What's next on campaign finance reform? Two proposals.

Despite Sonia Sotomayor's statements supporting the constitutionality of restrictions on corporate contributions to political campaigns, it looks like McCain Feingold may be struck down, thanks to the majority of conservative assclowns infesting the SCOTUS.

So what's next?

I have two proposals. And both of them are designed to sidestep First Amendment issues.

First, I'd suggest implementing strict conflict-of-interest rules in the House and Senate. The concept is simple. If you're say a prominent member of the Senate Finance Committee, for example, your committee is about to go to work on an important bill on health care, and you just took a bunch of campaign money from health insurers and pharmaceutical companies who could be affected by the upcoming bill, well, that's a conflict of interest.

To solve these fox-guarding-the-henhouse problems, it's time to implement rules. Under the new rules, you would have two choices.

1. Give the money back.
2. Recuse yourself from work on the health care bill.

Simple concept. The corporate and individual donors can still donate all the money they want under existing rules, but if it creates a conflict of interest, they get their money back, or their senator can't do work for them.

The second proposal is designed to deal with PACs, and 527 groups who don't donate directly to politicans or candidates, but instead do things like putting attack ads on TV.

It's simple. Create a new income tax for PACs, 527 groups and all other groups, on money used for political purposes. Make it a 50% tax. Kind of harsh, but it's designed to create a fair playing field. Revenues from that 50% tax on political money goes straight to the FEC, to provide public funding for political campaigns.

In other words, the more money that corporations and rich assholes spend on political groups, the more public financing money becomes available to politicians and candidates to put forth messages that can be used to counter them.

Sound like a plan? The beautiful thing is that both the conflict-of-interest rules and the political contribution tax do not infringe on the First Amendment in any way. They just change the rules of the system so legalized bribery is less effective.

No person or entity may donate to any candidate for office for whom the Donor is ineligible to vote at the time of the donation. That disallows corporate donations altogether of course since corporations don't vote.

Clearly, the purpose of Representatives is that they represent the voters in their districts, not a national party or national interest. Likewise with Senators now, though their original purpose was to represent the State.

I want to be represented by a representative, not a career politician.