If Court Outlaws Public Campaign Matching Funds, Personal Wealth Should also be Banned from Campaigns

The United States Supreme Court is preparing to hear oral arguments in a landmark campaign finance case, in which a wealthy candidate who chose not to use public matching funds alleges those funds amounted to an illegal enhancement of his opponent’s speech. That assisted speech, the argument goes, was an unconstitutional government intrusion into the territory of his own free speech rights.

Observers say the right-leaning now convincingly corporatist Roberts Court appears likely to side with the wealthy candidate, and effectively outlaw any and all public assistance that would give the non-wealthy a hope of competing. If this is their verdict, the Court should add to its finding that no candidate can spend more than a nominal amount of personal wealth to expand his or her own speech beyond that of a less affluent opponent.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Joseph Robertson is Executive Director of Climate Civics International (climatecivics.org). He represents CCI in the UNFCCC negotiations and other United Nations processes, and in the Earth Diplomacy Leadership Initiative. He is Chief Strategist for Resilience Intel and the Climate Value Exchange, and a member of the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition Advisory Group. Joseph is a principal in the Good Food Finance Network, co-leading efforts to establish a new co-investment platform for food systems transformation and the Integrated Data Systems Initiative. He previously served as Interim Director for the Food System Economics Commission, during its start-up phase, and as Senior Advisor, Sustainable Finance, for the EAT Foundation. He is the founder of Geoversiv (earthintel.org) and The Navigator (navigatornews.net).

Amend Constitution to Ban Partisan Redistricting

Every ten years, according to the mandate of the Constitution, the US government conducts a nationwide census, to learn how many people live in each district, in each state, to ensure that membership in the House of Representatives is evenly distributed. And immediately after the census figures are released, all 50 states begin redrawing Congressional districts, according not only to population, but to the registered political preferences and demographic indicators of the populations in question.

The result is what is called “gerrymandering”—the convoluted bending of House districts to ensure that most of them lean decidedly toward the Democratic or the Republican party. The difference is whether one party or the other is in charge. We need to amend that Constitution of the United States to ban partisan redistricting, which is one of the st flagrantly corrupting practices in our democracy.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Fourth Amendment Rights are Not a Trivial Annoyance

The nation has been facing, ever since September 11, 2001, a mounting pressure to surrender vital liberties in the interest of security. Now, the government is implementing a plan, several years in the works, to require travelers at airports to pass through full body scanners that snow security agents naked images of the passengers’ bodies. The Electronic Privacy Information Center says the scanners violate the Fourth Amendment.

In response to the EPIC lawsuit, a government lawyer has reportedly responded by saying the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) is responsible for ensuring passenger safety, using the latest technologies, and that efforts to fulfill that mission “should not have to stop every five minutes for comment and rulemaking”. This is an offensive and dismissive remark that puts basic liberties at the margins and privileges the arbitrary power of security officials over the rights of individuals.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

This Land is Our Land (video)

This video is an expression of the ideal that in a democracy, the nation belongs to all of its people. It is our view that the power structures through which people of privilege exercise their will are no more private or wholly their own than the government itself. In a true democracy, every citizen should be committed to fostering and honoring the whole landscape of democracy.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Tax Cuts for the Rich have NOT Created Jobs

After 30 years of re-engineering our nation’s economy and tax code to deliver huge benefits, free of charge, to the wealthy, the most massive transfer of wealth in the history of the world —a transfer of wealth that has led to now catastrophically failed wealth disparities between the wealthiest and the poorest—, we have not seen the wildly prolific job-creation that was promised. Indeed, we have seen our manufacturing base stripped away piece by piece and our middle class society systematically eroded.

Now, after 10 years of massive tax breaks for the wealthiest people in the history of humanity, we have seen a further concentration of wealth and a further erosion of the open market for employment and innovation. The 400 wealthiest people in the United States now control more wealth than 155 million people at the other end of the socio-economic spectrum combined. The tax cuts that were supposed to be given to the “supply side” were never given to the supply side at all, only to those that seek to own it.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Fear of Difference is Opposition to Democracy

The United States of America is a nation of immigrants. It is a nation that has wrestled with vicious undercurrents of racism and xenophobia, and has emerged ever more democratic, generally trending toward a more perfect union representing the foundational ideals that were, in the 18th century, so far out of reach, but so necessary as core aspirations. And over time, it is a nation that has become richer, stronger and more democratic, by getting closer to those foundational ideals.

In advocating for the most effective way to form a new democratic nation in Argentina, Juan Bautista Alberdi wrote that Argentina should follow the example of the United States and encourage major waves of immigration, because the resulting society, with a large population, with diverse backgrounds and a commitment to building something new, will make for a more sustainable and democratic republic.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Public Officials Who have to Cut Social Services Are Not Creative Enough

A radical idea is flooding through the American political discourse: that the only way to “repair” government budgets is to make extreme cuts to spending on social services, like education, healthcare, parks, infrastructure and public safety. The fact is: any public official who argues there is no option besides slashing spending on quality government programs is not creative enough and cannot be said to be fully equipped to govern.

Polls now show between 80% and 90% of Americans want “cuts” only to areas of spending that are legitimately wasteful, fraudulent or abusive. Only 11% support education cuts, for instance. There is no support for cutting Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security benefits, only waste, fraud and abuse. Officials who have promised budget-busting tax cuts in order to curry favor with voters and financial backers are not serious about fiscal solvency.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Parasitic Enterprise is not Legitimate Enterprise

There is a myth that is often put forth as evidence that conservatives are unserious about democracy, which is that they favor rapacious capitalist behemoths. Many do, especially those for whom conservatism means capitalism. But most conservatives are ordinary people who want the little guy to be free of the imposing will of major power interests. It confuses matters to assert that all conservatives are interested in promoting big business interests.

As a good friend of mine often says, it matters more what people hear than it does what you say. When most conservatives hear talk about business, they don’t think about how wonderful it would be to promote the infinite expansion of multinational corporations, and they don’t hear their own vocabulary as promoting oligarchy.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

The Tea Party is an Alarm Bell

The Tea Party movement is famous for its persistent expression of rage. It has been elevated by partisans who want to channel that rage to harm their opponents, and it has been misinterpreted by progressive politicians as a result of ignorance and poor anger management. Those superficial qualities are symptoms; the movement is an alarm bell that neither party seems equipped to respond to.

The alarm is clearly about the erosion of the influence of the individual, the small organization, local culture. The alarm is not about taxes or liberalism or spending or immigrants; those are all targets of convenience. The alarm is an attempt to alert us to our own reduced importance in a world not run by us or by our representatives, but by powerful, impenetrable interests.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

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