A Proposal for a Working Document

I've been working on what I think should be the working document for The 99% Declaration. It weeds out a lot of what I see as being adjunct issues that can be fixed later. I think that it really cuts to the heart of the issue, and if taken seriously could be a very simple reform.

WHEREAS the pursuit of national service through elected office is ever more prohibitive to the average citizen;
and WHEREAS the presence of money in politics causes undue influence -- real or imagined -- over those elected to represent and serve the people;
and WHEREAS every citizen has a right to free political speech, and the ability of the wealthy to dominate the national conversation through unlimited expenditures infringes on the right of ordinary Americans to make their voices heard, and indeed can alter the speech of the citizenry through the propagation of misinformation;
and WHEREAS corporations as legal entities do enjoy certain rights, those rights are separate from the people who comprise the corporation, and do not include free political speech;
and WHEREAS Congress has become dysfunctional through polarization, lack of civil discourse, and representation of moneyed special interests, thereby neglecting its duty to represent the American people;
and WHEREAS America no longer has a clear direction or goal, resulting in an insular society where the rich seek to get richer and the poor struggle to survive;
This delegation of citizens, formed from the communities of these United States and its territories, convened as their fore-fathers did before, in this city of Philadelphia, do hereby declare:
PROPOSED 1. That the ability of a citizen to seek national office must not be prohibited by the size of his coffers;
PROPOSED 2. That elections must not be bought and sold by the highest bidder;
PROPOSED 3. That those elected must be kept in office due solely to their merit to the people -- not due to the deep pockets of their few supporters;
PROPOSED 4. That all citizens must be able to exercise their right to free political speech without fear of being drowned out by the loudest voices;
PROPOSED 5. That the right to free political speech belongs solely to the people, and not to any other entities;
PROPOSED 6. That corporations must not be allowed to exercise a right that they inherently do not possess;
PROPOSED 7. That there must be a return to civility in our national discourse;
PROPOSED 8. That a clear goal for our country must be developed;
PROPOSED 9. That Congress be bound to furthering our progress toward that goal.
We, the undersigned, on this, the fourth day of July, two thousand and twelve, do hereby petition the three branches of the government of the United States of America to address the grievances above.

Each of the numbered points labelled PROPOSED would be up for discussion by the delegates, and if they were voted to stay, they would change to RESOLVED. I have modeled this loosely on the document created by the First Continental Congress in 1774, the full text of which is here:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Declaration_and_Resolves_of_the_First_Continental_Congress

I welcome suggestions on further points to add, either in the top section or the bottom. I think that by looking at this thing as a full document, and leaving off all of these arguments about the specifics of changing these things (which we shouldn't be dealing with), we will get a better idea of what we are all working toward.

2. Overturn the "Citizens United" Case

From http://www.the99declaration.org/overturn_citizens_united

The immediate abrogation, even if it requires a Constitutional Amendment, of the outrageous and anti-democratic Supreme Court holding in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and its progeny.  This heinous decision proclaimed in 2010, equates the direct and indirect payment of money to politicians by political action committees, corporations, wealthy individuals and unions with the exercise of protected free speech. We, the 99% of the American People are outraged and demand that this judicially sanctioned bribery of politicians be reversed and never be deemed protected free speech again.

Right off the bat, I can see something that is a misinterpretation of the ruling. "...equates the direct and indirect payment of money to politicians by political action committees, corporations, wealthy individuals and unions with the exercise of protected free speech." As far as I can tell, after having read parts of the ruling and interpretations thereof, the case only has to do with independent speech. The candidates themselves are still bound by campaign finance rules.
And therein lies the problem. This is a giant gray area, and I have to say that reading the court's opinion, their logic is fairly sound. They reason that because the first amendment protects an individual's political speech, and corporations (specifically Political Action Committees) are just groups of people, the speech of that group of people can not be inhibited. They also reason that it is not the court's nor the legislature's job to "ration" speech -- in essence, they can't decide what amount of speech is fair for someone to have, since everyone is guaranteed unlimited political speech.
This idea that not all speech is equal, and that's OK, is logically based in history. If you think back to when the country was founded, the main distributors of ideas were the newspapers. Freedom of the press is also guaranteed in the First Amendment, so newspapers were obviously considered when it was written. If a newspaper editor wanted to publish nothing but liberal opinions, for instance, that would be their right, though it's not necessarily ethical. So the average person's speech at the time was limited to what they could get published in which newspapers. There are no laws -- as far as I know -- that seek to give equal time to anyone who wishes to publish in a newspaper.
Now, however, we have much more varied forms of media, and forms of media that reach much wider audiences. It does scream of injustice that any one individual or small group of individuals can get their message out to the masses at the exclusion of others. In essence, by not limiting the speech of few, you are silencing the many. But you can't limit the speech of the few, because they have just as much right to unlimited speech as the many do. It's a giant legal quagmire.
So how do we fix it? The only way that I can see to do it is to eliminate Political Action Committees altogether. Prohibit corporations, as entities, from campaigning for any particular candidates or parties. The individuals within the corporations, of course, still have unlimited political speech, and if they wanted to raise money or group money together informally to campaign for a candidate or party, they would be welcome to do so, but all the money would be treated as personal income, and subject to taxation. Obviously, throw in the caveat that independent expenditures (ie: if I were to pay for a television ad supporting Mitt Romney, but I'm not part of his campaign) would have to bear the names of the individuals responsible for the content, and you've got something that could be workable.

