Constitutional Amendment to Reform the Financing of Political Campaigns

In my opinion, the United States government has become a plutocracy in which wealthy individuals and companies own the government. 

This has happened primarily because successful political campaigns have become so expensive that candidates must solicit huge amounts of money from those who have it.  If they want this stream of contributions to continue, they have to dance to the tune that their donors play.  In addition, government has become a revolving door in which many of those who hold office or work for those who do, trade their service for vast riches by going to work for those who can make fertile use of their connections once they leave public service.

These factors, combined with the fact that campaigns have become very good at using our new media and their huge resources to manipulate public opinion, have led to a government that at the very least is no longer for the people.

This country is facing very serious problems.  That's not new.  What is new is that we are making practically no progress in addressing them because our government no longer serves the people.  I don't see how that can change until we effectively take big money out of our political process.

In some past crises, we have been able to look to the Supreme Court to set things right.  However, in this case through the Citizen's United decision and overturning campaign finance reform, they have made things much worse.

It appears to me that only through a constitutional amendment can we get our government back.  This won't be easy.  Those who benefit from the current system are those who have to initiate the changes.  However, the people still ultimately hold the power if we get organized.

I am proposing the following constitutional amendment to address this problem.   Admittedly, I am not a constitutional scholar or even an attorney, but someone needs to get the ball rolling.  I have no doubt at all that much of what I have been proposed can be improved, but it is a starting point.  What do you think?

Twenty-eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution


Section 1

Only individual, living, human beings shall be eligible to contribute to the campaigns of those running for public office.  No companies, corporations, labor unions, political parties or other groups may contribute directly or indirectly to political campaigns.

Section 2

Contributions to political campaigns by individuals are limited to $500 per candidate per election. Congress by a two-thirds vote of both Houses shall have the power to adjust this amount, but in no case shall the maximum exceed the greater of $500 and 1% of the total compensation for the office the candidate is seeking.  Such contributions may not be solicited or received earlier than 1 year before the election for the office being sought.

Section 3

Individuals can contribute only to the campaigns of candidates for whom they are eligible to vote.

Section 4

No entity other than a candidate’s duly recognized political campaign shall fund attempts to promote one candidate or denigrate another for the purpose of influencing the outcome of an election.

Section 5

When a campaign ends, amounts collected for a candidate’s campaign but not used for that purpose must be submitted to the federal, state, country, or city government for which the office was sought.  No amounts contributed for a campaign may be retained by the individual seeking office for their own use or carried forward for future elections.

Section 6

No member of Congress nor any person employed in an official capacity by any member of Congress nor any person contracted for substantial official work by a member of Congress may be employed by any registered lobbying company or its agents for a period of 5 years following the termination of the member’s Congressional term.  In addition, such a person may not act as a paid consultant to Congress or its members.

Will the Voter ID Laws Reduce Your Representation in Congress?

If the Republicans in various states are successful in using Voter ID laws to disenfranchise the elderly, the poor, college students, and others who frequently vote for Democrats, why wouldn’t that reduce the number of representatives that state gets in the House of Representatives and the number of votes it gets for President in the Electoral College?

Read Section 2 of the 14^th amendment to the Constitution.  What else could you conclude?  If you deny the right to vote to male inhabitants over 21, the basis of representation is reduced proportionally.  Sorry about the male part.  I didn’t write the amendment, but here it is.  Read it yourself.

Amendment 14 - Citizenship Rights - Section 2
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Conservation - Energy's Best-Kept Secret

Energy is never far from the newswire.  Should we build the Keystone Pipeline to help Canada move its oil to the U.S. and also to international markets via Houston?  Do we dare to apply sanctions to Iran that might disrupt world oil supply?  Will the projected increases in fuel prices this summer derail our economic recovery?  Can we ignore the effect that burning fossil fuels has on global climate?  Is fracking (hydraulic fracturing) for natural gas safe?  Should we stop building coal-powered power plants that are known to be major polluters?

In most of our discussions about energy, we all seem to be die-hard supply-siders.  We focus most of our attention on how to obtain more energy and very little on how to make better use of what we have.

