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[PATV] Wednesday, December 18, 2013 - Extra Credits Season 7, Ep. 14: Incentive Systems and Politics
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[PATV] Wednesday, December 18, 2013 - Extra Credits Season 7, Ep. 14: Incentive Systems and Politics (Part 2)
This week, we continue our series about design problems in the U.S. political system.
Extra Credits is moving to their own YouTube channel on January 1st! Subscribe here!
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But to the discussion, your first point would mean the need to outlaw Super PACs. And that is kind of a shitty position.. In my opinion, sadly they are needed. Unless laws are made to lower the cost of ads being placed on prime time T.V, or a regulated commercial slots for government elections (which is a slipery slope I don't think anyone is willing to go down), it just doesn't work. Politicians need those time slots in order to get most Americans to even know who the hell they are, much less anything about their politics. Without them you will get a lot more party line voiting, "oh I am going to vote for this guy because he is a republican, because that means he is obviously better then this independent or democrat." < That type of voting. As it stands prime time ad slots are just to expensive for politicians to afford it otherwise.
Unless we change the entire system.
Instead of having most of the money donated via Super Pacs and things like that. Instead create a new tax, say 1% of every persons paycheck gets donated to a federal campaign fund which is then divided based upon which office you run for. (Reps get the least because they are on two year cycles, Senaters get more, and the President gets the most because he is running across the entire country.)
Doing the math it would look something like this 115,000,000 households, given an average of 80,000 a year income, would generate an campaign fund of around 92 billion dollars. That is a LOOOOT of money. And we could probably drop it to .1% of every persons check and have 9.2 billion and that would most likely be enough to cover it. (Presidential campaigns cost about 1.2 billion these days, leaving 8 billion for Congress. Probably enough.)
As to your second point.
Another issue is that a Rep only serves 2 years. We need a sort of minimum on this in order to make sure that people don't just serve the 2 years as a representative to get the sweet retirement and then enjoy the rest of their life playing golf and drinking wine.
Instead of doing it how you guys have it, I would instead change it up. If we cut out the huge campaign funds for in lobbying then we instantly don't have to really worry about this. Lobbyist get a bad rep because well, it seems corrupt. And it probably is. But they also serve a very important function of acting as experts our government can talk to in order to learn about certain issue. They are needed, and allowing ex congress people to have this job after serving of different committees seems right. They will have the know how, and know the best way to influence Washington, hopefully in a way that is good.
I really think you guys are doing an awesome job here, the idea of changing the government for the better is one I think Congress needs to be having. Great discussion topic, and I look forward to next weeks episode.
While we're talking about ideas that have little chance of actually happening, term limits would solve both problems mentioned in a much cleaner fashion. With term limits the return on investment for campaign money would decrease sharply since the duration of effectiveness would decrease, and then the process would have to start all over again. Also, with term limits the supply of ex-elected officials will begin to steadily increase, which would decrease the demand for such people, and the supply of such positions would be limited. Also, since the terms are limited, the amount of influence that any one ex-elected official would have would be limited since their former co-workers would be cycled out before long, and the influence on the new batch would not be as strong. Of course, term limits would also need a constitutional amendment to happen, so it’s still just a hypothetical argument.
Moreover, I think the premise of the discussion is flawed. The assumption is that full time governing is a desirable state for elected officials, which I do not agree with. Remember, aside from appropriations, any law that passes is, by definition, a limit on freedoms, in one way or another. In many cases, that limit is acceptable. We can clearly agree on limiting the freedom to kill, steal, etc. However, as time goes on the number of obvious limitations on freedom decreases dramatically. In the absence of such clarity, stupid laws are created. Just think of how much knee-jerk legislation passes because an event happens and there is pressure to 'do something'. It also encourages corruption as various interest groups, businesses, and organizations try to get laws passed to limit the freedoms of their competition or limit the freedom to perform an activity to which that the group objects.
Ironically, speaking of incentive systems, the more that an elected official 'governs' the more incentive that outside groups will have to try to corrupt them with money or other influence.
Except that every other western democracy works fine without the concept of SuperPACs. The election cycle in Canada, the UK, Australia, etc. is about six weeks. In the US, the cycle is about two years now, and only getting longer. People on both sides are already positioning for 2016, this doesn't happen in any other democratic nation.
Pretty much all of this happens because legislators are spending time they should be using to read, research, and refine potential laws worrying about campaign funds, lobbyists, and how much their vote is worth to the sorts of people that can make their lives easier when they retire.
I understand your desire to be governed less, but our government does a lot more than limit freedoms. They also provide essential services and a social safety net. While I can guess that you might feel that those sorts of programs are still a limitation imposed on those who pay taxes, the intent is to relieve the underprivileged of some of their lack of freedom.
And yes, pretty much any change to the way Congress conducts itself would require a constitutional amendment and convincing legislators to limit their own powers is unlikely, but it's come close to happening in the past. We ought to keep trying.
