Suppose you are a sports fan and you and a group of friends have collected an impressive pool to bet on a game. The bet is sizeable enough to impact your future. How would you feel, entering the stadium if you observed the opposing team’s owners on the court, laughing with the referee; showering him with presents and cash, offering him free meals, vacation time at their condos and use of their private jets to whisk him and his family off on junkets to exotic locales. How confident would you feel that the ref’s calls during the game would be even handed and bias free? How confident would you feel that your interests would be fairly considered? How reassured would you be by the referee’s response to your protests that their money and gifts were "only buying his access" while you had never even been introduced. As your team lost game after game, how long would you remain convinced that the system was open, transparent, and fair?
There is no issue in contemporary life regulated by politics, Congress, and the law, where this referee analogy does not apply. The opposing team is the corporate sector and the nation’s richest citizens, leveraging their wealth, power, and virtual monopoly over all mass-media communication to win the collective public wealth. By being the major source of money for election and re-election (money and services) the corporate sector has conscripted Congress as a personal concierge. In return for their service, it treats them as a coddled elite; enhancing the flow of wealth and opportunity for re-election to them while they are in office and offering lucrative employment or patronage of their lobbying concerns when they retire.
But what do we expect? We don't hire our politicians by paying for the elections or by supplying them with free air-time for debates on our public airwaves. We allow the corporate sector to pick up the majority of the tab, and because we force politicians to pay broadcasters for our air-time and to buy advertising, that tab is enormous---about ten thousand dollars a day to be raised every day if an incumbent is to have a chance at re-election.
There are several things which could alter the balance of power radically in the peoples favor:
1) Full Funding of all Federal Elections.
2) Free air-time for all qualified candidates in unstructured debates beginning about six weeks before the elections (our virtual attention span) and banning of all political advertisements.(As they do in Europe.)
3) Banning of all corporate contributions and services. (Of course members and employees of corporations can contribute and vote, but why should corporate treasuries be allowed to support policies which may work for stockholders but not the majority of people or the commons?)
4) Make it illegal for any legislator to vote on any issue in which they have a financial interest.
5) Make it illegal for any legislator to be employed for five years after leaving office by any corporation or business entity which came under their purview while they were in office.
Now, it's fairly obvious that the political sector will never vote for this. They would never have gerrymandered their election districts or allowed electronic voting machines if they really wanted fair elections. But with enough uproar and bedevilment, this is something on which the people could insist. It is the CORE issue to regain some control over our political process. Without it, I'm afraid we can kiss our asses (and our democracy---what's left of it---goodbye.