As a bit of an aside, I'd like to address something that I find incredibly positive that has come out of the Citizens United decision. I'm all for ballot access. I think that the more candidates on a ballot, the better. With that in mind, the current Republican primary, with the help of SuperPACs, is going great. Because the candidates themselves don't have to spend as much money to campaign, they are able to stay in the race far longer than they otherwise would have. That means that instead of having a nominee pretty much decided in the first few contests, the entire nation has an opportunity to make their voice heard.
I can't find anything wrong with that.

1. Elimination of the Corporate State

The second point in the list, overturning the "Citizens United" decision, is one factor of this topic, but we'll deal with it in its own post. For now, let's ignore that part, and focus on lobbyists and campaign finance.

From http://www.the99declaration.org/eliminate_corporate_state

"The merger of the American political system of republican democracy with the economic system of capitalism has resulted in the establishment of a corporate government of, by and for the benefit of domestic and multinational corporations. Therefore, the 99% of the American People demand an immediate ban on all direct and indirect private contributions of anything of value, to all politicians serving in or running for federal office in the United States.

This ban shall extend to all individuals, corporations, “political action committees,” “super political action committees,” lobbyists, unions and all other sources of private money or things of value, including but not limited to, direct or indirect gifts and/or promises of employment. Private funding of political campaigns by concentrated sources of wealth such as corporations have completely corrupted our political system. Therefore, all private funding of political campaigns shall be replaced by the fair, equal and TOTAL public financing of all federal political campaigns."

The first thing that I have to do here is address this snippet: "...the 99% of the American People demand..." I know that this is called The 99% Declaration, and that the Occupy Movement seeks to represent the 99% of Americans making less than $380,000 a year (or worth less than $8.4 million, depending on whether you're talking about the top 1% earners or the wealthiest 1%, which are different, albeit overlapping, groups).
The problem with this particular line is that it implies total consensus. It says that everyone who isn't in the top group agrees with this message. That is not -- and will never be -- the case. The best that we can do is reflect the opinion of the majority of the people in the 99%, and hope that we can make things better for the vast majority. Anything other than that is disingenuous.

That out of the way, let's look at the topic itself. The first thing that is addressed is lobbying. It says that no one who holds office or is seeking office in the federal government may accept anything of value from anyone, at any time. The obvious problem here is that they need to fund their (re)election campaigns. This is addressed next, by saying that all campaigns will be publicly funded only. It's implied that a candidate may not spend any money except that which is provided for him by public financing.

I would agree with the section on lobbying. There is no legitimate reason, as far as I can see, that a person would have to give anything to a politician in order for their voice to be heard. Even if someone wants to meet a politician for a working lunch, there is no reason that the office-holder can't pay for their own meal. If they can't afford it, they shouldn't meet for lunch. Perhaps someone can point out to me a legitimate reason that a politician would receive anything from a constituent (other than campaign contributions).

When it comes to campaign finance, we start to get into a weird gray area. Ideally, it should take absolutely no money to run a campaign. That would be the ultimate freedom of political speech. The problem is that everything in our society has value, including time. The amount of time that someone volunteers to your campaign can be considered a monetary contribution. If they spend that time producing a product (bumper stickers, websites, television commercials, YouTube videos, top hats with your face plastered on), that could be considered a monetary contribution.
Because everything has value, we can't have a completely free election. No candidate can run a campaign without supporters, and he is ultimately indebted to those supporters. So, if we look at 100% publicly financed campaigns, we have to either pay everyone who works on a campaign, or we need to ignore donated time and goods as contributions.
If we pay everyone involved in a campaign, we either end up with really small campaign teams, or we have a lot of taxpayer money being spent on unsuccessful campaigns. If we ignore donations of time and goods, we could still end up with candidates being indebted to corporations (think Rupert Murdoch donating a hundred hours of airtime to a candidate).
Currently, public funding is only available to Presidential candidates. They may be eligible for contribution matching during the primaries, and a $20 million grant for the general election. If we extend this to all federal offices, how much are we willing to carve out of the budget?
Personally, I think that campaign finance does need an overhaul. I'm not sure that public funding is the answer, but I think that it could be part of the answer. Let's throw out an idea to be beaten and forged into something workable.

Let's say that we outlaw all monetary contributions to federal campaigns. We provide some amount of public financing, and prohibit the use of a candidate's own money after a certain point (current rules allow $50,000 out-of-pocket when accepting public funding. This may or may not be fair). We allow donations of time and goods, but prohibit television advertisements (or require equal time given to all candidates' advertisements). If a news show reports on a candidate, that's fine; if they interview a candidate, they must give equal time to all candidates for that office. We create a public venue online for all candidates to use. This could include public forums, video streams, press releases, or anything else that you can imagine. This tool allows a candidate to get their message out to the vast majority of people, at little-to-no cost. Obviously, there are still production costs for videos, images, and the like, but it would be a step toward leveling the playing field for all candidates.

And that's really the goal.