Quote:
Originally Posted by AtomicLabMonkey
Quote:
Originally Posted by sperry
Damn I'm jaded today.
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Yeah you are. What you said is incorrect; the President and Congress do have a ton of power, that's why lobbyists/special interest groups spend so much money and time trying to influence them. What it sounded like you were trying to say is that anyone who gets to that level is corrupted already by the time they get there, which I would agree usually appears to be the case these days. The two party system isn't helping matters either. The problem with taking all campaign finances and dividing them up equally among everyone running is that then you'll have 10 gazillion crackpots signing up to run, who aren't serious and just want to see the country and have some fun on someone else's dollar.
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My point was that's it's impossible to get a President that can actually make a difference. You simply can't get elected in this country unless you're willing to support the status quo, because tons of seriously rich corperations and people have already purchased the gov't and continue to use their money to stop change.
Significant campaign finance reform is simply one way to help correct the situation. Of course, you can't just let anyone run on a evenly split campaign bank, due to the emmence waste of money ('course I'd consider the current campaign expenitured emmence wastes as well).
Try this: Require all candidates to have a "party". Your party must have 50,000 (or some logical arbitary number large enough to prevent crack-pots) members. Once you've got enough members, your party can run, and will recieve their fair share of the campaign finance pool.
Or, more simply, limit the total amount anyone can spend on a campaign to say $1 million, and don't bother with dividing it all up.
My point is, most all of the potential Democrat nominiees are just as good as any of the others... but the Dems will have to pick one to rally behind in order to beat Bush. I'd rather live in a nation where they all have a shot at winning. I wouldn't have a problem with a President elected by only 30% of the popular vote, if that's still the majority. The CA governor recall election may have been full of yahoo's running, but at least there was a choice! The presidential election only allows me to pick from 2 yahoos.