{"id":2112,"date":"2009-06-17T16:56:02","date_gmt":"2009-06-17T23:56:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/wordpress\/?p=2112"},"modified":"2009-06-17T16:56:02","modified_gmt":"2009-06-17T23:56:02","slug":"funding-for-candidates-dependant-on-their-campaign-promises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/uncategorized\/funding-for-candidates-dependant-on-their-campaign-promises","title":{"rendered":"Funding for candidates dependant on their campaign promises"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, I had a idea that might be a little hard to implement, but would bring some honesty back to the democratic process.<\/p>\n

I think individual donors should be allowed to specify which campaign promise led to their donations for a candidate. Then, if the candidate failed (by a impartial observer) to at least attempt to live up to the promise, they’d have to refund the donations. This might literally mean they couldn’t run the next election cycle, because they would be too far in the hole to their donors.. but it would be a way of making sure that politicians “stayed bought”.<\/p>\n

The problem with the current situation is that a politician can promise anything they like – and them completely forget every any promises they want after they get to office. If they upset the majority this way, they might not get reelected – but if they just upset a minority – making promises to that minority to get them extremely motivated in getting the pol elected, and then ignoring the promises after their election – nothing bad will happen to the pol, even though they’ve behaved dishonorably.<\/p>\n

(This is partially in response to this article<\/A>\u00a0 – I’m disappointed, but not particularly surprised. Supporting rights for LGBTs is just not a centerist thing to do, and Obama is playing to the center, probably in the hopes of getting reelected. (says the Sheer, who is clearly not a expert at politics)<\/p>\n

Personally, I’d rather he didn’t care about the next term – that would show that he was a truly honorable politician, willing to do the right thing on every issue even though it cost him 4 years in office*. But that’s also too much to ask for, as well I know. I guess I can always hope that after he no longer has to worry about reelection – assuming he gets reelected in 2012, and the world doesn’t end – he’ll deliver on his earlier campaign promises<\/p>\n

* = of course, then I’d also want him to be honorable enough to bow out in favor of a Dem candidate who could win<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, I had a idea that might be a little hard to implement, but would bring some honesty back to the democratic process. I think individual donors should be allowed to specify which campaign promise led to their donations for a candidate. Then, if the candidate failed (by a impartial observer) to at least attempt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2112"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2112\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}