President Bush’s new budget proposal cuts more than $53 million money from the budget of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the agency that allocates federal money for NPR, PBS and other federally funded media. This is a quarter of the CPB budget. This same budget will drastically crank up…
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 …
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.
Molly Ivins has passed away. We’ve lost one of the sharpest voices in political journalism, an erudite and empassioned observer. The CNN report is here. I’ve followed Molly’s words on and off for the better part of two decades and I have found her cool judgment and sound reasoning cause…
If you’ve been following this blog for the past few weeks, you know that I attended the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis Tennessee (Jan 12-14). The conference, sponsored by Free Press, drew more than 3,500 participants. Free Press offered a reduced admission fee to those who agreed to…