I do agree that term limits could be a big help and has come close to being successfully amended in the past. It would certainly be a good start.
Often when an issue comes up that my political savvy friends care about, rather than discussing the actual issue (whether it would be good or bad to do X), instead it becomes a question about whether X is constitutional.
To me if the only rational for not doing something is because a bunch of politicians 250 years ago didn't think to put it into a document (one that has been amended numerous times), then you really don't have an argument at all.
EDIT: @Cururu, thanks for proving my point. Right on que.
Oh, and we have to stop electing judges in this country. Different issue entirely, but just as bad.
Seems like this episode finally addresses the REAL problem with American politics: fundraising. But I find it odd that you advocated against salaries in the previous episode, while advocating in favor of pensions in this episode. So we're supposed to pay them more for quitting than for doing their jobs? Actually, given some of these asshats, I could almost see the logic in that.
I suddenly find myself wondering why you're doing these episodes. Is it just to get gamers' heads out of our asses? It can't be because you expect us to actually do anything about the state of politics. Gamers aren't even organized enough to stop the music industry from waltzing in and destroying the only honest video game reviews we had.
It's not that the constitution is above reproach. It can, and should, be amended from time to time as necissary, and there are clear methods in place to do so. The issue is that it is set up as the supreme law of the land. Any and all systems of government need to have hard rules on what is and what is not allowed, and ignoring those rules is generally a bad idea. If the government can ignore the limits on its power when it's inconvenient, then there really isn't a system of laws in place at all, and the concept of civil rights evaporates. After all, it is that same document that you so deride that establishes that you have any rights at all.
Remember: the only real unique power that government has is that it has an exclusive monopoly on the legal ability to deprive people of life, liberty, and property. That is an important power, and is a necessary one to be able to fund the social programs that @ddrusianninja described. However, that power should be exercised as rarely as is necessary.
The solutions are novel but kind of beat around the bush.
The the original writers of constitutions were very aware of the power of lobbyist and special interests, Federalist paper 10. The only thing would amaze the founders is the method of transmission.
The problem with PACS is the mechanisms they work through that being the partisan political party. Think of it what is a PAC? Its a collection of citizens who wish to convince others to vote a certain way for a certain reason. If we limited PACS it gives far more power to the official partisan party structures. That is not necessarily desirable. This is what has happened in the other English speaking nations, its next to impossible(some times illegal) to raise an issue or engage in politics outside of the official parties in Canada, UK or NZ and Australia. So it is a huge trade off.
Also I am not sure if you want former elected officials working in government after they retire. This was another problem nations like Canada had. Outgoing government put their cronies into the bureaucracy and a good relationship between an elected official and deputy minister often ensured a good position in a department afterwards. So the new government is facing off against a bunch of its former opponents who now reside in the bureaucracy.
A little more simple and straightforward law would be something that Canada adopted, which basically states Minister and Ministerial staff can not lobby for a group related to their portfolios for two to Five years. Not perfect but tends to form a lot of breathing space and they may not be hired at said department for five years.
Also: I'm sad to see you guys leaving Penny Arcade, but I'm glad you were able to alight here for a while after you left your previous arrangement. The good news is it's easier to share your episodes with our teen patrons when I don’t have to worry about them, or their parents, stumbling into dickwolves and the like.
I’m also very curious why you decided to leave.
@Cururu the problem is, in the US the Constitution is used like a club (or maybe a barrier) to prevent real discussion from happening.
Without getting all political here (although pretty hard with the topic), take the concept of Healthcare. Not Obamacare, but just the underlying concept. I have many friends who think it's unconstitutional. Eventually it degrades into complaints about the Constitution, illegal immigrants mooching off the system, etc., etc. but the actual question at hand: How come the US Healthcare system is so much worse and so much more expensive than our world peers, never gets addressed.
Instead we debate the intent of the Founding Fathers, and in the process grant them mythological clairvoyant wisdom that allowed a bunch of slave owners from the mid 18th century to have some sort of visions of what the future will hold. People on either side argue about what the founders would say about Gay Marriage or Healthcare Reform or the NSA, when the truth is, we have no idea what they would have thought.
Other countries have Constitutions (or the equivalent), only the US uses it as a barrier to change.
@zingledot - Very true. Things like the electoral college (making 95% of the population's vote worthless in the Presidential election) and gerrymandering doesn't help either.
If a constitution is not a limit for other countries, then those countries don't really have a constitution, merely a system of guidelines that can be tossed aside when convenient/they can get away with it.