It is difficult to know how much energy we waste in the United States.  Information provided by the Department of Energy^[1] and Lawrence Livermore labs^[2] has been used to argue that we waste more than half of the energy we use. That may an overstatement since conversion and transmission of energy inevitably lead to some loss.

Nevertheless, we do use an extraordinary amount of energy, and much of it is unnecessary. In 2009, the U.S. consumed 9.4 quadrillion BTUs of energy.^[3] That is enough energy to heat all of the water in the Atlantic Ocean by more than half a degree.^[4]  We also know that the U.S. uses more than twice as much energy per person as does the European Union and more than four times as much as the world average.^[5]

We spend a lot of time, money and effort trying to find clean and renewable ways to produce energy, and we should.  However, it appears unlikely that any of these will be game changers in the near future. 

We wring our hands about energy independence, engage in wars over energy resources, and support horrible governments to get access to their oil. We dig in places that would be better left undisturbed. We pollute our environment with the byproducts of burning unbelievable amounts of fossil fuels. We flirt with unimaginable disasters by using nuclear energy.  We extract oil from sources like tar sands that are known to be environmentally damaging.  We extract natural gas using fracking techniques that pump thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals into our underground aquifers and may increase the odds of earth quakes.   And all the time the real payoff is simply to quit wasting energy. Conservation doesn’t mean sitting at home in the dark with your coat on. It simply means stopping the flow of energy that isn’t needed.

The opportunities are everywhere and include insulation, smart lights, smart power grids, black pipes on roofs to heat water, heat pumps, high mileage vehicles, goods shipped by train rather than truck, passengers moved by train or bus rather than by plane or car, high efficiency furnaces and air conditioners, and smart buildings. The opportunities are almost endless, and the government can have an enormous impact on facilitating their implementation by providing incentives and assistance. Doing so will create jobs, increase our quality of life, reduce pollution, improve international relations, and improve our business climate.

Conservation may not be as cool as some sexy new technology, but it sure makes a lot of sense.

References

[1] http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/index.cfm#summary
[2] https://www.llnl.gov/news/newsreleases/2010/images/energy-flow-annotated.pdf
[3] http://www.pennenergy.com/index/articles/display.articles.pennenergy.power.operations-reliability.2010.05.us-energy_consumption.QP129867.dcmp=rss.page=1.html
[4] http://www.chacha.com/question/how-many-gallons-of-water-are-in-the-atlantic-ocean
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption

Model Shoot Photos

I was lucky enough to be able to participate in an amateur model shoot through my camera club.  I took a lot of pictures.  Here are some of my favorites.  Having great models, lighting, and backdrops really makes things easier.

 

The Catholic Church and the Minnesota Same-Sex Marriage Ammendment

In November, Minnesota voters will be asked to decide whether or not to join 31 other states that have passed constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage.  Even though Minnesota already prevents same-sex marriage through its Defense of Marriage Act, this amendment would extend the prohibition to the constitutional level thus barring challenges to the law’s constitutionality. 

Specifically, the proposed amendment states, “Only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Minnesota."

According to a recent report from the Minnesota Campaign Finance Board, the Catholic Archdiocese of Minneapolis & St. Paul and the Catholic Dioceses of New Ulm contributed $700,000 last year to support passage of this amendment.  Half of that money, $350,000, was donated to Minnesota For Marriage, an organization that is spearheading the push to get the constitutional amendment approved.

According to Catholic World News, Archbishop John Nienstedt and other church leaders in Minnesota are enthusiastically supporting this amendment and he has warned his priests that open dissention will not be tolerated.  One priest who has challenged the archbishop on that point, Father Mike Tegeder, has reportedly been warned that he could be suspended from ministry if he continues to oppose the amendment campaign.

The Catholic Spirit reported that as part of a statewide effort by the Catholic bishops of Minnesota, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis provided $650,000 in 2011 to the Minnesota Catholic Conference for that organization’s activities to get the amendment on the ballot.

