Last week I posted at the Huffington Post, starting a dialogue about how to fight corruption in Congress. Hundreds of people wrote in with thoughtful comments, but almost everyone agreed on one main truth: that the political system is broken by too much money from special interests, and not enough influence for small-dollar donors.
Today I'm writing again to announce some big news. At Change Congress, we're launching a political "donor strike" where thousands of people pledge only to donate to politicians who support a system of public funding — plus Obama-style small-dollar donations — for congressional elections.
We call this "citizen-funded elections." The 2008 election proved the power of grassroots donations. Now's the time to turn that power into real change. We're giving Congress a choice: you can either have our money or money from special interests, but not both. We'll reward the reformers. But those who oppose reform won't get any money from us. Nada. Zip.
Already, the Associated Press has written a story about this donor strike. Can you help add to the momentum by taking the pledge today at this link? It will only take a minute.
Our pledge reads: "I'm pledging not to donate to any federal candidate unless they support legislation making congressional elections citizen-funded, not special-interest funded." You can sign it here.
Last night, I was on the Colbert Report and talked with Stephen Colbert about the corrupting influence of money on Congress. I then taped a special video from the Colbert green room announcing today's big news. You can watch it here or at the bottom of this post.
Last year, 10 senators (including Barack Obama) and nearly 60 House members co-sponsored the type of reform we're proposing. It's up to us to add to those numbers — and to get the backs of those who are fighting for change.
As Congress begins to debate the big issues of the day, we all have issues that we care about most. But progress will be blocked on every big issue until we solve the threshold problem: special interests having too much clout in our public debates. Especially with the economic crisis we face, it makes no sense for our elected leaders to spend their time begging for campaign contributions from the very special interests that got us into this mess.
Ironically, in these tough economic times, you can do your part to clean up the system by pledging to give nothing. Thousands of people pledging to give nothing will go a long way. Here's what some of our partners in the reform movement are saying about this new campaign:
DEMOCRACY MATTERS's Adonal Foyle: "As a professional basketball player, I am proud to pledge that I will donate only to candidates who support citizen-funded Congressional elections."
COMMON CAUSE's Bob Edgar: "If millions of small donors make it clear to Congress that they are serious about real reform now, that will make a huge difference in our ability to get Congress to do what more and more members are realizing they need to do: End their addiction to money from a handful of big donors, once and for all."PUBLIC CITIZEN's David Arkush: "We're near a tipping point in Washington politics. Small donors made a huge impact in 2008, but unfortunately, big money still has more sway. Now small donors have a chance to change the pay-to-play system and have their voices heard."
U.S. PIRG's Lisa Gilbert: "In order to see change on critical issues like the economy and our healthcare system, we need a clean campaign funding system that allows regular voters to be heard by our politicians."
AMERICANS FOR CAMPAIGN REFORM's Dan Weeks: "What we're seeing is the small donor revolution starting to leverage its power on a broken Washington system."
Can you watch the video announcing the donor strike and take the pledge today?
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This is the conflict of interest most media has. Most of the money is spent on media. Television most especially. Most radio and television budgets are based, actually count on like payment for the fall crop, campaign money every few years. The anchors, the pundit, the owners, none want to talk about it because it's where their good things come from. Did you, for instance, ever hear Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow talk about this subject? It's the big no-no subject.
Please ask, "Where are the big campaign bucks spent?" "Can't our political system find better uses for our hard-earned small contribution?" "Why not think about why we even need so much money spent?"
Not everyone knows, however, the value of the Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Free Software movement, and the brilliant and subtle observations Lessig made in his book, Free Culture. I had hoped that the new administration would have some inkling, however, and help establish these new paradigms.
Instead, we get Pirelli of "prosecuting-for-the-RIAA" in Justice, while all Lessig is left to tell us about this political equivalent of Buy Nothing Day.
Um, I would have hoped that Lawrence Lessig would have been given a larger national platform to promote his much bigger ideas -- and leave people like Pirelli in the (ever shrinking, ever shirking) private sector.
Something is wrong here.
If we just have a few million people who contribute $25-$50 a month, that would amount in a few years to billions of dollars. That could pay for educating millions of people to support the right issues and would pay for promoting promising young people on political tracks to acquire a controlling share of political power after a couple of years. It is that simple. Otherwise it is not going to get better even if Obama, or the presidents after him, will have a hard time being quite as bad as the present one.
How about rethinking your pledge to something like, "I will donate exclusively to those federal candidates who support citizen-funded elections and pledge to forego special interest funding."
I used to have all the hope in the world, and I did join this movement. I think one person got it right; There is still enough big money that congress and the senate doesn't need small money to win long seated, career politician elections. Obama did, but I have a feeling large donations from the health care industry paid better.
let's really change this now!
I think not,... and unless this 'fair' treatment can be managed, why should a corporation get the same rights as an individual?
There should be a place on the IRS form where you can choose where your taxes go.
Then we would have health care and forget those slimeballs in the banking system. Those folks should go to jail.
I really like the idea, and have been practicing that for many years. The problem is that this is the same thing as doing a tune up on a car motor when the problem is that you have a bad bearing.
IMO........the "bad bearing" in this case, is entrenched career politicians. Until "We the People" start looking towards ideas and integrity, instead of idealogy and willingness to compromise, not a lot is gonna change. Right now, all this will accomplish is to drive politicians more heavily towards high dollar special interest groups.