I have nothing to add to the millions of people who have
expressed dismay and shock that the Senate could not pass a bill to increase
background checks on gun buyers. As all the media except for maybe Fox News
have reported, around 90% of all Americans supported increasing background
checks. Yet the Senate couldn’t muster the 60 votes needed to prevent a
filibuster, and so the bill failed.
The Senators who voted against the bill all have one worry: If they voted in favor of what their constituents wanted, gun rights organizations such as the rabid National Rifle Association and even more rabid Gun Owners of America would give exorbitant amounts of money to their opponents.
While I’m certain that a few of the 45 Senators voting
against better background checks are gun crazy, it was the potential loss of
their job that made many if not most vote thumbs down.
Forget about integrity or ethics. What happened to doing what the people who elected you want you to do?
Many blame the rules of the Senate for the failure of a bill
supported by virtually every American. But I blame it primarily on money. It should be clear to most Americans by now
that money plays too great a role in American politics and political campaigns. Congress should act to overturn the decision
in Citizen’s United and institute real campaign reform.
I would start by limiting the amount of money that can be spent on any candidate’s campaign by anyone—different limits for different campaigns. Negative ads against one candidate would count against the total for every other candidate in that particular race. If a candidate is mentioned positively in an issue ad, say on gun control or abortion, it would count towards his or her total; if mentioned negatively in an issue ad, the amount spent on the ad would count towards the totals of the other candidates. I would begin the count the day after the previous election so that the total would apply to four years worth of spending for a presidential candidate, six years for a candidate for the U.S. Senate and so forth. Included in the count would be all spending for a candidate, including traditional and online advertising, social media campaigns, travel, consultants, polling and public relations efforts.
The immediate objection is that candidates have no control
over other groups. Opponents might nefariously spend out a candidate in the
first year of a four-year presidential cycle.
That takes a quick fix: forbid third party groups from mentioning a
candidate positively or neutrally in an ad or brochure without the candidate’s
permission.
I would keep the limits very low. Based on reports that
Obama and Romney spent a combined $2 billion waging the 2012 presidential
campaign, I would set the limit at $100 million a candidate for president and
scale it down from there. The low limit would encourage more candidates and
more parties and not give such an extreme edge to wealthy candidates such as
Romney.
My proposal is a pipe dream, of course. It might take a
constitutional amendment and it certainly would have a tough row through
Congress. The political industry comprising consultants, lawyers, PR and
advertising agencies, polltakers, IT specialists, graphic designers, printers,
actuaries, telemarketing firms and social media companies would be against it.
But most importantly, the people behind the money currently being spent on
campaigns—be it gun makers, investment banks, multinational manufacturers or
right-wing free market free booters like the Koch brothers—would be against it
because they would lose their big edge in their battle against the majority—the
ability to buy elections.
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