http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/...
Money is causing such horrible damage to our democracy. Money unfairly overpowers and overshadows all the decisions and all the media about those decisions. Look at the presidential race. All that seems to matter is the amount of money. The democratic aspect of elections is a forgotten whim.
Why? Because the candidate with the most money wins.
Why? Because our representatives make decisions because of who helped them get elected.
Why? Because big money chooses who they want in office in the first place.
If this continues, we lose the Nonzero sum game: http://www.nonzero.org/
Money is Controlling our Democracy
It's worse now than it's ever been... We have lost the dream that "anybody" can run for office. Not even a school board seat can be navigated without big money getting lined up behind their ponies. Campaign costs are simply unreachable by all but the richest and most connected folks, while the most qualified among us steer clear of the whole situation. How many good candidates have we lost because they weren't backed by deep pockets?
Governments and Civilization Evolves
But who says that the way we have been doing things is the way it will be? It isn't! In the past, there were kings and their subjects who had no say. What happened? Government has evolved past that because when more people are given more ability to contribute to society, the society thrives (relative the other societies of the day).
In allowing the few with the money to make the decisions for the rest of us, we are going backwards, dangerously reducing our ability as a nation to compete, to thrive and to grow. All citizens must participate to their fullest to create the kind of strength that allows us to grow and survive.
The Public is Disgusted, and Apathetic
The call is getting louder and louder from the public to kill the horrible insidious disease that is the unfair influence of money. It is the cholesterol in the arteries, the malignant cancer in the body, the global warming of our democracy. Old ways of dealing with it will no longer suffice and will only slow the demise.
But like the fading of ineffective and failing ways of tribal chiefs, the ancient monarchy, and the United States of the 1700s, 1800s, and 1900s, we grow, and we change as a nation and we evolve.
Governmental Surgery
It is time to rip the parasitic money players out of the system and force them to co-exist in a world where the people are in control of their government. It will take a fundamental change, not just random limits on people's freedom to donate money. It will take a new system, a system that meets the power of money with it's own money, public money. Just as the public money that goes into the infrastructure that is our transportation system, communications systems, Clean Money is a critical infrastructure of our election system. It is a public good.
Like chemotherapy for the body, like corporate investment in zero emissions, and creating newer and significantly more efficient ways of existing on the planet, Clean Money, Full Public Financing of Elections, eliminates the money advantage. It makes elected representatives accountable to the voters and only the voters and not the few who are determined to maintain oligarchical control for their own self interest.
It's not If but When Clean Money Happens
All modern democracies will need to install Full Public Financing of Elections at the core if they are to escape money's clutches. It must become as basic to citizens as the vote itself is.
With the passing of the Assembly, the first real Clean Money bill AB 583 has a chance of triggering the larger evolution of our nation.
Clean Money is not like what we've seen before because it allows money to serve the system without having it be the factor that determines the winner. It's the matching funds which kick in when an non-participating candidate spends more than the Clean Money candidate, or when an independent expenditure attacks a Clean Money candidate. Clean Money represents a "control system" continually pushing candidates back to the constituents and the ideas and pushing them away from the biases proposed by self-interested money and the unfair goal of financial superiority. It is one person one vote. Money should never be allowed to replace votes.
Nonzero Sum Games Dictates We Must Have Win-Win, not Win-Lose
Survival of the "richest" has gotten us very far, but if the United States is to survive beyond now, it will need to be "survival of the fittest", where "fit" means that every citizen is capable, thinking, participating and contributing, where we all win. It is imperative to strive for this goal.
Only when we are able to turn this titanic state of California around and re-enfranchise our justifiably apathetic population will we be back on track to continue to grow as a forerunner of the worlds human existence.
Need The State Senate and Governor Schwarzanegger's Support to Change the World.
Clean Money Assembly Bill 583 is the first step for California. The world will follow.
I hope that when the bill reaches his desk, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger fully supports Clean Money, and signs it without hesitation, and promotes it throughout the state.