Building a Digital Wave to Get Money Out
September 28, 2011Sign our petition to Get Money Out of Politics at www.GetMoneyOut.com
Yesterday, on the Huffington Post, and on my cable news show on MSNBC we announced the formation of a petition to get money out of our political system, and a draft amendment to the Constitution that will do it.
More than 27,000 people signed up in less than 9 hours, our servers were overwhelmed and in one day the petition accrued more signatures than any petition filed to the President’s We The People website to date. This is clear evidence that while we may debate mechanics and ideas a huge number of us share a single common value and goal. To Get Money Out.
You can join us here: http://www.getmoneyout.
And here’s a FAQ on our amendment draft and why it works.
How do we convert this wave of frustration and anger into positive action? And how do we do it without falling into the trap of rooting for political and media heroes and villains – when ALL of us are the only ones that can do this?
Many call for a heroic politician to stand up and lead. But this issue, which creates a seemingly impenetrable wall or “Green Curtain” of money — can only be solved outside the government.
Here’s why: Money in politics is like a suicide vest of money on every politician. If any one tries to remove it, all the others exploit the decision and the courageous soul loses their job (94% of the time money determines winners). The ONLY way to remove all the suicide money vests is to take all of them off ALL AT ONCE. (On 3 if you will)
Last night Congresswoman Donna Edwards reached out on Twitter to support our efforts and she acknowledged that the only way get money out is all at once.
We can only do this by building an outside massive, unrelenting digital wave that can break with a singular focus on both our Congress and State Legislature — until an amendment to the Constitution is passed to Get Money Out. (For those who scoff, we amended the Constitution TWICE over beer.) Imagine the difference on my MSNBC show between me as a talking head asking about money in politics and 100k people, plus me or 250k, or 1 million who simply want to Get Money Out.
This morning, Politico’s Dave Levinthal asked Jimmy and me if starting with a Constitutional amendment was too ambitious. I responded by pointing out that you never want to take a boat out of the harbor until you know where you are going. Our goal is to make the singular focus the issue of Getting Money Out a point of direct engagement in next year’s Presidential election.
As for the Amendment draft itself, it is based on what I call “NCAA” rules. Just as it is an offense for a college basketball player to accept money or gifts, so too must it be for politicians and campaigns. This will force the necessary debate public funding and other campaign structures.
Until we get money out we can’t address the corrupt structures that prevail over health, energy, education, defense, trade and banking. And until we do that we will suffer massive poverty, resource loss, anger and frustration. But we can harness all of that to alter the structure through simple singular focus, modern and traditional media, the web and our own personal resolve.
So join us: GetMoneyOut.com
GREAT IDEA! but I think that 'anything of value cannot be accepted" for if a member of Congress were to accept a Rolls Royce, would that not be the same as "money?"
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The above two lines are the answers I got when I tried to reach http://www.getmoneyout.com I even tried accessing it from the location on the Dylan Ratigan site. Better make sure some cretins aren't messing with your site. I am anxious to "sign up" and urge you to check this out. Many thanks.
Let us know if this keeps happening please! Thanks for signing up.
I cannot log in to the http://www.getmoneyout.com website to add my name to the list.
Visit your browser preferences, empty your cookies, then return to the site. That should reset it! Email if you still have problems.
We need to run this with very clear messages. People need to email friends and broadly blog references to this website. Dylan, the background that you've already captured needs to make its way to GetMoneyOut.com. I'll do my part.
Keep up the awesome work! Thanks for all of your help.
The next amendment after this? Citizen members on Congressional Ethics Panels and Congressional benefit/pay hikes put up for national referendum.
Great For Congresswoman Donna Edwards!
Maybe she can sponsor some AA type meetings in DC to help her fellow representatives sober up.
"Hello I am a Congressman/Senator and I am addicted to campaign contributions."
What do You think? How do we help them help us get this thing passed? How can we hold an intervention?
Post Your Thoughts.
When the congress comes up and says OK we will write an amendment and get it started. WE say NO. This amendment proposed by Dylan Ratigan will be the one OR else.
Thanks to everyone involved – We can do this with a digital wave.
