Let's have WE THE PEOPLE not be corrupted by legal bribery:
"No person, corporation or business entity of any type, domestic or foreign, shall be allowed to contribute money, directly or indirectly, to any candidate for Federal office or to contribute money on behalf of or opposed to any type of campaign for Federal office. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, campaign contributions to candidates for Federal office shall not constitute speech of any kind as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution or any amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Congress shall set forth a federal holiday for the purposes of voting for candidates for Federal office."
50,742 signatures
To add your signature, go here:
http://www.getmoneyout.com/
Thanks for posting that. This seeks to address one of the top problems that this country is facing right now.
However, why would the politicians ever agree to cut their own jugular, no matter what the commoners want?
Quote from: Midway on September 29, 2011, 09:56:34 PM
Thanks for posting that. This seeks to address one of the top problems that this country is facing right now.
However, why would the politicians ever agree to cut their own jugular, no matter what the commoners want?
Of course they wouldn't ever agree to that, even though a REAL democratic society is the cornerstone of American pride.
I guess the commoners need to make a ruckus nonetheless until we get more courageous folks like Bernie Sanders, Kuscinich and Ron Paul among others.
The # of signatures has grown more than 50% in just 2 days!!
NOW: 76,425 signatures!!
Those who are suffering in our type of Democracy are not a fringe group:
We are the 99percent.
Hear OUR stories (far from what you'd expect in a so-called "civilized" nation):
http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/
The most common financial problem?
Healthcare expenses!
No person goes bankrupt or loses their home to foreclosure in any other "civilized" nation due to medical expenses.
We need to fix this over-arching problem and join the other civilized nations in taking care of our own.
Three years ago, I left my 15-year career as a financial professional, because I was disgusted and disturbed by the rampant evidence of corruption in the relationship between our banking system and our government.
At the time the Tea Party was emerging and I was confident that between their exploding wave of anger and our newly minted president's soaring aspirations for all of us -- we would align to confront and resolve the blatantly corrupt relation ship between banking and our government and more broadly BUSINESS and STATE.
I was sure that the obviously aligned interests of Obama's constituents combined with the Tea Party's libertarian dogmas about money and government, that rigorous bank reforms in simple, fair and transparent way would follow. And more importantly, I believed Obama's energy and the Tea Parties would align to separate BUSINESS and STATE in order bar banks, or any other special interest from corrupting policy in a way that breaches fundamental fairness in our nation and prevents adaptation in a time of rapid change.
Their combined wave of energy was magnificent. Obama, scintillating and inspiring, harnessing a digital wave and the Tea Party, raw and rebellious screaming in unison: "We're not going to take this any more!"
Little to none of this happened and I was wrong. And I feel I must do something about it.
As it turns out, I'm not alone. In just five days, 80,000 of us have signed a petition to get money out of politics. To make this happen, we will need to grow this movement, and that starts with your voice.
When we hit 100,000 signers, we're going to do a special show on getting money out of politics from Washington DC, deliver our 100k signatures to Congress and issue what we call a "High Surf Alert." Attached to the high surf alert will be a link to a 3-paragraph letter from all of us explaining that we have signed this petition with the intent to send it to others.
This way we can harness the wave to grow our effort, lest we waste it on a bought and paralyzed government. When we are bigger we can then direct our attention at them.
I want explain to my viewers why we feel so strongly about this.
You can tell me your story in one of two ways. One, click here and leave a comment on why you want to get money out or two, film yourself talking about GetMoneyOut.com, put it on YouTube and send it to dylan@dylanratigan.com. I will use these video clips and stories on my show. I want people to see that it's not just me, that there are hundreds of thousands of us, millions of us, with one message: Get. Money.Out.
After 3 years of doing my best to marshal resources with dozens of impassioned collaborators to highlight obvious corruptions and solve problems together on TV, in person and on the Internet -- I found it doesn't matter what I or anyone else thinks or does about a given policy idea -- because the entire media, and the two-party political apparatus that sets the debate is being funded by a relatively narrow group of major interests and any solution that threatens those funders is simply never discussed.
While our healthcare, educational, banking, military, energy, trade and tax policies all have great room for improvement, I believe that the events of the past few years make it clear that until we get money out of our political system, we cannot begin on any of it.
I recently learned that 94% of the time the candidate that raises the most money wins. Policy, race, gender, tie color... voice. Age all can be ignored in a candidate because -- 94% of the time the candidate that raises the most money wins.
So this past weekend when I saw the Occupy Wall Street/Occupy America protests spontaneously erupting in 60 cities, as the New York protestors heading into their 3rd week -- I decided to walk over Friday evening to Zuccoti Park to see what they were doing.
