political change

Anita Graf (agraf@agecon.uga.edu)
Thu, 28 Oct 1999 09:59:46 EST5EDT

Misha shared the following:
>*Donate gobs of cash to politicians who can vouch for your interests. Take
>the gambling-industry-funded attack ads on politicians who criticize what
>gambling spokespeople like to term "family entertainment," which
>successfully stifled the grassroots movement into limiting gambling
>expansion. Examples include video-gaming interests in South Carolina,
>which contributed $400, 000 to defeat David Beasley, the Republican
>governor and critic of gambling, and which donated $500,000 to the
>Republican National Committee to run attack ads against Democratic
>Governor and gambling critic Parris Glendening.

Imagine, if you will, a country where the politicians are not allowed
to take PAC money, where campaign "war chests" are limited to a
reasonable level (attainable by resourceful people who are not
Trumps, Forbs or Bushes) , where campaign tv and newspaper add spaces
are allocated before hand and not to be sold to the highest bidder.
Imagine, if money were not the barrier to running for or staying in
office. Now, once that candidate is in power, he or she can AFFORD
to listen to his/her *consituents* and can afford to make decisions
which are in the public good but which might run counter to the
profit-interests of company X. Hmmm. Might we get better anti-trust
enforcement? Might we get better city planning? Might we get better
product liablility? Might we get better enforcement of environmental
laws? Might we get few subsidies for those who are already skimming
the cream from the top? Might we get some solutions which also work
for the LONG RUN PUBLIC INTEREST? In short, might we get the
government to actually and consistantly do it's job as the manager of
the public realm, allocation of public goods, reduction of public
bads, etc?

I certainly think so. Maybe this idea of mine is a little Utopian,
maybe it won't be so easy to get those big greedy hands out of all
the pies they've been in for so long. Maybe they'll always be some
corruption and money will always "talk." But couldn't we at least
make an effort to get money to just simply "talk" and not scream and
totally dominate the conversation as it does now?

Anita
Anita Graf
Research Coordinator
Market Development of Organic Agricultural Products
313-F Conner Hall
Dept. of Agricultural and Applied Economics
University of Georgia
Athens, GA 30602-7509
(706) 542-1915 phone
(706) 542-0739 fax
agraf@agecon.uga.edu

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