More than 400,000 DVDs have been mailed to the homes of Minnesota Catholics, courtesy of Catholic bishops in the state.  The 18-minute DVD includes an appearance by the Archbishop in which he says it is time for Minnesotans to vote on a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman.

So the question is this.  How can this possibly not invalidate any claim the Catholic Church has to tax exemption?

Austin Cline provided an overview of the tax exemption laws in About.com.  To paraphrase (emphasis mine):

Tax exemptions are not a right.  No group or church is owed a tax exemption. These exemptions on various taxes are not protected by the Constitution.  They are created by and regulated by the legislatures and can be taken away by them. Tax exemptions are provided in exchange for groups’ providing services to the community.  Church tax exemptions are in jeopardy if they engage in direct political activity either against or on behalf of a political candidate or in an attempt to directly influence the passage of particular legislation. Losing tax-exempt status can mean both having to pay income taxes and that donations to the group will not be tax deductible by the donors.

This excerpt from the IRS Tax Guide for Religious Organizations describes what churches must do to retain their 501(c)(3) statuses that allow them to be tax exempt and allow people contributing to them to deduct the contribution.

In general, no organization, including a church, may qualify for IRC section 501(c)(3) status if a substantial part of its activities is attempting to influence legislation.  Legislation includes … a referendum, ballot initiative, constitutional amendment, or similar procedure.  A church or religious organization will be regarded as attempting to influence legislation … if the organization advocates the adoption or rejection of legislation.

How could this be any clearer?  The Catholic Church has attempted to influence whether or not the constitutional amendment is passed by contributing large amounts of money to lobbying organizations, by trying to influence voters who are members of the Church on how to vote, and by muzzling its own leaders’ ability to discuss the issue.

The Catholic Church must lose its tax exempt 501(c)(3) status, and contributions to the church by individual tax payers must not be deductable.  This is a fight we must engage in if we expect the separation of church and state to mean anything.

Sustainable Capitalism

Free-market capitalism is amazingly effective at releasing the energy, ingenuity, and industry of society.  It has repeatedly delivered more and better things to more people than any other economic system that has been tried.  However, it has a serious problem.  Over time, it simply is not sustainable.  Eventually too much of the wealth inevitably accumulates at the top. 

When that happens, the system quits working well because those who need to have disposable income to create demand for goods and services don’t have any.  The quality of life for most is greatly diminished because no one will hire them to produce goods and deliver services that aren’t needed, since most people can’t afford to buy them.  Even opportunities for those at the top are reduced because few have money to buy their products.  This keeps them from doing what they love most: making money. 

Anyone who has played Monopoly or Poker should understand this easily and completely.  Once one person has all of the money, the game is over, and if you play long enough one person will eventually have all of the money.  No other outcome is possible. 

Marriner Eccles, the Federal Reserve chairman during the Great Depression, expressed this very well in Beckoning Frontiers.  To paraphrase: 

As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption, mass consumption implies a distribution of wealth to provide buying power.  Instead of achieving that kind of distribution, by 1929-30 a giant suction pump had drawn an increasing portion of wealth into the hands of a few. The other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit ran out, the game stopped. 

This same thing is happening today.  The disparity in wealth between the few who are very rich and everyone else is the greatest it has been since just before the Great Depression in 1928.  Unemployment is high, people are losing their homes, and the middle class is shrinking.

The implications of understanding this inherent lack of sustainability in capitalism are enormous.  Those who claim that the solution to our economic problems is to give the wealthy more money with which to create jobs by cutting their taxes and reducing regulations have it exactly backwards.  Clearly the problem is not that wealthy people and businesses don’t have enough money to create jobs.  They have lots of money.  The problem is that there isn’t enough demand for the goods and services that those jobs would produce to justify creating them.

In order to balance the “giant suction pump” drawing wealth into the hands of the few, capitalism needs a counter-balancing pump that draws some money from the top where it is sitting unproductively and pushes it back through the economy where it can create demand.  Otherwise, the system is not sustainable.  This is referred to as a sustainability pump.

