Rich Matthews, HW Columnist
Recently, the world ended due to a United States Supreme Court decision requiring corporations to receive the same consideration as inividuals in relation to campaign funding. With or without this legistaton, one thing remains unchanged; becoming the President of the United States requires expenditure of roughly 1/2 of 1 billion U.S. dollars for a job that pays a few hundred thousand U.S. dollars per year.
The decision by the U.S. Supreme Court was clear. If political action committees, individuals and other loophole exploiting entities can contribute money to a campaign, business entities must be afforded similar rights and privaleges. I agree with this decision. I am dissapointed with the dissenters of this decision who suggest the idea that now campaigns are going to be flooded with cash as if there is no other source for money and influence peddling beside the corporate source of financing.
If the dissenters of this recent decision by the Supreme Court were really against unlimited money in campaigns, a different tactic should have been employed. The lack of discussion relating to this easy to figure out problem leaves only one conclusion; the dissenters are totally fine with unlimited money in campaigns as long as it comes from organizations or entities more likely to donate towards their party.
How can we level the playing field and remove the horrible cash addiction our political system has? Can the never-ending campaign be stopped? Is there a day when we will never have to listen to a sound-bite again? Unfortunately, I believe power brokers (substitute campaign financiers) will always have a finger in the pie of campaigns. The very simple action of banning public media from charging for advertising for any and all elections will never happen. There is simply way too much money changing hands.
The airwaves, often reffered to as public airwaves, are actually owned by the people and leased to business and government entities. The FCC regulates these and terrestrial sources of media for content and the right to continue operation. If we have a partial stake in ownership of the medium exploited by national news organizations, why are we paying so much just to have an election? Does this even make sense?
I propose that any and all media organizations have a right to charge money for acess to their stations for the purpose of advertising. I suggest that similar to the way that these mega-corporations do not charge for mandated tests of the emergency broadcast system, they should not be allowed to charge for election coverage or election advertising. Very simple.
The result from a regulation like this would be limited non-topical election advertising. We could even require equal free coverage given to all candidates. This would essentially end all negative, destructive campaigning on paid for media and place a heavier burden on campaigns to generate their own content online or in newsprint. Maybe we could get back to hearing candidates taking clearly defined positions on issues. What can we learn from a 25 second commercial? I dare to hope that we can end or reduce the massive and toxic amount of money pouring into our political system.
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Photo credit: Gavel Grab.
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Popularity: 5%
Rich, It does seem simple, doesn’t it. It has always surprised me that such a seemingly simple solution has not had a movement of sorts. Then again, as you stated, there’s just too much money changing hands during campaigning cycles. We can assume that there are plenty of lobbyists around to ensure such a solution does not materialize or is even seriously proposed. That’d be an entire billion dollar industry shit out of luck.
I wish more candidates, politicians, and major news sources backed such an idea. Heck, an online video movement like we’ve recently seen with the “It gets better” movement could work, at least to plant the seed into public consciousness that the current way of “doing business” is not the only option and we are well within our rights, since we own the airwaves, to make sure that election coverage and election advertising is free of charge.
Sadly, robust democratic debate seems like a mere dream. (Especially over this topic.) Statistics show that by and large the candidates who spend the most money get elected. This is not the kind of democracy I’d like to be a part of. I’m happy to see you redirecting the discourse of the Supreme Court decision and its relationship to the media and campaigning and taking it toward this line of questioning. This was an issue before the ruling and nothing has been done to truly engage with it. Thanks for sharing. Looking forward to reading more articles from you, Rich.
–Julian–