THOMAS JEFFERSON, THE 3RD PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, QUOTE
" I BELIEVE THAT BANKING INSTITUTIONS ARE MORE DANGEROUS TO OUR CIVIL LIBERTIES THAN STANDING ARMIES. IF AMERICAN PEOPLE EVER ALLOW PRIVATE BANKS TO CONTROL THE ISSUE OF THEIR CURRENCY, FIRST BY INFLATION, THEN DEFLATION, THE BANKS AND CORPORATIONS THAT WILL GROW UP AROUND [THESE BANKS] WILL DEPRIVE THE PEOPLE OF ALL PROPERTY UNTIL THEIR CHILDREN WAKE-UP HOMELESS ON THE CONTINENT THEIR FATHERS CONQUORED. THE ISSUING POWER [OF CURRENCY] SHOULD BE TAKEN FROM THE BANKS AND RESTORED TO THE PEOPLE, TO WHOM, IT PROPERLY BELONGS."
THIS IS A QUOTE BY THOMAS JEFFERSON AND HIS FORE SIGHT OBVIOUSLY UNDENIABLE. PLEASE POST IT AND USE IT ON YOUR SHOW. THANK YOU
You should get Colbert to sponsor this movement as well Dylan.
http://www.wesh.com/video/29326857/detail.html
News about the new PAC by Facebook! Even mentions Google and how much they spend on lobbyists. Why would these site need lobbyist protection? Is there something else going on here?
This will be lucky to even get enough attention to merit being shot down by the right wing propaganda empire. But its still an idea worth bringing up and supporting.
It makes perfect sense.
The best way to get this thing rolling is to do your best and make it non-partisan. Without of the conservative SCOTUS justice retiring or dying we it seems that we will be stuck with the repercussions of Citizens United. But frankly, the system was already bad even before that case. It just simply made it worse.
I'm a pragmatic liberal and speak about politics often on both sides. We may disagree on policy but we all agree that money should be taken out of politics. Our system of government has become legally corrupt.
A judge must recuse himself from a case where he has a personal or financial stake in the outcome. Why in the world would we think that politicians would be able to make objective decisions and not be influenced from the lobbyist that just threw them a $10K a plate dinner? It is absurd for anyone to argue against that.
Very Perceptive Mr. Malloy!
Those are some of the reasons I would recommend considering the Renew Democracy Amendment as that is a more complete and less partisan solution as it requires no public funding of candidates. It says:
The Renew Democracy Amendment
The right of the individual qualified citizen voter to participate in all pertinent local, state, and federal elections shall not be questioned and the right to vote is limited to individuals. The right to contribute to political campaigns and political parties is held solely by individual citizens. Political campaign contributions shall not exceed an amount reasonably affordable by the average American. The rights of all groups, associations and organizations to other political speech may be regulated by Congress but only as to volume and not content and only to protect the right of the individual voter’s voice to be heard.
Just click on my name to visit the Renew Democracy site and sign to support the most complete solution to empower the voter!
Why is the national holiday in the amendment?
Yeah why is it in there? Great question
At a guess, it is an attempt to ensure all voters are able to vote no matter their economic circumstance. As it is now, if you have a job that won't allow you to take a random Tuesday off, or you don't have any vacation days left, you might not risk voting.
I think the idea is that not having a holiday penalizes those of us who have jobs, but rich folks who sit by the pool and sip champagne for a living have no trouble making it to the polls. So the holiday is also a way to reduce the influence of the rich in politics.
If you want to start a dialogue about election financing, then please support my WhiteHouse.gov petition in support of comprehensive campaign financing reform.
Any petition created on WhiteHouse.gov's petitioning site that gets more than 5,000 signatures will be "addressed" by the Administration. Your guess is as good as mine what that means. But it couldn't hurt to make your views known. (There are also many other petitions up on WhiteHouse.gov available for signing that need your help.)
Here's the link to the petition: http://wh.gov/4vd
If you're scared of shortened links from random people on comment boards, here's the full link: http://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/i…
I look at Dylan Ratigan every day for an hour and truly believe that greed and corruption have plagued our federal, state, and local politicians for at least the last 100 years. It is imperative that we, as a nation, educate ourselves with knowledge of our country's colonial inception, the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the American Revolution, and understand the underlying principles of our democratic republic. If we understand the U.S. Constitution's 7 articles and 27 amendments, we can then further comprehend, that this new amendment will be our 28th, providing it is ratified.
