... and reelects and elects those that aren't the corporate types to get hopefully a majority in the senate and house, we can start moving on the following necessary changes. We the citizenry need to have a grass roots movement that has their back too to combat the inevitable response by the wealthy uber class if their bought politicians are pushed out of power too.
1) Constitutional amendment overturning citizen's united that codifies:
a) corporations are NOT people and therefore all decisions that try to derive from a court clerk's decision that there was in that 1800's decision are null and void and need to be re-litigated as there is no stare decisis that supports that.
b) money is NOT free speech, and likewise.
This needs to be done in such a way that our fourth amendment rights in the 20th century are also protected and establishes ownership of content that we put in cyberspace online such as Facebook and Google Mail, etc. so that these companies can't just throw up their hands and say "Now that we aren't persons any more, the government now has the ability to come in and look at all of the data that we no longer own". Make it clear that we as individuals OWN the secrecy of that data, and therefore the government doesn't have the freedom to walk in and seize control of that. This should borrow from the precedent where they claim *ownership* of copyrighted and patented material in cyberspace as well, no matter on what fashion it sits on someone's computer that isn't owned by some "protecting" corporations' computer, etc. That precedent should be used for us to claim ownership of that private data based on tenets set by copyright law. If the amendment is done carefully, we won't have any kind of split between those of us that want the above constitutional amendment, and those that want changes protecting our fourth amendment rights in the wake of all of the domestic spying that has been going on.
2) Public financing of elections nationally, and hopefully we can get it passed in most states as well for state and local elections.
By getting the constitutional amendment for #1 passed, the precedent of having money not be free speech will allow us to regulate more how it is spent on elections too, and allow for restricting its expenditure by individuals and allow for matching funds that the Supreme Court overturned in Arizona when the right wing sued to stop these matching funds happening in Arizona where they had publicly funded elections.
3) Get rid of electronic voting systems, or have them minimally in place in a fashion that MANDATES that their source code be owned by the state, and not held privately by corporations like the company formerly known as Diebold.
4) Tear down some of the top two primary voting systems that have been put in place in places like California, Louisiana, and Washington, and that the rich and powerful (BOTH oil billionaires and so-called "liberal" wealthy individuals like Bloomberg tried to push along with corporate owned media like the Oregonian) TRIED unsuccessfully to push here in Oregon last election.
Instead go to a system that is already mandated in other countries if they don't have proportional representation noted as instant runoff voting. Instant runoff voting is done nationally in countries like Australia now, and a system like that would allow people to vote for third parties like Ralph Nader in 2000, but not "mess up" who wins, by having their vote still count for their "lesser of two evils" of their "lower" ranked choices of one of the two major parties. With Instant Runoff Voting, it is argued that Al Gore would have had a bigger margin of victory in Florida in 2000, which would have made it harder for them to steal the election the way they did. I believe there were more Nader voters than Buchanan voters then who would have had their second choice votes count for Al Gore then.
There might be tweaks needed to make sure that instant runoff voting is run properly, and also reported on properly, so that those elected know based on first round votes, who voters really voted for initially to see who they should align themselves with and what policies they should reconcile with with other party voters that helped them win.
Some people might say we should move to proportional representation the way many other countries have now. Ideally that would be nice, but I think many more radical changes not only with voting processes but the way our body of government is organized that would almost need a constitutional amendment to implement. Maybe down the road we look at that after we make a lot more fundamental changes first, but initially I think instant runoff voting would only tweak our voting systems, and in effect give us many of the benefits of proportional representation that winner take all for two parties voting system that we have in place now screws up.
5) Put in place a constitutional amendment guaranteeing people the RIGHT to vote, not to just not be discriminated against in their actions of voting, which is what is in place now. What is in place now is made useless if a Supreme Court now falsely concludes that there is "no longer discrimination in election systems" and therefore the Voting Rights Act had been in effect rendered useless in many states where it is needed most now. Then any ALEC efforts to try and do more voter disenfranchisement will be made illegal and violating people's constitutional rights.
6) We need to fix the after effects of the Telecommunications Act passed under Clinton proposed by Republicans which has let the media get to this level of oligarchic consolidation. Their needs to be newer legislation that breaks up these monopolies and starts to use the Sherman Anti-trust Act again to do so.
These would be good starts to getting in a newer system where money doesn't own the system, but we need to first get the right people in office that are prepared to start making the above changes. Those running for office should be challenged on whether they are ready to do all of the above items to fix our system, if they truly want to be a part of the "people's revolution" that is needed now and that many people I think are thirsting for out there in America, regardless of their party membership.
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