Issues

  • Money – has a corrosive effect on the process of governance.
  • Information – An accurately-informed electorate is essential for meaningful elections
  • Income Disparity
  • Upward Mobility
  • Access to Government

Because our system of governance fails to manage these issues properly, it’s no wonder that Washington fails to govern in a way that works. And if these issues are not fixed, then nothing else matters because any attempt to address other problems are addressing symptoms, not the root cause. On the other hand, if these issues were managed properly, lot of other problems would fix themselves with no direct effort.

Money

During Watergate, the guiding principle of competent journalists was “Follow the Money”. This is as true today as it was then.

Thus, the main thing that needs to get fixed in Washington is the current campaign system of “Legalized Bribery”. There is a very high correlation (we’ve heard around 94%) between money spent on a campaign and success. The system is designed to strongly encourage if not require representatives to make decisions for the benefit of whoever funds their campaign. This is fundamentally broken.

The previous attempts at reform using laws to enact limitations on campaign finance, limiting who can donate or how much they can donate, do not work and cannot work because loopholes can always be found.

We believe that the only solution for the problem of money in campaigns that can work is some form of public campaign financing for vetted candidates. Public Campaign Financing has been tried in several state elections, most notably in Maine and Arizona with great success. This needs to be expanded to all elections, both federal and state, in all states.

If you think public funding of campaigns is expensive, consider how expensive our system of legalized bribery is to the planet.

Information

Incumbents tend to get re-elected a very high percentage of the time, not because they are good (although a few are), but because of “Incumbent Entrenchment”. Most incumbents get re-elected because of a lack of accurate information about them and their opponents, thanks to the first issue – money. And much of the responsibility for the failure of accurate information being received by the electorate results from the collusion of the traditional media. Most of the media is owned by a few large and rich corporations having as their agenda the increasing of their short-term power and money, usually to the detriment of the planet, and, ironically, to the detriment of their customers as well.

One solution is to support the often poorly-funded new media sources that rely on the internet for the distribution of their information. Thus, a completely free and open internet without any form of censorship is a fundamental requirement. Thus, we completely oppose any form of legislation created to eliminate Network Neutrality, or that allows any entity or government to limit, control, or throttle access by anybody to any internet content for any reason.

A good example of how well a network supports poorly-funded challengers to the status quo is one member’s experience with a Credit Union. This is probably the first time a network was successfully used to provide information from a source other than the entrenched establishment. See the DCU Campaign Description.

One idea we support is to require TV and radio stations to donate time (as they used to) for the benefit of vetted candidates, because these stations at one time were required to manage the “commons” (airwaves) for the benefit of all of the public. What could be more beneficial than the airing of candidates without any filtering by the mainstream talking heads? Implementing this idea would also drastically reduce the amount of money required for a campaign because media ads are so expensive.