This gives each and every committed voter $500 to spend on campaigns, funded by all taxpayers. It allocates funds according to grassroots support, not corporate support.

How? You use incentives -

1) Come work for the VA for 2 years – All School Loans Paid

2) Immigrate to America with a valid Medical Doctor Degree – Green Card Issued

3) Promise to take Medicare and Public Option members and get higher payments

Those are just examples…

How come people like you always ask questions and have no ideas of your own?

Instead of pulling ideas out of the air, learn about what’s actually working, and what’s actually in the Fair Elections Now Act! I’m surprised that Phoenix Woman (assuming she’s in Phoenix) didn’t mention how well the Clean Money, Fair Elections system is working in Arizona state elections, since 1998 or so.

Basics:
- Candidates choose the current pay-for-play system or “running clean”. If the latter, the candidate takes no private money and gets full public funding, so long as…
- They demonstrate popular support in their district by getting a set number of public signatures and $5 donations.
- Attacks from non-publicly funded candidates or independent expenditures against a publicly funded candidate results in matching funds for the “clean” candidate, up to a competitive cap.
- Has survived all court challenges, and is very popular with Arizonans. Used by both Democrats and Republicans.

This has resulted in (among other things):
- Better funded candidate wins much less of the time. Previously, better funded candidate almost always won.
- Drastic decrease in amount of money spent in elections, since there is no advantage to attacking a “clean” candidate (they get matching funds immediately).
- More women, minorities, and young people run and win
- Increasing voter participation and increasing constituent contact with incumbents

This seems to be the organization/ site discussed at length in the articles PW linked here “for the Fair Elections Now Act, which would promote public financing and rein in the amount of private cash spent during an election season.”

http://change-congress.org/

The features of the site are not always easy to find- the below for example, which is quite informative-

Thus, if you click on the red bar at the main site (linky above) (text says “new feature- call congress”) it gets you to a list of House sponsors and non sponsors of the legislation:

http://change-congress.org/vie…..to_viewall

Here is info about the legislation:
http://change-congress.org/about/

It’s easy to get around anonymous donations just like it’s easy to get around secret ballot if both parties want to do it. And anonymity prevents disclosure and accontability.

Time limits on campaigns might be a great way to do. Other countries have what are essentially snap campaigns. The downside is that it further advantages incumbents by not providing challengers the ability to increase name recognition.

TV adverstising is limited (believe it or not); that’s why it is one of the most expensive parts of a campaign.

I don’t understand how the proportional spending thing works outside of allocation of public campaign funds. And that would only encourage small state politicians to break lobby for increases in the limits.

Good job.

Begin by limiting contributions to $1000 per donor or per giver per year.

Make all donations received completely anonymous. If you want to support critter X you give it to the campaign fund who makes the distribution in a limp sum at the time of a re election campaign. This allows you support someone whose ideas / work you believe in without it being a bribe legal or otherwise.

Limit the time and money that can be spent on a re election campaign to level the playing field. This has to be long enough to get the message out and enough money to accomplish the same.

Limit TV advertising

Make election spending proportional to the amount of registered voters in the election. Small state senators have lower spending limits than big state senators. All congress races get the same allotment.

Some ideas for starters.

1. Actually getting the private funding arms race out of the picture

2. The lobbying by the lobbyists themselves

3. The lumping of corporate lobbying groups and public interest groups into the same legislation

4. Smart lawyers who can frame any action as violation of freedom or speech or freedom of association

We have disclosure; we know where the money is going and a whole lot of the money laundering dodges. But we haven’t used this information effectively on a broad scale to force the politicians themselves to make changes. Nor are we clear how to do that.

We have modest efforts, like ActBlue, to buy our country back, but we have not yet translated that well into the sort of clout that industry lobbyists get from similar or smaller contributions.

We have people power, but we are only beginning to figure ways to apply that power to legislation.

We have a powerful alternative medium in the blogosphere but only token efforts to translate that into mass education on the issues.

Money will stop when those who pay the money decide that they are not getting enough for what they are paying. Only in that environment can public finance be real change to the money chase.

Maybe it’s time to get beyond the ain’t it awful stage and start exploring some practical steps to move forward. There are many (too many) information resources available to help in this.