I live 5 blocks away and worked 2 blocks from the square they are in for years, this Friday was one of my first trips back to that street corner in years and I was both fearful and excited to see what was going on. I have also never been to a protest like this.
On the Internet it said their message is this:
"Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%."
They said they we non-violent, had a policy of no drugs or alcohol in the Park, and didn't allow bullhorns or amplifiers of any kind -- they communicate by repeating out loud a given speakers words in short sentences. The short sentence requirement for speakers (not easy for me!!) has the duel benefit of keeping speeches short -- and avoids that being "talked at" feeling that can result from electrical speech amplification.
When I arrived Friday there was a boisterous crowd in good spirits from all walks of life -- the hippies, young people and Tea Partiers I expected -- the old ladies and local lawyers I was encouraged to see as evidence for this groups broader appeal.
I was able to talk to different groups over a few hours and it was clear that we were in agreement. Our government is bought, and we need to do something about it. In fact, you don't have to go to Zuccoti Park or any other protest to know that!
Unrelated to any of these protests, we have started this petition to get money out. We have done so because we all agree, that until we do so, we will be prevented from engaging in the debate we all desperately need on virtually every issue to end this corruption.
I wanted them to know that I agree with them and that I support their principle, to learn from them and share with them my own efforts.
I asked on Friday if I could return the next day, Saturday, to address their General Assembly in their unusual speak and repeat fashion in Zuccoti Park. They told me if I came back the next day and signed up at 630 I could secure 5 minutes, I did so and a few hours later was granted time to speak.
Here is what I told them:
Dylan at Occupy Wall St by Dylan Ratigan
"My name is Dylan. I live five blocks from here. I think you people are crazy. I love the way you communicate. The world has noticed your voice. You have been here for three weeks, and you should be very proud of what you have accomplished. For fifteen years I worked as a financial services professional. Have you guys said that yet? I can't believe I'm here talking to you. I'm here because I agree with you. I made the decision three years ago to leave the financial services industry. I did that because it was clear that the financial services industry was purchasing both political parties. I believe that the fundamental problem with our collective desire to demand the debate America deserves is that both of our political parties are funded by well-heeled individuals, because they are bought. So I have been asking myself what the hell I'm going to do about this. I have decided that I am going to devote all of my resources, whatever those resources may be, with the knowledge that the decision to devote resources is much more important than what your resources are. I believe that you and every other group of people who know for a fact that the government is bought and are making the decisions to make 2012 the year our voice will be heard. I ask myself -- what do I do with my voice? I look at myself like an angry villager. I am irate. I know that if I cannot harness my personal rage for positive change I will harm myself and not help anybody else. My question to myself has been how do I harness fire in myself? You can either burn yourself in the town square or you can deliver a single a message to your government. My message is that the government is bought. If we do not separate business and state, and harness this energy to make that the central mission of this years' election we cannot begin to do the work we have to do. Thank you for giving me some of your time and congratulations on your success. "
I agree with their principle, I don't know what will become of their movement, but I know I want to help them because I agree with them. I also agree with Ron Paul, Lawrence Lessig's #rootstrikers and millions of other disgusted and disenfranchised Americans who know that their government is bought and are mad as hell about it.
In fact I think the singular message of ending our corrupt government function and the money that changes hands to facilitate it is the one goal almost everyone shares. Not surprisingly our efforts at aligning in a world of divisive issues makes us an underdog. Last week Politico described our effort like this:
"MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan is bent on banning money from political campaigns through a constitutional amendment, which is about as likely as the Cubs winning the World Series the night lightning twice strikes a massive earthbound asteroid."
But I believe if we approach the disparate communities with humility and shared principle, and a narrow focus, from Occupy Wall Street to factions of the Tea Party and beyond -- to offer support, debate and learning, we have in 2012 our best chance yet to end the blatantly corrupt relationship between BUSINESS and STATE.
The battle for me it has how best harness all the fire that I feel for actionable positive change.
Since I devoted myself to this issue of about how blatantly corrupt our government has become -- I feel I have tried three methods to resolve it:
1. Scream! -- It felt good to express myself, but I found it to be an intense energy that alienated people with no positive harness to direct it.
2. Fight! -- This also felt good, but rarely led to any resolution or positive action.
Or 3. -- Help! Convert that rage into action everyday FOR something that is based on broad principle with a narrow goal.
I believe our decision to form this petition and use our voice to demand a real debate about an Amendment to get Money Out of politics in 2012 gives all of us something to be FOR -- and a tool that can do it. We may agree to nothing, but can we all agree to do this.
Follow Dylan Ratigan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DylanRatigan
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-ratigan/get-money-out-making-wave_b_992126.html
Boomshakalaka!!
In the past 7 days, one hundred thousand of us have decided to GET MONEY OUT of politics once and for all!
The force is breathtaking. We know the problem -- we are now building the tools to fix it.
