Please don't stop at campaign reform

[Al KOlwicz <AlKolwicz@qwest.net>]

The solutions being offered to the problem of "money and influence in politics" range between inadequate to illegal.  I oppose most of what is being proposed.  Who will be the power that will decide: who can qualify as a candidate?  Who is entitled to contribute, and how much?  By relegating this power to anybody is a severe constriction on our cherished concept of freedom and liberty.

There are more far-reaching alternatives that deserve consideration.  Examples (by no means a comprehensive list) are:

1.  Physically move Washington lawmakers back to their districts/states.  Dissolve the physical place of the House and Senate.  Dissolve the physical place of the Committee.  This change would place the lawmakers in contact with their constituents -- rather than the special interests.

2.  Change the procedures for creating laws.  An illustration of this would be -- in the case of budgets, require every lawmaker to prioritize (publicly) every line-item in the budget.  Then use a computer to calculate the aggregate top priority items.  Fund only those items that are rated above the budgeted revenue.  This will tend to eliminate low priority items.  Line items would be separable into multiple line-items by agreement of small numbers of legislators.  Until the process is fixed, one cannot fix the money and influence problem.

3.  Make it illegal for elected officials to spend time fundraising.  In no tother job that I know of can the employee spend so much time serving themselves.

4.  Provide a free website for every federally elected office.  Provide un-monitored sub-webs to anybody who wishes to be a candidate for the office.  Provide un-monitored subwebs for every special interest who wants to publish anything regarding the office.  Provide general discussion capabilities.  These web sites would provide voters with a consolidated place to see candidate information and rebuttals.  It would reduce the cost of reaching voters.

So, before locking into simplistic changes that will not work and will probably reduce freedom and liberty, I hope that the moderator will open to debate to more far-reaching solutions that will work, are constitutional, and preserve liberty and freedom.