President Obama told Vox yesterday that he "would love to see some constitutional process that would allow us to actually regulate campaign spending the way we used to, and maybe even improve it."
Will he do anything about it? Unlimited campaign spending is something that has been an important issue for me ever since the Supreme Court started hacking away at some of our campaign finance reforms starting with FEC v. Davis and the notorious Citizens United ruling. I’m of the mindset that we need to equalize spending in ELECTIONS (not in the marketplace) in order to promote a politically equal society.
There are a lot of great organizations fighting for this like
Represent.us and
PFAW. I know Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s story pretty well because I’ve been a part of his grassroots
campaign for a year now.
Ben is a big activist. He’s spent years trying to get a lot of our national budget away from Pentagon spending and into more social programs. But his biggest obstacles during this time were defense contractors who had invested a lot of their money into currying favors from politicians. These politicians were not going to help him cut our national defense budget.
This is why Ben began his non-profit, Stamp Stampede, an awareness campaign that stamps money (legally) with messages like “Not to be used for buying elections.” I saw him in Virginia once doing a demonstration about it and his passion was really infectious.
In between petitions and rallies, I feel like the best way to contribute
every single day in getting the word out about big money in politics has been stamping my money.
Cashiers, friends, and strangers ask me about my stamped money all the time and I like to give them a little run-through about why big money is corrupting our democracy because it leads to quid pro quo scenarios. Big businesses give Congressmen money for favors in return--basically, bribery. And it’s getting more out of control with every election.
I also know that as my dollars get passed from person to person, multiple people see it. The Stampede website says, if you stamp your bills correctly, it can be seen by about about 800 people while in circulation.
Justice Ginsburg told C-SPAN that if she could reverse one Supreme Court decision with a “magic wand” it would be the Citizens United case. Unfortunately, her 5 colleagues disagreed.
We need to get the message about this issue into more American minds. When people see my stamped dollars and read it, I’m hoping they get the sense that a growing group of their fellow citizens care deeply about campaign finance reform. I know a lot of them will think briefly about what the dollar says, and then forget about it. But as the whole country continues to keep talking about this issue on TV and radio, the ones who saw my dollars will hopefully—perhaps even out of confirmation bias—look up and for the first time, listen. Learn. And get involved too.
[This is my first Daily Kos diary entry. Thanks for reading!]