Also, the U.S. constitution is in no way a barrier to change. It has been changed many times. One time it was even changed back when the first change turned out to be bad (prohibition). What the constitution is is a barrier to the lazy. If you want the change, then you have to put in the work to get the constitution amended. If your friends use it as a barrier to stop discussion, just explain to them a reasonable plan for getting your change adopted as an amendment. If you cannot come up with a reasonable plan, then perhaps society is not yet ready for such a change, and you should focus on trying to convince society that your view is correct. This can take time and a lot of work, but it is definitely possible, since it has happened many times. Would it be nice if we could skip all of that hassle and just impose the change? That depends. Do you trust the people with that power to ALWAYS use it wisely? Such efficiency becomes a serious detriment when the 'wrong' people can wield it.
Considering that this entire topic of discussion was prompted by the fact that many of our leaders can't be trusted, I believe that some inefficiency is a feature, not a bug. And, unfortunately, in any democratic system there will always be people elected that should not be, because the elected representatives are only as good as the population voting for them, and it is human nature to want to take the easy/lazy route and not do their due diligence.
Basically, these systems are in place because it is impossible to always have virtuous and enlightened people in charge (otherwise we'd just go with a benevolent dictator every time, if benevolence could be assured), so limiting systems must be in place for the times when the 'wrong' people are in power. This also limits the good leaders, but the tradeoff is worth it in the long run.
Electoral college has it's purpose. Gerrymandering happens, but it isn't as big of a problem as people say and people can't be bothered to vote people out who do it. People just like to deflect blame from themselves, and find reasons not to vote. They complain about a lack of a 3rd party, but they don't vote for them. They complain about lack of change but they don't vote out incumbents. Voter turnout is abysmal for the presidential election, and even worse for the /more important/ local elections. Here in Utah, republicans always win by a landslide because the church tells people to get out and vote, and people in the church vote mostly one way. This state is isn't as red as people say, but the voting population is. You want your vote to count? Then fucking VOTE.
Even if your candidate loses, if they get a lot of votes then it sends a message that the things this person stood for are important and it still shapes our political landscape.
Change doesn't happen all at once, but you don't need signs and billboards and money to do your part. All you have to do is go to your local polling office every couple years for like 15 minutes.
In the case of government intervention in markets like health services it is clearly constitutional for the government to get involved. The real question is who has the regulatory power? My reading is the state level does, but current forces are aligned against me on that.
The point of asking such a question is to best allow people to tailor their laws to their needs. The federal government when it implements a law implements or at least should for all. This means and benefits and cost are spread to all. While if the authority is left to the state you will have 50 different systems, 50 different labs to run test and over time bad polices should be culled and good ones prompted. Basically one is a planners design the other is more organic. So the question of constitutionality is important, is the USA a republic of states or an unitary federation that delegates authority to smaller units? The answer to that question has a large impact on any program you think should be implemented.
We do have a good idea of what the founding fathers would say on many scenarios, but you are right that in of itself holds little water.
Other nations do have Constitutions and they use theirs in a far worse manner to entrench all kinds of special interest. The US Constitution is one of the finest governing documents in history, it is clear, concise and easy to read.
The electoral college has it's purpose for what, precisely? I'm sorry, I don't mean to sound glib, but I don't know where you're going with that. The EC was originally created to compensate for the size of the US, and the fact that is was unrealistic to have the votes at the same time, as they would only be read off by mid July. Sure, back in the day in which the fastest form of travel was letter and a shapely, firm ass (donkey in this case), the idea of electing people to vote in an election for us because we couldn't travel to DC made a whole lot sense, but in a time in which information can be shot at the speed of light and reflected off of relays in orbit around our planet to be received by supercomputers in japan, the idea seems a little quaint.
The other arguments for the EC includes that it protects the lesser states from the more populated ones or keeps attention on rural areas, but in a system in which the American Vote is counted as a whole, instead of State by State this becomes a non issue. The EC fails in the first argument anyway, because a) the amount of EC votes is based on population, so states like Alaska aren't going to have much compared to say, California and b) it ends creating a worse problem, wherein one state's vote is actually worth more per population than another, because in order to compensate for the problem presented in a, states like Texas has to give up some of their votes to states like Hawaii, who doesn't have a robust enough population to meet the minimum requirement for the EC. While I am always in favor of Texans not getting much of a vote, that's just not a fair system.
I also mentioned there was an argument for protecting people in rural areas from not having as much of a voice as people in cities. The argument states that the EC keep presidential candidates from just doing the train skip from New York, to LA, to Houston and Chicago and calling it a day. But running the number shows how little sense this argument makes. the largest cty in the US: New York City, boasts a population of just of 8 million people, and you don't get to San Jose, the 10th spot before you get under a million people, so unless there's a megalopolis with 100 million people somewhere in the middle of Missouri, I don't see how it's possible to win the popular vote while just going from major city to major city. However, because of how the EC works it is completely possible to ignore all but 8 states on your cavalcade across the US and still win the EC. In fact it is completely possible to win the US presidency with only 21% of the Popular Vote by exploiting the electoral college. So, yes the EC is a problem, no civilized country in the developed world uses it other that the US, and for good reason, it is an over bloated system that encourages some of the worst aspects if politic, while giving us nothing in return.
