If.Then.Fund and the 28th Amendment

Prof. Laurence Lessig had come up with a proposal, an alternative campaign finance structure, that would set forth a $50 tax credit to every registered voter. The tax credit could only be used to contribute to a candidate's campaign. En masse 149 million registered voters would finance all elections with the $7.4 billions of contributions (if all of the tax credit was expended), making the funding of electoral campaigns fully decentralized and democratized without any individual supporting a candidate involuntarily. This would have the following benefits: elected officials would no longer be beholden to the billionaire & multimillionaire donors that currently fund their campaigns for office, elected officials would be responsive to constituents as their will would need to be heeded to garner their contributions, Super PACs-Corporations-legal entities of all sorts will be returned the sidelines of our republic, and candidates that aren't wealthy or have social network of wealthy individuals would have access to being representing their fellow citizens. The downside, or my interpretation of a downside, for this campaign finance proposal is that every elected official and wannabe elected official would be a tornado of self-promotional pandering flacks, still not resolved to bring the needed solutions to their constituents.

I came across if.then.fund, a start-up that is seeking to amplify the influence of small donors and couple the votes of Congress with campaign contributions. Below are quotes from their 'about' page to give an idea of what they are trying to achieve

Shaping the next Congress

Your donations go toward the reelection campaign of current members of Congress when they vote the way you want, or toward their next general election opponent if they vote the other way. if.then.fund helps you “keep ’em in” or “throw ’em out” in the next election, shaping the make-up of the next Congress to be more aligned with your views.

Targeting real outcomes

Instead of making an aspirationation donation to a candidate, campaign contributions made here on if.then.fund are based on what legislators actually do, not what they say they will do. if.then.fund routes your contributions to members of Congress who vote the way you want and to the opponents of those who do not. By being targeted, your contributions will be more effective at supporting candidates with similar views to your own.

So the next improvement on both these ideas, in my humble opinion is to combine them. Imagine if each bill was tied to the elected official's campaign coffers and everyone of his constituents were involved in expressing their opinion about their legislator's vote. When legislation came up that was fully innocuous (renaming a post office) there would be no contributions from constituents coming in and their wouldn't be a partisan divide, but when a bill such as the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), or NY SAFE Act (NY State's controversial gun-control legislation) the constituents would make their voice heard and put their buck (more likely quarter due to the number opportunities to contribute) where their mouth is. Through multiple pieces of legislation, the campaign coffers would either fill up for the elected official or they would be empty with a war chest filled for his general election opponent, this wouldn't dictate explicitly the results of the election but the more contributions his constituents receive the more mailers, radio ads, and TV ads they will be able to pay for to explain their votes and their vision.

A platform like if.then.fund could be implemented in such away that each registered voter could check into the service and see what votes are coming infront of their elected officials with a rationale for why the elected official is voting the way they are voting along with statements from the sponsor of legislation and declared opposition of the legislation. As constituents aren't obligated to participate, just as they aren't obligated to vote, they only participate when they support or oppose legislation that they are animated by an issue. This would have the benefit that elected officials could differ with a majority of their constituents occasionally if it were a matter of principle but the elected official couldn't deviate too often without being assured that his/her re-election will go down in flames.

I would add an additional restriction to Lessig's proposal, and that would be to limit contributions from constituents of candidates and elected officials only; banning out of state and out of district contributions is essential from preventing outside influence. So in case an issue that is explicitly local gets twisted into a national issue, as in the recent "World Trade Mosque" which was approved by the local community board but opposed by millions of people that would never set foot in Manhattan but would have contributed towards the opposition and yet never would have had skin in the game. Decisions being made by those that have skin in the game is the point of democracy (and capitalism too if one were to read the Father of Capitalism Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations).

Modern electoral campaigns have a need for paid-for staff in most cases and at minimum postage and printing costs for mailers to deliver the candidate's message to prospective voters. Current modus oprendi is that a vast majority of campaigns' funding comes from the ever slimmest of the population; the rarest of individuals that have discretionary funds to pay for these campaigns aren't equally distributed and aren't in large part trying to exert their political will but instead attempting to gain economic advantages that can be categorized as 'rent seeking' or 'crony capitalism'. To transform the current status to the desired goal would require a Constitutional Amendment, but states could set up campaign finance regimes such as this prior to a Constitutional Amendment barring non-constituents from funding campaigns. Though there would still remain outside funding, the publicly finance campaigns would be available only to those that forgo outside funding as is the case in Arizona and Maine's Clean Elections. Having the additional benefit that some amount of funding would be available for any challenger to run against the incumbent would create an incentive for challenging every incumbent instead of as it is now that a vast majority of elected officials are never challenged
in their general election. This form of public finance would also have the benefit that the constituents would be empowered over their elected representatives so that their will be carried out; the intended purpose of representative republic and a democratic form of governance. This also sidesteps the legitimate and often stated criticism of public finance: "why should my tax dollars go towards a candidate I disagree with, or not even going to vote for?" Tax dollars would be distributed exactly in proportion to the level of support of the constituents, though if the constituents changed their mind regarding the legislation (or several pieces of legislation) then they would have financially supported a candidate that they by election day won't support with a vote.

