Campaign Financing in a Democratic Republic
hskiprob
You have asked me a question very similar to the two questions that I have asked myself. You stated: "Agreed. And the Supreme Court has said those dollars equal free speech. Interpreted that way, I am a peasant. How to get the other peasants to understand this is the million dollar question. This is the statement and question I was asked in reference to campaign reform. Reworded: How do we "peasants" stop all the special interests from controlling/paying off the politcians through massive campaign contributions?
The questions I had asked myself are 1. “how do you get the majority to know the difference between a good law and a bad one”? 2. How do you get the majority to understand when a right should be protected and when we should acquiesce one of our rights for the public good. Those are my two million dollar questions. Whether you know it or not, they are pretty much one in the same question.
Social democrats believe they can muster the political power to implement those laws that would benefit the majority through the democratic process. I am going to try to explain why I believe that is impossible.
As a relatively poor family, your parents choose for you to go to a parochial school. So how did your parents really determend that choice which I believe was a tough one? In my opinion your parents were very smart knowing how potentially poor public education is while also having to pay taxes that go to public education, even though they had the additional expense of paying for the parochial school. Despite this unfairness, public education also shows poor people they can have children they can't afford to educate and raise and it shows responsible adults who don’t have children, that they are still going to have to help pay for the education of the children of irresponsible parents. This is just one of many reasons why our public education is failing. It also allows wealthy special interests (through tax deed sales) to take away the homes of poor people who can’t afford their property taxes. Brilliant. We take away the homes of poor people to pay for the education of the children of irresponsible parents. If we didn’t have public education we wouldn’t need property taxes and personal responsibility would start to have an effect on our society again. Addtionally, the wealthy courthouse vultures (through tax deeds) would stop praying on poor homeowners.
It’s a human/inalienable rights issue. We should all have the right to free speech and we should all have the right to keep the money and property we earn, we just don’t force the government to protect our rights even though they are supposed to be protected as per the Constitution. The ruling class as you saw in my book have unlawfully abrogated the Constitution and rule of law and now the majority is literally being taxed into poverty by the ruling class.
If you had a bunch of money, wouldn’t you want to be able to use it to affect those things you believe in? However, if there wasn’t any money in the public treasury to be taken by the special interest, all the redistribution of wealth would cease to exist as well as all the campaign money. If there is no money in the public treasury to be taken by special interest, the special interest will no longer contribute to the political game. They have the money to game the system and the majority doesn’t. Who do you think is always going to win, no matter how many laws are on the books. Then, you still have to try to enforce the law and you know what happens to people who try to buck and call out the corruption in the system? Think Edward Snowden and Julian Assange.
If the government is allowed to restrict one right, that opens up the majorities ability to restrict other rights which they have and will do. When it comes to socio-economics, sadly, you can’t trust the majority any more than the ruling class. Too many of them will vote or their own self-interests rather than what is in the best interests of the majority.
If we allow the restriction of one right, first how do we know if it’s a good idea and secondly how do we determine which other rights we should or shouldn’t restrict?
Either you believe in rights or you don’t. You can’t have your cake and eat it too because the fact is “No” one really knows what is in the best interest of the majority, therefore no ones knows which rights we should acquiesce for the benefit of the public good.
So if you can give me the specifics as to how we can solve Venezuela’s problems, we will both become billionaires. Whereas, I can show you exactly what has to be done to solve the majority of Venezuela's problems. It very simple. Reduce the size and scope of government. The more that is done, the better off the majority will be. It’s not rocket science. Our founding fathers figured it out 235 years ago. Each generation has just became more ignorant of the importance of individual rights. It’s really more arrogance believing that one knows what is in the best interest of the public good. Thinking the majority can figure this out is pure insanity. The foundation of our Constitution is the protection of property rights. It was to protect us from taxation and other forms of property confiscation. In 1800, not one Citizen paid one dime in taxes to the Federal Government. The cost of the Federal Government was funded by luxury import taxes. Foreign merchants selling their wares to our Citizens paid for the costs of our entire Federal Government. Of course the man that helped to write the proverbial book on "Inalienable Rights" was the then President Thomas Jefferson. He also was the first person to introduce a Bill in Congress calling for the Abolition of Slavery. Only a man who cares more about the public good who do such a thing, yet knew you should never acqiescise a right for the public good. He obviously knew slavery was a usurpation of an inalienable right.
The greater the usupations of individual property rights by government, the greater amounts of campaign spending there will be. Fairly simply logic.