The Bernie Sanders App
Campaign finance reform? They have an app for that. The Bernie Sanders App.
Or they should.
Bernie & Finance Reform
I have already mentioned that Bernie could be more powerful than the President. I also noted that, while Hillary may or may not be correct that Senator Sanders is a one-issue candidate, his #1 issue is arguably the largest threat to our country, and even to the world: it is becoming increasingly obvious that government responds to donors, not citizens.
So how might Bernie implement campaign finance reform, without being President? How might he push through such reform, when it’s something that probably no elected official could hope accomplish?
And finally: How might Bernie implement campaign finance reform without even introducing a bill to Congress?
It’s important to remember that Bernie’s not a Democrat; he’s an independent. So he is not bound by a particular platform or ideology. He also has this huge following that he could grow dramatically, if he could pull supporters from all parties and ideologies. Which is important: people on all sides want big money out of politics.
A Major Problem with Campaign Finance Reform
With that, there is a pivotal but largely unrecognized problem in Bernie’s drive to restore power to the people. If the government doesn’t respond to voters, then how are we voters to reclaim our power by going through the government?
Because being President isn’t enough. It would take a revolution in all three branches of government. I personally don’t think Bernie could accomplish it from within the system, not even as President.
So rather than vote with our ballots, we need to vote with our feet.
And our dollars.
Consider a private sector approach for achieving campaign finance reform. I think that is something Senator Sanders and his Berning supporters could do, and Congress, Citizens United, and the Supreme Court be damned.
And because it’s a private sector approach, many conservatives would also back it.
The Bernie Sanders App
Imagine an app for cell phones, the Bernie Sanders App: we scan in a bar code, and it tells us how much the manufacturer donates to political campaigns, when compared to its gross revenues. It also tells us how much manufacturers of comparable products donate.
Ding.
At first only a few people would change their shopping habits. But a quick drop in sales of just a few points would damage many corporations. And even if the corporation can absorb the losses, the drop could still cost the CEO her job.
So suddenly there is a free market solution to big money in politics. Because once that part of the Bernie Sanders App is up and running, then the corporation’s supply chain would be examined. Maybe the corporation doesn’t contribute to political campaigns, but it buys from suppliers who do. Ding. Now there’s pressure against suppliers and producers who aren’t on the shelves, but who meddle in elections.
After that, it would also factor in private mega-donors, looking at how they make their money, what companies they own(ed) or work(ed) for, what boards they sit on, and what stocks they hold in large numbers. Those are dings against all of those companies. When their sales drop, his stocks drop, and all of the affected corporations will put pressure on him to stay out of the political arena.
Now, imagine the Bernie Sanders App also had GPS capabilities, and told me how the retailer I was visiting scored in terms of campaign donations. Ding. And it also looked at what brands they favor, and who their wholesalers are. Ding.
After that, the app would look at corporation lobbyists. Ding ding ding.
More Corporate Responsibility
With time, the Bernie Sanders App could add in data on all aspects of corporate responsibility: environmental impact, diversity, maternity leave, work environment. With each expansion of the app, the world gets a little better.
And Bernie could do it all without superdelegate one.
Ding.
The beauty of this is that it would cost next to nothing. The Open Source community would gladly build and maintain the app; and with Bernie’s leadership, his supporters would provide the research supporting the app, in a Wikipedia-type fashion.
There are some other possibilities, and I will cover those in future posts.
Pictures of Senator Sanders altered from a photograph by Gage Skidmore, courtesy of Wikimedia.
How appropriate that the app would be free!!
Even though I am a stove pipe hat Republican, I agree that the government’s responsiveness to the donor class rather than to the electorate is, if not the most important crisis facing our nation, it is certainly in the top three. The vote is a sledgehammer but campaign donations are a finely-calibrated laser scalpel that can sting, wound, cripple, or kill at the user’s will.
I am afraid, however, that (even though I am almost always in favor of ground up, distributed power solutions to problems) this proposal would probably have the effect only of driving the process underground or of a cycle under which the donors and candidates find ever more creative ways of moving the money under the radar such that the reporting system always lags. From an economic perspective, you are trying to build a disincentive for mutually beneficial transactions between willing sellers and willing buyers, something that is almost always a losing proposition.
What is called for, in my view at least, is something more radical. Strict terms limits. No one runs for re-election. Ever. Further, no one who has served one term in federal office may run for any other federal office for ten years, with the sole exception that the Vice President can run for President. While that would allow some corruption in the run for the initial term, it is in the later terms that the rot really sets in as donors make it easy for the candidate to avoid much of the pesky fund-raising–“let us host that dinner for you . . . .”
Plus, no one would be in Washington long enough to “go native.” Members of Congress would still be loyal to their districts rather than to the “institution of the House,” etc.
It would not be a perfect solution, but it would certainly make thing a lot better, and it would do so very quickly, and it would return us to the concept of citizen officials rather than a standing class of officeholders.
Good points. For the ‘underground’ aspects of campaign financing that you raise, that would be addressed in yet other apps. I will cover that in a future post.
However, I have to disagree with the term limits. First of all Edmund Burke — the father of conservatism — pointed out that statesmanship is a craft. And we proved that in Louisiana the hard way, with term limits. When the Legislators are all green, the power first gravitates to the governor. He’s term-limited too, but in 8 years Jindal just wrecked the state in order to carpet his ill-fated ambitions to the WH.
After that? Power gravitates to the lobbyists, and the bureaucrats. They’re not term limited, so they know the system, and if they get blocked this year, they’ll be back the next year. And the next. And the next. And the next…
So term limits limited us, while it empowered outside money, which ironically is the very thing we need to get rid of.
Term limits AND reform on lobbying. We really need to do something different because the system we are working with now is so broken, and so influenced by corporate money and NOT the will of the voters.
I am not for term limits because if we ever find a statesman who will represent the people, and that would be a big if, we will not want to get rid of him. I like the APP and it would work. Thanks Joe.
Thanks for the comment, Eddie. Please share with any Berners out there…