I am very pleased with Dylan Ratigan's work on MSNBC and believe we are like-minded, because I, too, am for the proposed 28th amendment and have recently sent our Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, an e-mail indicating that we needed a "term limit amendment." He has not yet responded but I would imagine this would work against his selfish interests.
With Dylan's 28th amendment, taking money out of lobbying/campaign contributions, and a 29th amendment, which would limit terms to prevent statesmen/women from transforming and becoming politicians. We are in dire need of such reform and it is by far, long overdue!
Corporations are entities that get federal government financial support in the way of taxpayer funds to build their businesses, advertise them, giving additional money in the form of never-ending tax breaks, training in the best way to move their operations offshore, etc. Yet at the same time they're people! When it comes to giving huge donations to political parties, they insist they are people and they have the same first amendment rights that we do. Corporations get to double-dip, as each of their employees have a vote and right to donate, and the corporation itself another vote and right to donate. This outrageous double-speak comes straight from Orwell's 1984..
Congress is always talking about "entitlements", but, never in connection with themselves. They need to be dependent upon the same health and retirement programs that the rest of are. Social Security and medicare are NOT ENTITLEMENTS, but congress's health and retirement programs are.
I think people are too afraid of our government to get behind this idea.
It is NOT the government that instills the fear! It is the wealthy special interests, which have every politician in every state government and in Washington in a money-backed hammer-lock, and choke-hold.
Fazal.. good thought however people have been concerned about the lobbyists.. would TOTALLY control and put those term limited politicians in place every few years. Continuity has its place. BUt these long in the tooth AKA long dangling pocketed politicans need to be shown the door. If the average American Woke UP STOPPED WATCHING. Dancing with the Stars, American Idol and paid attention to what was happening, we would not have gotten into this mess. How many of you know the name of US Senator wife who was on the ENRON BOARD way back when and how he managed to pass legislation that did away with the Glass Stegal Act..? Probably no one. I am one of the few lame brains who bothers to read those bios that come wtih the proxies for stock votes. Do you ever look at who serves on this board and that? Has anyone bothered to see the movie, FOOD INC? You should. ANd fast. I totally support what is going on down in the Wall Street park by the protestors. Speak out America. I wish I had copyrighted my flag idea 3 years ago
Nothing attempted, nothing done. Excellent idea, but my fear is that it will be killed by the do nothing congress who will stand to loose the support of their wealthy campaign contributors. We must do what ever is necessary to level the playing field, but more importantly, we must prevent millionaires and billionaires to drive policies that will render the middle class and the working poor in this country, impotent. Reducing the power hungry greedy corrupted American haters of their influence in government will be quite a hurdle, but with patience it is doable.
What we need to do is set it up like England 4 to 6 weeks elections with debates giving each canidate 500.00 for office supplies each with equail air time and print paid for by the election fund
dylan it will work
Albert Einstein siad some thing to this effect.
It is not evil I fear the most because evil shall always exist. It is the people that see the evil and do nothing about it thatI fear the most..
So many americans have stared at evil every day enabled evil and greed to grow day in day out..
For instance security guards in seattle don't help ayoung girl being beaten right in front of them because company policy is to not intefear because the company could get sued and the workers hurt which might cost the company money also.
I was fired from a quicky mart job for going out and helping a young woman from being beat to death, I broke company policy and was fired for helping and putting company money at risk over a human life.
Shamefull acts of greed done day in day out, this may not change corruption in politics as much as every body hopes, but I feel it must be tried and it just might work out great. Also it will put mud in politicians eyes(corrupt ones..meaning most) if it gets some media attention as well as gets up for vote.
There is no reasonable legal argument that backs up the SCOTUS majority decision on Citizens United. Even if you accept the ridiculous premise that "corporations are people", when they are REALLY government licensed assemblages of individuals whose sole purpose is to make as much money as possible, the assertion that money is "speech", as protected by the First Amendment, is legally and logically indefensible! If money were constitutionally protected "free speech", then EVERY anti-bribery law in American would be INSTANTLY unconstitutional as an infringement on "freedom of speech".__So there are two choices: 1) either let every con incarcerated for bribery out of jail, or 2) GET MONEY OUT of politics.__Some people who have been working on that for years are at: http://www.YouStreet.org. Former Senators Al Simpson and Bill Bradley are staunch supporters of this organization, and should be of great help in our effort.