With a two-party system this form of public financing would also provide the ability to fund 3rd party legislative candidates. For example, the NY SAFE Act State Senator intends to vote in favor of the gun control law, his constituents that oppose gun control but also both major parties can assign a portion of their credit to support the Libertarian candidate whomever that turns out to be in following election. The Libertarian Party Committee is then able to recruit a candidate with the knowledge that they will have at minimum such-and-such amount of money that the constituents contributed in opposition to the incumbent State Senator. A similar scenario could be made for a State Senator who voted against NY SAFE Act and could pledge their funds for the Green Party opponent.

In New York State there is odd trait within electoral laws known as Fusion balloting, where a candidate can be on the ballot multiple times and the aggregated votes received across all party lines determine the total vote count. Republican candidates routinely receive the Conservative Party ballot line along with the Republican Party line; as does Democratic party vote totals are often supplemented with the Working Families Party votes. The question arises how does one deal with funds that are assigned by constituents to oppose a sitting Republican legislator and intended for a Conservative Party opponent which turns out to be the same Senator our constituent opposes or a Democratic legislator with constituent intending to support an opposing Working Families Party (WFP) candidate? Though there is no simple answer, I would let such funds roll over from election to election until a candidate that opposed the major party candidate. I put this caveat forward in the likely scenario that a incumbent who is too moderate for the Conservative Party supporter or WFP supporter leaves office the local minor party doesn't simply get to subsidized the major party candidate who is now running for an open seat. Though discussing these minor details, I must admit I'm not as attached to these particular reforms as much as the funding of the opposition of the major party and reducing the effect of non-constituent funding.

In the case of the Governor, the ability of constituents (any registered voter of the state) to demonstrate their support of opposition of a bill would be able to fund either 'signing the bill into law' or 'vetoing the bill' again with some mechanism to fund opposition candidates in the next general election. In the 2014 election of Andrew Cuomo, this would have tied WFP's hands in attempting to saber rattle progressive opposition to get a better deal negotiated with the governor. Threats to raise up an alternative candidate as a means to bolster the party coffers would not be an empty threat anymore, after such a reform at least, since all the funds raised in opposition to the incumbent ro establishment candidate would be committed to an alternative candidate.

Feel free to critique, comment and add to the idea below.

Cantor Loses To Tea Party Candidate: Not Holding Breath For The End Of Crony Capitalism

Eric Cantor stepping down from Republican House leadership is being reported as sending shockwaves through political halls of power, I believe that it is actually not an indicative of things to come but rather a lagging indicator that the GOP's purity test is has the party on a trajectory to obliviation. When elected officials that are willing to compromise about anything are thrown out of the party, such as Arlen Spectre and Bob Bennett, there can be no debate or civil discourse between the parties. As the logjam becomes semi permanant, the voters will continually seek to 'throw the bums out' and as the primaries veer off to a more and more untenable obstruction for obstruction sake position the moderates that were thrown out of the party would either join the Democrats or start their own moderate party like the Likud party in Israel.

Starting a third party with centrist inclination while the Democratic party veering back to a populist left position would be best for the nation, having gradients of political policy among the three parties would give more choice to the electorate for having their voice represented while at the same time dissuade an absolutist purity of ideology due to an alternative viable option in the general election. Though that scenario would be best for the electorate and democracy, the more likely outcome is the lip service paid in campaigns against status quo crony-capitalism hegemony but govern to the whims of Big Business so that every election both Republican and Democratic politicians claim to be the savior of Main Street and bash the elite until they are sworn into office. For example, Barack "Change" Obama who repeatedly stated that you can keep sending the same people into office and expect different results-- then goes hires Clinton's old economic team and Bush's Military-Industrial-Complex team to carry out exactly the same policies.

To rebut the Chief Justice of Supreme Court in his McCutcheon decision, but it is absolutely within the role of government to fix the apparatus of democracy and whether the elected representatives decide that the fix is providing transparency of campaign contributions or restricting only constituents to contribute to campaigns or some sort of public financing of campaigns, to keep our democracy strong and transform an out-of-touch Majority Leader losing an election from shock to expected outcome we need to tackle this as an problem that needs a solution.

