We Need a Populist Movement-Part 2: Governance

Follow the money.

I personally think that our nation's government has never been so broken or dysfunctional in my lifetime. And I completely agree with Larry Lessig on the cause: Congress is beholden to corporate interests above all else because their expensive elections are funded by corporate donations. This is the root cause; therefore, fixing how elections are funded is step one--priority one.

To say I was flabbergasted and horrified by the Supreme Court's decision to allow corporations to make unfettered and undisclosed contributions to our elected officials would be an understatement!

I truly am naïve enough to believe deeply in "We the people..."  We are a noisy bunch, filled with conflicted interests and ideas, but basically I think people believe in taking care of people.  Corporate interests believe in increasing profits, and all too often their focus is just on this quarter.  The future be damned.

And, regrettably, those who run the increasing number of "too big to fail" transglobal companies in this nation (another huge mistake) are raking in disproportionate levels of income.  I'm sorry, but in the world according to Tim, unless one cures cancer or AIDS or provides humankind with a clean way to live fossil fuel-free or some other noble gift to our species, no one is worth an annual income of $10 million or more--no one: not me, not you, not anyone else.

So how to address this mess in which we find ourselves:  government caring more about monied interests than the average person on the street?  I'm advocating for a populist movement:  support the Fair Elections Now Act.  You can learn more about it at Fix Congress First.  Fix Congress First has no political agenda, no party affiliation.  It's only focus is correcting how we fund our elections.

Until we return government back to "We the people..." we will continue to see our elected officials serve as the puppets of monied interests and not the people of this nation.

In the next day or two I'll publish another in this series.

Related Posts at tt.us

• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 1: Healthcare
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 2: Governance (this post)
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 3: Civil Rights
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 4: Journalism
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 5: Faith Practice