To what extent has democracy in the US been subverted by money?

[Hansmeister]

My proposed campaign finance rules are very simple: politicians can only take donations from registered voters in the district they represent, but with no limits to the amount that can be received. All donations have to be disclosed online within 24 hours of receipt. Politicians cannot raise money while holding public office, nor can they run for election while holding public office.  No other limitations are necessary.

Sounds good to me.

It would work, but at the pretty steep cost of eliminating all experienced elected officials.

No, they just can run for consecutive terms.  And the "experienced" lawmakers we have right now certainly certainly haven't really lived up to it so far.

[Berkut]

It's not really a good thing.  Administration and lawmaking are skills, they need to be learned.  It's harder then you think.  If you prevent people who in office from running from office, all you'll have is inexperienced people.  It would be like the major shift elections every two years where whole of government is made up of what you call "move on.org types" and Tea party fanatics.  The government shutdowns were a direct result of inexperienced lawmakers not knowing how the system worked.  The same thing occurred in the 1990's in the aftermath of the "Republican revolution".

Well, what we need is to find some happy medium between what we have now, where most seats are completely locked in, and a constant flux. You are right, legislative skill is important.

But right now we have the vast majority of seats locked down (this is largely due to another of my pet peeves where lawmakers have basically subverted the democratic process - gerrymandering), and so a disproportionate amount of resources that are not local to the election in question are spent on those that are NOT locked down, and even in those areas where the seats are locked down to a party, it forces the parties to cater to the more radical members, since there is no real general election fight, so the primaries just go to the most hard right candidates. Hello Tea Party.

[CountDeMoney]

Maybe we could set up a counsel of former officials to act as a consultative body?

We already call them "lobbyists".  What would be your new name for them?

[DGuller]

You say that like it is a bad thing.

It is a bad thing.  Making laws is not unskilled labor.  Just because gerrymandering is producing overly strong incumbents doesn't mean we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

[crazy canuck]

You say that like it is a bad thing.

It is a bad thing.  Making laws is not unskilled labor.  Just because gerrymandering is producing overly strong incumbents doesn't mean we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Making laws has two components. Politicans are supposed to have the necessary judgment to decide what should legislation should be enacted and to obtain the necessary political support for such legislation.  Experience in "making laws" is not necessary for that skill set although it may be an asset.   The drafting part is left to others who do need experience in the craft of drafting laws.

[Berkut]

You say that like it is a bad thing.

It is a bad thing.  Making laws is not unskilled labor.  Just because gerrymandering is producing overly strong incumbents doesn't mean we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Making laws has two components. Politicans are supposed to have the necessary judgment to decide what should legislation should be enacted and to obtain the necessary political support for such legislation.  Experience in "making laws" is not necessary for that skill set although it may be an asset.   The drafting part is left to others who do need experience in the craft of drafting laws.

Well, DG is right in that there is more to "making laws" than simply the technical ability to draft them - there is also the political skill needed to muster the support for them. Including all the vote trading, and other crap necessary.

And that is most certainly a skill.

DG, I am not advocating throwing any babies out - just wish for some more balance.

[crazy canuck]

You say that like it is a bad thing.

It is a bad thing.  Making laws is not unskilled labor.  Just because gerrymandering is producing overly strong incumbents doesn't mean we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Making laws has two components. Politicans are supposed to have the necessary judgment to decide what should legislation should be enacted and to obtain the necessary political support for such legislation.  Experience in "making laws" is not necessary for that skill set although it may be an asset.   The drafting part is left to others who do need experience in the craft of drafting laws.

Well, DG is right in that there is more to "making laws" than simply the technical ability to draft them - there is also the political skill needed to muster the support for them. Including all the vote trading, and other crap necessary.

And that is most certainly a skill.

DG, I am not advocating throwing any babies out - just wish for some more balance.

Re-read the first of the two components I described for law making 

[Berkut]

You say that like it is a bad thing.

It is a bad thing.  Making laws is not unskilled labor.  Just because gerrymandering is producing overly strong incumbents doesn't mean we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Making laws has two components. Politicans are supposed to have the necessary judgment to decide what should legislation should be enacted and to obtain the necessary political support for such legislation.  Experience in "making laws" is not necessary for that skill set although it may be an asset.   The drafting part is left to others who do need experience in the craft of drafting laws.

Well, DG is right in that there is more to "making laws" than simply the technical ability to draft them - there is also the political skill needed to muster the support for them. Including all the vote trading, and other crap necessary.

And that is most certainly a skill.

DG, I am not advocating throwing any babies out - just wish for some more balance.

Re-read the first of the two components I described for law making 

Fair enough, although I would argue that is three skills.

The judgment to know what laws should be proposed is a radically different skill from the political acumen to get them passed.

[crazy canuck]

You say that like it is a bad thing.

It is a bad thing.  Making laws is not unskilled labor.  Just because gerrymandering is producing overly strong incumbents doesn't mean we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Making laws has two components. Politicans are supposed to have the necessary judgment to decide what should legislation should be enacted and to obtain the necessary political support for such legislation.  Experience in "making laws" is not necessary for that skill set although it may be an asset.   The drafting part is left to others who do need experience in the craft of drafting laws.

Well, DG is right in that there is more to "making laws" than simply the technical ability to draft them - there is also the political skill needed to muster the support for them. Including all the vote trading, and other crap necessary.

And that is most certainly a skill.

DG, I am not advocating throwing any babies out - just wish for some more balance.

Re-read the first of the two components I described for law making 

Fair enough, although I would argue that is three skills.

The judgment to know what laws should be proposed is a radically different skill from the political acumen to get them passed.

I dont think they are that different. Knowing what laws should proposed carries with it a judgment of knowing what is politically possible.   