As for why people don't vote for third parties. Well, that's because third parties aren't just a waste of a vote, they are a vote against your best interest. Say the US was split 50/50 on wax makers vs haberdashers. They are evenly tied for the race, but then silversmiths enter into the fray. Silversmisths don't have much in common with the haberdashers, but the silversmith's policies align very well with off group of the wax makers. They end up taking, say just 10% of the wax makers votes. That means that the end result is 50% Haberdashers, 45% Wax Makers, and 5% Silver Smiths. The Haberdashers win, because the Silversmiths stole their votes from the Wax Makers, and now the people who voted from the Silversmiths, have to deal a Haberdasher president, which they don't like one little bit, because they didn't support the Wax Makers. Third parties just can't exist under these conditions. But that's a problem with our voting system and not really the EC.
The lesson here is never vote for a Silversmith, the crafty bastards.
Additionally, what you don't actually understand - at all, something that many, many advocates of finance reform don't comprehend on even the most basic of levels - is a little thing called reality.
You know what freedom of speech is? It is the freedom to speak out on whatever you want without fear of the government throwing you in jail. An essential part of that is the ability to print books with whatever content you want, or make movies with whatever content you want, or make games with whatever content you want, or sing songs with whatever content you want - all of which costs money, both to produce and to air and advertise and distribute.
This means that it is literally impossible to remove money from politics because it undermines the very idea of freedom of speech - we have the RIGHT to speak out on whatever we want to. We have the RIGHT to advocate for whatever we want to advocate for. And that means we have the RIGHT to spend our money on advocating for or advancing whatever beliefs we happen to have. In fact, this is why the founding fathers INCLUDED freedom of speech in the Constitution - so that no one could repress anyone else's political views, ever, using the threat of force of law in this country.
Every single person who is for limiting political spending is against freedom of speech. There are absolutely no exceptions to it whatsoever - that is precisely what they're advocating for. It is impossible to have freedom of speech in a system where the government can censor what you say - and it is worst of all when they can censor what you can say about the government.
Everyone has to have the right to make videos, write books, give speeches, sing songs, make art, and otherwise advocate their views. That includes EVERYONE - from Joe Schmoe on the street to the CEO of Exxon-Mobil. You may not like what they have to say, but they have the right to say it, and they have the right to pull for whatever candidate they want to pull for. All attempts at campaign finance reform will, thusly, fail or utterly violate everything that this country stands for.
And in reality, contrary to what crazy people believe, in reality money isn't nearly as important as people think it is. People will often point out the insipid "the candidate with more money tends to win", which is absolutely true, but also absolutely meaningless. Why? Because guess who gets more money? The candidate who is more popular, more often than not. The exception - when someone is essentially running a privately-funded campaign with a small support base - tends to be the exception to the rule, the case where the better funded candidate fails. Indeed, the actual reason that money and success correlate so strongly in politics is not that money = success, but that success = money. In fact, there's a lot of evidence to suggest that a lot of political campaigns are overfunded - Obama and Romney in 2012 actually had too much money, and a lot of that money was wasted.
TL; DR; any form of campaign finance reform whose purpose is to prevent people from pulling for a candidate or cause is obviously evil and anti-freedom (obviously anti-corruption laws are a different matter), and money isn't as important as many people make it out to be.
If you believe that people are so insipid that they would simply vote for whoever has more money, then you have to acknowledge that democracy is a completely worthless system and we cannot use it anymore. Period. There's no exception to this. It is just reality.
If you think that people can be so easily swayed that a guy with two bucks will always beat a guy with one, then you are saying that the people are incompetent and incapable of choosing their own leadership, and democracy should be done away with and replaced with a better system.
On a side note, the solution to all issues with government is simply one word - Aliens.
Just look at how awesomely united the world is everytime there is an extraterrestial invasion~
Moreover, contrary to your beliefs, the Constitution is actually pretty straightforward. There are crazy people who think it says things that it doesn't, but in actuality what the Constitution actually does isn't terribly complicated. Separation of church and state. Freedom of expression and assembly. Equal protection under the law. The right not to testify against yourself and to be secure in your own property against search and seizure without a warrant. The list goes on, but it isn't terrifically long.
The idea that Obamacare was unconstitutional was mostly nonsense, and socialized medicine has even fewer questions Constitutionally - the Constitution says absolutely nothing about socialized medicine. You have to remember that there are insane fanatics who believe that the Constitution does not separate church and state, despite the fact that it is at the very top of the Bill of Rights.
Other countries have constitutions which act as barriers to change as well.
Difficulty in changing the Constitution is a feature, not a flaw. Only people with no wisdom - or the outright evil - think it is a flaw that it is hard to take away freedom of speech.
