thatmattbone.com

Barack Obama becomes president

Boingboing reports today on the staggering cost of the bailout(s) thus far.  However, it’s easy to get lost in such huge numbers.  What’s a million? billion? trillion?

Fortunately the google comes to the rescue and we can quickly figure that the cost is around $13,000 per person  (4 trillion divided by 300 million).

What would happen if we just gave that amount of scratch away?  What would everyone do with $13,000?

If you’re awake and you have cable, turn on C-SPAN2 and watch the historic all-night Senate session about Iraq. It really is quite interesting to see the Senators talking on their own without mass media spin. Unfortunately these things are usually only on during the day (though you can catch the last hour if you get home early enough).

Update:
At this time Fox News is talking about a WWE wrestler, CNN is rambling about the Brumfield shooting, MSNBC is showing a prison special, CNBC is showing Donny Deutsch and how you can GET RICH, and the same for Bloomberg.  If this frivolity is not enough, MTV, the shiny things network, is celebrating our national stupidity with ‘Scarred,’ a show with “user-generated videos of mishaps and wipeouts.”

Slate has a compelling piece on campaign finance reform. They discuss the Ackerman-Ayres proposal, which would allocate $50 to registered voters. The voters could spend the money on candidates of their choosing. Even more interesting, is that donations from private individuals to campaigns would still be allowed, but the contributions would be funneled through the FEC to disguise their origins.

It certainly is an interesting idea. However, there are many glitches, though most are technical. How, for instance, would third party candidates become registered to receive money? It is already quite difficult to get third parties on ballots, and this system could potentially make third parties even less relevant. If implemented properly, the system could do the exact opposite, but that is one big if. Also, the ’secret algorithms’ used by the FEC to disguise the origins of money could be a huge point of contention. We already have enough voter confidence problems with the electronic black boxes tallying our votes, how much confidence would we have in black box donations?

No doubt this plan would wildly change politics, and something does indeed need to change. We’re in desperate need of well thought out policy. Reactionary politics gets us no where. Yet, as the article points out the dramatic changes are exactly the reason why this plan would never come to fruition; incumbents have too much to lose.