Suggestion worth considering from Christopher on facebook:
No person, corporation, business, OR NON-GOVERNMENTAL entity of any type
GREAT IDEA!!!! BUT I THINK YOU SHOULD ADD TO THE PROPOSAL :" NOTHING OF VALUE," IN ADDITION TO THE GET THE MONEY OUT; WHICH WOULD ELIMINATE ANY BOONS TO THE DEDICATED MEMBERS OF OUR CONGRESS. AFTER ALL, IF I GIVE A ROLLS ROYCE TO A REPRESENTATIVE, ISN'T THAT THE SAME AS CASH?
THANK YOU FOR TRYING TO PUT THE BEST OF THE BEST IN OFFICE NOT THE ONE WHO HAS THE RICHEST FREINDS WHO NEED SPECIAL TREATMENTS FOR THEIR OWN QUEST AND THE MONEY FLOWS LIKE HONEY TO THE RICHEST. OUR COUNTRY HAS BEEN DUPED BY THE RNC AND THEIR RICH FRIENDS AND WILL TAKE TH USA TO THE BOTTOM FOR THE CHINA GOVM'T TO TAKE OVER. WHAT UNIFORM DO YOU WANT TO WEAR??? THINK ABOUT IT!! LOVE OF COUNTRY AND YOUR COUNTRYMAN AND TO GOD IS WHERE THE PEACE MOVEMENT NEEDS TO GO. I FOR ONE DO NOT WANT TO CHANGE MY UNIFORM OF THE USA FOR ANOTHER COUNTRY NO MATTER WHO IT IS.
Dylan, this thing is getting pretty big bro, but I think it's time to catapult it. We need you to make some appearences on Jimmy Fallon, Morning Joe, The Daily Show with John Stewart, and whatever our new Tea Party friends watch.
Everyone is talking about the inability of our congress to get anything accomplished for the American people, but I don't think that any of them have come to the woderful conclusion and call to action the you and Jimmy have. I don't know who's in charge of scheduleing on these other shows, but they need you on their shows. The American people need to hear your message, and while you have a loud horn now, I think it needs to be much bigger.
Maybe we could all flood the websites of these other shows, demanding that they all give you an interview about money in politics. We have nearly 100k people, thats enough to get some attention and take this to the next level. Dylan, all you have to do is go on television and tell all of us to message John Stewart all at once, overload their servers, then they will have no choice but to hear us.
This is the biggest issue of our generation, and everyone should be talking about it until we fix it.
Madison: There is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by… corporations. The power of all corporations ought to be limited in this respect. The growing wealth acquired by them never fails to be a source of abuses.” And so it is the Kochs and their billionaire elites have finally taken control of the Republican Party for the purpose of creating their own oligarchy. The checks and ballances have been delluded to the point you can't tell the difference between them.
Please be careful with the link posted. As soon as I signed the petition, my e-mail address book was hacked and tons of phishing spam was sent out.
Fire the U.S. Supreme Court!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dylan,
Here's a much better and more politically realistic alternative to the constitutional amendment you've been pushing for campaign finance reform. It's the public financing plan proposed by Yale Law School professors Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayres. Per the description in Wikipedia:
Voting with dollars.
The voting with dollars plan would establish a system of modified public financing coupled with an anonymous campaign contribution process. It has two parts: patriot dollars and the secret donation booth. It was originally described in detail by Yale Law School professors Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayres in their 2004 book Voting with Dollars: A new paradigm for campaign finance.[7] All voters would be given a $50 publicly funded voucher (Patriot dollars) to donate to federal political campaigns. All donations including both the $50 voucher and additional private contributions, must be made anonymously through the FEC. Ackerman and Ayres include model legislation in their book in addition to detailed discussion as to how such a system could be achieved and its legal basis.