Only if we harness this massive, aligned wave -- across all political spectrums -- do we stand a chance at forcing the debate and passage of a Constitutional amendment to ban all private money.
Which means the decision to tell another person we are doing this -- is our greatest power today.
If we simply tell one other person -- we seize the unprecedented benefit of asymmetrical growth. If we ALL do this -- the numbers go like this: 100k…200k….400k….800k…1.6m…3.2m…6.4m…12.8m….25.6m…51.2m…102.4m!
I consider you -- the first 100,000 -- to be founders. We know our country stands at great risk, but we also have massive untapped potential. Let’s seize it.
Apparently the group' Anonymous' is getting involved also. This is picking up some steam.
Shutting down New York Stock Exchange .... With 5 days notice? Pretty ballsy move if they pull it off.
http://www.forbiddenknowledgetv.com/videos/activism/we-are-the-99.html (http://www.forbiddenknowledgetv.com/videos/activism/we-are-the-99.html)
Quote from: bobsim on October 05, 2011, 12:35:18 PM
Apparently the group' Anonymous' is getting involved also. This is picking up some steam.
Shutting down New York Stock Exchange .... With 5 days notice? Pretty ballsy move if they pull it off.
http://www.forbiddenknowledgetv.com/videos/activism/we-are-the-99.html (http://www.forbiddenknowledgetv.com/videos/activism/we-are-the-99.html)
I think this video is very appropriate today:
http://www.youtube.com/v/8rwsuXHA7RA?
Text SIGN to +19177206888 if you agree!
Lets eradicate the root of our problems:
http://www.getmoneyout.com/
Dylan Ratigan.
Host, MSNBC's 'The Dylan Ratigan Show'; Author, soon to be released 'Greedy Bastards'
Get Money Out to Bring Jobs In
Posted: 10/7/11 09:39 AM ET
I'm in DC right now, about to hand over our petition to get money out of politics to Senator Dick Durbin. It's fitting I'm in DC to do this today, because a jobs report just came out showing that our politics can not solve our unemployment problem.
Apparently, this month, America added a little over 100,000 jobs. The unemployment rate remained flat, and the broader unemployment rate jumped to 16.5%. These numbers indicate that America cannot employ the thirty million people who want to work, who want to put their collective energy and personhood towards something of meaning. It's telling Americans they are trash. Americans do not like hearing that message from their government, and they are making that point loud and clear in roiling protests all over the country. This is heartening to say the least; I've been wandering and experiencing our country come alive, from Zuccotti Park and the Occupy Wall Street protests. And what we all want is to end bought government, to build a shared alignment of our values in a wave of energy.
The contrast to DC could not be clearer. Earlier this week, President Obama and Congress decided to kill a couple hundred thousand American jobs to help big money interests, by passing three corporate trade bills. He's doing this even as protests wrack the country, and as our very culture speaks back. This week, for instance, Sesame Street decided to introduce a new character suffering from poverty and hunger so part of their audience of children can see someone like them. Imagine that - protests in the streets, children being told it's normal to be hungry, and a President and Congress focused meanwhile on shipping jobs elsewhere.
Amazing. But understandable. This is the result of a bought government.
How, exactly, is this working? How is this system depriving us of what we need? It's simple - the cash speaks, the people don't.
Let's start with trade. NAFTA-style free trade agreements with Korea, Colombia, and Panama are now "fast-tracked", and should end up passing at some point next week. Just the Korean deal alone will kill 156,000 jobs. The Panama deal will enable corporations to hide revenue from taxation and regulation, and the Colombia deal is about ensuring there is yet another low cost production zone with no labor rights. These deals are supported most prominently by the US Chamber of Commerce, the biggest spender of anonymous cash in the 2010 elections.
Beyond these mini-NAFTAs lies a trans-Pacific trade deal that is already threatening the lives of people around the world. This one's at the behest of big pharma, which has its own stake in our government. No one has credibly analyzed this trade framework yet, but I'm pretty sure that anything within the existing free trade axis isn't going to be helping us find jobs.
Again, bought government. The campaign cash comes from corporate interests, and they get what they want.
What about the public? What is it that we don't see when we allow a bought government to run wild?
Sesame Street introduces new characters periodically as the culture changes. Today's a new character is named Lily. Her family suffers from what's called "food insecurity", otherwise known as hunger (a scourge which costs America $167 billion a year). That's how many children are going hungry in modern America, that Sesame Street must feature a hungry character to stay relevant.
This too comes back to money. Food stamps were the original mechanism to deal with hunger, as a government program, they helped end hunger domestically. Senator George McGovern in the 1970s realized that hunger was a massive problem, and used a Senate select committee to research, publicize, and solve the problem. There was no donor base behind the hunger problem, but Congress has a structure that allowed it to diagnose problems felt by Americans, and deal with them. Food stamps and school lunches, not Sesame Street, were how Congress used to tackle the problem of children having nutritional deficiencies.
