What do ya'll think about publically funded political races? There was a guy on the Colbert Report last night talking about how when we have corporations put money into the race, they expect to get something out of it. And through publicly funded elections would could stop the, in a sense, legal bribery of politicians. Obviously this creates some difficulties, but let's hear some ideas tossed around on this subject. Personally, I think if there was a way to do it fair & justly, I'd support it.
we are already virtully socialist. we have to pay politicians our money so they can convince us to vote for them. ridiculous. also i think you should replace the word "elections" with "campaigns".
well lets not forget that bill gates is a member of the public. how is a personal payment from his checking account different than one out of the coffers of microsoft, for example? the people with money will still have all of the power regardless.
why should i have to pay my money to these stupid candidates so they can campaign for my vote? i am effectively paying idiots for them to annoy with their lies and stupid ideas. it is obviously fine that politicians are gonna try to convince me of their stupid plans. but should i be paying for it? the media will give candidates all the exposure they need for free.
When you send in your tax returns, you have the options of sending $1.00 for public election campaigns. If this were raised to lets say $5.00, and that was the only money available to candidates, that would pretty much be the only way to control the "bribery" aspect.
That wouldn't work, people would still receive money under the table. Then they would say it was their own money. Where theres a will theres a way...
That pretty much summarizes my opinion. There's simply no getting around the fact that the vast majority of leaders will be wealthy, and accordingly controlled by other wealthy people. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, though it appears to be a bad thing now.
Absolutely not! I do not believe that citizens should be forced to support a party or ideology they are opposed to. Personal contributions is a form of free expression and should not be interfered with. To do so would simply remove people fruther from involvement in the political process.
If the public funds were the only ones available to politicials for campaigning, it would be a much more level field for candidates.
the government should never tell a citizen who they can or cannot give their money to or why. what you are saying basically means i would not be able to give money to a candidate who supports my views, but would instead have my money forcibly taken and given to politicians i hate. also these laws do nothing except create criminals and loopholes and people would use "independent" groups to campaign for their guy anyways, and then we would have to investigate the independent groups constantly to make sure they were not doing the bidding of the candidate and effetively donating money to the candidate in the form of campagning. this is already happening with the veterans for truth or whatever and moveon.org or whatever where the groups are considered pawns of the candidates and we are in the stupid position of investigating whether they have been in contact with the candidate. as if that is wrong! let people say what they want and pay who they want. if you think a candidate is a corporate shill, dont vote for him. or vote for the candidate who is the shil for the corporation you like. regulation causes unintended consequences, dont do it.