Of the Patriot dollars (e.g. $50 per voter) given to voters to allocate, they propose $25 going to presidential campaigns, $15 to Senate campaigns, and $10 to House campaigns. Within those restrictions the voucher can be split among any number of candidates for any federal race and between the primary and general elections. At the end of the current election cycle any unspent portions of this voucher would expire and could not be rolled over to subsequent elections for that voter. In the context of the 2004 election cycle $50 multiplied by the approximately 120 million people who voted would have yielded about $6 billion in “public financing” compared to the approximate $4 billion spent in 2004 for all federal elections (House, Senate and Presidential races) combined.[8] Ackerman and Ayers argue that this system would pool voter money and force candidates to address issues of importance to a broad spectrum of voters. Additionally they argue this public finance scheme would address taxpayers' concerns that they have "no say" in where public financing monies are spent, whereas in the Voting with dollars system each taxpayer who votes has discretion over their contribution.
The second aspect of the system increases some private donation limits, but all contributions must be made anonymously through the FEC. In this system, when a contributor make a donation to a campaign they send their money to the FEC indicating which campaign they want it to go to. The FEC masks the money and distributes it directly to the campaigns in randomized chunks over a number of days. Ackerman and Ayres compare this system to the reforms adopted in the late 19th century aimed to prevent vote buying, which led to our current secret ballot process. Prior to that time voting was conducted openly, allowing campaigns to confirm that voters cast ballots for the candidates they had been paid to support. Ackerman and Ayres contend that if candidates do not know for sure who is contributing to their campaigns they are unlikely to take unpopular stances to court large donors which could jeopardize donations flowing from voter vouchers. Conversely, large potential donors will not be able to gain political access or favorable legislation in return for their contributions since they cannot prove to candidates the supposed extent of their financial support.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_ref…
I especially liked what You said, Dylan, at Zucotti Park the other night. About the Whale Oil people stopping the development of Electricity. I am assuming that was a reference to Nikola Tesla and what was done to him by men like J.P.Morgan, George Westinghouse, and the Rockefellers. Just as he was to give FREE ENERGY to the world, and these "money changers" realized if Tesla was successful they would not be able to put a meter on it and charge people massive amounts of money for energy. Or guys like Bruce DePalma, Edwin Gray, Stan Myers and the rest. There's a good reason that Jesus took a whip to the "money changers."
I agree we need to get money out of politics but this idea will take years to be realized. first it would not e adopted until after 2012 election then it would have to be passed, and then we would have to go through at least two election cycles to remove all those in congress that have been bought.
We do not have this long to wait. We need to demand all representatives that are taking money to step down, we need a clean congress, and we need this clean congress to implement the bill.
we have to end campaign financing by billionairs who then go on to control congress and the white house.. a joe 2 pack like myself is totally ignored.. we have to change the presidency from two four terms to one six year term.. the pres. spends the first two years being pres. then he spends years three and four, not doing the peoples business, but on campaigning and raising money so he can get his keista elected to a second term…he is then beholden to his benefactors..he belongs to them, just like in the movie ''the invasion of the body snatchers''
one example of the strangle hold this has on the presidency and congress is our blatantly one sided middle east policy..is this in the best interest of 309 million americans?… we eliminate this with a one six year term with public financing.. maybe a second six year term, but not consecutivly..
It is time for the 99% minus the tea baggers to vote out those that are in congress currently and put in a set of people who are 'of the people, by the people and for the people'!
I have a problem with it being posted on Huffington Post..Perhaps if Dylan had appealed to both conservative and liberal sites it could have had more of a bi-partisan reaction…As it is I see it’s the same old with Liberals just attacking… How about stop taking sides (I’m center right myself) and blaming others and we all say it’s our country forget your party and let’s work together ontaking out the trash.
Dylan your show to get money out of politics is a great idea that I hope happens however we all live in the real world and in the real world money pays the bills. So that means only the wealthy and famous will be able to run for office. Comercials that pays your salary is very expensive for a politician. It is there biggest overhead. How do you propose that candidates meet their overhead? Is MSNBC and other media outlets willing to give up the revenue that politicians generate.
America, take back your government! It's your's! Get the money out of the political process. Make America what it should be!
You can definitely see your enthusiasm within the work you write. The world hopes for more passionate writers like you who aren’t afraid to say how they believe. At all times follow your heart.