The second change I would make if it was the world according to Perry, would be to remove the money from political campaigns and advertising. I am not a legal scholar, but the Citizens United Supreme Court decision was wrong in my view. To say that a rich person’s or corporation’s freedom of speech is infringed upon by not letting them spend as much money as they want in an election is outrageous.
If there are 2 citizens, one with $100 and one with $1,000 and a law were passed saying that you could only spend $100 on the election, the richer citizen would be on an equal footing with their lesser well off citizen and have to actually win based on the content of their message.
If anything, to allow a far richer person or corporation to spend virtually whatever they wanted to on an election cycle is to allow them a megaphone when their competing citizens do not have access to one.
Just as the networks used to be required to give equal time to both parties when showing political coverage, when it comes to political campaigns, free speech by its very nature must also provide for a level playing field, or else we run into a situation where the rich will always have an advantage over their fellow citizens and be able to “drown out” the free speech of their fellow citizens, and under our nation of laws, one citizen’s rights should not infringe on, take away, or lessen another citizen’s rights.
In my view, all political campaigns should be fully funded by a government trust fund, with each candidate receiving the same amount of money. That is the ONLY money they are allowed to use during their campaign. The other option would be that all campaigns can still be privately funded but just like in sports how there is a salary cap, there would be hard campaign caps on what could be spent and they would be closely monitored by the Federal Election Commission.
There is something very wrong when candidates spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to win state legislature seats that only pay a fraction of that as a salary.
There is something wrong when candidates for Congress raise and spend millions of dollars for a job that only pays a fraction of that.
There is something very wrong when candidates for President have to raise and spend over a billion dollars for a job that pays a small fraction of that.
Until we take the money out of politics we will only be getting a fraction of the representative democracy we are entitled to.
For more on this topic, check out The Brennan Center For Justice.
Perry Waag 