Buffett should back key reform

To the editor:

Warren Buffett was on the cover of TIME magazine recently. The cover story discussed his many laudable points about how to improve life in America, and noted the inspiration he took from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?s observation that, ?It may be true that the law can?t change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless.?

Speaking of laws to restrain the heartless: Mr. Buffett will never see the sensible tax policy that he feels is the best way to curb Wall Street excesses, market volatility, excessive executive pay and corporate misbehavior ? unless we change the current system of political campaign financing. If he wants to really do something about this, Mr. Buffett needs to put his considerable financial resources and influence behind two key reforms.

First, Mr. Buffett needs to help us get the special interest money out of our political/electoral process. This means ensuring passage of the federal Fair Elections Now act, so candidates for Congress and the Presidency no longer have to be on the take from Wall Street, corporations, K Street lobbyists or anyone else. For Iowans, he can support the VOICE (Voter-Owned Iowa Clean Elections) act. Once elected representatives can opt out of the money race and govern on behalf of the people, tax policies like those that Mr. Buffett favors will actually have a chance of being enacted.

The second reform for Mr. Buffett to support, which is closely related to the first, is a Constitutional amendment ending the fictions that corporations are persons and that money is the same thing as free speech. These two fictions are the primary reasons that Congress and the Presidency are for sale, and these two fictions led directly to (among many other debacles) the 2008 global financial meltdown, subsequent $14 trillion bailouts for the big banks, and all of the human and social suffering that has ensued.

If Mr. Buffett really wants to see America become the kind of country that he talked about in TIME?s Jan. 23 cover story, he needs to support these two reforms publicly and contribute generously to Public Campaign, Public Citizen, and the many other advocacy groups across the political spectrum that are promoting these key reforms.

? Patrick Bosold, Fairfield