I'm old enough to live on Social Security, and, for most of my adult life, I've heard about Campaign Finance Reform.
It's a total fraud. First-time Candidates promise they'll do it. Once elected, they forget all about it. "It's not practical," they say. "It's too complicated. We've got more important things to worry about!" Like a Bill to name a bridge after someone.
In my native state of North Carolina, we bear the stigma of having allowed corruption of campaign financing to take a giant leap forward by electing Jesse Helms to the US Senate, for 30 years.
Jesse's national contribution extractor, The Congressional Club, reached across state lines like never before to help elect CONservatives all across America. If you can't raise enough money in your home state, go next door. Or go continental. During its existence, 1966 to 1973, the Club raised $100 million to elect CONservatives, back during a time when $100 million was real money.
Candidates of both Parties have now adopted Jesse's strategy, nationwide. This distortion of democracy has grown to such gargantuan proportions, that big campaign money powerhouses outweigh the influence of those of us who can vote.
But if public officials are supposed to represent the constituency who elect them, why are they forced to serve the desires of those who cannot vote for them? For any representative democracy to work, deciding the laws we live by must be done by those elected, not by those who paid to have them elected.
Campaign Finance Reform is a fraud, because immediately it conjures up a set of rules which rivals IRS in complexity. Rules look like they work, but they're designed to create loopholes for clever lawyers and politicos to figure a way to slip through. Reform is made to look good to a politically naive American public. But it plugs one leak, and simultaneously drills two more holes. The money pot only grows bigger.
This happened every time any attempt has been made. Works about one election cycle, then it's chopped and mangled, requiring another Campaign Finance Reform.
So why doesn't it ever Reform anything? Because all those who make money from gathering money don't want it to. Campaign Finance Reform is always designed to fail.
What can be done?
Restore democracy in America. Jesse discovered how to corrupt our democracy with money. Time to return to basics: One person, one vote.
Why should a voter in Texas, Wyoming or New York be allowed to purchase votes in Carolina? And with Corporations daily becoming multi-nationals, who is actually electing people to public office in America?
In a representative democracy, every elected official has a precise geographical boundary which decides who can vote to elect each Candidate. Boundaries are clearly established, regardless of occasional gerrymandering.
Money = voting.
Therefore, the only people allowed to vote with their money -- to make campaign contributions -- must be registered to vote within any given political boundary.
It's idiotically simple. And does not require a five pound Rule Book, dripping with loopholes, to describe it.
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