@zingledot: The electoral college is horribly flawed and needs to go away. The problem is that it doesn't work at all as it was supposed to; the puprose of the electoral college was to balance out the power of the big states and the small states by giving the smaller states more power electorally. The problem is that in reality, it doesn't work at all; what actually ends up happening is that some states will always vote some way, and some states always another, with only a small number of states being swayable. As such, the only states that really matter are the states which can be swayed, which gives them disproportionate power in our system based on absolutely nothing. Eliminating the electoral college ensures that everyone in every part of the country matters equally vote-wise, and would encourage politicians to campaign everywhere when running for the presidency, whereas right now, they focus on the swing states more-or-less exclusively.
Likewise, gerrymandering is inherently bad. There's nothing wrong with creating regions of interest, but it has to be done fairly and neutrally, which means you have to do it in a non-partisan manner, WITHOUT an eye for who is going to get elected, and simply with an eye for "Who is this demographic". A city is a reasonable district; a city cut in half, with the rural county folded into each half of the city, is not.
Read the Tenth Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." The Supreme Court was able to interpret the individual mandate as applying to the Taxing and Spending Clause, but without that interpretation, it would have been struck down.
Think about this scenario: every state votes for candidate A with 50.1%, compared with candidate B's 49.9%. Except that Texas decides to vote 90% for candidate B (or California, if you'd rather). That means that the one polarized state gets to override the more evenly-distributed votes of the rest of the country. This system of voting is why bills must go through the Senate as well as the House; the Senate gives equal representation to every state regardless of population, in order to balance out the polarization of a given population area.
Which is why the Senate exists. There is no particularly good reason for this concern to directly impact presidential elections as well.
Let's also note that in ye olde times, electoral voters might actually vote against the wishes of their state. It wasn't at all common, but the position mattered if only because of the potential. Now it's simply an anachronistic entity that leaves most states ignored during presidential elections.
I live in California, for example, and how much do you think we saw either of presidential candidate in 2012? Flip the script; how much were they in Mississippi? If we live in a representative democracy, why is it in any way logical to make a citizen's vote functionally irrelevant for determining the one person who will represent us all?
@Titanium_Dragon: I... think you may be misunderstanding the goal of campaign finance reform. Never, not once, have I seen or heard anybody say that the government should have a right to censor what is said in a political context. Nor, when you get down to it, is anyone arguing that you can only say X amount. The point is solely to limit how much money can be spent to on access to the biggest platforms, collecting an army of advertising wizards, and so forth. You can say what you want, and as much as you want, even if it's just shouting at the sky. The goal of reformers is to disallow particularly rich entities from chewing up all the messaging resources to an extent that few others, if anyone, can match, and- at least in some cases, including with my own beliefs- finding ways to even the playing field for people high on political willpower and skill but short on sugar daddies.
Many years ago, when Karl Rove was a young man (he really was, hard as it is to believe now), he did an interview where he laid out his political messaging premise. It was, in its most basic form, take your message and say it. Then say it again. And again. And again. And when you're sick and fucking tired of saying it, on the tenth or fifteenth or twentieth go, that's when people are hearing it for the first time. So at that point, you've finally got a little attention, and now you have to say it even more so it sinks in. Whether or not you agree with Republican politics, it's hard to argue that playbook hasn't worked. That interview happened in the early 80s; the last thirty years have been quite good for the party.
You're saying you think that should be totally legal, I don't disagree with that at all. I think we'll both agree quite strongly that everyone should have the right to say what they want on their own behalf. The thing is, when one side has an overwhelming edge in finances, the other side has very little functional freedom of speech because they get drowned out. Studies have shown that there is a point of diminishing returns in spending money on a political campaign- the exact point depends on the level of the race- but for any type of national or high state office, that point is at a level most would-be reps and senators have no chance of reaching without considerable outside help.
Basically, there are two aspects to campaign finance reform: Limiting what the high-rollers can spend, and boosting the smaller players financially so their voice can get out there enough for them to be heard. Some people believe in one, some the other, some both. But since your concern seems to be more with limitations placed on the big dogs, I'll leave it at this: Even the most restrictive limits on campaign spending would run into the millions for any sort of national race. The only functional limitation there is on the methods for dispersing information, not on what can be said. And if you tell me that a national campaign can't reasonably make any number in the millions work to spread their message- especially in the Internet Age- then I think you're selling human ingenuity desperately short.
Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 (AKA The Commerce Clause): To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes.
Also Article 1, Section 8: "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;"
If Congress could NOT institute such things, things like Medicaid and Medicare would be unconstitutional. They are constitutional precisely because of the commerce clause, among other things. What was challenged was Obamacare's method of execution, which basically punished you for not buying insurence on your taxes. They ruled that that was perfectly constitutional under their taxation powers, and that it was not a violation of the Constitution.
