Govt corruption

Haven't published any posts lately.  I've written many, but more and more of them are ending up like this one. So I thought I'd post it anyway.

We need to make our elected officials more responsible to the PEOPLE they represent.  This will not happen as long as money buys influence in government.  I think this is a common message that both the OWS and TEA could unite on.  Both believe government is corrupt.   There is a difference in belief as to where the blame lies, but both believe that we have a problem with the officials not representing We The People anymore.

My Proposal:
We need an amendment to the constitution that limits the amount of money an elected official can spend to get elected.  The amount would be limited based upon the number of people that elected representative would represent.

So let's say that limit is set at $2 per person.  Candidates vying for President would be allowed to raise as much as $2 * 300,000,000 people so a maximum of $600M could be raised and spent on the campaign for that person to get their message out to the people.  Congressional representatives would be able to spend $2 * 900,000 = $1.8M.  These are just examples.

It's a fair sum.  It certainly isn't the amount being raised in Presidential races nowadays.  But it will cause the candidate to Budget and Spend Wisely, two qualities I think we really want our elected leaders to have.

The biggest problem is that anybody can go out and spend money to promote a candidate.  That's a huge issue.  If you say people can't do that, then you are violating their first amendment rights.  It doesn't matter whether that person is in the 99% or the 1%.  Everybody has that right to express their support and try to get others to agree with them.  So how do you account for the money behind that?  You can't.  And that's where the problem comes from.

If I write a letter to my local newspaper expressing support for a politician, then why couldn't some corporation buy a full page advertisement doing the same thing?  You could try to limit it from TV and Media print, but what about the web, and blogs, and forums, and tweets, and facebook pages and so on!  You simply cannot prohibit people and/or corporations from getting the word out.

And that's where my idea lies dead in the water.  I don't know how to close that loophole, or at least prevent it from being abused as a secret form of donating to somebody's campaign.  I don't have a solution to tackle that part of the problem yet.