Steamroller Spitzer: Had To Go; "My Way or No Way" Cuomo: Can Stay Forever

So it was often referred to in 2008 and throughout Eliot Spitzer's governship that he 'did not play well with others' which was part of the rationale to why he couldn't weather out the storm of his perchance to use high end prostitutes like current Senator David Vitter did when he was outed as a family values politician that flouted his family obligations. Assemblyman Keith Wright in an attempt to collect endorsements from Democratic clubs around the city came across the problem that the Governor is not too popular among the most active Democratic activists, as seen in the below quote from Capital New York article:

Later, (satirist and protest candidate for governor Randy) Credico asked (former Assemblyman Peter) Grannis, “How is the comptroller’s relationship with Andrew Cuomo? Seriously.” After a few moments of silence from Grannis, who had a knowing smile on his face, Credico added, “Be honest.”

“I know the answer to the question," Grannis replied. "It’s a strained relationship and that’s unfortunate because we … could be a much more aggressive and productive partner with the governor.” He added, “the governor has this approach: my way or no way.”

AND

“Expectations have been high for this governor because of what he did with the Marriage Equality Act,” Wright told the crowd. “Why can’t he do that everywhere? I mean, that’s the question. This governor is in firm support of the Dream Act. I’m going to tell you quite frankly, the New York State Senate doesn’t like it. They hate it. And the Dream Act really doesn’t poll that well. So, you have senators that just won’t do it, just won’t do it. You’re giving tuition, financial aid to children of undocumented immigrants. Every place is not Greenwich Village."

So the styles of the Governors could be considered similar, if there was even a small smell of scandal would Cuomo be forced to resign as Spitzer did due to lack of support? Or would Cuomo weather the storm due to the support that his grating leadership style has lost him are the grassroots and not the big money contributors. In the documentary "Client 9", Ken Langone (billionaire founder of Home Depot) was shown in his own words to have inside information about investigating Eliot Spitzer prior to any knowledge of Spitzer's involvement with prostitutes, and demonstrated that his personality had nothing to do with his resignation but that his grating and obnoxious was merely directed towards the wrong segment of society, the organized money. Andrew Cuomo's obnoxious behavior is set against the least among us and those in the middle class, so he is secure in getting an insurmountable level of support and resources from those that are morbidly wealthy. Only those that have near infinite resources cannot be offended by elected officials that dare to seek out to carry out the will of the people and enforce the law indifferent to size of his/her bank account. When organized money screams for the heads of elected officials, get behind those candidates for office; when organized money get behind elected officials they find agreeable, scream for their heads and oppose them in every possible democratic institution.

But maybe the current New York State governor with future presidential ambitions should look to a previous holder of that office for some advice:

"We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace-business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hatred for me - and I welcome their hatred. I should like to have it said of my first administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second administration that in it these forces met their master.- President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Speech at Madison Square Garden"

IRS so called scandal

George Will said on ABC's This Week "A Tennessee group was told your entitlement to this status was contingent upon telling us the names of the high school and college students that you trained to participate in politics." The status that Mr. Will has his undies in a twist over is the nonprofit apolitical 501c4 organizations having their tax exempt status being delayed. If the Tennessee organization had nothing to hide, they could have sought out a 527 status and avoided the delay, instead decided to avoid contributors disclosures and obfuscate where their money is coming from denying the American public their right to know who is attempting to persuade public policy. 

There is a common theme in the conservatives' response across internet forums and social media, that liberals would not stand for the same actions if IRS used the same scrutiny on liberal nonprofits. No one needs to imagine what would occur if a Republican administration used the IRS to harass and audit liberal nonprofits; since it occurred under Bush against the NAACP, Planned Parenthood, and others. The right-wing complains about delays in being granted tax-exempt status; what conservative organization was denied 501c4 status? I can tell you which progressive organization was denied, Emerge America as they transformed their 527 organizations to 501c4 was denied the only benefit of avoiding to disclosing their contributors. The Tea Party and Patriot movement creating nonprofit organizations explicitly for politically purposes were still able to retain financial contributors anonymity despite that is neither the letter of the law or the spirit of the law to grant the status to such poltical organizations.

Much can be understood by the modus operandi, if tax-exempt 501c4 organizations intended for apolitical purposes to promote the general welfare in comparison to tax-exempt 527 organizations intended for purely political purposes, then the reason for political organizations seeking out 501c4 does so for the only distinction between 527 an 501c4: not disclosing political contributions.