[Razgovory]

It's not really a good thing.  Administration and lawmaking are skills, they need to be learned.  It's harder then you think.  If you prevent people who in office from running from office, all you'll have is inexperienced people.  It would be like the major shift elections every two years where whole of government is made up of what you call "move on.org types" and Tea party fanatics.  The government shutdowns were a direct result of inexperienced lawmakers not knowing how the system worked.  The same thing occurred in the 1990's in the aftermath of the "Republican revolution".

Well, what we need is to find some happy medium between what we have now, where most seats are completely locked in, and a constant flux. You are right, legislative skill is important.

But right now we have the vast majority of seats locked down (this is largely due to another of my pet peeves where lawmakers have basically subverted the democratic process - gerrymandering), and so a disproportionate amount of resources that are not local to the election in question are spent on those that are NOT locked down, and even in those areas where the seats are locked down to a party, it forces the parties to cater to the more radical members, since there is no real general election fight, so the primaries just go to the most hard right candidates. Hello Tea Party.

I don't see how it fights gerrrymandering.  The seats will still go to the same parties, it will just be different people in that party each time.  This is attractive if you want to purge out moderate members of your caucus like Hans does, but otherwise I don't see the benefit.

[LaCroix]

a lot of these rants aren't backed by real evidence. private money is far less powerful today to government than it was even a hundred years ago. the panama canal company bribed five hundred ministers of the french government in the 1880s. let's not even touch what the vastly wealthy could do in the roman empire. the wealthy will always be influential, but it's not as if the government is subverted by their whims and desires. there might be individuals within government, but not government as a whole. there are simply too many components that would have to be consumed by it.

look at the koch brothers. wealth created the tea party, but there was clearly a thirst for the tea party's ideologies in the U.S. and thankfully due to our two party system, the fringe groups are kept on the fringe. the tea party influences the republican party, and a sizable percentage of republicans sign onto it, but the republican party isn't fully controlled by it. however, not all fringes are bad, as you hint at in your opening post, berkut.

there are differences between the democrat and republican parties, but they're not vastly different because the majority of the U.S. population generally agree with each other. there are plenty of littler and finer disagreements, of course - i don't mean those. say 10% of the wealthy, 10-15% of the average person, and 50% of the bottom 10% all pushed hard enough for income equality, that's still only a small amount of people. conditions probably have to get worse so more people are willing to change their stance before actual change takes place

[Sheilbh]

Disagree.
Dean was a flash in the pan and his next act was to figure out how to shovel as much corporate money into the Democratic trough as possible. 
Obama is far more problem than solution.  He is Exhibit 1 of the permanent fund-raising presidency.  I realize you hedged with the "(08)" designation - but that just underscores the stark difference between promise and reality.
Rand Paul?? He is one of the loudest shills for loosening any restrictions on campaign fianance.  And his very existence as a political force is essentially parasitical on decades of propaganda spewed forth by corporate funded liberatarian "think tanks".
The tea partiers are an unorganized force that basically stand for nothing coherent beyond anger and ignorance.  Their role over the past 5 years has been to be alternatively used as dupes or foils.

There is no counter-trend.  You are kidding yourself.

Sorry to head back to this but I was being brief. The point I was trying to make is that I think these are all counter-points to the corporate finance/big money funding campaigns.

Dean was the first candidate who used the internet successfully and unfortunately his campaign - which I remember talking with TC about and we were both big fans of this centrist Governor from New England - got consumed by his supporters and turned him into a rather different candidate.
I think Obama (08) and the Paul family have since learned how to use the internet to build campaigns but also to raise funds while more strictly remaining in control of the message whether it's mainstream or crazy, respectively.
With the Tea Party, yes, some of their think tanks have corporate backers. But the the truth is a lot of 'their' campaigns don't and a large motivation is the perceived corruption and lobbying deals done by the 'establishment'. Just spend some time reading any Tea Party site about, for example, Cantor's primary. They acknowledge he was a solid conservative, the problem is he was a K Street solid conservative - and, contrary to the impression you generally get, that mattered far more than immigration.

I don't think any of these point to a legislative counter-trend, but I don't think they need to. It seems that Citizens United is an oddly apt group for this ruling: they can show their film about Hillary Clinton.

Trouble is, Hillary lost. She seems to be running exactly the same coronation-campaign as last time so I think she could end up losing again if any challenger can build up a bit of momentum. Similarly I can't think of a great deal of campaigns that have been won by your Adelsons or your Kochs. I am not convinced that a single recent USSC decision actually matters for politics in this media environment.

I don't see how any of current US politics which seems volatile and changeable is somehow more corrupt than Rove v Shrum or whoever else on the Democrats bench. I'd argue that volatility is because the old corruption - which surrounded big ad spends - is dying. What Cantor spent on steak dinners, his opponent spent on the entire campaign and their sources of that money were wildly different.

I think there's more concern with lobbying and the shameless ease with which Jon Favreau (main speechwriter during Obama's first term)  moved from a White House role to opening his own lobbying firm. But I don't think that's been caused by any new rulings, or old laws, or anything else. I think it's been a permanent feature of Washington for decades, which probably does need tackling.

[Hansmeister]

Sheilbh, that was a very good post and spot on.

[Eddie Teach]

Jon Favreau (main speechwriter during Obama's first term)

Obama's speeches were so money and I didn't even know it. 

[Neil]

Yeah, the revolving door between government and lobbying issue is a tricky one.  The ability to get things done and know who's who in Washington is definitely a skill of extreme value to employers, especially as the federal government must take on a larger role in the years to come.  On the other hand, it would be very difficult for political appointees to make their way in the world with too many restrictions.  After all, these guys only have their job for a couple of years.  But during that time, they have to worry about being destroyed by Republican short-sightedness, and you're not going to spend a lifetime working at that level in government.