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by Peter A. Belmont / 2012-06-17
© 2012 Peter Belmont
Lovely eye-catching title! But, actually, my essay is not about burning Washington to the ground, or even about starting over. It is about defining the REQUIREMENTS for ending/reducing the power of money in American politics.
There is only one way to “Burn Washington to the Ground and Start Over”. And that is to change the constitution (or its interpretation) [1] to forbid any entity but an American citizen (human being, that is)—or a PAC funded by and acting for such citizens— to take “political action” in the USA and, equally important, [2] to put a cap on the amount of money any American citizen can spend in any year cumulatively on any and all “political action”, be it local, state, or national in intended impact.
I do not recommend anarchy or terrorism as a means to this end. How to get there is a puzzle, but it is THE puzzle for all Americans.
The most important first step is educating people to know the entire length and breadth of the problem. The problem undoubtedly includes the power of money to determine elections. But it also includes the problem of the power of money to determine legislative, administrative, judicial, police, and military outcomes.
Read more about this in my earlier essays here and here.
Read a proposed constitutional amendment here.
The problem with Washington is that American politicians—with few exceptions—have become totally corrupt, willingly having become tools of the oligarchy, that is, tools or representatives of very rich individuals and very rich corporations and agglomerations of the same.
For the proposed constitutional change, “Political action” needs to be comprehensively and carefully defined. It should include support for litigation except by parties to the litigation.
Gifts to PACs (political and litigation advocacy groups) by human beings would be allowed subject to the annual cumulative cap. PACs — alone among groups — would be allowed to take political action.
If the very rich are prevented from buying political power, and the non-human-beings — corporations and other groups (labor unions, bowling clubs, literary societies, chartered non-corporation banks, trusts, etc., blah-blah) — are prevented from taking ANY political action — then there is a chance for democracy to be re-established in the USA. There is (IMO) no chance otherwise. (Thus, merely reversing “Citizens United” is not enough, not by a long chalk.)
If these entities are forbidden to take political action, how will political action be taken?
Political action will, generally, be taken by PACs, each PAC acting for a number of citizens who have contributed to it—subject to the annual restriction on political contributions by citizens. Any corporation or labor union (or any other non-person entity) can in effect start its own PAC through contributions by its own officers and employees or members. But such contributions will no longer come from the corporations themselves or from the unions, etc., themselves, but from employees or members. The vast wealth of the corporations and of the officers of corporations will thus be kept out of the world of political action.
Such is at any rate my plan. Wealth usually finds a way around any rule and will attempt to do so here as well.
Tally ho!
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