I couldn't agree more completely...One of the keys to
sustainability is, oddly enough, campaign finance reform.
As long as corporations are allowed to skew the financing of
political races, the focus of politicians will be more or
less dictated by corporations and their interests--which can
be characterized as being short term profits (sometimes) at
the expense of society. I don't mean to imply that
corporations are actively against social good (although this
often seems the case...), it's simply not something that's
very high in the corporate conscience priority list and
often conflicts with corporations' pursuit of profits.
There are certainly exceptions to this rule, but our country
is not being overwhelmed by enlightened capitalists...
An interesting lesson in this and what can happen to a
country that allows it politicians to be sold to the highest
bidder is J. Michner's historical novel "Poland". Poland's
several attempts to institute representative democracy were
consistantly subverted by representatives taking money from
outside interests to thwart the national good.
As other posts have pointed out, international trade and the
WTO are threatening to overwhelm domestic environmental
legislation. WTO's politicians/economists/negotiators are
willing to sacrifice environmental (external) costs for the
sake of international trade. Large corporations are mostly
transnational entities which now transcend national
boundaries and interests and they're financing politicians,
through PACs and other means, that support their (the
corporations') views.
My view is that campaign finance reform is the single most
important issue of the 2000 election. Rex Dufour
>
From: "Anita Graf (Staff)" <agraf@agecon.uga.edu> >
To: sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu > Date: Thu,
28 Oct 1999 09:59:46 EST5EDT > Subject: political
change
> 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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