Tag Archives: Getting money out of politics

An Even Better Way to Get Money Out of Politics

By Joe Firestone

A couple of weeks ago, I posted on a simple solution to the problem of getting money out of politics. I said then:

If the election you’re voting in is virtually a two candidate contest, then vote for the candidate, who, in combination with her/his supporters spends the least amount of money. In a virtual multi-candidate contest, do the same thing.
That’s the proposal, in its simplest form. Its objective is to reverse the current race to the bottom in buying elections by ensuring that there would be a powerful incentive to start a race to the top to raise and spend as little money as possible in campaigns. That incentive is that if you spend too much you lose, pure and simple.
The other rationale for the rule is that the person who raises and spends the least amount of money for a campaign, will generally be the person who is “less bought” by wealthy people, financial interests, and large corporations. Eventually, if the rule took hold it would no longer be said of the Congress that “the banks own the place.”

I cross-post at a number of sites, and at Daily Kos I received a comment from “Musial,” which being of a certain age, engaged me immediately. The comment advised me to read the “money outta politics” solution, which “Musial” felt was superior to my own. It says:

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Getting Big Money Out of Politics: A Solution

By Joe Firestone

A lot of Americans have the feeling that those who have and supply big money to candidates, office holders, lobby groups, think tanks, and media have bought politics. That it is they who are determining the agendas that office holders act upon and even the specific decisions they make in passing laws and rendering executive and even judicial decisions. This short post won’t debate the extent to which big money has perverted democratic processes in the United States. Instead it will offer a simple, perhaps an oversimple, solution to the problem that will really work. Here it is. Continue reading