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The real focus of this movement should be the immediate illegality of lobbying. This is the single most important thing that should come from this movement. Everything else is secondary and would be a waste of the energy that has finally taken a hold of us. Lobbying is legalized bribery that can only lead to the corruption of politicians that are SUPPOSED to represent us. They can't do a faithful job of that if they are being paid to basically do the opposite. Sure, they don't get to pocket that momey but they use that money to campaign for reelection or shoot fo a higher public office.
I can't finish my thoughts at this moment.
this is not my post.. Why do I have the ability to edit other ppl post, this needs to be fixed, or else police can just come on here and control the movement from with in.... This is dangerous
Politicians!!! It's hard to serve TWO masters
Submitted by Rancho Larry on
The Lobbying Payoffers or the electorate (CHOOSE ONE) at your peril
Hey Boehaner and Cantor I'm talking to YOU!
Lar
If we are willing to put the
Submitted by AshleyCarey on
If we are willing to put the work into organizing the relevant data, we can make a legitimate argument of the presence of quid-pro-quo in our legislature. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quid_pro_quo - That's the way the U.S. government deals with bribery claims. If we can prove clearly what payments influenced what favorable legilslation to be drafted/passed for the campaign donators, we can make a really presentable argument to the public. I this we should do this and I'm willing to help however I can. It's the most imperative issue in this movement, I truly believe. Getting corporate money out of our political system can be done if we present organized, truthful data that's nearly impossible to deny.
http://www.opensecrets.org/ is an excellent place to start. It lists the top five campaign donors for each public official, and even goes over how their voting record relates to this. Let's get started. Are you with me?
I agree
Submitted by Supersean on
I agree that lobbying is bribery. We're not there yet, but I'd love to see the movement more focused on getting money out of politics. Public funding of campaigns seems like a viable solution.
The problem I see is that while we're focused on corporate money's corrosive effect on government, we turn a blind eye to union money's effect on government. As long as we differentiate between the two the movement can easily be dismissed as a ploy of the Democratic Party. The day the movement can say to the American people, 'Get all money out of politics. Corporate money AND union money.' is the day we turn the corner and get another 50 million people on our side.
First of all yes we need
Submitted by Fallout2man on
First of all yes we need comprehensive Anti-bribery reforms but they must make sense within context. First of all let us understand it is impossible to prove intent beyond a certain point. It's just simply much too high a bar of evidence. Our elected officials are in many cases not being influenced outright or swayed directly but their votes are still being bought and sold. We must understand that exchange of legal tender in all forms is an inherently corrupting act even when done entirely free of any strings. Because of that for any anti-corruption policy to truly succeed we need to hold our politicians to a much MUCH higher bar.
We must pay them a fair salary for their service and then for their time in office we must legally prevent them from receiving economic compensation of any kind. We'll probably need to tailor it more aptly after doing some research but if you understand that money or gifts are always inherently corrupting because in human nature they naturally create a trust relationship and establish an unfair way those with economic advantages may influence trust and decisions of elected officials that is not fair to those without comparable economic situation.
Our soldiers do not have the freedoms of civilians and we understand the reason this is so is because it is essential to the job they do for the Republic. So to our politicians must answer to a higher calling. In times where economics may determine one's ability to pursue justice or pursue reform of law we must create anti-corruption legislation focused on preventing any form of economic advantage from ever affecting the decisions of a politician. This also means we would need to have their immediate and/or extended family sign some sort of consent form as well to prevent compensation from going to their relatives.
But in short, the system has become so bloated with graft and so gamed by those manipulating the letter of the law to find new ways to violate its spirit. So we must understand how human nature works, gifts create influence universally so gifts must be universally disallowed. The only things that should weigh on a politician are the effects of the policy he produces, end of story.
That makes a lot of sense.
Submitted by AshleyCarey on
That makes a lot of sense. Any collection of people with large amounts of money and influence should be prohibited from using those resources to assert dominance over the majority in a democratic system.
can't we just say it?
Submitted by Supersean on
or do we dare not speak its name?
Can we finally just say that labor is just as big a problem as far as buying influence as any other sector of 'donors'?
any thoughts?