Socialized medicine is entirely Constitutional, and if you extended medicare to everyone tommorrow, there would be no question if it was Constitutional.
As far as the "but what if Texas votes 90% one way": Yeah, that's the exact problem we have right now, which is why the present system is pants on head retarded. There's no difference between a state being 51-49 and 100-0 in terms of actual presidential vote, which means that a state which is 60-40, the 40% of people who vote the opposite way from the majority effectively have no vote in the presidential race at all - they may as well not vote because their vote counts for noting in the presidential race. And as a result of their vote effectively not counting in the presidential race, many people from the minority party in such states don't show up at all to vote. It causes all sorts of problems and doesn't do anything to actually help ensure that the country broadly supports a president - in fact, IIRC presently it is possible for only 11 states to elect the president, which means you could get into the presidency with fewer than 25% of the total votes cast in the country.
I'm sorry but the idea of one state voting 90% one way being an issue is just insane, because, even if it did happen, the rest of the country would have to be incredibly close for it to matter, and in reality, what we actually see is a continuum from about 80-20 to 20-80. The actual, real world problem of "most people in most states don't have votes that matter in the presidential race" is a far, far larger issue than one state voting very heavily one way or another.
@Spiffy McBang: The reason that campaign finance reform is effectively impossible is because it is 100% legal to create a non-profit corporation for the purpose of advocating for a particular idea, position, candidate, or party. There is absolutely no way whatsoever to prohibit this legally because of freedom of speech. And in fact, one of the major reasons for freedom of speech in the Constitution is precisely to prohibit the government from doing this in any way, shape, or form - the government CANNOT choose what you can and cannot say and how much you are allowed to say it. This is why classified material is legal to share, for instance - the law you break when you breach classification is either espionage or an agreement you've signed. If someone from the US government just hands you, without solicitation, classified documents, you can show them to absolutely anyone forever 100% legally. The government cannot touch you. This is why - the government cannot regulate content of speech.
As a direct result of this - as a -direct- result of this - it is impossible to limit campaign spending. Period. Sure, you can limit the actual campaigns, but if people just want to give someone money to make ads or whatever for the candidate or cause of their choice, there is absolutely nothing whatsoever Congress can do about it (beyond avoiding quid pro quo and other forms of corruption, which are unrelated to speech content).
Then you haven't been listening. This is the entire core of campaign finance reform - it is why the McCain-Feingold act was deemed unconstitutional. It prohibited people from saying certain things in certain media within such and such date of the election. This was obviously unconstitutional as it is a violation of freedom of speech, and obviously is one - its purpose is to prevent people from speaking out.
Liars will say otherwise. This is because they are liars. This is reality. Reality is you're saying "No, you can't say that here." That's censorship, period.
This is censorship. You have the RIGHT to hire people to make ads for you. You have the RIGHT to broadcast your message, or to print books, or whatever else. You have that right; it is constitutionally protected. And because these things cost money, you have the RIGHT to spend money on these things, because it is an integral part of speech.
If this were not the case, the government could prohibit you from printing books or broadcasting whatever they wanted.
This is precisely what these people are advocating for, which is why they are evil or stupid or both.
There's no reason for the playing field to be evened out. There is no such thing as an even playing field. This is an enormous, blatant lie. Some people will always have the advantage over others, and if your party is so worthless that you cannot raise money, then your party is worthless.
People who have messages which resonate well with the population get money. Those who don't, don't. People lie to themselves, decieve themselves into believing that if only they had more money... but the reality is that the reason you lack money is because you lack value.
It is NOT the job of the US government to make elections more competitive. It is their job to allow the US public to elect people.
With the internet, spreading your message is cheaper than ever; posting Youtube videos costs nothing more than the cost of the video. Social media costs nothing more than time and internet connections.
There is no "chewing up all the resources" - yes, you could, in principle, purchase all the television ad space. SO WHAT? I have to question whether this is even an issue; people will hate you if you do it, because they'll get annoyed with your constant ads, and if you think that people are so stupid that someone who did this would automatically get all the votes, then you're saying people are too insipid to choose their leadership and democracy should be dismantled because it doesn't work. That's reality.
In reality, though, thanks to the internet, there's a lot of other ways to reach people. Television isn't our only god now. You can also send out pamphlets, make calls, and go door to door - lots of other alternatives exist, and indeed, have been proven to be far more effective than television advertisements. And if someone DID buy up all the television ad space, then their opponent would imply that they were trying to buy the election - but in truth, where did that money come from? People.
