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James Kindler

Mental Health Recovery Coordinator,

TEDCRED 20+

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How do we get corporations out of government.

Large corperations run our government, thay donate huge amounts of money for which they are rewarded. The government no longer represents the people but rather the corporations. We are supposed to be a representitive republic but our needs are not being represented, the corporations are. This is why I'm in the occupy movement, to try and return to our constitution and excercise my rights. We want the government to represent us and not the corporations, they are not people. Everyone thinks we are there to get money from the 1%, while this may be true for many what I have just written is true for me and most in the movement.

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  • David Tappan

    • 0
    Jan 20 2012: As it stands now, our government is built on legalized corruption. Corporations, interest groups, wealthy individuals, and unions all buy and sell politicians with their vast sums of money. The needs of the people come second hand to the needs of campaign donors.

    We should stop ALL private campaign spending and donations ranging from corporations and unions to interest groups and individual people. If we only stop Corporations from giving campaign donations, interest groups and wealthy CEOs would still be able to exert influence over politicians with their money. But if we stop them from donating money, it would only be fair to stop everybody as well or else they would have an unfair advantage, so unions shouldn't be allowed to donate money or environmental groups or even Joe the plummer.

    Politicians should be given a set amount of money provided by the government and that is all the money they would be allowed to use in their campaign; this way they wouldn't owe their souls to anybody except the voters - the people the government are supposed to serve. Ideas should run the system, not money.

    • Joshua Pierce

      • 0
      Jan 20 2012: Congressman need many advisers to do their jobs. Too often their advisers come baring large sums of money. Taking the money away from the process would only facilitate other means of affecting influence, because it doesn't affect the incentive of Corporations to affect influence - only the means by which they could do it legally. Corporations would continue to seek the positions of policy makers and would continue to sway the votes of those positions they couldn't fill. Even without money in the equation, large corporations could still find ways to monopolize the time of Congressman enough that our policy makers would not have the necessary advisement on a non-biased public need. I don't believe that Congressman should be allowed to profit from a position of public trust, this is fundamentally a conflict of interest. I think that an open/public forum is the only equitable means by which influence should be asserted on policy makers, but we would have to establish it so that speakers in this forum aren't career representatives and are very frequently elected by an open democratic process to represent interested groups or organizations.
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        Justen Robertson 50+

        • 0
        Jan 20 2012: Joshua makes a good point: everybody pretends as if laws, once passed, are actually followed. There is a thing called sovereign immunity. Governments are only liable for their breaches of law if they feel like being liable (which, unsurprisingly, is very rarely). If you can get elected today you can worry about the law tomorrow, when you have the power to ignore it. Laws are broken by politicians and aspiring politicians all the time, often flagrantly. Another law is not what you need.

        In fact the whole premise of law is in contracts - agreements between two parties that bind them to a certain course of action. But contracts rely on the honesty and good intentions of both parties; or, failing that, the power of some third party to intervene and enforce the agreement. Who intervenes and enforces a contract between you and a government official? Nobody. Your government has already declared itself the sole arbiter and provider of enforcement services for you. You have no resort when the government fails except violence (which is what you set out to avoid in the first place). If your government is full of crooks, which appears to be the case, they cannot be bound by good will and noble intentions.

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