Submitted by Supersean on
any thoughts?
My above post was a response
Submitted by AshleyCarey on
My above post was a response to your comment about labor unions. The rules should apply across the board, of course.
what r we waiting for?
Submitted by Supersean on
well, if that message was out front, no corporate money AND no labor money, I'm sure the OWS movement would have a LOT more supporters. Until such time the protests will be dismissed as a bunch of shills for the Democratic Party seeing as a vast majority of labor money goes to Democrats.
Labor is a problem born of a solution to an even greater problem
Submitted by Fallout2man on
Well yes Labor is a problem but in a way it's kind of not so much a problem as it is a tragedy. The problem is that labor unions while possible hives of corruption were born as the only way to fight a corrupt system where wealth dictated policy. The problem is our entire economic system and regard towards labor, capital, etc, needs to be re-evaluated.
But yes Labor unions are part of the problem it's just that they really don't deserve any scorn. Instead we should work to create a system where the good functions performed by a labor union are handled by the system itself in a way that isn't prone to corruption. Otherwise we risk heading into dangerous territory by not heeding the warnings of the past. Labor unions formed because our economic system gave labor no way to combat its exploitations at the hands of employers. Employers naturally have incentives to lower wages, lower benefits and cut the cost of labor, and this is just a fact of capitalism. Employers are told to screw over workers by the system. We cannot abandon our duty to solve the problem that regardless of the value of labor we understand that all Americans are deserving of a fair opportunity to make a living wage to support themselves and their family in any economic system and that government is sorely abandoning its duty to govern if it does not do this.
unions are powerful enough, no need for apologists
Submitted by Supersean on
wow! just wow!
do you really belive that unions 'don't deserve any scorn'? By your measure, or someone else's? have you searched the databases at opensecrets.org?
do you want money out of politics or not? or is it just their money that concerns you?
i guess four legs good, two legs bad!
Fallout2man, I agree that
Submitted by AshleyCarey on
Fallout2man, I agree that legislators can easily cover their tracks to avoid quid pro quo accusations, but there is plenty room for drawing correlations. You've seen it in documentaries and exposes -- this legislator received this much funding from this corporation, and made this law dramatically favoring that corporation or its field countless times. Those are the correlations we can draw ourselves if we're willing to work hard for this cause.
Those in any position of public power: legislators, federal regulators, and police should be held to a higher standard based on their higher power. (and my cop dad agrees -- we're not alone in this)
We Must have AntiIncompetency legislation as well
Submitted by Fallout2man on
Also, anti-corruption legislation isn't enough. We must establish a clear precedent where an elected official may have charges of incompetency brought against them so they might be removed for office for willfully ignoring the facts. We risk by focusing on only anti-corruption reforms missing one other key way politicians abdicated their duty to us. They also, not wanting to do the hard work of advocating difficult policy that might hurt their chances at securing large donors for the next elections cycle, politicians attempted to intentionally lie, mislead is and forestall any changes to the current system.
They could do this because they controlled the media through big business but also because for the longest time we assumed some inherent competency in those elected to office. The problem becomes that at times where the system can be universally tilted to favor one segment of the population over the other it becomes the natural tendency of a self-interested politician to improve his re-election chances at the expense of his constituents. We must remove that advantage by making a second set of charges, including corruption charges, that should allow us to remove elected officials from office.
Incompetency charges would hinge upon proving that a politician made a single really bad decision or a pattern of bad small decisions, which would happen by requiring all votes in office be given a full paragraph-worthy reason (similar to judicial opinions that come with supreme court rulings) stating the reasons for the vote and goals it was to accomplish. If a politician recorded an important single vote or pattern of small votes where there were specific stated goals, and it could be proven that the politician then willfully voted in such a way despite being informed of facts prior to it that the practical effects of their vote were not suitably achieved by their vote and would be considerably better served by a vote otherwise. In other words giving us a standard whereby the courts may establish that a politician made an objectively stupid decision by not listening to the facts, that such an offense should be considered an act of contempt against the American people, punishable by removal from office.
Incompetency reforms are even more important than corruption reforms. As is often said, attribute not that to malice which might be adequately explained by incompetence. So we must enact a means by which to remove the incompetent from office!
