[Newspoetry] Financing Elections?

[DL Emerick]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/opinion/25weds1.html

Campaign Finances

 

The test of all this is simple:

As long as private money dominates elections, it will.

 

I have long advocated public finance of public elections.

 

How much is enough?

 

A candidate should have funds to match any opponent
arguably aided in even the least way by "issue groups",

whether it be by a hot-button issue or more directly.

 

In fact, to discourage such shams and shames,

of ostensible  competition, to inform voters,

I have advocated a finance deterrence theory:

A public financed candidate should get at least

twice as much matching funds as his "private" foe.

 

I have advocated the confiscation of left-overs,

So that any elected candidates

must fork over all residual campaign funds,

in order to be seated in their public office -

so that potential competition is not deterred,

thinking that the incumbent has too big a lead,

too large a war chest to overtake in challenge.

 

I have advocated, too, the abolition

of winner-take-all single member districts,

and moving toward proportional representation,

even suggesting the dissolution of state boundaries,

so that districts are apportioned without regard to them,

by an impartial computer program,

that pays no attention to enclaves, cities or states.

 

I have advocated an increase in the number of representatives,

So that, possibly, it might approach a "mathematical sample" -

A size it would not attain unless it were at least twice as large,

Giving the excess for delegates to proportional representation.

 

I have advocated stripping Presidents of veto power,

And that said function be lodged in the Senate,

Whose members should function as a council of sages,

Monitoring the legislation of the People's House,

And the nefarious ways of executive offices.

 

Given recent massive vote fraud -

which is not about checking voters for valid IDs,

as the GOP falsely, deceptively, corruptly claims,

but about the corrupt manipulation of elections,

such as has happened, most visibly,

in Ohio (2004) and Florida (2000),

resulting in the election (sic!) of Bush,

I have advocated the abolition of state-controlled elections,

For federal offices, at the very least.

 

All these changes are structural, in nature,

Such as is the heart of true progressivism,

Which is never substantive, but procedural,

Believing bad structure permits corruption,

Which fact is not lost upon the corrupt.

 

(Oh, the Electoral College can be junked, too.)

 

I dream of clean elections,

Of the possibility that two truly worthy candidates might compete,

In a truly fair contest of policies and programs, of clean ideas,

In at least one election in my life time.

 

I doubt my dream will ever come true,

Such is the truth about big money in America today.

 

In other news, today, it is reported

Bill Gates plans to spend $60,000.000,

(chicken feed, really, to him)

To make education a high priority issue

In the 2008 Presidential Contest.

 

What's the matter, Bill?  Sales too slow?

 

Elsewhere, Bush visits Harlem.

To tout his "signature" education issue,

No-child-left-behind,

Which sounds so anti-leftist,

And is so lacking in funding,

And in any visible and viable results,

And so opposed by the States,

That I'd never want it said:

That's my "signature" -

It be like forging your own name.

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