If They Won’t Get Money Out Of Politics, All of Their Campaign Promises Mean Nothing
It's election time again and the candidates are filling our mailboxes, their campaign web pages, and the ads we see with promises of the good things that Pennsylvanians want: Affordable healthcare, a liveable wage, a lower cost of living and stopping the construction of AI data centers which are already ballooning our electric bills. Candidates say they will solve these problems using "common sense" solutions - telling us, in effect, that if we elect them, they will go to Harrisburg or Washington and talk sense to those politicians and straighten everything out.
This fantasy of how politics works, that it is a battle of ideas and that, if only we elect the right people or the right party, good, sensible ideas will win out, ignores the underlying fact that the "problems" that make life so hard for so many are, for a much smaller group of people, the "solutions" that make life so nice for them. On the other side of each "problem" are people who do not want to see the problem fixed, at least not if fixing it is going to cut into their ability to get wealthier.
While we see a dysfunctional and extremely expensive healthcare system and people stuck in medical debt, they see a system that they are tapped into, one that allows them to make a lot of money, for some all they need to do is cash their shareholder checks. While 70% of the country is barely getting from payday to payday, they see a wonderful, profitable, low-cost labor force. While we see the cost of living continuing to go up, they see the companies they own grow bigger by swallowing competitors and raising prices. While we see data centers muscling into our communities, spoiling our water, and raising our electricity bills, they (mostly billionaires) see opportunities to make enormously more money by building facilities in a far-away land called Pennsylvania, where ignoring the locals and sticking them with the bill is the way business is done.
“This isn’t simply a battle of ideas. It is a battle of political power.”
This isn't simply a battle of ideas. It is a battle of political power. Political power is the ability to make the future what you want it to be. Today in Pennsylvania, the few have almost all of the political power. What the few want for the future is the "solutions" that are in place right now. If their profitable solutions are creating problems for you, well, too bad for you.
How do the few get to have the future they want while the many get the problems? They buy it. Pennsylvanians currently allow wealthy people and corporations to turn their wealth into political power - power that rightfully belongs to each of us. For the wealthy, it is a small price to pay to keep their profitable solutions in place.
So, whenever we see a candidate who is promising to solve our problems but has no plans to get political power back in the hands of the citizens, we call, "Bullshit!" Candidates who are not backing-up their promises of good things with a plan to get big money out of politics, are either naive or they think we are.
We can change the laws so that political power cannot be purchased. We need lawmakers who are willing to do that.
In order to identify candidates who are willing to take back our power, we asked the candidates in competitive primary races for the Pennsylvania House and Senate if they supported three specific reforms to reduce the ability of the wealthy to turn their money into political power:
Reform #1. Ban unlimited gifts from lobbyists to legislators and public officials.
Reform #2. Put limits on currently unlimited campaign contributions.
Reform #3. Make the Citizens United decision irrelevant with a state-level ban on all election spending by corporate, union, and other organizations using a strategy known as "The Montana Plan".
We also asked them to post their positions on money-in-politics issues and other democracy issues on a page of their campaign website - something we call a "Democracy Page". You can see the results here.