Incompetency reforms are
Submitted by AshleyCarey on
Incompetency reforms are vital, but like most other major political governmental reforms, something big has to come to light before any reactive change is made. Our government doesn't exactly bow to our whims if we just ask nicely, and any illegal tactics of exposure would immediately cause us to lose support from much of the 99% we're fighting for. The tools are legally ours to expose the corruption to the world and publicly embarrass the legislature. The information is all public, we just have to work harder to expose it than they do trying to cover it up.
Let's not hope for a lucky break, work with what we have.
Submitted by Fallout2man on
The problem is this, if you want to realistically pursue charges of corruption under current statutes you need to prove that the politician knowingly made a decision for reward and that allows all sorts of shenanigans because at the end of the day people will just develop more elaborate forms of code and hidden cues with which to signal their intent to comply in their efforts against the public.
We must be realistic, if it were simple to merely dig up evidence on corruption and charge our current congress it would be done already. Anonymous would've already made a huge info dump and we'd all be laughing our ways to the recall election as we threw them out on their collective asses. But that isn't what's happening often because today most forms of oppression have learned to operate and exist without the explicit need of those maintaining the system from even being aware that they are in fact furthering tools of economic oppression.
Those who wish to influence policy have carefully mined human nature and manipulated structures of power and systems of influence to rig our system against the 99%.
Process to Success for the 99%
1: Organize worldwide for economic justice, be non-ideological and all inclusive, swell numbers as fast as possible.
2: Quickly solidify communication and consensus process and link all occupations together. After the initial numbers swell it is critical to keep momentum moving forward by immediately solidifying the image of the movement as America speaking with a single voice. Decisions can still be reached with democratic consensus but all external communication has to be processed through representatives to maintain maximum legitimacy.
3: Decide on a form of collective voter pressure on existing congress. Our goal is an Article V constitutional convention. This MUST BE THE ENDGAME. We must amend the constitution to make the drastic changes to elections and other laws that have enabled business and economics to pervert justice and equality against us.
4: Once we've gotten that then we can form a consensus on demands and on hashing out more specific reforms.
At this point I think we need to basically put our effort into grabbing the apathetic 50% and never votes in elections. We should sell them on "Just this once, your vote matters!" and if we could find a way as voters to get enough of the electorate to enter into a collective agreement to vote then we could use it as a direct tool to bludgeon congress to pass the call for a convention.
In fact, is there a way for citizens to sign some sort of collective voting agreement that would allow us to officialize this policy? It might be our only way to force congress' hand. Let's face it, if there was anything embarrassing to use as ammo we'd have it already. We need to work with what we've got and send those idiots packing from the capitol.
These public information laws
Submitted by AshleyCarey on
These public information laws were implemented for exactly this reason. The government was founded on a system of checks and balances, with some checks belonging to the people -- like campaign fund data. If we don't use the tools we were given by our founding fathers to do what we should, how can we expect any real change to take place? The reason politicians win this battle is because they're good at speaking, and they're good at manipulating the meaning of public data. They face very little resistance from the apathetic public they've created with their constant acts of disappointment, but this is the part where we stop being apathetic. Saying "that won't work" and giving up on the prospect of using these tools to incite change is an immmediate return to apathy.
Again, our numbers are our strength, but if we don't take advantage of them and work together while we stand together, then we're just standing together. We can get so much done if we use our numbers in cooperation for a common, non-partisan goal to return democracy to the people.
Remember: WE can't amend the constitution. And as long as the electoral system is broken, we can't expect those we vote into office to do what we ask of them. We must expose the corruption in order to make it undeniable, and the change will follow. But as it stands, many Americans aren't sure if the corruption exists, or flat-out don't believe it's there. We can do something about this. We're up against a powerful and entertaining mainstream media flow of misinformation that allows people to believe that everything is fine. So many Americans won't join us until we convince them our claims aren't just claims -- they're facts.
Well if it's something you'd
Submitted by Fallout2man on
Well if it's something you'd like to pursue then by all means. But I can tell you right now that if your goal is to shame elected officials you are pursuing it in a horribly inefficient way. To shame politicians we can't point to explicit corruption we need to show the obvious disdain they have for the 99%. If you want to pursue a strategy of victory through empathy then you need to understand again the tools with which we are given.
