Today I am continuing the discussion about inequality and our current corporate sovereignty system that has undermined democracy and individual rights. You will recall that Danny Leipziger called for a “New deal in place of the current Raw Deal”.
No New Deal can work until you restore “one man, one vote”. To achieve this you need to take the money out of politics and elections. How? Public funding of election expenses. Give every Senator $10m of public funds and every Representative say $2m and make it clear that taking private money will be treated as corruption, with jail as the outcome. (The equation of money with “free speech” is a truly weaselly way of justifying the current arrangement). Secondly, create an independent Federal Boundaries Commission that redraws the gerrymandered constituency boundaries and keeps the politicians out of the process. Third, facilitate unions and union participation on the board along the lines of the German model. Fourth, raise the minimum wage and make it inflation adjusted. Fifth, take a leaf out of Leipziger’s book and set up bureaus where poor people can seek redress for banking (mainly mortgage) malfeasance as the property bubble is looming again. And lastly, reform corporate governance to promote a more independent Board, to require an remuneration committee responsive to shareholders, and to prevent political contributions that are not the place of the corporation to give.
Who can do this? Only the Supreme Court can outlaw money in politics and corporate corruption, because the politicians themselves never will. The current Supreme Court has been politicized, so for the time being there is little hope of intelligent decisions. We’ll have to wait for a new generation. And then you need a good salesman in the White House, a good politician who can sell the “Modern New Deal” . Hope springs eternal!
Giving every candidate an equal amount of money will not necessarily solve the problem, though it is a good start. For instance, Democrats regularly outspend Republicans in many races when the Republicans emerge the victors. May I add to the list, the introduction of proportional representation, to break up the two party duopoly in favour of the multi party systems used in much of Europe, Israel, New Zealand and South America.
Your suggestion about proportional representation is a good one, although it does cause other problems. If you want strong government proportional representation is not the way to go. The current British coalition would be a normal thing under that system, and one can argue that the weaker party (liberal Democrats) have been edged out of the picture (they wouldn’t agree!), and this was not what most people wanted – they wanted Tory government that was moderate . So coalitions don’t necessarily work well, or at least I don’t think this on has.
Has the American and French system of one-party rule worked? Has the Finnish, Danish, Swedish, Norweigan, Dutch and German system of coalitions been a failure? I think the coalition has not been great, but I would pick it over a one-party Conservative or Republican majority any day.