Stephen Colbert famously and poignantly mocked the tax statuses of Super PACs and their deceiptive partners in crime by creating Colbert Super PAC and 501c4 Colbert Super PAC SHH! to hide who contributed to the his fund. Unlike the Tea Party and Patriot movement 501c4, Stephen Colbert actually had apolitical purposes  to educate and entertain the public about the absurdity of the campaign finance and the tax code.

http://www.salon.com/2013/05/14/when_the_irs_targeted_liberals/

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/21/business/advocacy-groups-denied-tax-exempt-status-are-named.html?_r=0

"Election rigging" is not the correct term that NY1 and NY Post keep using

Wilson Pakula is the authorization in New York State that allows a registered voter to run for the primary of a party they are not registered in already. Repeatedly referring to the shenanigans of State Senator Malcolm Smith, City Councilman Dan Halloran, Republican Party officials in the Bronx & Queens, and the two Spring Valley officials as "election rigging" is at best lazy reporting at worst intentionally misleading their audience for the purpose to sensationalize the news.

Money dealings of these public officials is where they went awry of the law, implicating elections being rigged trades trust in elections for the chance of increase in ratings or increase of sales. It is not a minor infraction of public watchdogs to the public in the deceptive perceptive that these politicians' corrupt self-enrichment could somehow corrupt the election results and thereby our democratic institutions. Primary ballot access has little to do with general election results, and certainly couldn't be categorized as 'rigging'.

Typically partisan primaries are limited to registered members of the party, New York State allows for fusion ballots that allows party members appear on multiple parties' primaries and on multiple ballot lines in the general. To do so you would need the party chairman of the respective municipality to authorize it, in the Smith-Halloran scandal Democrat Smith would need the Republican chairs of 3 out of 5 of the borough party chairs and those authorizations were what Republican Halloran was assisting Smith in attaining in his quixotic effort to become Mayor of New York on the Republican ballot line. These party chairmen's authorizations are called by the shibboleth Wilson Pakula after the legislation that allows the cross partisan ballot.

No actually vote tampering nor election rigging was threatened to occur, it was very similar to Bloomberg over paying Independence Party officials for political consultancy services. The difference is the money that Smith and Halloran was not their own and therefore illegal. The greatest source of corruption is the dependency of private contributions; had all elections were citizen funded as Laurence Lessig has proposed or publically funded as Wolf-Pac.com has proposed this scandal could never have occurred.


http://callaconvention.org/

http://www.Wolf-Pac.com

Profit Motive: Enemy Of Liberty

The profit motive has been restrictive of human freedom, as more and more of day-to-day activity for most of the global population has been determined or affected by profit motive the less choices are made available to the individual. The "free" enterprise and the corporate paradigm seeks out the the most profitable activity available regardless of outcome and ill effects. Losses that can't be entered into ledgers are referred to as externalities, so if there's a buck to be made to pollute, exploit individuals, corrupt decisions, or prostitute morality-- a buck will be made. If a problem can be solved wholly with less profit or continuing  the problem at a lower grade but with sizable return on an investment; the results will most certainly be whatever is the most profitable. The range decisions that can be made available to the individual shrinks with the possibility of the choices having a profit. If there is no profit in an individual's choice, that choice unsurprisingly becomes unavailable. For example, there will always be more profit in scarcity rather than abundance, so in the case of the food supply there is enough arable land in the U.S. alone to feed the world several times over but due to the profit motive it will always more profitable to keep starving a certain segment of the world's population. If the market decides between scarcity or abundance, the choice will always be scarcity for with abundance comes out goes the profit.

Potable water is the most abundant and necessary resource on the planet (with possible breathable air being the only thing of greater abundance). So with it being so abundant there certainly couldn't be a profit motive to potable water, right? Except again and again throughout the world private companies like Bechtel attempt to corner the market on resources create scarcity. Cochabamba is the 3rd largest city of Bolivia, and through under handed dealings of the IMF and World Bank the Bolivian government was forced to privatized their water systems as a condition of continued financing of their national debt. Bechtel, as the primary benefactor of the previous Bolivian development projects, was in the envious position to own the water company and set the prices for water that the people of Cochabamba needed to live. If the profit motive is really the best means to the most efficient process of bringing services and goods to market, why would the cost quadruple over night for Cochabamba's residents when Bechtel entered the market? It's because profit motive is the means to find more profit not efficiency nor solutions. But "free" marketeers (or more aptly named privateers) could never acknowledge failings in the unconditional love of higher rates of return.

