Campaign Finance Reform

Campaign Finance Reform is bullshit!  If you disagree, give me a few minutes.

1. Everyone (well, political junkies!) knows that incumbency is the single most important factor in determining who will win most elections.  The people prefer the devil they know to the devil they don’t.  Mostly because most people don’t spend a lot of time following political news, but at least they know the name of their incumbent.  In addition, Americans routinely trust Congress overall somewhere beneath bank robbers, while at the same time praising their own Congress person.  How can this be?  Americans are not typically rational creatures with a command of relevant facts, that’s how.

Does Big Money Always Win Elections?

Of course not, as incumbency typically trumps big money campaigning. Many voters prefer the devil they know! 

Nevertheless, one of the legs of the Democracy Movement is that money is not a form of speech that is protected by the First Amendment’s free speech clause (“Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”).

Term Limits

Often when I impose my favorite topic (“we are NOT a democracy and what are we going to do about it?”) on other people, someone suggests Term Limits as his solution. “Term Limits will keep our elected officials from spending half their time dialing for dollars, especially with the donor class; it will keep lobbyists off their backs.” When I ask, “limited to how many terms?,” they invariably say two, "as they will need some time to learn their new jobs.” When I object that they will be dialing for dollars through that first term, the discussion ends of its own weight as this solution is not a perfect fix of the problem. And arguing over a detail is never much fun.

The Tail that Wags the Tail …

Not ready for prime time, come back later!

When the tail wags the dog, the dog is in ... trouble. When a small and relatively insignificant part (the tail) of the whole (the dog) is so powerful that the whole does what the part dictates, something is wrong. Cancer works this way; a few cells begin to multiply out of control and the body begins its march toward inevitable death. But when the tail wags the tail that wags the dog, it is as though a flea in the tail is wagging the tail that wags the dog; here, things are really not the way they should be. The Dog in our parable is the Economy, the national economy or the world economy. The Tail is Finance, or the Financial System. The financial system is those “industries” whose sole “product” is money. Banking, insurance, brokerage and – lest we forget – gambling. All other industries deal in real products and services, things we can actually touch and see and feel; only Finance has no real product and no service that is not an instance of Paul trading money with Peter. Banking pays you interest for your deposits, and gives you loans and mortgages for your promise of future payments of returned principal and the interest thereon. Insurance isolates you from low-risk but high cost phenomena in your lives, like your home burning down or your needing major heart surgery. Brokerage lets you invest in some piece of the overall economy, taking a small risk to get better returns on your capital than would otherwise be available with a savings account from your local "commercial" bank. And gambling, an industry of negative social utility that seduces you into the belief that you can get rich with no real effort and then swallows all your money, but not before assuring you that you will do better next time, guaranteed! This is Finance.

The Democracy Movement

The Democracy Movement is a war over democracy in America, whether we shall have it.

The Democracy Spring event in Washington, DC in the spring of 2016 was not the opening salvo of the Democracy Movement, it was merely a sign of where we are today.

The Democracy Movement began in earnest as a response to the infamous Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010, a decision that declared, not for the first time but in no uncertain terms, that corporations were natural persons under the Constitution and therefore entitled to Constitutional rights and protections, and that money in unlimited amounts was protected speech.  As this decision undermined what we all were brought up to believe – that we are a democracy, that We the People rule, and that we are all created equal under the law – a movement broke forth to correct this insult to our collective identity.  And for lack of a better name, this is The Democracy Movement.

The ACLU & Citizens United

I have spent a lifetime walking in near lock-step with the ACLU and its unwavering support of our fragile Bill of Rights, particularly the 1^st amendment, and its laser-beam concentration on that amendment’s “freedom of speech, or of the press” clause.  God knows I could write a short book glorifying dozens of unpopular cases that the ACLU took on, and won.  But here I would like to register my dismay at their narrow reading of the issues in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court case of 2008 – 2011.  In this case, the ACLU submitted an Amicus brief for the film maker, and it was right to do so: Citizens United had every right to have its movie broadcast.  But the ACLU erred in siding with the Court in its expanded consideration of the place of money in politics.  Here is what they wrote for public consumption in defense of their position.

The Irony of Democracy

One of the great ironies of contemporary American life is that the greatest democracy the world has ever known (that would be us, the United States of America) and the land that spends half of its annual tax receipts exporting democracy around the world, is not a democracy itself.  A democracy is a nation-state where the people rule.  All we are is a nation-state where the people VOTE, but the people do not rule.  You don’t need me telling you this, you know it.

This sorry state of affairs is the single reason why I wrote my book and why I write my blog, that we are not a democratic land where the people rule and what we must do to become a true democracy once again (well, that and I like to write and I like seeing my ideas and words in print).

What ARE we then, if not a democracy?  Lawrence Lessig thinks we are Lesterland, a nation-state where the Lesters rule.  Greg Palast thinks we are "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy."  Maybe we are an oligarchy, where a few rule the nation-state.  Or a corporatocracy, where corporations rule.  Or a plutocracy, where the rich rule.  Or a kleptocracy, where the thieves rule.  Or fascism where big businesses have taken the reins of democratic power for their own purposes.  All these apply, all except democracy, because the people clearly do NOT rule.

