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Rick Hubbard receives national
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Click here for
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Need for Reform |
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For 224 years our democracy has endured. Yet it is in trouble today. It is threatened by the corrupting influence of big money contributions and special interests. The Problem: Money from these special interests heavily influences public policy by Congress and we all know it. This practice costs us hundreds of billions of dollars as citizens - amounting to $500 - $1000 per family! It limits and defines our choices of candidates. It defers, misdirects, and blocks legislation to change our national priorities -- even when these changes are in the common interests of American citizens. According to the Center for
Responsive Politics, 96 percent of the American people don’t
contribute a dime to any federal candidate or to the two major
political parties, and a check of $1,000 comes from one-tenth of
1 percent of the public. Our politicians thus are selected and
brought to us by the wealthiest, most powerful financial
interests in the nation, which helps to explain why millions of
Americans regard our elected public officials, our employees, as
representing "them" more than "us." Most Americans do not want our Congressional Representatives making decisions on legislation based upon which special interest groups will offer huge amounts of money to help win the next election. Increasingly we understand that we all pay hundreds of billions of dollars for these and for other benefits conferred by Congress on these special interests. A Few Examples: Vermonters of all backgrounds, interests and political affiliations understand that the power of big money from special interests treats all of us, Republicans, Democrats, Progressives, Independents, and Vermonters of other parties, with equal arrogance. We
all pay the higher prices for brand name drugs before being
allowed to buy cheaper generic substitutes, because Congress, in
return for $18.6 million in campaign contributions, passed
legislation to extend their drug patents longer, costing us as
consumers as much as $550 million a year at the pharmacy
counter. We
all pay higher prices for larger cars using extra gallons of gas
at the pump because Congress, in return for over $5.7 million
dollars in political contributions, has failed for the last 5
years to increase the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards
to require that the Automobile industry continue to manufacture
a mix of automobiles each year that are increasingly fuel
efficient. The higher prices for larger cars using extra gas at
the pump cost us an estimated $59 billion a year. We
all pay more taxes to our federal treasury because Congress took
contributions from the broadcasting industry and, four years
ago, gave away a new digital part of the public airways for free
to existing licensed broadcast companies.
The Federal Communications Commission estimates that not
auctioning off the right to make money using the public airways
for digital transmission cost our federal treasury about $70
billion dollars. That’s over $700 per American family we have
to make up in our taxes. Taken
together, we all pay hundreds of billions of dollars for these
and for other benefits conferred by Congress on these special
interests. We pay part of this money out of our wallets at
places like the pharmacy counter and at the gas pump. We pay
more money from our checkbooks, for higher taxes to replace the
money that never came into our federal treasury, due to
Congressional subsidies and gifts to selected industries. The Solution: To repair our democracy, we must replace big campaign donations from special interests with money on behalf of all citizens. We must provide our elected Congressional Representatives with proper incentives to again pass legislation on behalf of all citizens. We must broaden our choice of candidates to include those who are not independently wealthy or beholden to special interests. In sum, we must completely repair our democracy and restore faith and trust in our elected representatives and institutions of government. To accomplish this, we must enact legislation that addresses all of the following three areas; we must prohibit soft money in federal elections, we must provide public financing (an investment of about $10 per family/yr) for qualified candidates, and we must provide free broadcast time for qualified candidates in federal elections. In our federal budget we now invest over $280 billion dollars annually in our military to protect our democracy from threats from abroad. With an investment in public financing of only $1 billion dollars annually, (about $10 per family) we can protect our democracy from threats from within, and save an average American family as much as $500 - $1000. Consider the single previous broadcasting example that cost our federal treasury an estimated $70 billion dollars. That's an average cost of $700 per American family from this one example which could have been prevented by an investment of $1 billion, or $10 per family. Said differently, the savings in this one example justify the ENTIRE annual $1 billion cost of public financing for some 70 years. And this is just the tip of the iceberg of savings. Questions for this Election: So, given all this, why is our incumbent Senator so silent? Why don't we hear more about what the present system costs us as citizens? Why don't we hear more about why partial solutions won't save us a dime of the hundreds of billions of dollars the system now costs us? These are the questions we should be asking. An Alternative: I intend to give all Vermont voters: Independents, Republicans, Democrats, and Vermonters of other parties, a choice in the upcoming primary and general elections. You now can vote for a Senator who will work for truly meaningful campaign finance reform |
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ANNOUNCEMENT! |
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To allow Vermonters across all party lines to vote for meaningful campaign finance reform in the upcoming elections, I have run against Jim Jeffords in the Republican primary, conducted a write-in campaign in the Democratic primary, and am running in November as an Independent.
Here
are the actual vote totals for U.S. Senate candidates in the
September 12th primary, together with an estimate of the amount
of money spent by each candidate. Please be careful in comparing
the figures. Although I qualified across all party lines, Jim
and I were in the Republican Primary and Ed and Jan were in the
Democratic primary. Rick
Hubbard - 15,991
votes Spent about $15,000 Jim
Jeffords - 60,234 votes Spent about
$900,000 Over 3,300 Vermont voters have qualified me across all party lines, to raise the issues of national campaign finance reform and a shift in our national priorities in the upcoming elections. Click Here to Learn More. |
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My Pledge To You |
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| I will strive to conduct myself in this
manner! Click Here to Learn More |
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Join My Team |
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To be effective, I need your participation in my campaign.
Here are some ways to get involved (click
the following)
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Rick Hubbard Bio |
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I grew up in Middlebury and was educated at
the following schools:
University of Vermont, B.A.; Dartmouth's Amos Tuck School, M.B.A.; and Georgetown University Law Center, J.D. Then I returned home to Vermont and began to practice law. Learn More. |
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| My Walk For Reform | |
| To date I have walked over 400 miles and visited over 70 of Vermont's 251 communities to advocate for campaign finance reform. | |
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Rick walking in Marlboro |
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From April 10th - May 5th I walked the east side of Vermont, from Brattleboro to Derby Line. Click here for details From March 13th - March 16th I walked Rt 9 from Bennington to Brattleboro. Click here for details. From September 30th to October 15th I walked
the length of the west side of Vermont. Click
here for details. From November 2nd through November 7th I walked in Kentucky with 89 year old Doris Haddock who recently completed her walk across the entire United States to support campaign finance reform. |
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| "Granny D" as she is known has been remarkably successful in publicizing the need for campaign finance reform. We walked together for five days into Louisville, | |
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"Granny D" and Rick walking |
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| Kentucky where she delivered a speech in front of Senator Mitch McConnell's office. Senator McConnell led the successful filibuster last fall in the Senate that defeated efforts to prohibit soft money in Federal elections. For details on her walk, click on www.grannyd.com | |
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A more detailed discussion of the need for campaign finance reform. Details of how reform would work.
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Rick south of Rutland while walking west
side of Vermont |
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Rick near Woodford while walking across bottom of Vermont, March of 2000 |
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Rick at Canadian Border |
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Fred and Dorothy Tuttle |
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Murray Banks Introducing |
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Fred Tuttle |
