That seems like a face palm marketing strategy. I think it is great to be inspired by other civil rights leaders, great…
I think if you market your strategy with the name of another civil rights leader you’re going to allow others to own the framing from the start. Maybe in spirit it is a good idea, using another’s name with so much pent up charged rhetoric against them seems like a self own (failing) for little to no perceived gain.
I agree with both @sciguy24 and @enduser here.
Additionally, our general public is increasingly impacted by, (if not made aware of), our institutions’ disfunctions, especially in myriad perhaps seemingly disparate ways. People know the economy isn’t doing well, despite the malinformed metrics propagandized to the contrary. Our courts are illegitimated. Our anti-popular forever wars are offshored. Our politicians are literally mentally unwell. Etc, etc.
Some difficulty for the street marketing is in clarifying such intersections of corruption into a galvanized issue. Yet, the general apatite for anti-corruption seems to be growing, and can be expected to continue accelerating given the brinks politics are reaching. Our marketing wouldn’t need to radicalize people to the point of understanding as well as Malcolm X. Our marketing would need to be inclusive of political understandings and perspectives. How should we rally such a broad coalition on this issue?
I think the central issue is public funding of elections. Without it we can’t pass the rest of our agenda. Its so important I don’t think we should be focusing on anything else right now. I don’t know of any pieces of legislation currently in the house or senate for this.
I stand by my opinion that first, we must get money out of politics. If we can do that, the system can start to function again as designed, by the people and for the people. How can we get the corrupt politicians to vote to take away the donors? Not likely since that’s money they need to campaign next election and keep their seat. I like the idea of publicly funded campaigns where each candidate gets the same amount and they do not have to find donors. It would solve the issue of donors being their Boss, but of course we have no incentive to give them to do this. At each turn, the corrupt system blocks fixing the problem. Someone smarter than me put in place a Convention of States which would override congress, the courts, and the president, to put us back on a progressive path. This is where our efforts should be.
You’ve made good points. It sounds like a question is: how can lawmakers be incentivized to prefer publicly funded elections? Perhaps others with more campaign experience would have some insight.
My first thought is that some politicians face races in which they’re financially disadvantaged (relative to others in their races). That may be a dynamic we could explore to enable an incentive for supporting publicly funded elections.
Secondly, politicians might oppose publicly funded elections because they would stand to lose out on some advantage in being able to raise more funds (perhaps with name recognition or something). So, perhaps we could explore how to undercut such an advantage so that an incumbent would not think their reelection could be threatened by publicly funding elections.
Another random thought: might it be useful to initially have publicly funded elections at the state level, kind of as a stepping stone to federal level? Would this be something that might avoid some liability of otherwise initiating it federally?
I like this idea.
Forcing public funding could be bad with current PAC laws, but offering it up as a seed of sorts could be good.
I had GPT do some implementation strategy ideas for this effort:
Implementing the Transparent Governance and Corruption Prevention Act requires a thoughtful and strategic approach, especially considering potential resistance from vested interests. Here are some implementation strategies that could prove fruitful:
Gradual Phase-In:
Stakeholder Engagement and Education:
Public Awareness Campaigns:
International Partnerships:
Whistleblower Protection Programs:
Technology and Transparency Tools:
Independent Oversight Bodies:
Cross-Party Collaboration:
Incentives for Compliance:
Continuous Evaluation and Adaptation:
Civil Society Participation:
By combining these strategies, you can create a comprehensive and adaptable approach to implementing the Transparent Governance and Corruption Prevention Act, overcoming resistance and fostering a culture of transparency and accountability in political and financial processes.
Why couldn’t we have a Justice caucus that was composed of any party affiliation united under finance / corruption reforms?
I think a precision strike at dark money would have far less opposition than public funded elections, but it is definitely less change. It is something that can move quickly, probably being able to force lawmakers to put their names on a yes or no vote before the 2024 election.
Not going to stop the legal bribery, but it can be a step forward.
Would be happening even if the bill doesn’t pass.
This could be a more feasible idea and would start a great movement to make a difference, but I live in a very red area and I’m sure it could never happen here while the dis/mis info is so prevalent. Seems this would take very different resources depending on location.
Another idea for this.
Trying to breath life back into AOC/Gaetz’s bill that would ban members of Congress from trading stock. Not sure how much pulse is left there but a good idea is a good idea. Plus we have a little name recognition on our side to work with cause the big thing here would be holding them and anyone who supported this feet to the fire.
A) Reintroduce H.R. 3003 (Cortez/Gaetz’s Stock Trading Ban Bill)
B) Federal
C) Members of Congress should not be allowed to take part to what is akin to insider trading while ordinary citizens are penalized or imprisoned for the same thing.
We just need whistle blowing say you get 10% if you expose a financial conflict of interest or fraud. I would extend this to tax collection. We need a anonymity in reporting these cases as well.
