For a Greater Leverage

I'm feeling a little buzzed, so i'll give you a topic...
Campaign finance- is it unconstitutional? or should we be approaching the problem from a different angle?

To give a crash course of why campaign finance is somewhat ruining America (among other countries) is that it gives unnecessary leverage to those with heaping piles of money. Politicians need to get elected so they campaign to get their name out--nothing wrong with that. They need money to campaign and so businesses that feel a particular politician will support their interests will donate money to said politician to try and help get him elected. When that particular politician gets elected, he is then (unofficially) obligated to 'pay back' the contributor(s) in 'favors'. These favors can be anything from subsidy support to endorsement of a particular policy.

Where this can go awry is when a politician takes the 'obligation' he has to pay back his contributors as a higher priority than that of the people that really matter- eg the ones that voted his ass into the position. This is why we have enormous tobacco subsidies rather than a useful healthcare system (among other things) and why most financial banks have a firm grip on most of Washington's balls.

This cant be fixed by taxing the rich more than any other person (i'm referring to percentages not monetary amounts). if there is one thing i definitely will support on the right-wing politics, its that one cannot 'take'. No matter how one looks at it, under the current economic system we enable wealth to be made. Sadly, even immorally. However, it is legal. That is the problem. The correction is not to take what is rightfully theirs (because it is, we allowed it to happen/it was a legitimate loophole in the system/etc), and to take what is rightfully a possession of someone else is stealing. Plain and simple. Taxation is not stealing merely for the fact that it is legalized. so what could be a solution?

Set limits on campaign finance so the politicians cant dig themselves in too deep, therein enabling our policy-makers to do what we elected them to do? Sadly, campaign finance falls under the territory of free speech. Anyone is allowed to spend any amount of money they wish in any way they wish (dont get technical on me people, you know what i mean), and support anyone they wish with said money. One cannot argue against one of the founding pillars of our constitution.

So, we must argue with another piece of our constitution! Though Campaign finance(CF) falls under free speech, there is another way around it. Essentially, CF is what enables those with more money more leverage in the political realm. In essence, a loophole in the free speech argument allows a kind of plutocracy. the problem is not necessarily the money, but the leverage itself.

We must then, create a way in which we dont not assail anothers' rights, yet regain the leverage we are guaranteed by our democracy. In the way, i believe that we should find a way to give the people more leverage over the elected candidates. To put it simply, every elected official (congress, senate, executive) should be subject to a much easier form of ejection/impeachment. It is, after all, a very foundational piece of our national constitution that if a regime no longer serves the interests of the people, it is in the peoples right to remove that regime and replace it with another that is more suitable (look it up, its there!).

Obviously, as the position of authority gets higher, it will be more difficult to impeach. But in terms of congress and senate officials, an annual 'review' should be instated, and if certain policies are not being worked at hard enough, or enabled when it is clear that they could have been (essentially, if the official is not serving the interests of the majority but that of the plutocracy/campaign finance chaps) then they should be easily removed from their position. Probably by another vote-popular movement.

As for who would replace the official, I'm sure if a popular movement were mobilized to remove an official, a person within that movement would be more than capable of filling the position. If not, there could be any number of mechanism for replacement--a runner up of the elections (if favored by majority of course) for example.

There are other options of course. But as for an option that respects the idea of privacy as well as democracy, the way to go seems to be to find a way to increase the political leverage of the people. Preferably, the increase must be at least equal to the influence of the ones financing the politicians. In this way, the politicians will no longer be fully swayed by the rewards of serving the lobbies (for example). They will also be swayed by the fact that if they do no do as their electors wish, they can be removed from their office at the tip of the hat.

It doesn't hurt every now and then to remind our leadership that they still need to fear their people....