Padlock the Revolving Door!

Campaign finance reform isn’t nearly enough. To really get the influence of money out of politics, we need to keep ex-politicians out of corporate boardrooms.

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It’s hardly surprising that the McCain-Feingold-Cochran campaign finance reform bill continues to languish in the Senate, populated as that body is with Democrats and Republicans disinclined to limit the amount of cash they can raise from corporate donors. But even if the bill were to sail right on through Congress, it wouldn’t really help.

You can limit the amount that individuals can give to a campaign. You can ban soft money to political parties and hard money to individual candidates. You can even ban corporate contributions entirely. But a fundamental truth will remain: Politicians and corporate cash always find each other, generally at the expense of the interests of ordinary citizens.

The corrupting influence of corporate cash on elected officials goes much further than the typical access-for-cash quid pro quo. The vast coffers of corporate money are tapped in ways both indirect (consider Newt Gingrich’s and Hillary Clinton’s huge book advances) and blatant: a high-pay, low-work gig on a board of directors upon leaving office, for example.

What’s more, McCain-Feingold-Cochran and similar attempts to separate big money from politics are both constitutionally and politically problematic. For one thing, wealth itself isn’t always the enemy of democracy. Ross Perot’s millions financed the greatest challenge to the Republicratic duopoly since the Bull Moose Party. His Reform Party collapsed, but inspired the Greens. Everyone needs money; how could a new political movement get its message out to the American people without the ability to pay for TV time?

Campaign finance reform isn’t just a money issue. The real problem is the access enjoyed by corporate henchmen to men and women who are supposed to be working for us. The solution: Cut off that access.

The Constitution already prohibits certain types of citizens from running for office. If you’re a naturalized citizen, you can’t be president. You can vote if you’re 18 but you can’t become a senator until you turn 30. Why not extend that principle by saying that anyone who has been a corporate officer or high-ranking manager, or has held a substantial percentage of stock in a large corporation, shouldn’t be allowed to run for any political office? After all, if the last few decades have taught us anything, it’s that you can’t serve America and a corporation at the same time.

Once in office, the president, vice president, and members of Congress should not be allowed any interaction with any high-ranking employee or representative of a big corporation (we’re not talking mom-and-pop businesses here). That means no phone calls with old buddies with a lust for drilling holes in national parks. No e-mail exchanges with ex-frat brothers intent on hawking new weapons systems. No meetings. Nothing.

A CEO lockout may seem extreme, but consider our current situation: Now, only corporate execs and reps enjoy unlimited access to our elected representatives. And look where it’s gotten us. Can anyone doubt that we would have signed the Kyoto Accord on global warming if not for corporate influence? That we’d have socialized medicine? That the minimum wage would have kept up with inflation? That free trade agreements would at least include basic environmental and workers’ rights protections?

No comprehensive campaign finance reform package would be complete without carefully regulating the lives of former politicians. After leaving office, it should be illegal for a former public servant to accept any position working for a major corporation. Otherwise favors could continue to be doled out in exchange for future employment.

Naturally, there is absolutely no chance that these ideas will even be discussed in the halls of power, much less enacted. That fact — that we as a nation don’t even talk about such things — is as disturbing as the excesses of our cash-bloated political system.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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