A New Chance to Make Presidential Campaigns about Voters Not Dollars

[flashl]

Today, amid considerable fanfare, bipartisan legislation was introduced in both houses of Congress to overhaul the way we finance the presidential campaigns. It is long, long overdue.

In 2008, winning the nation’s highest elective office is going to cost $1 billion between the two major party candidates. The figure is even higher if you include the vast sums spent by all the other candidates, parties and political committees.

Let’s put this figure into a little perspective. Viable presidential candidates must raise at least $100 million each by the end of 2007, before even entering the actual election year. This means collecting five $2,300 campaign contributions “every single hour, every single day, including weekends and holidays, for an entire year,” estimates political scientist Michael Malbin.

And then the fundraising really kicks into gear next year.

Where does all this money come from? Mostly from the same special interests who have business pending before the federal government. In order to make sure that jingle of the pocket books of any particular special interest are heard loud and clear, businesses and wealthy special interest groups will be represented by a “bundler.”

Bundlers usually are CEOs or lobbyists of a business or industry. They will approach a campaign and receive tracking identification from the campaign, say, a tracking number. The bundler then reaches out to all the managers and other individuals of the business or industry and ask them to mail in their individual campaign contributions of $2,300 (the legal limit from an individual to a federal candidate), and write the company’s tracking number of the check. That way the campaign knows which business or industry is responsible for those contributions.

Read More ...

Please explain to me how do we separate the practice of being in bed with the money handlers, corporations with deep pockets seeking for favors, and forging ahead democratically?

[postulater]

1. How can you spend $1 billion?

I wonder where all that money goes. And why should it take a billion to get us the information we need to decide who we support. Youtube would be lot cheaper.

[flashl]

2. 'Collecting five $2,300 campaign contributions “every single hour, every single day'

Sounds like anderson or enron or subprime accounting? Somebody is getting RICH.

[EFerrari]

3. Kick

[Romulox]

4. The same people who believe there is no quid pro quo must believe wrestling is real.

"I don’t think, based on my 35 years of fighting for what I believe in, I don’t think anybody seriously believes I’m going to be influenced by a lobbyist,” Clinton said.



:eyes:

[flashl]

5. www.WhiteHouseForSale.org

"Public Citizen is monitoring this practice of fundraising on its Web site www.WhiteHouseForSale.org, and helping to connect the dots between funds raised and official favors doled out."

[flashl]

6. 5 reasons for public financing

States, cities lead with clean-money alternative to a seamy system.
The election year hasn't even begun, but the nation's political system is already awash in record amounts of money, much of it spent to buy influence.

In other times, this would have evoked outrage. But candidates have grown so dependent on the money that all but a few stand mute — afraid to push the obvious remedy, public financing of elections. So perhaps it's worth pausing to note some of the reasons that the idea makes sense, even if it's getting no attention from the major presidential contenders. Here are five:

* Wretched excess. Candidates, the two major parties and the nominally "independent" groups allied with them are on track to raise and spend $5 billion or more in the 2008 campaign, far more than ever before. In Iowa alone, it's projected that Democrats will spend the equivalent of $300 a vote for each caucus participant who turns out on Jan. 3. That kind of money doesn't come just from upright civic-minded citizens.

* Wealth test. Both parties acknowledge that in recruiting candidates for congressional races, a major criterion is whether the prospect is rich enough to personally finance a campaign. That smells of reserving public office for the elite.


* Dialing for dollars. Members of Congress complain repeatedly that running for re-election is so costly that they have to spend up to one-third of their time "dialing for dollars." For challengers, it's worse.


* Fat cats. Despite all the stories about an Internet-powered rise in small contributors, just 21% of all presidential campaign contributions have been in donations of $200 or less, little change from previous years. Meanwhile, contributions are up 91% from donors linked to the securities and investment industries, 68% from the entertainment industry, and 47% from drug makers.


* Shady bundlers. The power of "bundlers," power brokers who aggregate individual donations into giant packages, continues to grow. Hillary Clinton has been embarrassed twice by such operators, one indicted on business fraud charges.

There is an alternative already adopted by seven states. It's called clean elections, or clean-money campaigning. Pioneered in Maine a decade ago, it lets candidates accept public financing in return for a promise not to take private contributions beyond a required threshold sum of small donations.

The result is more time for candidates to talk with the voters; more women, minorities and middle-class candidates seeking office; and fewer campaign-finance transactions that look like thinly disguised bribes.

Clean election systems cost from $2 to $6 per year for each voting-age resident, a bargain for trimming costly special-interest influence. In North Carolina, for example, the clean-election option has virtually ended an outrageous special-interest bidding war for seats on the state's top courts.
Read More ...