True campaign reform

1) No elected or appointed official who receives a pension for his/her government work can then go on to work with or for a lobbying group without forfeiting his/her pension.

Reason: It makes no sense to have an elected official use his/her job to further a career at voters' expense, and then work against the voters' interest.

2) All candidates shall have a cap put on the amount of money spent on their campaigns, beginning with the smallest political jurisdiction. The candidate running against an incumbent  shall be allowed to have an additional 50% to spend.

Reason: An incumbent has the advantage of name recognition and office and record. This levels the playing field a bit.

3) The campaign shall not be allowed to spend the money alloted to it until a specified date which should not be six months before the election.

Reason: This will help do away with the incumbents' needs to start fundraising while they are supposed to be working on legislation. This will also help because it eliminates the need for the outrageous sums of money spent on elections by parties and candidates.

Realistically I do not expect these points to be taken seriously by incumbents, political parties, TV networks, newspapers, radio stations or anyone else who makes money on elections.

But one can hope.

Beware of Bi-Partisan Compromises

While bi-partisanship occasionally works to improve legislation, it often leaves both sides unhappy. Compromise is only possible when both sides have a common goal and a common desire to succeed. When one side only wants to make the other side look bad, compromise is nearly impossible.

There's no satisfactory compromise on Gay Marriage or Universal Health Care, there are only compromises on ways to achieve those goals. Either you want everyone to have the right to marry or you don't. Either you believe everyone should have access to affordable medical care or you don't. Now, compromises are possible in determining how you achieve affordable medical care but not as to whether or not you should have it.

Here are two examples of the problem with compromise:

A group: All people should have the right to marry.
B group: No.
A group: Let's compromise- Only those over 35 years of age.
B group: OK, but only if they were previously married to a person of the opposite sex - and had the marriage annulled.
A group: In the interest of bi-partisanship and compromise we can go along with that.

A group: We should increase taxes on all those who make over $1,000,000 dollars a year.
B group: No.
A group: How about if we make it $1,000,000 dollars and they must have
$10,000,000 in the bank.
B group: How about $10,000,000 and $5,000,000,000  in the bank.
A group: In the interest of bi-partisanship and compromise we can go along with that.

Someone always ends up with the short end of the stick. Add in campaign finances, lobbyists and the need to get re-elected and the all of the public ends up with the short end of the stick.