I think focusing the publicly funded election mission to the state level is our best bet for success. Doing it in a national campaign I think is just asking for roadblocks and opposition. You need to remember that the most corrupt members of Congress don’t just have donations on the line here they have cushy lobbyist jobs waiting for them at the end of their tenure as well. No donors means no golden parachute. If we leave it up to a pressure campaign on Congress I don’t believe anything will ever pass. This is by the design of the donors to roadblock any progress being made on ANY issue they don’t like.
However any success on the state level can then be used as additional pressure on that particular state’s representative. It is still up to them which way they vote unfortunately but if you’re voting against publicly funded elections after your state passed a law for it you’re just asking to get chucked out of office.
My only issue with this plan is that isn’t it basically Wolf-Pac? I don’t think it’s line for line the same mission but wouldn’t there be a good amount of overlap here if we ended up focusing on a state level plan? I don’t know if this results in us spreading resources across multiple fronts unnecessarily when maybe a consolidation of missions would be best? At the very least targeting states where Wolf-Pac has succeeded seems to be an excellent starting point for publicly funded elections. In my opinion.
It’s just that I believe this is a much larger task then say my spotlight bill or piggy backing on previous presented legislation like the AOC/Gaetz bill. I’m for it 100% and there is of course a “go big or go home” aspect to it all but the corruption wasn’t built overnight and won’t be dismantled that way either I believe. Why has there been no mention of Democracy Dollars since Andrew Yang? Because there is no appetite for it in Washington. Even though they all supposedly loathe the fund raising process.
We need to peel away at corruption enablers in order to also educate the larger public on how deep rooted it is as well. That is why I am in favor of incremental wins for this campaign. The goal being to eventually have the public begging for public funding of elections. After twenty laws have been passed to limit the corruption Congress members can engage in I think the next logical step has to be “why do we even let corporations and the ultra wealthy buy them off to begin with”?
Yes the people know corruption is rampant in Washington but what percentage of them know the extent? That you could have a member of Congress writing laws one cycle and then lobbying in the Capitol or on TV the next…telling us Joe Manchin is a moderate or whatever.
Those are just my thoughts on the strategy for this not trying to discourage anyone of course. Most important aspect of this fight is that we do it together. Creating a movement right now is more important than any single legislative win I think.
Last thought on the Spotlight Bill is it allows us to gather intel for other initiatives in the healthcare, climate change, corruption, etc. battles by knowing who is bought by who.
While also getting to use that wonderful police state logic against politicians for change. “Well if you have nothing to hide…”
And I’m sure there are a couple PACs out there that are called like the Nucleus for American Progress or something and it’s just three billionaires stacked up in a trench coat cartoon style.
Not a huge win by a mile but with the donors trying to hide themselves it’s where I think we need to start unraveling this whole cluster you know what.
I’m very curious what you see regarding the obstacles to publicly funded elections in your red state; why do you think it could never happen? Assuming the established reps would be in opposition, how significant of an obstacle is that? Would a popular base in your state care much about establishment opposition? Would red state reps be responsive to their base in general? How much right wing popular support could be organized for getting publicly funded elections?
I suppose I feel like the right wing has strong anti-corruption interest, would organize for it, and that their reps are fairly fearful of crossing their base.
I think wolf-pac is about bringing states together for a federal change with a particularly unique path. I don’t think we have nearly as much strategy, and probably would be taking a different route. Such organizations could be leveraged as part of our plans in some way. And, perhaps our route would include organizing particularly viable states to pass publicly funded elections within said states.
To your other points, I agree we could take a more incremental approach by exposing corruption information. But would people care for such information?; it may not feel impactful. Of course the information would be useful. Yet, how significant has the increasing exposure of our supreme court’s illegitimacy been for the public? Maybe such exposure is just setting the stage for political change.
What would this take? I think an example of a state with internal publicly funded elections could serve as a great role model for the public to understand what to demand.
I live in Missouri. The level of rampant misinformation and ignorance is staggering. As long as that persists I don’t see it happening because the vast majority of people in this state think that government is inherently corrupt, not that individual politicians are. There is baked in corruption, but not every politician takes part. Unfortunately without common people here seeing another state succeeding in having a public funded election they’d likely never support it. And sadly the threshold for that perceived success would be Fox News saying it was a good thing.
I like the idea, it could definitely garner popular support, but essentially making headhunters of the donors would likely shy away most politicians. If this idea get into the mainstream it could find hold, much like the recent pairing of AOC and Gaetz. I still think that a bill specifically forcing dark money to be disclosed would have more support, but not as great an impact.
I am worried PAC reforms are required at the same time. Otherwise you are playing a corruption wack-a-mole.
Definitely needs to happen, but that first step of forcing the contributors into the open will make serious ripple effects with the uneducated and uninformed. It’s a first crack in the dam of corruption from my perspective. I don’t claim to be very knowledgeable on campaign finance, it’s just how I see it.
My intuition tells me your are correct.
