OK! That makes a lot more sense and would be a great improvement over how we do it now.

ichabod,

Racism got into the issue because Obama’s supporters realized that it was, at the time, effective means of shutting down arguments against their Messiah. After all, nothing a racist says could be right…

Well that and pandering to the Blacks was necessary in order to defeat SWMNBN in the Democratic Primary.

I concur with your post.

It is common courtesy to allow the person at the podium to speak, as that is why people go to these things, to listen to the speaker.

I am neither a liberal or conservative. I think Wilson’s frustrated outburst may be forgiven considering what has happened in America this past decade.

I never heard Wilson say anything in respect to race or showing disrespect because of color. How racism got to be an issue is beyond me.

Let me reword this in a small way, then. The only people who should be able to contribute financially to any electorate is the individual, no groups or organizations. Individuals, of course, need a cap on their contribution limits like, say $2000. Obviously, this makes things substantially more difficult for organizations.

Just curious, but has anyone found a link to Rupert Murdoch’s solution to political soft money? I only heard it reference in TTC’s Game Theory lectures, and it sounded extremely interesting … I am curious why it fell through (probably both parties unanimously refused to participate). For those that don’t know the offer, the short version is that he was going to put up $1 Billion if the parties agreed to hold a vote on the elimination of soft money. If the bill passed, so be it. If the bill failed, however, he would contribute $1 Billion to the party that held the most votes in favor of the bill. There were other details, but this was more or less the meat of it.

Take the time to look at jonolan’s Big Donors list. You will notice that most entities are not “big business” but “big labor”. All of their money goes to Democrats while “big business” tends to cover all their bets by giving money more or less equally to both parties. So, who benefits most from this system?

About Wilson’s words. I take comments like the following into account when judging Wilson’s comment.

“you’ve heard all the lies” -Obama characterizing the criticisms of opponents to HR3200 in a labor day speech.

A large number of politicians are not particularly tied up with big business, especially the Democrats. They’re tied up with other special interest groups instead, ones largely antithetical to American businesses. Removing “big business” from the equation would only address part of the problem. Indeed it would unbalance the situation and make it worse for everyone.

You saw my earlier post on the Big Donors. Remove the “big businesses” from that list and tell me if you want to see who’s left running things.

As for congress’s lack of seriousness, the problem is simple … we allow our congress, and government officials in general, to be tied to big business. Personally, I like Rupert Murdoch’s approach to getting rid of soft money, but anyway it is done is fine with me. Until government is completely separated from business interests we will have this kind of crap in office. Our government is run by business interests and primarily works when their pockets are properly lined. They don’t care about the people that elected them, so long as they don’t do anything that vastly opposes the will of their constituents. Unless the people raise enough stink about business interests in public office, including but not limited to soft money, officials will always find ways to waste time. It is just a circus act, nothing more.