And what about today? Aside from corporate trade deals, what is Congress doing to solve today's most pressing issues. Well, Congress is spending its time... forming caucuses to support Predator Drones. Yes, there's a Predator drone caucus whose mission is to acquire more drones as quickly as possible and deploy them anywhere, even against protesters at the political conventions this summer. Boeing, Northrup Grumman, and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems are quite happy to buy Congress to sell more of their product. In the predator drone caucus is the Chair of the Defense Appropriations Committee, Norm Dicks. He holds the position Jack Murtha held, on the subcommittee made famous by Tom Hanks in Charlie Wilson's War. His subcommittee dispenses hundreds of billions of dollars. And they say we have no industrial policy!
We get no jobs. We get hungry children. And we get drones spying on protesters. That's bought government for you.
I could go on. I could talk about banking policy, and the way that banks fund politicians to ensure that they face no real threat from regulators. Or how the Bush administration destroyed the anti-trust section of the Justice Department, and the Obama administration hasn't been able to really repair it. Or the Keystone pipeline and oil, in which former a Hillary Clinton for President staffer lobbied colleagues at the State Department at the behest of the pipeline company TransCanada.
But you get the point. Money has simply overwhelmed our political system. And the protests we're seeing, the national convulsion of frustration against corruption, are a result.
After all, if our government-corporate elites can't ensure that we as a society feed hungry children, then why would any of us expect that we would ensure there are enough jobs? We have a bought government, and a bought government isn't very interested in making sure you have a job, or a child has a meal.
After I finish my day in DC, after I let Senator Durbin know that people want an end to this corrupt system, I'm going to Zuccotti Square again, because it is only in building waves of energy, of human dedication to ending our collective inaction, can we move forward to get money out. And then maybe we will get the jobs we so desperately need.
Follow Dylan Ratigan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DylanRatigan
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-ratigan/get-money-out-to-bring-jo_b_999866.html
Quote
How To Regain Our Democracy
Posted: 10/19/11 09:42 PM ET
Declaration of Independence
Our politicians are bought. Everyone knows it. Conservatives know it just as much as liberals do. And libertarians have probably known it all along. The Democrats are bought and the Republicans even more so. They don't represent us. They represent their donors. We have taxation without representation. Our democracy is in serious trouble.
We must regain our ability to make a difference, to have our votes count. Right now, corporate interests and special interests dominate our politics because they can spend unlimited money. Unfortunately, in this current system money speaks louder than words. The pen might be mightier than the sword, but the checkbook is far mightier than the pen. In the congressional races in 2008, the candidate who had more money won more than 93% of the time. Our representatives don't serve us; they serve the people who pay them -- their corporate funders.
How did we get to where we are now?
QuoteStarting in 1978, the Supreme Court opened the spigot to corporate spending in politics. Since then, the average American has seen their wages stagnate and their share of taxes rise significantly, while corporations have seen their tax burden shrink and the top 1% has literally tripled their income. There has been a massive redistribution of wealth in this country. And it's going straight to the top.
There is one answer though. It is the one thing that is above Congress and the Supreme Court -- a constitutional amendment. We must pass an amendment saying that corporations are not people and they do not have the right to spend money to buy our politicians. Corporations have no soul. They are profit-making robots. They are not endowed by their creator with inalienable rights. They are legally created fictions that are charged with maximizing profit without any concern for morality. They can and they must be stopped before they destroy our democracy.
We are not against the existence of corporations, we are only against their ability to buy and control our government. Robots can be useful, but that doesn't mean we should let them run our democracy. We must not allow multinational corporations to infringe upon American sovereignty. This is supposed to be a democracy run by citizens, not by international, unaccountable business and financial interests.
This is one suggestion.........but as someone who was a citizen advocate in Tallahassee, I have my doubts about whether this will work:
Quote28th Amendment
Corporations are not people. They have none of the constitutional rights of human beings. Corporations are not allowed to give money to any politician, directly or indirectly. No politician can raise over $100 from any person or entity. All elections must be publicly financed.
Unfortunately it appears that our Congress is completely infected with the virus. So proposing an amendment through Congress seems hopeless. But luckily there is another way. We can do this purely at the state level. The states can call for a constitutional convention and they can ratify an amendment that comes out of one. And there is nothing our corrupt federal government can do about it.
We are hoping that the first wave of volunteers help us organize at the state level. Let's go occupy the states! Can you imagine all 50 state houses occupied until the people get what they want -- their democracy back! It can happen. You can make it happen. Joint the fight.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/how-to-regain-our-democra_b_1021067.html