Ten years ago, I walked from California to Washington, D.C. to help gather support for campaign finance reform. I used the novelty of my age (I was 90), to garner attention to the fact that our democracy, for which so many people have given their lives, is being subverted to the needs of wealthy interests, and that we must do something about it. I talked to thousands of people and gave hundreds of speeches and interviews, and, in every section of the nation, I was deeply moved by how heartsick Americans are by the current state of our politics.
Well, we got some reform bills passed, but things seem worse now than ever. Our good government reform groups are trying to staunch the flow of special interest money into our political campaigns, but they are mostly whistling in a wind that has become a gale force of corrupting cash. Conditions are so bad that people now assume that nothing useful can pass Congress due to the vote-buying power of powerful financial interests. The health care reform debacle is but the most recent example.
The Supreme Court, representing a radical fringe that does not share the despair of the grand majority of Americans, has this week made things considerably worse by undoing the modest reforms I walked for and went to jail for, and that tens of thousands of other Americans fought very hard to see enacted. So now, thanks to this Court, corporations indirectly fund their candidates without limits and they can run mudslinging campaigns against everyone else, right up to and including election day. Moreover, their lobbyists now have carte blanche to threaten incumbents with smear campaigns if they don't bend to the respective corporate interest.
The Supreme Court now opens the floodgates to usher in a new tsunami of corporate money into politics. If we are to retain our democracy, we must proceed in a new direction until a more reasonable Supreme Court is in place. I would propose a one-two punch of the following nature:
A few states have adopted programs where candidates who agree to not accept special-interest donations receive, instead, advertising funds from their state. The programs work, and I would guess that they save their states more money than they cost by reducing corruption. Moving these reforms in the states has been very slow and difficult, but we must keep at it.
But we also need a new approach--something of a roundhouse punch. I would like to propose a flanking move that will help such reforms move faster: We need to dramatically expand the definition of what constitutes an illegal conflict of interest in politics.
If your brother-in-law has a road paving company, it is clear that you, as an elected official, must not vote to give him a contract, as you have a conflict of interest. Do you have any less of an ethical conflict if you are voting for that contract not because he is a brother-in-law, but because he is a major donor to your campaign? Should you ethically vote on health issues if health companies fund a large chunk of your campaign? The success of your campaign, after all, determines your future career and financial condition. You have a conflict.
Let us say, through the enactment of new laws, that a politician can no longer take any action, or arrange any action by another official, if the action, in the opinion of that legislative body's civil service ethics officer, would cause special gain to a major donor of that official's campaign. The details of such a program will be daunting, but we need to figure them out and get them into law.
Remarkably, many better corporations have an ethical review process to prevent their executives from making political contributions to officials who decide issues critical to that corporation. Should corporations have a higher standard than the United States Congress? And many state governments have tighter standards, too. Should not Congress be the flagship of our ethical standards? Where is the leadership to make this happen this year?
This kind of reform should also be pushed in the 14 states where citizens have full power to place proposed statutes on the ballot and enact them into law. About 70% of voters would go for a ballot measure to "toughen our conflict of interest law," I estimate. In the scramble that would follow, either free campaign advertising would be required as a condition of every community's contract with cable providers (long overdue), or else there would be a mad dash for public campaign financing programs on the model of Maine, Arizona, and Connecticut. Maybe both things would happen, which would be good.
I urge the large reform organizations to consider this strategy. They have never listened to me in the past, but they also have not gotten the job done and need to come alive or now get out of the way.
And to the Supreme Court, you force us to defend our democracy--a democracy of people and not corporations--by going in breathtaking new directions. And so we shall.
How about a new law "No person shall lobby Congress/government who is paid to do so." How about a constitutional convention? Remember, money is not wealth or speech. It is a tradable symbol of socially agreed upon political power. The US has just crossed into the underworld of transglobal and foreign corporatism, a euphamism for fascism. It's the corporate "banks." The rot from within. The transfer of puplic wealth and power to private non-soverign "investors." It's the carbon and uranium interests, socialized costs and privatized profits. The president (let's go nuclear") doesn't have a clue.
How quickly will the corporations start trying to find ways back to the good old days under a scheme like this?
You must not have walked through Chicago.
Get involved. The American people will not surrender to tyranny.
"I've been thinking a little more about the Supreme Court's decision. This ruling gives foreign powers more rights than U.S. citizens. Imagine that! Aramco, a corporation owned by the Saudi Arabian government, will have enormously more influence in choosing your senator than you will. That's one thing that I meant when I said that "if we do nothing, you can kiss this country goodbye."
This will not stand. It cannot stand. There are too many Americans who love this country and won't allow it to happen. And you are one of them.
We are making a movement. If you have a moment, please forward this email to five of your friends, and ask them to sign our petition at www.SaveDemocracy.net. And then a mighty voice will rise up from the land.
Courage,
Alan Grayson
Member of Congress
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Please sign Alan Grayson's petition. Then call, email, or write a letter to your Senators and Representatives. Especially if they are Republicans. These greedy corrupt characters need to know that the American people will not surrender to tyranny.
I'm going to join a 24 hour effort, instead of watching my favorite tv program I'm gonna to spend that time working for this campaign.
Viva La Liberte
I think I'll just turn off the TV, cancel the paper and go bird watching or something. Then when it's time to vote, I'll have a look at each candidate's public and vote for the one I agree with the most.
I ask everyone on this thread to ask yourselves. When our country is under threat by superior forces, who will defend a corrupt nation ? Are there going to be some stalwart courage emerging from Corporate leadership to risk life and family to support an idea ? The signers of the Declaration of Independence were ruined, burned out, shot and chased across country for signing a piece of paper that gave credence and authority to our American life, our justice system and our right to sovereignty.
Who would sign that paper today ? Glenn Beck ? Bill Gates ? The Weinstein brothers ? Ted Turner ?
No. none of them. and more importantly, the youth and middle America today would scoff at enlistment and defy the draft. America is losing itself. Our power isn't just our citizens hard work but the belief of our foreign neighbors in our birth and the drama of our experiment.
What happens when our neighbors stop looking to us for leadership ? For strength ? What happens when the Experiment fails ? Where is hope ?
Campaign Finance is the one key that starts the engine of change for our political economic future and we just sat and watched it get murdered without so much as a yawn.
The problem with the conflict of interest suggestion is that the SC ruling allows corporations to spend unlimited money on their own ads. It doesn't allow corporations to donate any more directly to the candidate. If Exxon Mobile wants to spend a billion dollars telling people to vote for candidate X, there's nothing candidate X can do to stop them. So either the conflict of interest rules would ignore money spent on behalf of candidates (such rules would still be worthwhile, but wouldn't help with the new problem the SC has created) or they would unfairly penalize candidates for spending outside of their control. In the latter case, a corporation could spend money on a candidate they didn't like, just to stop them from voting against the corporation!
So nice idea, and a good rule in any case, but doesn't actually help with the SC ruling.
Fat chance of that happening. Do you think these Congressmen would restrict themselves?