Proposed Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America: “Equal Time Amendment”

Proposed Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America

1.”The principle of “equal time” shall govern all elections for public office in the United States, whether local, county, state, or federal. “Equal time” means that each and every declared candidate for public office shall have equal access to all forms of media for the delivery of that candidate’s political statements. The purpose of “equal time” is to give the voting citizens adequate knowledge of each and every candidate’s qualifications and positions and remove the influence of private financing from political campaigns. Time shall be apportioned to each candidate without charge by all media having government licenses to broadcast or disseminate information, provided that commercial messages may be interspersed for the purpose of providing adequate monetary support to the organization producing the medium. ”
2.”The relevant executive agencies (eg, FCC) shall be empowered to make and enforce regulations that guarantee “equal time” is provided by all media.”
It is recommended that, in local elections, candidates be given time on a dedicated television channel sponsored by cable and satellite television companies. Organized debates could be one way of giving candidates time to speak.
For state and federal elections, it is suggested that declared candidates be limited to short statements on TV, say five minutes long, that can be interspersed with commercials as needed to provide the broadcasting companies adequate recompense for the air time used that would otherwise be used for other programming. The candidates can be given relatively unlimited space in newspapers, magazines, and on web sites, as this is much cheaper to produce.
It is further recommended that all political messages, whether for or against a candidate or relating to a particular piece of legislation, be required to be identified as to source or author, and that such messages be counted in the “equal time” calculations needed to provide maximum fairness in political dialogue.
The purpose of this requirement is to prevent anonymous political messages and to prevent private companies and individuals from purchasing time to convey messages that overwhelm the time given to the candidates they oppose.
It may be necessary to enact regulations that require a person purchasing time for a political message to also purchase an equal amount of time that will be given to those on the opposite side of the argument.
One of the most important reasons for this amendment is the possibility that organized crime figures could “take over” the political discourse with the injection of sufficient amounts of anonymous money. Under the Citizens United precedent, the Supreme Court has ruled that any individual or group can influence an election or referendum by using money, anonymously gathered and disbursed, to create such items as television commercials that endorse or denigrate specific candidates or issues.

Since money is neutral, that is, agnostic as to its origins, any cause or person can obtain a decisive advantage in a popular election or referendum with the application of sufficient amounts of money. With the added advantage of anonymity, any group, even one that obtained all of its funds through illegal enterprises, could obtain decisive advantages in elections.

Such an advantage, available even to organized crime, is dangerous to the very concept of open democracy. The danger is so great that significant steps must be taken to forestall the risk of taking over our government by organized crime figures.

In fact, even now, a significant aspect of organized crime has overtaken our government. I refer to the control by pharmaceutical companies of important parts of our administration, since this is the area with which I am most familiar. Pharmaceutical companies have tailored Medicare Part D to suit their profit-making needs. They have used the Food and Drug Administration to maximize their profit potential and minimize their risk of adverse administrative and legal actions by the government. In fine, the pharmaceutical companies have taken over the parts of government that relate to their profit-making potential, enabling them to maximize profits and minimize risk.

There are many other parts of government that have already been taken over by large companies through lobbying and undue influence. One example is the “military industrial complex” of which we were warned by President Eisenhower. Most areas in which the government is nominally required to exert control in order to prevent exploitation of people and diversion of resources have already been taken over by the industries which they are supposed to control.

The only solution to these take-overs is for the people to reassert control over their exploiters. The people must first learn, be educated, and understand who is their true master and who is their benefactor. Our true benefactor is the government, shorn of its lobbyists, with its rules and regulations controlling who can make money off of what enterprises and in what ways. The true masters, with their own best interests in mind, are the corporations and companies that try to bend the government to their will.

We, as the people, must re-assert our control over the government and remove the corporations and their lobbyists from their seats of power.