Do NOT EXPECT that you are some special snowflake that will magically find explicit evidence of bribery despite I'm sure thousands if not many more individuals of all walks of life already actively combing for such information. While it's possible something was missed let's not hedge our bets on something so unknowable that maybe we'd happen to discover it by accident. DO NOT RELY ON UNKNOWNS when the cause is so important.
So if we want to engender shame via the media what we will need to do is going to be no small task and there's a reason I shy away with it as an approach. Victory through compassion is a victory through sacrifice and it is a victory only achievable through considerable sacrifices of those protesting. Civil rights did not come without exacting its pounds of flesh upon the protestors. If we are to apply the same strategy here make no mistakes we must choke the gutters of the streets with the bodies of the dead, as that was what it took the last time we shamed congress into fixing inequality back during the great depression.
For those of us though that would seek a humane revolution, one that truly embraces the actual application of non violence. Not just in requiring the pacifism of those protesting, but in the unspoken requirements of violence against those protesting that is the fuel of such movements. We must make a choice, either we are ready to give up dead to quench the requirement in a growing segment of the population that if someone has not died that it does not matter, that if oppression does not come from physical blows to ones body it does not matter, that any movement is not legitimate until enough of its members have been explicitly destroyed by that which they sought to protest. That us the dark underbelly that belies peaceful movements, is that there is still just as great as ever a need for violence, but a need for violence against the protestors to galvanize sympathy in the public.
There is another way though! We must realize the ways the system was gamed against us and play a little from the enemy's book as well. IF we can game procedure perhaps through some kind of a collective voting agreement we should be able to call a constitutional convention. If we can do that then we'll gain a once in a generation chance to propose reforms that can target every facet of a problem as we will not be constrained in proscribing powers able to combat the myriad of economic forces which drive inequality today. Otherwise what else are we do do?
Again, we can't go magically assuming the winds of fortune will provide us with bounty to press our charges of incompotence and corruption, we can only guarantee our bodies, so we must make use of them as effectively as possible in pressing our agenda.
How will you get your voting
Submitted by AshleyCarey on
How will you get your voting agreement if democracy isn't working out for us at this time? It's much less reasonable to expect our legislators to listen to our voices instead of their donors
If there was a bounty of clear evidence of corruption, this wouldn't be as difficult as it is. But to say that it's impossible, or even unknowable, is ludicrous. We aren't even trying. We have to use the system before it uses us. Asking them to let us make decisions does not seem effective. Can you explain how we can simply ask for the power back and expect it to be returned?
On the issue of your belief that finding evidence of corruption is impossible, I posted this below in a response to somene else:
Indisputable evidence is key, and we can definitely find some. We have an open list of the top five contributors for several hundred US legislators at our disposal, along with each politician's exact voting record. That's thousands of opportunities to find a link that they forgot to cover up. The only positive thing about this corruption being so widespread is that it makes it that much easier to find solid evidence. If we all post examples of donation correlation to certain bills, amendments, etc., we can sort through them all and pick the top five or ten most obvious. Present that to the public, and our case gains much more credibility.
Follow Lobbyists' Money
Submitted by alhs06 on
Follow Lobbyists' Money , http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/06/follow-lobbyists-money-with-new-...
An excerpt,
As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was running for re-election, about $1 out of every $20 he raised for his massive war chest came from a tiny but elite group of Washington insiders: federally registered lobbyists and their immediate family members, according to a new analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics of campaign finance data and lobbying reports.
In 2009 and 2010 alone, Reid raised about $919,000 from 572 lobbyists who were registered and actively lobbying during either one of those years, the Center found. That's more than any other member of the U.S. Senate, but he's hardly the only member of Congress to post notable numbers.
