• Kalkaline @leminal.space
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    1 month ago

    It’s absurd that politicians are allowed to accept campaign contributions from individuals and corporations. Campaigns should be publicly funded.

    • Omgarm@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      The corporations is especially crazy. An individual supporting the democratic process makes sense. They are the ones voting. But a business doesn’t vote.

        • FundMECFSResearch
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          1 month ago

          Maximum monthly donation should be tied to minimum wage for 1 day of work. Realistically, who (unless you’ve got malicious intent or you’re rich as fuck, in which case I’ll assume malicious intent), is going to donate more than 1-20th of their income to a political party. Want to donate more? Choose a charity instead.

          (And a bonus) this law would probably break the gridlock on increasing minimum wage.

      • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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        1 month ago

        The very-dishonestly named “Citizens United” fucked over We the People. Badly. Now, even Democrats and Independents have to also raise obscene amounts of money to match what giant corporations almost always throw at the Republicans who promise to lower their tax rates, limit regulation, repeal environmental and antitrust restrictions, etc.

        If it’s not yet fully a capitalist hellscape, it’s well on its way there…

    • TallonMetroid@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Campaigns being explicitly publicly funded would also have the benefit that if the fatcats want to contribute more*, they’d need to pay more taxes!

      *while still not getting to choose who they’re actually contributing to, because eat the rich

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        It also stops what is going on right now thanks to Citizens United- foreign dark money coming in to influence elections.

        Because Russia is very likely pumping a lot of money into U.S. elections and they’re probably not the only one. It’s legal, so why not?

    • themadcodger@kbin.earth
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      1 month ago

      But won’t someone think of the poor corporations?! What about their free speech?

      • Roberts, probably. I didn’t actually read citizens united.
        • themadcodger@kbin.earth
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          1 month ago

          I’m all for the corporate death penalty. Need a bailout, sure. C-suite is fired, assets seized, and corporation becomes nationalized.

          Or something like that. There’s a reason no one has consulted me on the best way to accomplish this.

          • bamboo@lemm.ee
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            1 month ago

            I mean if the government is providing a bailout, at a minimum they should get shares of the company at the current market value. If that’s a controlling share, well then it’s as good as nationalized.