Democracy for Vancouver

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Above is an audio segment of The Conversation from KUOW Public Radio up in Puget Sound. The first 41 minutes deals with current food issues. At around the 41 minute mark, there is a conversation with Craig Salins, Executive Director of Washington Public Campaigns (WPC) about public financing of campaigns.

Obama has opted out of the Federal system of campaign financing because of the expectation that right-wing 527 organizations and the Republican Party will be spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to turn him into Satan reincarnate.  It is just a current reality that the Federal system of campaign financing is seriously broken and ineffective.  If you search around the net, there are plenty of explanations about how the present Federal campaign finance system is dysfunctional.

Obama making this decision to opt out does not mean he does not support public financing of campaigns.  In fact, the opposite is true. He is big supporter of public financing, just not the system that is in place now.

The failure at the Federal level is why the work of Washington Public Campaigns is so important. This organization has recently been able to push through the state legislature voter-owned election legislation.

WPC is working on instituting a public finance election system for the mayor and city council of Seattle and other cities around the state. Once these programs are in place and prove successful, a statewide program will be next.

Eventually effective use of these programs will translate into reforming campaign finance at the Federal level and controlling the use of money to legally bribe our elected representatives at all levels of government.

What is the purpose of doing this? As an example, look at what just happened in Congress. They voted to retroactively allow the telecoms to violate the 4th amendment of the Constitution. Do you think this might be related to the influence of money exerted by the telecoms on our representatives? You bet it was.

If we are ever to have a representative government in the United States, the influence of money must be controlled carefully.

Washington Public Campaigns is working hard to do just that.