{"id":115786,"date":"2014-05-01T20:44:39","date_gmt":"2014-05-01T20:44:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=115786"},"modified":"2014-05-01T20:44:39","modified_gmt":"2014-05-01T20:44:39","slug":"reviving-government-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/reviving-government-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Reviving Government Of, By, and For the People"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fred Azcarate<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here we are, 150 years after President Abraham\u2019s Lincoln\u2019s address at Gettysburg. Now, our democracy is imperiled not by guns and bullets, but by the greed of the rich.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court\u2019s 5-4 decision in the\u00a0McCutcheon v. FEC<\/em><\/a>\u00a0case struck down federal limits on the overall campaign cash that big donors may give individual candidates, political parties, and political action committees.<\/p>\n

How does that square with\u00a0Lincoln\u2019s 1863 declaration<\/a>\u00a0at Gettysburg that \u201cgovernment of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth\u201d?<\/p>\n

The McCutcheon ruling, combined with the Supreme Court\u2019s 2010\u00a0Citizens United<\/em>decision, represents a one-two punch to the face of American Democracy. McCutcheon\u2019s likely legacy will be the creation of mammoth \u201cSuper PACs,\u201d financed by unlimited contributions from the wealthy and the corporations they leverage.<\/p>\n

Our nation\u2019s campaign finance system creates an inherent risk that politicians will care more about the people paying for their electoral bids with donations than the people who vote for them.<\/p>\n

Together with other similar Supreme Court rulings, the\u00a0McCutcheon<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Citizens United<\/em>\u00a0cases are eroding our democracy in many ways.<\/p>\n

First, they\u2019re increasing the influence that money wields in politics. By raising the maximum contributions donors can make to election campaigns \u2013 both directly and indirectly \u2013 these rulings made it much easier for the deepest pockets to win support of politicians.<\/p>\n

The buck doesn\u2019t stop on Election Day either. These mega-donors cash in on their political \u201cinvestments\u201d once their man or woman gets sworn in (which is why many contribute to the candidates of both parties) to make certain their personal needs trump priorities for the general public.<\/p>\n

Second, the heaps of money perverting our democracy make it harder for most people to run for office. Unless you\u2019ve got your own personal fortune or a bunch of millionaire and billionaire buddies, you simply can\u2019t run. Our leaders shouldn\u2019t lead lives so removed from the challenges the rest of us have to deal with day-to-day that they identify more with rich people looking for another tax break than a working mom trying to find affordable child care.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t have to be this way.<\/p>\n

States across the country have taken the lead to get big money out of politics by passing comprehensive campaign finance reform that favors the public financing of elections \u2013 more than half of the states now have some form of this kind of law on the books.<\/p>\n

In February, Rep. John Sarbanes, a Maryland Democrat, introduced theGovernment by the People Act<\/a>\u00a0and Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, introduced theFair Elections Now Act<\/a>\u00a0in the Senate.<\/p>\n

This legislation would transform the current system to reduce big money\u2019s outsized influence. The bills would boost the clout of small donors and help millions more Americans play a key role in our politics.<\/p>\n

USAction, the organization I lead, and more than 40 other national groups support this legislation. The\u00a0McCutcheon<\/em>\u00a0ruling, which the Supreme Court handed down in early April, simply makes a bad system worse.<\/p>\n

Congress must respond swiftly to salvage our democracy and create the conditions in which a government that is of, by, and for the people can flourish.<\/p>\n

Via\u00a0OtherWords<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fred Azcarate Here we are, 150 years after President Abraham\u2019s Lincoln\u2019s address at Gettysburg. Now, our democracy is imperiled not by guns and bullets, but by the greed of the rich. The Supreme Court\u2019s 5-4 decision in the\u00a0McCutcheon v. FEC\u00a0case struck down federal limits on the overall campaign cash that big donors may give individual […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":115787,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-115786","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}