This week, Sen. Clementa Pinckney (D-Jasper) and Rep. Joseph Neal (D-Richland) introduced legislation to address the corrupting influence of money in politics. They have sponsored bills that would provide an alternative to politicians taking cash from industries they regulate.
“There has been much hand-wringing about the payday lending industry’s large infusion of cash to legislators,” said Sen. Pinckney. “While most people shake their heads and say ‘that’s politics,’ the truth is that it doesn’t have to be this way.”
Rep. Neal said, “Legislators feel trapped in a system of private funding for public office, and there is a perception that legislators pay more attention to the concerns of their contributors than they do to their constituents. We looked at the increasing cost of running for public office and the decreasing number of candidates, and came up with a workable and affordable plan to reduce the control that money has on our elections and our decisions as legislators.”
While the Clean Elections Act has been introduced every session since 2000, this year there is a separate bill for a study committee to create a pilot program.
The legislation would bring comprehensive campaign finance reform that provides a system of public funding for candidates for legislative and statewide offices who pledge not to accept any private contributions and agree to spending limits. “Clean Elections” as the initiative is referred to in the states where it is practiced, would provide grants to qualifying candidates that are based on the average amount spent to win a particular office.
Obama Administration continues US military global dominance
Thursday, February 19th, 2009By Peter Phillips
Project Censored
The Barack Obama administration is continuing the neo-conservative agenda of US military domination of the world — albeit with perhaps with a kinder-gentler face. While overt torture is now forbidden for the CIA and Pentagon, and symbolic gestures like the closing of the Guantanamo prison are in evidence, a unilateral military dominance policy, expanding military budget, and wars of occupation and aggression will likely continue unabated.
The military expansionists from within the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, G. W. Bush administrations all put into place solid support for increased military spending. Clinton’s model of supporting the US military industrial complex was to hold steady defense spending and to increase foreign weapons sales from 16 percent of global orders to over 60 percent by end of his administration.
The neo-conservatives, who dominated the most recent Bush administration, amplified this trend for increased military spending. The neo-cons laid out their agenda for military global dominance in the 2000 Project for a New American Century (PNAC) report Rebuilding America’s Defenses. The report called for the protection of the American Homeland, the ability to wage simultaneous theater wars, to perform global constabulary roles, and to control space and cyberspace. The report claimed that in order to maintain a Pax Americana, potential rivals — such as China, Iran, Iraq, and North Korea — needed to be held in check. Their military global dominance agenda required forward deployment of US forces worldwide and increasing defense/war spending well into the 21st century. The result was a doubling of the US military budget to over $700 billion in the last eight years. The US now spends as much on war/defense as the rest of the world combined making American taxpayers the highest war tax providers in the world.
Obama’s election brought a moment of hope for many. However, the Obama administration is not calling for deceased military spending, or a reversal of US military global dominance. Instead, Obama retained Robert Gates, thus making Obama the first president from an opposing party, in US history, to keep in place the outgoing administrations’ Secretary of Defense/War. Additionally, Obama is calling for an expanded war in Afghanistan and only minimal long-range reductions in Iraq.
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