About time I posted a politics blog, eh?
“When the political columnists say ‘Every thinking man’ they mean themselves, and when candidates appeal to ‘Every intelligent voter’ they mean everybody who is going to vote for them.” -Franklin P. Adams.
We need to revise campaign funding laws, because money has become too important in elections and special interest groups have an advantage to skew results over the American people.
Under the current campaign finance laws, there is an unfair advantage given to Republicans and Democrats. Current election spending doesn’t give third parties a chance. Only 10% of industry donations went to third party or nonpartisan candidates. Without money, you can’t advertise. Without advertising, no one knows who you are. When no one knows who you are, you can’t get your voice heard. In January 2007, Federal Election Commission Chairman Michael E. Toner estimated the 2008 race will be a $1 billion election, and that to be taken seriously, a candidate needed to raise at least $100 million by the end of 2007. According to OpenSecrets.org, Bob Barr, Libertarian, raised $1 million dollars, getting .4% of the votes. Barak Obama, Democrat, raised $640 million, and won 52.7% of votes.
Second, corporate influence is bad, because they don’t reflect the interests of the people. A month before the 2004 election, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, if you combine all finance sector donors, the combined total contributions to Democratic and Republican parties and federal candidates so far in this election season is $218 million. Finance sector donors include real estate, accounting corporations, insurance and stock brokers. Again using Bob Barr, 98% of his funds came from individual citizens donating, 1% from Political Action Committees (PAC), and 0% from federal funds, but he only accounted for .4% of votes. John McCain, Republican, had only 54% of his funding coming from individual citizens and 23% coming from federal funds. He raised $320 million total and got 47% of the votes.
Finally, there are better things to spend the money on that directly effect teens. $1,456,396,985 was donated overall, by industries, to political campaigns in 2008 (FollowTheMoney.org) If they instead invested in students, just based on this number:
*Every student who took the SAT in 2007 could receive $974 dollars towards college tuition
*We could build 27 new high schools, or 113 8/9 schools.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is getting ridiculous. I apologize for the infodump, but it was necessary. Doesn’t it make you sick? I think we should impose a law that constrains the amount of money allowed to be donated by industries and special interest groups to political campaigns. Maybe, just maybe, that could cause people to start actually paying attention to issues, not flashy TV ads. But this is only the tip of the iceburg of potential campaign reforms. Next week, please remind me, I will be writing about voter turnout. Stay tooned!