The last 30 years have been absolutely horrible for the Republican party. The Republican party has won elections while losing the electorate; the net result today is that the Republican party today is in dire straits. Their extreme shift to the right has resulted in them being unable to win elections outside of certain regions of the country, and as of the present time every single minority population in the US, plus women, vote for the Democrats - in many cases, overwhelmingly so, with over 90% of African-Americans voting democrat, and over two-thirds of hispanics and asians. Young people also vote for the Democrats overwhelmingly, with the Republicans suffering very badly; they win only in older demographics which are litearlly dying off. At the present rate of demographic expansion, Texas is going to become a blue state somewhere between 2020 and 2030, at which point it will become literally impossible for the Republicans to win a presidential election.
The Republican party has essentially been taken over by extreme right-wing fundamentalists who are obviously insane; Nixon's strategy of riding the crazy people to victory has resulted in the crazy people thinking that they have a place at the table of politics, which is why the Republican party is now set by infighting and kicking people out and extreme nastiness.
The Republican party is having very real problems precisely because their only demographic is people who are full of hate; even the businesspeople are starting to leave the party because they've realized that the crazy people there actually want to destroy the economy.
They won some elections, sure, but at the cost of the future of the party and the shape of the party. The party has fundamentally changed into something which only holds tenuous control over the House on the back of gerrymandered districts, and which is full of insane fanatics who shout out people who actually can govern.
There is no such thing as being "drowned out". If you can't buy TV ads, you have a lot of other avenues to speak to people; it is literally impossible to control them all. In the age of the internet, how do you stop them from making videos on youtube? How do you stop their supporters on Twitter? How do you "drown them out" in every platform ever? You can't.
Drowning out is what we like to call "the big lie": It is just censorship. You're speaking too much! That's what you're saying here. That's it. That's what it is.
It is utter nonsense. And if it wasn't - if people were truly so stupid - then you just have to say "Well, democracy doesn't work then, because the people are so insipid, they don't make choices based on anything other than money."
And if you feel that way, then you should be advocating for a technocracy. In fact, that's kind of why we have the bureaucracy to begin with - to prevent our elected people from doing as much damage. The EPA, NASA, the military, the FDA... these insulate the American people from the government. They do a lot of the work that the government needs to do without specific laws from congress. A lot of regulation comes from government agencies, and they're far better at crafting such things than Congress is.
But campaign finance reform is pointless if the people are as insipid as you think, because your goal is to destroy freedom of speech, and that's bad, and it won't fix the problem that the people are too retarded to pick proper leadership.
There's just no argument for it. No basis in reality. There's no "drowning out" in the age of the internet. There's no drowning out when you can knock on doors and make phone calls and hand out pamphlets and send letters.
Ron Paul's folks, a crazy fringe, managed to keep their candidate of choice VERY visible despite limited funding. Clearly, there is no drowning out - everyone knows who Ron Paul is.
And he had very little support; most people think Ron Paul is a crazy moron. If a crazy moron like Ron Paul can make himself visible, someone who is actually sensible should be able to do quite well for themselves.
If you can't, maybe you aren't as sensible or popular as you wish to believe you are.
"No. I'll get a real job again and spend time with my family."
That's exactly what he did when he lost. And Minnesota has gone downhill ever since that election with a Governor who has no clue how to do anything but pander to Union bosses.
He does touch on this, where politicians would basically be able to do nothing except write books, teach (although in theory even that would be disallowed)... not a whole lot. That's why he says we would need to support substantial pensions for former lawmakers. This, of course, leaves the potential for some abuse- a 30-year-old could leave the House and be well-compensated until death for two or four years of governance. The quality of the governance we would have to receive for that to be worth it is fairly high. But it is mentioned.
If you only ban congresspeople from working for affected organisations, then they can still receive rewards through family members, or as gifts - direct transactions, but also gifts in natura, discounts, or even services or offering them the use of stuff (such as mansions, airplanes, etc.) legally owned by their beneficiaries. If they have children, they would probably be satisfied with a guarantee that their children will end up in high places, or receive money, or whatever. So it's not enough to ban them from certain jobs, it's not even enough to force them to interact with and receive what they need from government(-approved) sources only, you need to go after their families as well.
It would of course be quite a large step forward to even get political culture to consider such rewards corrupt, rather than normal as is the case now, but you need to basically lock them and their families in a cage, gilded or not, if you want any chance to remove selfish incentives.
I would not have much of a problem with restricting lawmakers themselves in this manner - that serving in congress would be a sacrifice for one's country is not something that ought to discourage representatives - but restricting their families, who might not even be able to make the choice themselves, is a much harder pill to swallow. You could demand that representatives have neither partners nor children (and so their watch begins), but that eliminates a lot of good people, and worse, it eliminates an entire mindset from congressional discourse.
If you notice all of these exceptions revolve around harm to others. I can't think of any greater harm to the American people than money in politics.
@Titanium_Dragon
The Supreme Court did not agree that the individual mandate is Constitutional under the Commerce Clause, it was only the Taxing and Spending Clause that allowed the mandate to stay in, based on their interpretation that the penalty of not buying insurance constitutes a tax.
