Our Political System

Posted by on Jun 30, 2015 in Insights | Comments Off on Our Political System

non-sequiter

I was approached by a lady with a clipboard at Sunday’s farmers market. She wanted me to sign some post cards in support of AB 700, The California Disclose Act. Basically it force campaign advertisements to disclose the real identities of their donors. Good idea? Yeah, duh! Will it pass? Not in your life. The politicians rely too much on donations from large corporations, some of which may not be popular to the electorate.

Anyway, in the cartoon above, Danae had gone to Washington to lobby for BOSS, the Benevolent Order of Superior Sisterhood. My point is, who are our representatives supposed to be representing? The people in their district who elected them or their donors.

What are we to do to regain popular control of our government? Here are some simple steps:

  1. If your representative votes for a bill that you don’t support or against a bill that you do support, don’t vote for them. Realize that they deal with hundreds of pieces of legislation a year, so pick the important bills and balance the results.
  2. If they sign a loyalty oath with their party and conform, consider not voting for them.
  3. If they accept contributions from organizations that you disagree with, consider not voting for them.
  4. If they subscribe to practices, such as pork barrel politics, consider not voting for them.

If enough voters start doing this, our representatives might get the idea about who really has the power to elect them.

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