TPP - Trans Pacific Partnership

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP for short) has been on my mind these past few days and weeks.  It is a “free-trade” agreement that President Obama wants to be part of his legacy.  The reason that I have not written about it before now is that it may be a tempest in a teapot, no big deal.  The immediate problem is that the terms of the agreement are still shrouded in secrecy.  Which may make sense as all its details have not been hammered out yet.  Perhaps it makes no sense to see what an agreement says while it is still being debated and written.  Which means, I guess, that I am not rationally concerned with its secrecy.  That is, as long as what it says is not yet writ in stone.  The U.S. Constitution was a secret until it was ready to be published and ratified.

Nonetheless, the TPP is a real political issue.  Partly because it is secret so far (see above), partly because what has been leaked (and all leaks are “unofficial” and often unreliable) is really really bad, and partly because we DO know that the President wants to “fast track” it when it is ready to be considered by Congress and voted on.  Fast track seems to mean Congress has 90 days in which to debate the agreement and no permission to introduce any amendments.  The no amendment part sounds conspiratorial and downright evil.  But imagine the chaos if Congress amended it: it would have to go back to the trade negotiators who would alter it again and then back to Congress, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.  When the U.S. Constitution was being considered for ratification by the states, no amendments were allowed for the same reason: it would go back and forth between all the states and the Constitutional Convention forever.  In addition, a Yes to ratification did not mean the written Constitution was perfect, but it DID mean that none of it, not one small piece, was a real problem.  Similarly, a Yes to pass TPP will mean that there is nothing in it that does not pass muster.  As to limiting debate to 90 days, that seems long enough to me to debate a bill that won't be bothered by amendments.   So, I guess I have no serious reservations about Fast Track, as 90 days seems slow enough to me.

The Corruption Perceptions Index

Virtually all my writing is a protest against the political “corruption” in the United States of America, in the form of legislation and jurisprudence in favor of the highest bidder.  This might lead some to think that I believe that the USA is especially “corrupt” among nations.  This is neither the case nor do I believe it to be the case.  Transparency International, self-styled as “the global coalition against corruption,” annually ranks countries on their “corruption perceptions index.”  In 2013, the USA ranked as the 19th LEAST corrupt nation in the world.  19th!  As an American, as a patriot of the land of my birth, I would like to see us much less corrupt than that.  Ahead of us (in order of the organization’s 2013 ratings) are: Denmark, New Zealand, Finland, Sweden, Singapore, Norway, Switzerland, Netherlands, Canada, Australia, Luxembourg, Germany, Iceland, United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Barbados, Belgium and Japan.  Our score is 73% while the top two (Denmark and New Zealand) have scores of 91%.  There are 175 countries that the group considers and North Korea is at the bottom with a score of 8%.  

So we are better than average!  Great!  That’s nothing to write home about.  When we get to 1st place with a score of 93%, I will still be banging the drum for us to get cleaner.  This is my country, and as long as she sells herself to the highest bidder, I will continue to sound ugly noises.

On Representative Democracy

Putting aside a real question – do we really live in a democracy? – I’d like to talk for a brief moment about our representative democracy.

It seems to me that a representative democracy can take two forms: where our representatives do as we bid them or where they do what they think is best.  As to the first choice, it seems to me that if we really wanted them to do as we demand, then we should begin to implement a technology-based referenda state for all matters big and small and just let the people decide.  No need for representation at all.  On the other hand, I personally believe that our representatives ought to do what they think is best for us.  If we disagree, it is their job to explain to us why they think what they think.  If it is convincing, fine.  If not, it becomes our job to explain to them why they were wrong until they agree with us.  Failing that, it is our duty to remove them from office.  Or to allow them this difference from us ("we agree to disagree but we still love you").

Corporate … What?

It’s called “Corporate Personhood.”

“Corporate personhood” means that corporations are treated as though they were persons, indeed citizens, under the law, as having the same Constitutional Rights as “natural persons,” as citizens.

On the one hand it seems innocuous enough.  On the other hand it seems absurd – and dangerous.

Introduction to My Blog

I am "A Son of Common Sense," a son therefore of Thomas Paine (1737 – 1809), who was sometimes called plain “Common Sense,” after his pamphlet’s title.  Paine's Common Sense (1776) was the most important and most persuasive argument for the colonies’ independence from Great Britain.  It called on us to form a democratic republic, it called us for the first time the “United States of America,” and it can honestly be called the father of the Declaration of Independence, whose sentiments echo its own.  It was by far the biggest selling book in U.S. history – after the Bible of course – as it sold 500,000 copies to a population of 2,000,000 (which would be like selling 80,000,000 copies in today’s America).  Paine published Common Sense anonymously and he earned not a penny from its sale.  He cared about his message.  (As an aside, a half-dozen new biographies have been written about Thomas Paine since the turn of the century.  Here is an article from Wired magazine written in 1995 that may have sparked the renewed interest in my Dad).  And here is Bill Moyers interviewing a conservative and a liberal, both huge fans of Paine.

I care about my message too.