Medicaid and Medicare are opt-in programs; if we had instead expanded them to the entire populace, that would be one thing -- the government is offering you insurance for cheap or "free" (paid indirectly through taxes), while allowing you the option of not enrolling or instead buying private insurance. As I understand it, this is uncommon but very possible in most countries with socialized healthcare. But in my opinion (along with the majority of the Supreme Court justices) the Federal Government has no power to force you to buy anything. It's only because Roberts counted this penalty as a tax that the individual mandate was allowed to stand.
@Spiffy_McBang
Then you'd replace one problem (only visiting states with swing voters) with another (only visiting cities with swing voters). Even if candidates visited California, do you really think many candidates would bother with San Francisco or Redding? Voters in those cities vote pretty reliably one way or the other, so any candidate speaking there would likely either be preaching to the choir, or yelling at a brick wall. They'd be much better off spending their time and money in San Diego and , which have a more evenly-divided voter base.
It's also very likely that there will be very few small towns visited except for national publicity purposes, because the impact of visiting those towns will be very small. Nearly 60% of the country lives in urban areas with a population over 200,000, so by covering those 150 areas, you've done most of your campaigning. Theoretically you could win a popular election by only appealing to urban voters, even if you throw rural ones completely under the bus. That's not so easy in an electoral system.
The filibuster does not exist in the Constitution. It wasn't even adopted into the Senate rules, technically; senators just started standing up and talking forever, and while it was allowed for quite some time, rules to limit debate were discussed as early as the 1850s. Likewise, current Senate rules regarding the filibuster have been those drawn up to give the body the ability to cut filibusters short. Now that the filibuster has become a regular veto point in the legislative process, where any bill of importance requires sixty votes in the Senate rather than the basic majority that actually is written into the Constitution, it's most appropriate to view it as a game-breaking bug. It was never a feature.
Incidentally, the Senate just voted to weaken the filibuster as regards executive and judicial nominees. The benchmark for those positions is back to fifty-one votes. Legislation and Supreme Court nominees can still be filibustered and forced to find sixty votes in support.
There will always be swing voters, and swing voters will always be the ones politicians in a relatively close election are trying to win over. What the EC does is replace swing voters with swing states. The votes of anyone not in a toss-up state are therefore irrelevant for the purposes of electing a President. Yes, a presidential candidate would probably want to focus on areas with more swing voters, but in terms of messaging and promised policy initiatives, they would have to take the interests of swing voters nationwide into account rather than only the voters that could swing specific states.
But really, that's just a question of how the EC affects strategy. The main benefit to eliminating it is that every super-hippie in San Francisco who doesn't need to meet a Democratic nominee to vote for them (or trucker hat redneck in East Bumfuck, Texas who's going with the Republican candidate) will still have a vote as meaningful as that of a much more moderate person in Ohio or Virginia. That's how democracy is supposed to work.
But we're not a democracy, we're a federal republic. Most of the founders thought that democracy was inherently bad. Madison, from the tenth Federalist Paper: We have three branches of government, all put in office in different manners. Congress is directly voted in by the people (since the 17th Amendment, anyway), the President is voted in by the states, with power according to their votes, and the Supreme Court justices are appointed by the President, and confirmed by the Senate.
States are not required to assign all electoral votes to the winner of the election in that state. You can try to get your state to change to a proportional system, as Maine and Nebraska have. Alternatively, you could move to one of those states, or to a swing state, in order for your vote to "matter" according to the parameters you've given. I grew up in a swing state, and in a way there's a fair bit of freedom now that I vote in California; I don't feel compelled to vote for the "least bad" candidate from the major parties, and can instead vote my conscience and support the candidate that I feel is actually in our nation's best interest.
Why is it not fair? The argument is usually "one person, one vote", which I find sounds great, but ignores the effects of organization and population pools on voting. Making it so that rural areas have no voice isn't exactly fair either.
I know exactly which video you took that argument from, and the author was rather dishonest in that section. Specifically, he chose to use city populations as opposed to metropolitan statistical area (MSA) populations, which severely distorts the numbers in favor of his argument. For example, while the population of NYC is about 8-9 million across all five boroughs, the NYC MSA, encompassing the NY tristate metro area, is closer to 20 million. (And that's with a dense urban core - the differentiation between city and MSA population is even more stark for places like Los Angeles, where the population is much more spread out.) Among the top ten US MSAs, none is below 5 million in population, and collectively, they comprise between a third and a quarter of the total US population. Furthermore, most countries in the developed world do, in fact, use a system similar to the EC to select their chief executive, since most countries are parliamentary democracies.
If that really was the case, then the US would not have the history of vibrant third parties that it does. The reality is that few third parties are willing to do the sort of bottom up base development to make them competitive. Instead, they focus on the brass ring - the Presidency - ignoring how the other branches interact with the executive.