ecotopics

Public Campaign Financing

This page includes links to organizations promoting public campaign financing, quotations regarding campaign financing and bribery, and public survey polls. One of the most important ways for U.S. citizens to protect the environment is to help enact laws similar to those already in place in Maine, Vermont, Arizona, Massachusetts, New Mexico, and North Carolina that provide voluntary public campaign financing funds to qualified candidates (known as "Clean Money, Clean Elections" (CMCE) campaign finance reform). See how you can help in your state at Clean Money, Clean Elections In the States.

Organizations Promoting Public Campaign Financing

Quotes

"Unless the mass retains sufficient control over those entrusted with the powers of their government, these will be perverted to their own oppression, and to the perpetuation of wealth and power in the individuals and their families selected for the trust." Thomas Jefferson

"Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder." George Washington, letter 1779

"It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war." Abraham Lincoln (1864)

"Our government...must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests (which) corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics... The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have themselves called into being. There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done." Theodore Roosevelt

"[The incessant fund-raising both by the president and lawmakers] gives the American people the impression, which is not always erroneous, that to get legislation passed or decisions made, you've got to contribute money in a so-called legal bribe." Jimmy Carter

"Whoever directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers or promises anything of value to any public official with intent to influence any official act; Or, being a public official, directly or indirectly, corruptly demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally or for any other person or entity, in return for being influenced in the performance of any official act, shall be fined under this title or not more than three times the monetary equivalent of the thing of value, whichever is greater, or imprisoned for not more than fifteen years, or both, and may be disqualified from holding any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States." United States Code, Title 18, Chapter 11, Section 201.Bribery of public officials and witnesses

"We must put an end to the bribery that poisons our democracy and poisons all of us and our very earth." Doris Haddock, author of Granny D: You're Never Too Old to Raise a Little Hell

"Nothing illustrates what afflicts our democracy so well as this: 94 percent of candidates who spend the most money win." Former U.S. Senator Dale Bumpers

"Fund raising has a corrupting influence on all of us." Former U.S. Senator Paul Simon

"Democracy is threatened when the candidates we elect and laws we enact hinge on how much money is spent. To claim that campaign spending is a legitimate exercise of free speech is to deny the constitutional principle that each one of us counts. A donor who gives $100,000 gets a lot more free speech than the assembly-line worker, who cares just as deeply about the issues but doesn't give because he can't afford to and doesn't vote because he doesn't think his views matter unless his interests happen to coincide with those of the big donors, and they seldom do." Former U.S. Senator Dale Bumpers

"Money is to politics what acid is to cloth-it eats away at the fabric of democracy. Democracy doesn't have to be a commodity that is bought and sold. Most politicians enter politics to do good, not to ask for donations. There's no reason we can't have a political process in which everyone's voice can be heard, in which dissent is respected, and in which candidates run on the strength of their ideas, not the weight of their wallets." Former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley

"Our elected leaders are consumed by the need to raise election funds from special interests, and they no longer are able to represent the needs of the people or of our ravaged earth." Doris Haddock, author of Granny D: You're Never Too Old to Raise a Little Hell

"I want to see people running campaigns without fund-raising pressures, and serving in elected office knowing their only debt is to the voters. Imagine a political system where the worthwhile things people do in their communities count for more than the size of their wallets. Imagine people actually participating." Paul Rogat Loeb, Soul of a Citizen

Survey Results

65% favor campaign finance reform to ban "soft money" contributions to political campaigns (with 12% opposing and 22% answering "don't know").
78% believe that large political donors have too much influence on "which candidates become presidential nominees."
80% believe that big companies have too much power in influencing government policy, politicians, and policy makers in Washington. 69% believe that public opinion has too little power in Washington.
68% believe that donors make campaign contributions because they "hope to have more access and influence over these candidates."
61% agree that "contributors to Congressional campaigns get more than their money back in terms of favors and special interest legislation" (with 20% disagreeing and 19% not sure).
81% agree that "corporate greed and shortsightedness are harming our country."
76% believe that large companies have too much concentrated power.

Current campaign reform survey results from Public Agenda

Sources for Survey Results

http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/
index.asp?PID=289
http://www.publicagenda.org/issues/pcc_detail.cfm?
issue_type=campaign_finance&list=3
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=364
http://www.publicagenda.org/issues/pcc_detail.cfm?
issue_type=campaign_finance&list=4
http://www.publicagenda.org/issues/pcc_detail.cfm?
issue_type=campaign_finance&list=4
http://www.culturalcreatives.org/Library/docs/
NewPoliticalCompassV73.pdf
http://208.240.91.18/democ96.htm