SAVING OUR DEMOCRACY

I really appreciate Bill Moyer, a voice of reason within a whirlwind of spin. This a great article but quite lengthy. Please take the time to read it. He makes some very good points as to why the time has come for public funding of elections. I am definately in favor of public funding. The two major costs for campaigns are direct mail appeals and electronic media buys.

1) Deirect Mail Campaigns: It seems to me that since the U.S. Postal Service is a branch of the U. S. government that they should be required to mail for free 2 or 3 direct mail appeals for all candidates for public office. That would be the cap. No candidate would be allowed to send more than that. This would level the playing filed for all candidates, reduce the amount of junk mail that gets produced and reduce the amount of paper that is used in these usually ineffective campaigns. Most of these appeals end up in the trash or recycle bins. I know they do at my house.

2) Electronic Media Buys: Because the FCC, another branch of the U.S. government, oversees the liscencing of bradcast facilities, who are supposedly using the airwaves in public trust, that they should require said licencees to provide "x" number of minutes of free time to each candidate for public office. Once again no candidate would be allowed to purchase any additional airtime on radio or TV. This would be the great leveler.

There are any number of other restrictions that colud be put into place. I don't intend to design a whole system here on this BLOG. These are just a couple of suggestions that would help reduce the corporate influence on political campaigns. Also if the co0ngressmen and senators didn't have to spend so much time fundraising for their next campaign they might actually have time to do thier jobs............GEE, what a concept!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Please read Bill Moyers remarks by clicking on the link below or pasting the url. Thanks.......................PEACE........................Scott

SAVING OUR DEMOCRACY
Bill Moyers, AlterNet
The Abramoff and DeLay corruption scandals make it clear
that now more than ever we need publically financed
elections.
http://www.alternet.org/story/32750/