Massachusetts Gubernatorial Candidate Jill Stein discusses the environment pt2 from Jon Satriale on Vimeo.
Massachusetts Gubernatorial Candidate Jill Stein discusses the environment pt3 from Jon Satriale on Vimeo.
Today is Democracy Day for MA, which is about putting these straightforward, cost-effective ideas into action.
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I don’t agree with Charlie Baker.
I don’t agree with Tim Cahill.
I don’t want my money going to subsidize their messages or agendas.
…I’ve had with public financing. Now I can tolerate tax dollars helping any of the four candidates in this particular race, but what if somebody really extreme like the local Grand Dragon of the KKK were running? I suspect there would be several objections to subsidizing that message.
and I think it needs to strike a balance so that we don’t start funding any ol’ citizen who decides they have all the answers for us. As one example of how the Clean Elections Law that the Democratic legislature threw out on a voice vote struck the right balance, in 2002, Warren Tolman was able to qualify for CE funding, and Jill Stein came up just short. If Carla Howell had pursued it (if it weren’t anathema to her) perhaps she would have mustered the credibility to get 6000 $5 contributions. I imagine her funds came from wealthy Libertarian Party supporters, so it’s not a great example, but clearly the LP could do the work to get 6000 small contributions in MA. Barbara Johnson, on the other hand, probably would not have had the grassroots support to meet the criteria.
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p>And then we would have had real issues to discuss in 2002 and not the fake and irrelevant conversation between O’Brien and Romney that dominated the election.
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p>The one thing that Patrick, Cahill, and Baker have in common (other than their XY chromosomes) is that they’re all taking money from the corporate peeps that have business before the Commonwealth. And the role that plays in narrowing the political discourse and slanting the playing field towards corporations and against people is taking us to the brink. We desperately need to break that stranglehold.
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p>I think we could also have restrictions against funding hate speech, with some clear criteria of what that means and a citizen-led process for adjudicating specific complaints.
would have been so inspired by seeing a Clean Elections candidate compete that they would have decided to run for office and seek CE funding for state rep and challenge the creep that’s made them feel so disempowered for so many years but can’t see any way past their incumbency protection.
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p>The rate of uncontested elections in MA is frightening.
I will restate my favorite election funding scheme (and before you start with the limit on free speech argument, we limit the amount of speech by capping the size of donations, prohibiting signs, no allowing politicking within 150 ft, etc. – so we can if we want to). It is my favorite because I made it up.
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p>Not every candidate needs the Glob and Herald; not every candidate needs TV. So a flat state-wide amount doesn’t work.
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p>Limit expenditure to the median amount of all candidates for the prior three election cycles for THAT office. Require monthly OCPF filings to track target spending. INCLUDE all union, business, and outside spendign as part of that tracking total.
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p>Transparent private money.
into a corruption tax way more costly than public financing? Because that’s what happens in our current election system. We get corporate-sponsored candidates who become corporate-sponsored elected officials who have one real paymaster to worry about in office. We get a $22 billion Big Dig mess and no real mechanisms for oversight and accountability. If we had that, we’d be getting our money back.
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p>For all the backroom deals being hashed out with our tax money, and all the time OUR paid, elected officials spend sucking at the teat of wealthy and connected contributors, I’d think you’d want government that could focus on the task at hand, government accountable to the people and not just the people with big bucks. I guess you agree with Deval Patrick… but what does that practically translate into? His lead fundraiser Sean Curran is a paid lobbyist for IBM, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, and he arranges access to the governor for his clients for $5,000 a pop. Do you agree with pay-to-play politics? Cuz that’s what you support by “agreeing with” Deval Patrick.
You would be subsidizing the right of everyone in the electorate to be exposed to the views of all viable candidates, not just the candidates who have the most money.
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p>You would be subsidizing the right of your favorite candidate to have more time to listen to and engage with ordinary voters, because s/he does not have to spend so much time chasing big donors.
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p>Having the lots of campaign money, unless you are Bill Gates, means having an informal understanding that you will act in the interests of your biggest donors. These are generally not the interests of everyone else. Under the current system, even your candidate, whoever that is, has to do this.
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p>Wouldn’t you like your candidate to be able to keep and act in the spirit of his/her campaign promises, instead of having to step back from them because of back room deals that were made in order to get campaign money?
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p>Of course, if you’re one of the big donors, the current system is a pretty good deal. Line the right pockets, and they’ll take care of you.
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p>If you think small donors and grassroots support can overcome these problems, look at how effective that was in getting us a public health care option and negotiated Medicare drug prices.
This is a great way to look at it. And at the end of the day we can reap huge savings across the map.
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p>The public health care option is a great example of this — by missing out on these types of meaningful, commonsense reforms (that huge majorities of Americans support), we pay the price for it in the form of skyrocketing insurance premiums and/or inadequate health coverage.
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p>There are also a number of reforms that would cost little or no money. Watch the second video to see Stein lay some of these out… instituting a public records law and open meeting law for the legislature would open up the process. There are huge cost savings if we switch to a single-payer healthcare system. There are more cost-effective economic development dollars that we could be spending — cross-cutting solutions that improve the environment we depend on, our health, and other social ills all at the same time.
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p>Instead, we get shortsighted, narrowly-driven policies like destination casinos which are a surefire bet to be more destructive than they are productive.
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p>We really need to level the playing field and broaden the debate.
Let’s subsidize private health insurance and big pharma while we’re at it and throw money at the bureaucracy and profiteering of it all!
Which is more expensive:
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p>1) Letting politicians raise campaign money by doing favors for real estate developers, oil companies, state house lobbyists, and transnational corporations.
2) Paying for elections with pubic money.
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p>Everytime I run the numbers I conclude that its MUCH cheaper to cut the link between politicians and favor-seekers by public campaign financing.
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p>And if you want a taste of the difference it would make in politics, just listen to Jill Stein – a clean money candidate – and compare her to Deval Patrick – who is taking money from lobbyists and corporate favor-seekers. The public interest doesn’t have a chance as long as we have a system in which politicians who sell out raise millions of dollars and clean money candidates run shoestring campaigns.