It should be clear that this sustainability pump must not operate on borrowed money and must not result in government handouts to freeloaders.  The government already borrows too much money, and just dispensing money to those who haven’t earned it creates a dependent class of people with low self-esteem, results in enormous resentment from those who have worked hard to earn the money, and ultimately doesn’t help anyone.  People need the opportunity to prosper by having good job opportunities and the resources to take care of their well being. 

It is, however, necessary for the sustainability pump to have a way to draw unproductive money from the top in order to be able to push it back through the system.  It must do this through increased taxes on the wealthy, reduced government waste, and targeted spending cuts.  Closing loop holes so that all corporations will pay their fare share of taxes can also help. 

Many claim that increasing taxes will choke off the very modest recovery that we now have.  They would have you believe that cutting spending is the only viable way to reduce our debt.  However, it is worth noting that one of the biggest factors leading to our current debt is that we have cut taxes to a level not seen since the 1950's.  There have been many very prosperous periods since then with much higher taxes than we have today.

Just as the sustainability pump must siphon money from the top, it must also push that money back through the system in ways that will help the economy be productive.  There are many good ways to do this such as spending on infrastructure, education, research, conservation, clean energy, small business incubators, support for developing industries, health care, housing, public works, public safety, and reduction in those things causing climate change.

There are those who will try to dismiss this idea by labeling it as redistribution of wealth or social engineering, but the enormously skewed distribution of buying power is the heart of the problem.  One percent of the people have more money than they can possibly spend on goods and services.  The other 99% don’t have the buying power that a robust economy requires.  As Marriner Eccles noted, mass consumption requires a distribution of wealth.  He might have added that the broad demand on which capitalism thrives is based upon that mass consumption.   This does not have to be wasteful consumption or environmentally destructive consumption.  As has increasingly been the case in our service economy, much of the demand can consist of services rather than disposable goods, and those goods that are produced can be created in a sustainable and responsible manner.  Nevertheless, adequate demand for goods and services must exist for our economy to work well.

Some will argue that growing the entire economy will help everyone do better, and that should be our focus.  Of course we need to help the economy grow, but that simply won’t happen as long as 99% of the people can’t create their share of the demand our economy needs.  The 1% have been very prosperous during the first part of the 21^st century.  Focusing on the other 99% for a while will make the entire economy work better.

Still others will argue that the government doesn't create jobs; businesses do.  It is interesting to note that many of the people making this argument have government jobs and that government is in fact a huge employer.  However, what is being suggested here is not that we solve our unemployment by having everyone without a job work for the government.  Most of the jobs that would be created by the techniques recommended would be in the private sector.  However, they would be doing projects initiated by the government.  This would not only create jobs, but even more importantly, it would have a huge catalytic effect.  Putting some people to work gives them money to buy goods and services that other people create which puts still more people to work creating a huge leveraging effect.  Thus, the overall impact of providing such a stimulus can be very big.

This needs to be the best country in the world to do business and create jobs because it has a fair tax structure, people with enough money to buy products and services, the best support infrastructure, the best-trained and healthiest work force, the best research, and a safe environment.  This is how we get those exported jobs to come back home.  And the beauty of it all is that we can make capitalism sustainable in the process of creating it.

My Best Photos of 2011

I am an amateur photographer and belong to a couple of camera clubs.   It is very humbling to see the incredible images that other photographers come up with so at the end of the year I like to review my efforts to see if there is any hope.  Here are my 20 favorite images from last year. 

1 - Crosstown Park

2 - Hold That Hat

3 - Mother Love

4 - Minnesota Arboretum

5 - Leopard

6 - Crocodile

7 - Purple Flower

8 - Backlit Elk

9 - Mt Rushmore Panorama

10 - Canada Lynx

11 - Lilly

12 - Grand Teton Panorama

13 - Seattle Skyline

14 - Lion Geyser with Rainbow

15 - Bucking Bronco

16 - Blue Heron

17 - San Francisco Panorama

18 - Duck on Pond

19 - Pensive Bear

20 - Sunset