A public criminal corruption
Submitted by AshleyCarey on
A public criminal corruption charge against any single politician has always been guaranteed to make big news (regardless of who owns which news conglomerate -- if you got caught by the law, you got CAUGHT.) and create a stir in the public. Imagine, ideally, if we managed to find some solid evidence of corruption charges for several legislators. This shouldn't be too difficult since they're all doing it, and there are hundreds of them. That's a lot of research and data collection, but then again, there are many of us. I'd really like to advocate more action in forming this official case asap. Every moment we waste is a moment in which we allow the dire economic situation in our nation to worsen even more.
Following the money isn't
Submitted by Fallout2man on
Following the money isn't going to do anything because we can't prove to any reasonable standard the amount to which money may or may not influence a person's pattern of decision making. That's why you can't attack the problem of corruption with a blacklist or by only banning certain types of contributions.
Legal Tender = Coercion = Power = Inherently corrupting force.
The act of compensation is always an inherently coercive force that influences a human's decision making process. This is why politicians need to be paid considerably handsomely but BANNED from all other forms of compensation during their time in office and banned from making any sort of arrangements for compensation of any kind now or in the future while in office (or running for office) for themselves or their family. The bottom line is that since we can't prove if a decision was corrupted our only recourse is to prevent all forms of influence at the source. An elected official's duty is to All Americans EQUALLY, and we can only ensure the safety of their decisions by preventing outside factors from corrupting their decision making process.
We hold the military to higher standards, it's about time we held those ELECTED to lead them to a higher standard too.
Remember that corrupt
Submitted by AshleyCarey on
Remember that corrupt politicians could also easily say the opposite as reason not to do it. But they take the risk of committing these acts in a publicly available system, and their worst enemy is the people who actually read and compare those statistics with a critical eye.
Workng to expose all political corruption will likely result in four or five legitimate examples we can use, but that's all we need to make it known to the world what scandals occur in the US government. If you don't believe that worldwide public embarrassment of a corrupt government elicits a strong reaction from that government to repair their public reputation, history has numerous examples. If we expose specific corruption backed by hard evidence and data, we look responsible, they look irresponsible, and they're left with no choice but to switch their focus to covering their own asses. I'm sure if it were up to congress alone, campaign contribution data wouldn't be public, but it is, and it's more valuable now than it's ever been before. We can put a serious dent in this corruption.
Edit: I want to clarify that what you're saying is a great idea, but i firmly believe that, unfortunate as it is, it will take a public scandal exposing corruption in specific, previously trusted lawmakers to get the ball rolling.
This occupation movement is really powerful, and our power lies in our numbers. Exposing corruption of an entire legislature is too much work to possibly be done by a small amount of people, but we have a huge amount of people who want to see the corruption gone. We have a legitimate case for quid pro quo evidence that would hold its own in court, and we know damn well the American mainstream media isn't spending its time or resources investigating corruption of those they helped to pay off. It's up to the people, and only the people.
And most importantly, we have the truth on our side. That's a big player.
not really responding to you just testing the form
Submitted by Deadkip on
Take away corporate "personhood" under the 14th amendment. This is where corporations get their LEAGAL political power, until your reverse SANTA CLARA V. SOUTH PACIFIC RAILROAD (1886), everything you do is useless because what ever change you make will be overturned because corporations are considered a "natural person" aka "human" and are Protected under the bill of rights. So if you make reform they will say it is unconstitutional because it infringes on their "human rights".... So a multi- million dollar business has the same rights as a human being but the power of a god... If you don't know what "corporate personhood" is then look it up.. RIGHT NOW.. go to Wikipedia NOW B4 YOU REPLY TO ME, OPEN A NEW TAB, I will not respond to anyone who dose not know anything about the subject b4 giving their opinion. Don't feel bad if you don't know something, just look it up and then you know all about it. That's how you learn, admit that you have know clue then find out.
Guilt Riddled Ex Politician's Needed Apply Here
Submitted by alhs06 on
Guilt Riddled Ex Politician's Needed Apply Here,
Think maybe there might be a few of those out there, willing to expose the truth with indisputable evidence, to help our cause, The 99%?
Maybe we could start with Jesse Ventura, I only partially say this tongue in cheek and partially in all seriousness. Never discount where an unexpected helping hand may turn up from.
