Need honesty in government? - Get Honesty Bond
Posted in Walking Towards Liberty by R Lee Wrights on October 12th, 2009 by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster
“Hi, I’m from the government - I’m here to help you.” “Of course I will respect you in the morning.” Some lies are jokes because they are so obvious.
Sex will probably never change. But we can no longer accept dishonesty in politics.
Americans are frustrated with the seeming impossibility of electing candidates who follow through with the promises they make to raise money, win office, and get your vote. Elected officials who can resist the insanity now infecting government are an endangered species.
These sad facts have become truisms, with reams of jokes making the rounds that rely on what has become a fact of American life.
This is true today and it was true in the early 90s when the idea occurred to me to promote what I called the Liberty Pledge. The idea was inject accountability into the electoral system by allowing candidates to sign a pledge to their potential constituents assuring voters they would keep their campaign promises.
At the time I was helping out on a campaign for Dolores Bender White, Republican candidate for 20th State Senate in California. Dolores’s introduction to politics had come when she decided to declare at the last minute the election before. She lost, but learned a lot; Dolores was a quick study. She was determined to win and filed for the same race in the wake of the resignation in November, 1991, of long time State Senator Alan Robbins. Robbins had agreed to plead guilty to charges of racketeering.
Dolores filed to run in the special election that followed early in 1992. This time she faced a different incumbent. David Roberti, the god-father of gun control in California had, at least on paper, moved into the district. Roberti’s war chest was huge and not surprisingly, the barnacle-encrusted incumbent won handily.
The recall campaign qualified in April of 1994, just months before the regular primary.
It had been my pleasure to write the rather nasty, but funny, attacks to amuse, delight, and motivate conservatives and libertarians. They outraged liberals. Dolores ran the successful recall campaign against Roberti, the first in California in more than 80 years. Dolores was incredibly hardworking and persistent. Others have claimed credit, but unjustly.
The idea for the pledge really came about because of my experiences in the same district with State Senator Alan Robbins, the incumbent in that district for many years. I had run against him myself as a Libertarian in 1982 in a four way race. Naturally I lost. I would have been horrified if I had won.
You could not be involved in politics there at all and not know how dishonest most of the office holders really were. I was actually reading the pot holder with Robbin’s name on it when it occurred to me that things could be different if politicians had to keep their promises. The pot holder was rather ragged, sort of like American political honor.
“What if they had to resign if they failed to keep their promises?” I thought to myself.
Never one to let grass grow under my feet I wrote up the Pledge, made some literature, had a banner made and took them with me to the next Republican Convention. I intended to take up the project in earnest after we got back but the death of my sister Anne of a heart attack in Japan intervened. At that convention I had shared the idea with an old friend of mine named John Fund. He asked me for a piece of the literature and I was delighted to share.
And that would be the whole story except for events that took place some years later. You can read about it here.
In 2000 many things had changed in my life. I had discovered that John Fund was honesty challenged like so many politicians; he had lied to me about his relationship with my daughter. She and I had gone through a period of alienation that had ended when I discovered that she was telling me the truth about Fund and her relationship with him. Many revelations, large and small, had been forthcoming. One minor, amusing, point had been that Fund had used my idea as the basis of what later became the Contract with America.
Initially, I did not mind. However, when it became clear that it was a contract on America this changed. There was no enforceability in the PR campaign they used to take the House in 1994, just oozings of rhetoric never intended to enact change. Spin, spin, spin. Newt is at it again today. This time spinning himself as an exemplar of good Christian values while married to yet another much younger woman, having dumped the wife who made his success possible.
Decoupling the accountability from the potential for profit became a trademark for the NeoCons as they converting the rhetoric of Libertarianism into the newest justification for corporate profit. It was a sad end to what we had thought would be a real revolution.
I had discovered in 1997 that Fund had a reputation for stealing ideas so I was not particularly surprised; many young policy thinkers had been urged not to send him their unpublished work. I learned that from the boy friend of another one of my daughters who was then worked at Reason Foundation.
Accountability and how to enact it grew as an issue for me through the next years. But again I was busy. I was, and remain, the full time caretaker for my eldest son who had suffered two major brain injuries, the result of first a motorcycle accident and then a suicide attempt in which he shot himself through the brain. I considered many approaches for redressing the frightening trend in politics. Then I unearthed the original artwork for the Liberty Pledge.
Recycling time.
Holding politicians accountable had even more appeal to me than it had in 1993. Thus was born the Honesty Bond.
The Honesty Bond is intended to provide voters with a way to enforce fulfillment of the promises that flow so lavishly from the lips of candidates before they have transformed themselves into elected officials. The Bond provides a means for removing from office those who deceive their trusting constituents. If applied vigorously Honesty Bonds could turn the tide of dishonesty in American politics.
Politicians will not like the idea, a sign it would work.
This is really for their own good, you know. Some candidates are really honest people who will be relieved that there is a means to exact a simple standard for just doing the right thing. It will help the honest by creating a brand name. The honest should be encouraged. Others will appreciate the opportunity to win support over candidates who refuse to be accountable for their promises. These will be nudged into honesty and then forced to deliver.
Motives will not alter the fact that a tool will have been forged and placed directly in the hands of voters who desperately need a way to call government into account.
The Honesty Bond is a bond taken out to ensure a candidate for office complies with the promises made while running for election. It remains in force the entire time the elected official is in office. It is a bond just like those maintained routinely by such professionals as accountants, brokers, insurance agents, and house cleaners. The candidate pays for the bond themselves, accounting transparently for the source of the funds. The money is produced and the bond guaranteed at the demand of the constituents. It is up to us.
The amount paid out to create the bond will represent the cost of removing the honesty-challenged elected official from office if the official does not automatically resign. You should also get them to sign a promise to do so. I feel very good about recycling this idea and denturing it with the teeth I originally intended it to have.
I hope you agree and start putting teeth in your own local group. Insist your candidates become bonded. Do not vote for any candidate unwilling to stand behind their word, putting their money where their mouth is. Talk is cheap and this way they will respect us the day after they are elected.
Installing accountability 101 will be truly empowering to all of us. The truth. Simple honesty. Transparency and accountability. We need them now more than ever. Get Honesty. Bond them today.
Melinda Pillsbury-Foster is the author of GREED: The NeoConning of America and A Tour of Old Yosemite. The former is a novel about the lives of the NeoCons with a strong autobiographical component. The latter is a non-fiction book about her father and grandfather. Melinda is an associate editor for Liberty For All and can be reached at the.melinda@yahoo.com.
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October 13, 2009 @ 2:32 am
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