Get money out of politics
Our democracy is increasingly controlled by special interests comprised of large corporations and the extremely wealthy. We must amend the Constitution to guarantee free and fair elections.
In Lawrence Lessig’s 2013 poll, 96 percent of Americans said it was “important” to “reduce the influence of money in politics”. Despite the strong demand, candidates rarely campaign on this issue and almost never act after election.
A SuperPAC to fight SuperPACs
I applaud Lessig’s efforts described in the video below in 2014.
Seven years ago, Internet activist Aaron Swartz convinced Lawrence Lessig to take up the fight for political reform. A year after Swartz’s tragic death, Lessig continues his campaign to free US politics from the stranglehold of corruption. In this fiery, deeply personal talk, he calls for all citizens to engage, and a offers a heartfelt reminder to never give up hope.
He wrote in 2015 about the attempt to launch a “SuperPAC to end all SuperPACs” and launched a presidential campaign that promised to reform from the ground up with a crowdsourced Citizen Equality Act of 2017 to “fundamentally change the way our government works”.
Video explaining the end of the Lessig2016 campaign.
Movement for an amendment
Another political action committee aiming for a constitutional amendment that would end corporate personhood and enact publicly funded elections. It has already gotten five states of the required 34 to submit applications for an Article V. Convention as of June 2016.
Wolf PAC’s plan explains:
Wolf PAC believes that we can no longer count on our Federal Government to do what is in the best interest of the American people due to the unfettered amount of money they receive from outside organizations to fund their campaigns. We point to the failure of the Disclose Act as rock solid evidence that this would be a total waste of our time, effort, and money. We also point to the recent decision by the US Supreme Court to not even hear a case filed by Montana claiming it did not have to abide by Citizens United, as proof that state legislation is not a sufficient measure to solve this problem. We believe that we have no choice but to put an amendment in the hands of our State Legislators, who are not, at this moment in time, completely blinded by the influence of money, and might actually do what 96% of the country wants - take away the massive influence that money has over our political process.
Related coverage
On November 17th, Cenk Uygur spoke at the UCLA School of Law at a conference called, “Legal Issues,Remedies & Strategies To Get the Money Out of Politics.”
McCutcheon v. FEC
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