The profit motive detrimentally even when in the guise of providing abundance, genetically modified organisms  (GMO) from the labs are pest repellent and more tolerant of adverse growing environments, certainly the more food grown in more places can't be bad? And so the agra-businesses reinvest their profits to provide higher yielding seeds, the manufactured scarcity comes from the fact the seeds have been neutered and do not yield next season's crop. Even if they did have cross pollination of GMO crops and non-patented natural crops, the manufacturers of the GMO seeds go after farmers for intellectual property infringement because they hold the patents on the living flora they created in a lab!

But you say to yourself that you are not a farmer, and the price of your water isn't exponentially rising in price (yet), all of these happy and profitable corporations are so eager to provide me with cheap disposable products, and what does it all have to do with liberty? With the array of solutions to any problem have is cleaved to let the only the profitable solutions remain, it limits the available choices to the individual. It is akin to telling a child you can have milk out of the red sippy cup or the blue sippy cup, while creating an illusion of "free" choice and individual liberty when in fact the parent makes the decision that the child will be drinking the milk. Within the profit scheme, we provided all the choices that are the most profitable, even if the best choice for us sustainable but not profitable enough. The "free" marketeers (privateers) with claims that mixed economy where both government and for profit enterprise compete in supplying goods and services is some how unfair, that the only citizen/customer "free" choice should be between the red sippy cup and the blue sippy cup that profits them.

The culling of the choices to only those that are for profit, isn't the most nefarious aspect of the profit motive. The most nefarious part of the profit motive is that instead bringing solutions to preexisting problems it's the creation of new problems with ready-to-purchase solutions. Healthcare in America is an animal that was created by committee, one member says it should have horns, another one says it should have wings, and yet another says it should swim-- the end results an abomination that no one person would ever have intentionally created. Any attempt to simplify it, and possibly follow our neighbors to the North with straight forward single payer for-profit healthcare will be lambasted for seeking out a solution that smacks of Socialism (and thereby cuts the profit taking middlemen). As if getting nickeled-and-dimed as one comes to the less healthy side of a lifetime of living is as American as Mom, apple pie, and baseball. Richard Stengal after writing the Time article "The Cost of Care" with conclusions that include decreasing Medicare age of eligibility to save money, since the operating expenses of Medicare is so much lower than that of the private market. The only reason this choice is unavailable to solve America's problem is that the fanatical privateers can't see past the possibility of anything but the profitable solution. So liberty is denied to the citizen that wants to chose the lower costing and less profitable solution. All of the obfuscation that prevents the most freedom to America in regards is the decisions made by committee (all committee members are profit seekers and not solution seekers) but it is a stretch on my part to claim that the healthcare is problem that was created by the profit motive.

For profit prisons and campaign contributions to legislators to propose mandatory minimums are exactly a problem created whole clothe for profit. Non-violent drug criminals choke our prison system, and are carted off to the correctional facilities operated at a profit by the likes of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO group that have no interest in rehabilitation since recidivism is counter-profitable to having their prisons filled. Beginning in the late 70's and early 80's private prisons to turn a profit on the burgeoning war on drugs. But the Federal government's decision to tough on recreational drug use wasn't what allowed for-profit prisons, but the Powell Memorandum that called corporate America to arms in the political debate, along with U.S. Supreme court decisions First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti and Buckley v. Valeo expanding corporate power and influence over elections. This encroachment on human liberty by non-corporeal legal  entities, both blots out choices for the individual person (the breathing type of person not the LLC type) when voting but waters down the humanity that makes up the government initially intended to be of, for, and by the people. And if you are to believe I exaggerate the amoral nature and corrupting affects that the profit motive has then please consider this: two Pennsylvania judges Judge Mark Ciavarella and Judge Michael Conahan were convicted (February 9th, 2009) of defrauding the people of honest services due to the $2.6 million that was provided to the judges by the for-profit juvenile correction center they, as juvenile court judges, were sentencing minor crimes (such as defamation of school principal on a MySpace page and shoplifting) for extraordinary long prison sentences.

So whether the profit motive corrupts the water we drink, food we drink, or air we breath, it will remain an enemy to our life. As long as it is profitable to keep a significant portion of our population in jail, it will remain an enemy to our liberty. As long as it continues to predicate the addiction of consumable goods and false hope that is hyper-materialism, the profit motive will remain an enemy of our pursuit of happiness.




http://web.archive.org/web/20080607071734/http://www.50years.org/cms/ejn/story/85

http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/percy-schmeiser.aspx

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2136867,00.html

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_National_Bank_of_Boston_v._Bellotti

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo