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Comment by protomyth | Hacker News Reader

I'm fine with banning corporate money in politics as long as all groups are banned from giving money (e.g. unions). U.S. Citizens should be able to contribute individually in a non-tax deductible manner as they want to a candidate directly or a registered political party, but no other group or person. The obvious exception would be the political parties themselves (new tax status or maybe it exists now).

I would also like all public money pulled. We have a budget crisis and need to stop all non-essential spending. If you cannot convince people to give you money then you are not going to convince anyone to vote for you either.

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I don't think this is practical. So say your friendly neighborhood oil company sends a memo out to its employees saying "We need to drill in the [Insert National Park] to stay in business. So if you want to keep your job you need to send money to politicians that will allow us to drill in [Insert National Park]"

If that statement is true and the company would really go out of business than it isn't coercion. But the end result is the same as you have now.

The same is true for Unions just substitute "You have to elect this person or they'll gut your social security and take away your pension" in place of drilling.

There are actually laws about the corporation doing that exact thing already. Unions are a little trickery because they do use member money to do such things, but the principal is the same. Lock a few executives up when they pull this stunt and reward the whistleblower.

Look at the flip side: consider all the companies standing against SOPA/PIPA right now. Do you want to prevent them from even drawing attention to the issue? Do you want to prevent employees from taking any steps at all to raise awareness among like-minded people, many of which might work at the same company?

yes, yes I do - the media companies caused the law in the first place - individuals raised the defense

The obvious problem with this is that it only allows the interests of those willing to pay to be represented. Not everyone has the means to financially support a politician or cause. Also, as a permanent resident, don’t even get me started on the fact that I can’t even vote in local elections! I pay the same taxes... More if you count the bloody USCIS fees - how many times do I have to pay $85 for digital fingerprinting?

You are only represented today if you pay, this just means that the big troughs are closed and they need to start concentrating on individuals.

A couple of years back (90's) the majority of money collected by the Republican party where from donations in the amount of $50 or less (counter-intuitive but that why I remember it). So the small amounts matter.

Youtube and social media will probably gain in importances, so even no donors will have a bigger say than they did 20 or 30 years ago.

How does permanent resident (married?) work and is there a path to citizenship?

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