Real campaign finance reform: dilute the bad money with lots of good money

In his recent article at Salon.com, “How to fix campaign financing forever for $50,” Farhad Manjoo explores what should be a national priority: campaign finance reform. 

Why should it be a priority?  Because private money corrupts all political dialogue.  It makes us think that politicians are taking The People seriously, when they aren’t.  Our current system of private political donations give birth to the ubiquitous Orwellian political sound bites (e.g., the Clear Sky Law).

Presidential candidates must now start raising at least $2 million a week, or $286,000 every day, including weekends, until the election.  And the sales pitch for the contribution is not anything like this:

Please give me LOTS of money.  In return, I won’t invite you to special gatherings of political and corporate elites.  I won’t answer your phone calls any more than I answer the calls of people who don’t contribute anything.   I won’t have my staff flock to hear your legislative proposals.  All I’ll do is continue representing the interests of all the people.

What doesn’t work to fix the campaign contribution system?  Contribution limits. Manjoo argues that getting around the limits “has become a huge Washington business.” Here’s another thing that doesn’t work: Making politicians disclose who gave what to whom. Manjoo suggests that “sunlight just isn’t so great a disinfectant.”  Information is freely available, but there’s too much of it for the public to digest, or maybe we’re just apathetic.  As if we don’t know that huge energy and …

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Shopping for Sex: wasteful consumerism and Darwin’s theory of sexual selection

A few weeks ago I ate dinner with friends.  One of the friends mentioned that, a few weeks earlier, he had attended a party in an upscale neighborhood.  At that party, one of the guests announced that she had brought her own bottle of wine because the host’s expensive wine wasn’t good enough. From my end of the table, I blurted out that it is not necessary to have expensive wine to have a meaningful gathering with friends or family.  In fact, I added, “wine is not necessary at all.”  I was about to elaborate when I noticed that the other adults at the table were staring at me like I had three eyes.  “That’s not correct,” they told me, almost in unison. I know that “look” well. I have received that same “look” from various people on other occasions. On one occasion I got “the look” from someone who was trying to justify that an ordinary car wasn’t sufficient, so he needed to buy a BMW.  Another person who gave me “the look” was trying to convince me that her $75,000 kitchen remodeling was “necessary,” even though all of the appliances in her existing kitchen functioned perfectly.  The problem with her current kitchen was that it was “old.” I have also received that same look from fundamentalists when I explain that the earth is billions of years old.  The “look” is a “we-will-pretend-you-didn’t-say-that” look.  It shouldn’t surprise me to draw the same “look” from both consumers and Believers, given that wasteful and pretentious spending is the de facto national religion of the United States.  We’ve moralized extravagant spending to such an extent that “living the good life” means buying lots of things we don’t really need.

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Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan discuss whether religion is “built upon lies.”

Beliefnet is currently hosting an on-going discussion involving atheist Sam Harris and pro-religion blogger Andrew Sullivan.  The topics of the discussion are God, faith, and fundamentalism.  These are two excellent writers who are doing a terrific job of testing each others’ positions.  Well worth a visit.

Here’s a sampling of Harris:

Please consider how differently we treat scientific texts and discoveries, no matter how profound: Isaac Newton spent the period between the summer of 1665 and the spring of 1667 working in isolation . . .When he emerged from his solitude, he had invented the differential and integral calculus, established the field of optics, and discovered the laws of motion and universal gravitation. Many scientists consider this to be the most awe-inspiring display of human intelligence in the history of human intelligence. Over three hundred years have passed, and one still has to be exceptionally well-educated to fully appreciate the depth and beauty of Newton’s achievement. But no one doubts that Newton’s work was the product of merely human effort, conceived and accomplished by a mortal—and a very unpleasant mortal at that. And yet, literally billions of our neighbors deem the contents of the Bible and the Qur’an to be so profound as to rule out the possibility of terrestrial authorship. Given the breadth and depth of human achievement, this seems an almost miraculous misappropriation of awe. It took two centuries of continuous ingenuity to substantially improve upon Newton’s work. How difficult would it be to improve the Bible? It

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An inspiring Earth Day message from Jane Goodall

I know that it's not Earth Day.  On the other hand, every day is (or should be) Earth Day.   Mainly, I wanted to share the link to Jane Goodall's Earth Day talk from the spring, 2006 (see below).  The students in my daughter's class were given an assignment to read a biography and then make a short presentation…

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