Indisputable evidence is key,
Submitted by AshleyCarey on
Indisputable evidence is key, and we can definitely find some. We have an open list of the top five contributors for several hundred US legislators at our disposal, along with each politician's exact voting record. That's thousands of opportunities to find a link that they forgot to cover up. The only positive thing about this corruption being so widespread is that it makes it that much easier to find solid evidence. If we all post examples of donation correlation to certain bills, amendments, etc., we can sort through them all and pick the top five or ten most obvious. Present that to the public, and our case gains much more credibility.
How are you going to prove
Submitted by Fallout2man on
How are you going to prove such a claim? Are you involved in law? Do you know what the exact burden of proof is in such cases? I mean maybe it's easier than I'm thinking but I get the sinking feeling that it's going to be pretty hard to convict a sitting congressman of explicit corruption charges.
Sure we can show how we THINK he's being influenced by contributors but the problem is how do you establish proof of intent? Because from what I'm aware that's the standard with corruption charges. You have to prove they inteded to make a pay-for-play with federal power and that's much harder to prove then just looking at a list of donations and relations to the relevant industry.
So please, can you at least explain to me how this is going to be easy? Because right now you're proposing an approach any single individual could have taken before and yet did not (at least that we can see.) But because it should've been readily apparent the fact that someone has not done this yet tends to suggest that this either cannot be done or is extremely difficult to do. All of which don't make for a compelling case that this is the best means to achieve the goals of the 99%.
I would much rather we work on drafting a national independent voter pact that allows the 99% to sign a collective voting agreement regarding the 2012 elections. We make one demand, a constitutional convention, or we sign an agreement to vote as a bloc towards whichever congressional interests will pass a convention. Basically telling the current administration "Give us our convention, or we all swear to vote you out on a whole for whoever will." It allows us to work with what we've got and gives us an excellent way to reach out to apathetic voters. Every person signing the voter compact would become part of a greater hole, it lets us directly parlay starting numbers into power against the status quo and gives us a great running start at collecting the amount of people needed to be completely effective.
I'd like to point out that
Submitted by AshleyCarey on
I'd like to point out that this is my third response to you in which I state "this is not easy." But please refer to my first response, where I shared a link to the wikipedia page for the phrase "quid-pro-quo." No criminal is expected to answer "yes" when asked if they committed a crime. No infringement lawsuit, for example, takes place because the accused infringer agreed that he was infringing. Do you get what I'm saying? Quid pro quo is how you prove bribery without the admittance of either party. Why would a law against corruption operate on the corrupt admitting their faults? It just doesn't work that way.
The power to lobby comes from "personhood"
Submitted by Deadkip on
Take away corporate "personhood" under the 14th amendment. This is where corporations get the their LEAGAL political power, until your reverse SANTA CLARA V. SOUTH PACIFIC RAILROAD (1886), everything you do is useless because what ever change you make will be overturned because corporations are considered a "natural person" and are Ted under the bill of rights..... So a multi- million dollar business has the same rights as a human being but the power of a god... If you don't know what "corporate personhood" is then look it up.. RIGHT NOW.. go to Wikipedia NOW B4 YOU REPLY TO ME, OPEN A NEW TAB, I will not respond to anyone who dose not know anything about the subject b4 giving their opinion. Don't feel bad if you don't know something, just look it up and then you know all about it. That's how you learn, admit that you have know clue then find out.
"Everything you do is useless
Submitted by AshleyCarey on
"Everything you do is useless" is a bold claim to make. Exposing corruption that we worked together to collect and prove would be a lot more effective than trying to reverse a court case through a democratic process that we don't currently have.
Everything you do is
Submitted by alhs06 on
Everything you do is actually meaningful, but none of it will matter if we as The 99% are unable to extract some type of "Formal Change" that is drafted & passed through the legislative process & made law. This is what OWS started & what the rest of us need to help in orchestrating, by being diligent, passionate and with an uncompramised Solidarity, which means having a profound Respect for one & other.
Without Solidarity among our most historical diverse camp, we are no more than a handful of splinter groups trying to convince one & other of the importance to our individual causes. Stay on task & focus on our 99% philosophy. Choose a battle, win it & choose the next, or we lose the war.
"Long Live Occupy, Long Live The 99%"
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