Money In Politics
Many might ask, “since America is a democracy, why haven’t the people asserted their political will to redress the problems described above?”. The answer is that our political institutions have been captured for the benefit of special interests through the mechanism of Money in Politics.
As we all know all too well, our politics is now centered upon the pursuit of campaign money. First we had direct contributions to candidate campaigns. As those became somewhat regulated we saw the growth of PACs. As those were regulated and limited we saw the invention of 527s and SuperPACs. The final result was Citizen’s United which has now authorized unlimited “independent” campaign expenditures by everybody, including Corporations and Unions.
The capture of politics by Money in Politics extends well beyond direct election contributions to include the revolving door between Congressional and Executive staffs and the lobbying industry.
Even elected officials are part of the revolving door system of Congressman who leave congress go to work for lobbying firms, at much higher salaries than they made in Congress. The subtle message is; play ball with the special interests and we will take care of you, through campaign contributions and even a sweet job when you step down (or heaven forbid get defeated).
These days, Lobbyist with their nearly limitless budgets, even draft the language of laws to regulate their own industries! See Lawrence Lessig’s excellent book:
for detailed descriptions of the many ways that Money has nearly entirely captured our political process.
Clean Democracy
The Money Power has for too long blocked all serious attempts to limit its command of our economy and our politics. Even modest reforms are quickly “worked around” or overturned on dubious Constitutional grounds. We aim through a Constitutional Amendment to reclaim our Democracy as a means to represent the interests of “The People” not of “The Money”.
Usefulness of Some Money In Politics
While our current runaway system of Big Money dominating politics is a horrendous surrender of citizen sovereignty, there are some attributes of money in politics that make it a useful complement to elections.
One key advantage of money is time independence. Elections only happen on set cycles, using money to indicate political support for a candidate or issue can be done at any time, allowing preferences to accumulate incrementally.
Another useful attribute is arbitrary divisibility. A citizen has exactly one vote each for President, Senator, Governor, and Dog Catcher. With money contributions a citizen can indicate that they care much more about who is Dog Catcher than who is President by giving money to the candidate for Dog Catcher but not the candidate for President.
Further, ratios can be arbitrarily defined: 1% to Senate candidate, 2% to Gubernatorial candidate, 7% to Congressional candidates, 20% to Presidential candidate and 70% to Dog Catcher candidate. Each citizen can express their priorities by how they divide their political contributions
The Core Problem with Money in Politics
The problem with Money in Politics as it is today is obvious: it violates the core Democratic value of Civic Equality. While it is “one person, one vote” in elections, in the just as important money campaign those with much money have many many more votes than those with little money. Is it any surprise that our political system has been substantially captured by the Money Power?
Our Plan
We aim to keep the useful aspects of Money in Politics while putting all citizens on an equal basis in that competition. Here is how we do it:
As part of a citizen’s Free Money “dividend’ each citizen will get $100 per year (actually implemented as $8.25/month), of “Political Money” which can and will be tracked separately by the Free Money system. Political Money can only be used for political purposes. It cannot be used for every day expenditures.
The real power of Political Money is that ONLY Political Money will may be used for “political activities” including electoral campaigns AND lobbying. At $100 per citizen that amounts to over $30 billion a year for political speech – almost certainly much MORE than is spent now – BUT it is equal weighted per citizen, not disproportionately weighted towards the elites.
George Soros, the Koch Brothers, a median income worker, and an unemployed recent college graduate each have $100 to expend in the political process.
Thus, Political Money maintains all the useful features of Money in Politics, but does so in a way that provides Civic Equality in the ability to influence the political process with money. To deal with the fact that many citizens have only weak and intermittent interest in politics, a citizen may assign all or part of their political money by proxy to another Person or to a Political Legal Entity.
A citizen might have little or no knowledge or interest in politics but probably knows someone who does, for instance; “my Uncle Charlie who reads the New York Times and Wall Street Journal every day and who seems sensible”.
Alternatively, citizens could route their political money to Political Legal Entities that they believe will represent their interests either narrowly or broadly. For example a very partisan Democrat might route 100% of their political money to the Democratic Party. An issues oriented voter might divide their political money flow between say the Political Legal Entity Affiliates of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Sierra Club, and the NRA.
Such Political Affiliates, may then transfer funds to other Political Legal Entities such as political parties or candidate campaign committees, or expend their funds on qualified political purposes such as lobbying. The original political money transfers of $8.25 per month from Persons will be fully anonymized to prevent employers or others from pressuring Persons for contributions. All other transfers of political money will be subject to Real Transparency.