Getting the money out of politics

Uniquely, it’s one of the subjects that both Tea Party members and “Occupiers” agree on, there is too much money in politics.  It certainly looks like it’s not only the American people that are calling to get at least some of the big money out of politics, it’s our government as well.  Two interesting stories surfaced last week, The SEC is moving toward a rule that will make public companies report their campaign donations and political activities to stock holders, and the Citizens United ruling has sparked many proposed amendments to the Constitution.  

I have never understood why a public company would be allowed by its stockholders to hide it’s contributions.  We effectively lend them our money by buying stock, don’t we want to know how they are spending it?  Stockholders demand virtually every other piece of financial information about companies they own shares in, wouldn’t they want to know where the political dollars are going?  If a bank had lent them money I’ll bet they’d have to tell.

Opponents charge that this kind of disclosure rule would violate a corporation’s “free speech rights” and possibly expose them to criticism.  Possibly?  We know from the current Supreme Court’s ruling on Citizens United that Corporations do in fact have free speech rights.  I’m not sure keeping financial information from stockholders is part of “Free speech,” but then again I don’t agree that corporations should have these kinds of rights in the first place. 

Needles to say Republican representatives quickly proposed a bill that would make it illegal for the SEC to make any such ruling.  Vowing to co-sponsor the bill, our friend Scott Garrett (R-NJ, district 5) who is the chairman of the house oversight committee for the SEC, said “ The role of the SEC is investor protection, not to engage in a political foray.”  Of course this is from the guy who called Sandy aid to NJ “Wasteful,”  and apparently is against further regulation for financial institutions.  I wonder if he’s heard the term “interest rate swap” yet.  He will, we all will.

New York is pondering public funding of elections, which is probably the only sure method of getting masses of money out of politics and reducing the onslaught of wall to wall commercials at election time.  

Amend the Constitution?

One of the ways of getting a lot of the “Special interest” money out of the American Political landscape currently under consideration is creating an amendment to the constitution.  There are lots of proposals and lots of different methods to achieve the goal of reducing, or eliminating, the effect of special interests in U.S. Politics.  Just about all of them go directly after the dollars. 

 Of the 17 proposed amendments, all reverse the Citizens United decision and declare that Corporate money is not “Free Speech.”   Reversing corporate personhood is just the beginning though, some call for no political contributions whatsoever and some just call for limits on all election spending.  Some of the proposed amendments include state elections and some are limited to federal elections.  A lot of the amendments declare election day a Federal holiday, which I think is a good idea, and most include non-direct election spending.  Which would include pumping out media designed to sway voters to, or from a particular candidate.  

This all makes me wonder just what an election would be like if they were publicly funded or under strict regulation, not to mention the effects on the governing process.  Would the playing field be effectively leveled?  What would Senators and Representatives do with all the time they spend raising money now, govern?  That’s a scary thought considering some of our politicians.  Money has always been an integral part of American politics, I’m not sure I’d recognize the government without it.

I will predict that if any of these amendments ever gets off the ground it will be an uphill battle.  The first shot out of the corporate cannons will be that publicly funded elections are “Socialism,” and nobody wants that.  Or do we?

A pretty good list of the six major proposed ammendments concerning money and politics can be found here, but this list is not definitive.

https://movetoamend.org/other-amendments

The league of women Voters lists 14 proposed amendments (I came up with 17) and has a good discussion of the ammendment process as well as the various angles an ammendment might include.

http://www.lwv.org/content/review-constitutional-amendments-proposed-res...