The Country of Perryland

First, I would like to invite you guys to exercise your imaginations. Once upon a time, there was a country called Perryland. Like the United States, this country has 320 million people. 150,000, or around .05%, of the population are named Perry. They have an extremely special power. In Perryland, there are two elections every cycle. The first is the Perry election, where only people named Perry are allowed to vote. The second is the general election, where everyone can. In order to run in the general election, candidates must first do well in the Perry election. Perryland is a democracy, but the candidates have to make it through the Perry election first. These candidates are dependent on both the Perrys, and the people. These two conflicting dependencies create a big problem for Perryland.

Perryland is America. Like Perryland, we have both the people’s election, and the “cash election”. “.05%” of America gave the maximum amount to any federal candidate, which is the same number of Perrys in Perryland. In 1788, James Madison declared “the federal government ought to be dependent on the people alone”. Our government, our congress, has evolved. Studies show that members of congress now spend more time raising funds than they do working. Congress now only works for around 100 days per year, and the number is slowly decreasing. In 2010, almost 2 billion dollars was raised for just over 500 candidates. Congress members now have a constant awareness about how every decision they make will affect their ability to raise money in the future.

Imagine a doctor working at a medical school. The doctor has to decide which of these competing drugs she should recommend to her students. One of the companies begins offering her paid advert...

... middle of paper ...

...quality, and tax reform… There is one thing that is keeping our government from solving these urgent and greatly important issues: the corruption, meaning the dependency on the funders instead of the people. Ever hear of the 1% during the Occupy Wall Street movement? The number we should be caring about is the .05%.

We the people of the United States of America demand change. We demand a government that works for the people alone. So go support the giving of small amounts to our candidates, to help rid our system of the “big money” donations. Being kids, this is a problem that we must deal with. We will be growing up into this society. We have lost our constitutional republic, which was once dependent on “the people alone”. We have lost the constitutional republic that our founding fathers created back in 1787. We must act now, because this is our government.