Only a fool believes we need to spend millions to get to know a candidate and what hey propose to do for us.
Only fools think American democracy should be based on money influence.
I guess we are fools because we spend millions.
Only a fool thinks we need more than4-6 months of campaigning.
Only a fool thinks we cannot allow weekends to be "consumed" by voting.
Is America full of fools? Our politics are fool f fools and the damage to our democracy is TOTALLY self-inflicted.
Americans have known for a long time that rich people and rich organizations representing rich and middle class people have damaged our democracy. Why do we keep repeating the same act over and over again expecting a different result?
America is insane! I hope it is temporary insanity. But it has been since 1974 so I have little hope that we will fix our democracy. The rich are too powerful and too blind and stupid to see what they are doing.
"The absurdity of campaign finance reform By Nina Easton, senior editor at large"
October 29, 2010: 8:16 AM ET
http://archive.fortune.com/2010/10/28/news/economy/campaign_finance_reform.fortune/index.htm
"FORTUNE -- One narrative of election year 2010 was shaped long before any votes were tabulated. President Barack Obama penned the first chapter with his January condemnation of a Supreme Court ruling that lifted government prohibitions on spending by corporations in elections. The 5-to-4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission "strikes at our democracy itself," he said. Democrats and the media followed with tales of horror and fright, warning of corporate super-PACs and foreign donors. You could practically hear the theme from Jaws rumbling in the background.
But if American democracy really is being threatened by special-interest dollars, let's pose this question: Why -- after a decade of "reform" -- is there more money being spent, more outside electioneering, more negative advertising? Could it be because Washington's attempt at regulating campaign finance, treated as a sacred cause by editorial pages, has only led to absurd consequences?"
More.
"The Citizens United ruling did not invent special-interest spending; it enables corporations and unions to advocate directly on behalf of a candidate, rather than running more subtle "issue ads." Nor did it produce the phenomenon of undisclosed donors, as White House officials repeatedly assert. "Such expenditures were lawful (and routinely occurred in significant amounts) prior to Citizens United," Abrams notes. "
Our political system needs European guidance to limit spending and time!
Reform the political campaign process: set legal limits maximizing the amount of money to spend, outlaw PACs so only the politician speaks for him / her self, cut time to 120 days before election day for politicians to convey their platform message, and have voting on weekends.
"The Federal Election Campaign Act Amendments of 1974 (FECA) [Better name would be "feces" as it is a bunch of crap!] form the basis of current federal campaign finance law. FECA's main provisions include limits on contributions to federal candidates and political parties, a system for disclosure and voluntary public financing for presidential candidates. FECA originally tried to impose mandatory spending limits on congressional candidates as well as on independent spending, but the US Supreme Court held these spending limits to be unconstitutional in the 1976 landmark case of Buckley v. Valeo. (The Buckley case upheld contribution limits, disclosure and public financing.)
Over the years, FECA's impact was changed both through regulations of the Federal Election Commission and new campaign practices. One result was the growth of "non-federal" financial accounts under the control of the national party committees for which the parties raised "soft money" without contribution limits. In reaction, Congress in 2002 passed a significant amendment to FECA known as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA) prohibiting soft money contributions to national parties. BCRA also prohibited corporate and labor union funding of "electioneering" communications (which are candidate-specific communications run within sixty days of a general election or thirty days of a primary). (For CFI's detailed summary of BCRA at the time of its passage, see here.)
Like FECA, BCRA has been subject to many interpretive regulations and court challenges. In the most significant such court case so far, the US Supreme Court in January 2010 (Citizens United v. FEC) overturned FECA's and BCRA's prohibitions of corporate and labor union campaign spending."
http://www.cfinst.org/law.aspx
A few smart, immediate reforms needed TODAY.
Citizens United is probably the worst thing ever approved by the Supreme Court of the United States. If it continues, it will be the death of American Democracy.
"Why are Democrats obsessed with Citizens United?" [What? I am just a voter and non-party oriented, but it is obvious why endless money is bad for politics!]
by Michael Barone | Jul 26, 2016, 3:15 PM
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/why-are-democrats-obsessed-with-citizens-united/article/2597762
Anyone who thinks spending $50million to win a political positon in Government is not a travesty is stupid.
" . . . what Citizens United says is that corporations have free speech just as individuals do. They can spend their money on their own political speech (not on candidates, though). Remember that the case was about a movie criticizing Hillary Clinton; the government wanted to prevent that movie from being seen in the October of an election year. The Obama administration assistant solicitor general, in response to a question from Justice Alito, said that in the government's view, the government could prevent a book from being published if it was paid for by a corporation. (Silly me, I had thought Democrats were against book burning.)"
"Did the Supreme Court Make the Right Decision in the Citizens United Case After All?"
Few Supreme Court decisions have been memorable—and even fewer have been notoriously wrong. Michael Kinsley examines how the controversial Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case simply upheld a core national value (and maybe not the one you think).
by Michael Kinsley
May 2, 2016 8:00 am
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/04/supreme-court-citizens-united-case-decision
Want to see a rationalization of stupid? Look to the end of this quote. If middle class investors money is being used by the rich corporation, then Citizens United supports them being represented by big money. lol Stupid!
"Citizens United is probably the one Supreme Court decision since Roe that is despised by name, though these decisions are despised by different groups. For conservatives, Roe v. Wade has become shorthand for the profusion of new, judge-created “rights” in the 1960s and alleged liberal excess of all sorts. For liberals, Citizens United has come to represent the nefarious role of money in politics, which many feel has eroded if not destroyed our democracy. Money is blamed above all this year for Donald Trump, although Citizens United doesn't apply to him if, as is widely supposed, he is a human being and not a legal fiction. [Not sure what is being said here, but it probably is a joke about incorporated business.] More generally, big business will always be bigger than small business, and rich people will always have more money than poor people. Should that entitle them to more influence on the political process? (A further complication is that rich companies are owned not by rich people, by and large, but by pension funds, which are holding the money on behalf of the middle class.)"
Are you kidding. The backdoor to stupid is right here! Our political campaigns spend too much money NO MATTER WHERE IT COMES GROM idols!
Our political campaigns are TOO LONG also, and we should only vote on weekends!
If Citizens United was a "good" decision for the facts of the cas, i.e., show the movie, OK. Pass a law to cut back the amount of money that can be spent on political campaigns! Cyt campaigns to 120 days before the weekend of the election.
Fix our democracy!
"Anyway, you can't easily amend your way out of the problems raised by Citizens United, as you can the problems raised by, say, the Second Amendment: Citizens United, unlike the Second Amendment, is not an out-of-date decision that needs to be rehabbed. It was a good decision. It was correctly decided. It is not in there by historical accident. It should not be reversed. The proper way to “fix” the problem that many people see is to change people's minds, not to change the Constitution, which would require inserting language into the First Amendment that directly violates First Amendment values. First Amendment values say that if you want a more “level playing field” you must raise the low ground. You can't level the playing field by lowering the high ground. And the whole problem might be solved by Stein's Law (named for the late economist Herb Stein): “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” If enough people are enraged enough by the imbalance of political power caused by money, they will vote against big money, which will turn it into a negative."
Fix our voting process and fix our democracy.
