On a new Goverment Part 1

I've long had a distrust for politicians . For awhile after the Democrats took Congress, I felt hope; now I'm not so disillusioned. The problem, in my opinion is that Senators and Congressmen are more concerned with 1) Money 2)Power

ALL politicians care about their jobs. They'll do whatever it takes to be reelected. In this day and age, the one with the greater war chest, wins. With ads space that runs very high, and small time contributions will not cover this. They will resort to using large sums of money gotten from Corporations. Of course, these businesses don't do this out of karma, they expect favors. And so the cycle continues.

The best way to eliminate these to factors, is to

1. put a term limit on Congressmen
2. to create a Public Campaign Fund.
3. create a large number of political parties with electable candidates.

The term limit could be, say, 6 years. After that, you can't be elected again. I know it seems radical, this will bring fresh blood into American politics and break up political capitol. With no re-election to plan for, Congressmen can finally do their jobs; represent their constituents, not Big Business.

I'm still not sure how best to approach Public Campaign Funds, but I know it's very important to implement. Every candidate will have the same amount of money to spend however they please. This will bring more then just the 2 viable candidates from today's system; more political parties with a varying views and platforms. Which leads to Point 3....

In this country presently, you have between Choice A & Choice B. A vote for a 3rd party candidate is virtually a vote wasted. However, what do we do when neither candidate represents us? We bite our tongue and vote for the lesser of two evils. But does that really make the system strong? (Washington warned against having many political parties; to be fair, he also warned us to stay out of Europe's business!)

How many voted for Bush in 2000, thinking "Well, at least he's not as stuffy as Gore!"? Americans deserve to be able to choose the best representative for them, who has at least some chance of being elected. Don't we want to be certain of who's finger is on the nuclear trigger?

I would suggest expanding the number of Parties to 6 or 7. With Public Campaign Funding, it would be possible to array 6-7 electable candidates with a wide spectrum of political beliefs for Congress or Presidential elections.

This wouldn't fix all our problems, but it's a good start. As someone said "Washington isn't so much a place, but a state of mind that needs to be erased."."