All good points, but I'm not sure disclosure ought to be required by law. If a candidate won't tell voters where he got his money from, let his opponent make that a campaign issue.

Well, what I'd do is require them to disclose all donations. Donations must also be grouped by donor: that is, if one donor gives five times, all must be put together and identified as the same donor.

Donors would have the option of being listed as "Anonymous," listing only their state of resident. The campaign, however, would be required to still group donations from each anonymous individual separately, so that you could see things like this:

1) Anonymous Donor #27: Five donations totaling $25,000.

2) Anonymous Donor #5343: Seven donations totaling $150.

...and so on.

Candidates would be wise to discourage but accept such anonymous donations.

Then, voters could decide not only whether they liked what they saw on the donor's list, but whether they could stomach how much the candidate had in anonymous donations.

Trust to the sanity and good sense of the average voter after that.

Dean's concept is interesting, but I'm surprised no fat cat donors have claimed their right of privacy is being violated by disclosure. (The more hard-up Democrats become for cash, the more likely you'll see a challenge like this, btw.) "I have a secret ballot, so why not a secret donation?"

Well, like I said, making your donation anonymous should be an option. Candidates can decide how much in anonymous donations they're willing to accept, and voters can decide how much much in anonymous donations they can stomach in any given candidate.

By the way, this is how it works under current law. It's just that current laws are so byzantine and stupid no one can keep up with it.

My proposal would lead to much more easily tracked and understood information for voters than has ever existed before, by the way.

The problem I have had, for a while, is that full disclosure exposes donors to retribution if their candidate loses; there have been documented cases of the winners taking revenge in various bureaucratic ways, after getting "the names."

Dean's suggestion addresses that problem nicely, I think.

"Maybe we'll one day do the smart thing, ban all corporate and union donations..."

Yeah, but shouldn't corporations be represented in government too? It's pretty pathetic to continually make business out to be the bad guy. They should have every right to support the candidate that they feel will best represent their interests.

People like to accuse a politician of voting a certain way because he/she received a donation from a company that will benefit from that vote. Maybe the politician would support the measure regardless of the donation, and the corporation was simply helping to elect the candidate that best represented them. The same as any individual would.

But Bildo, contrary to what the Supremes believe, a corporation is not an individual, it is not a citizen, and a corporation can't vote. The Esmay approach, which I more or less agree with would allow no corporate contribution, but would allow the officers, directors and employess of the company to donate unlimited funds. A good tradeoff. As Dean also mentioned, it gets around the free speech issues per the Buckley decision.

I haven't quite figured out how I feel about the anonymity bit. But hey, if it is good enough for the US Socialists and Communists, it should be good enough for the rest of us.

My view is there should be no restrictions, no requirement of disclosure - smart candidates would disclose, dumb one's wouldn't, and they'd lose.

Money is never the problem - its always what is done with it that is the problem.

"Now that Democrats have had Lady Reality swat them hard on the nose with a rolled-up copy of the New York Times, maybe they'll actually do the smart thing for once? Let's hope."

I'm confused as to why you're hoping Democrats get smart. The best Democrat is a dumb one, because they're more likely to lose. I'm all for the Democrats losing plenty.

To Bildo's point: while I agree that corporations have a right to send representatives to lobby members of Congress with their arguments, I believe that a corporation is an artificial entity that can have its rights limited. Moreover, there's something rather wrong morally with making stockholders pay for political contributions anyway. Let's say I hold stock in Acme Anvils, and Acme Anvils donates a million dollars to the campaign of Senator Cleghorn. What if I hate Senator Cleghorn? Too bad. The corporation's spent my money instead of giving it to me in a dividend.

Just as it strikes me as wrong that trade unions take dues and give them to political candidates whether the Union members support those candidates or not.

If a corporation or union wants to solicit for voluntary contributions, I'm good with that. If stockholders and officers of corporations want to establish lobbying groups that solicit and donate funds, I'm good with that too.

To me, this all makes such perfect sense, I can't believe we don't just do it this way.

Make all donations anonymous. In fact, make it so the candidate doesn't know who gave him the money.

I'm not sure if this question has been raised here before, but: is there a legal or ethical difference between political donations from individuals and political donations from companies / corporations? It's one thing for an individual who has one vote in an election to give financial backing to a candidate. Corporations, however, are not people. Does a corporation have First Amendment rights? It certainly can't vote; yet by supporting candidates, corporations and other "group efforts" have a significant impact on the success of candidates. Where are the lines?

In fact, make it so the candidate doesn't know who gave him the money.

I don't see how you could do that. If I wanted to make sure the candidate knew that I gave him a whopping donation, I'd simply send the check directly to the candidate so he could see whose name was on it, then let him remail it "anonymously" to wherever it was supposed to go so he couldn't find out who sent it.

my cat's breath smells like cat food...

WHOOOOOOSH! over the head ;)

I would ban all donations to any political candidate over $100 from any individual and $1000 from a group indexed for inflation. Why those numbers? Arbitrary. Then if anyone wants to exercise there constitutionally protected right to free speech they are welcome to use their money to do it by what ever method they have the means to support, the catch is that they have to do it for themselves. You want to buy commercial time? Fine, you have to write the script and deliver the message. The constitution protects your "individual" right to free speech, not you're right to essentially bribe a politician.

Realizing this is a radical approach that would never see the light of day, I would opt for all donations to be made to a blind trust. Oh and all lobbying should be banned. Now for those who will, in a very predictable way, dismiss this all in a knee jerk fashion consider this, if you really want smaller government we have to get the big money out of campaigns, it's really just that simple. Big donors demand reciprocation, anyone who dismisses this is very simply fooling themselves. As long as big money controls elections, and it does, the government will be beholden to those who fund the campaigns. Until then we have to put up with checkbook politics and quid pro quo.

Oh and one other thing, that I really want to make a point out of is this idea that limiting the amount of money that an individual can give to a politician is somehow a violation of the 1st amendment. This idea is simply retarded. The 1st amendment is about individual speech, and as long as you want to speak then you have the ability to spend as much as you can afford to do so. There is nothing in current law or that has ever been proposed that Prevents Dean Or anyone else from using your money to express your political ideas. Go down to the local TV station, or contact the networks if you have that kind of cash, and sound of for 30 seconds. If you don’t have that kind of money then the traditional soap box is always available.

This idea that giving money to a politician is some how speech and therefor protected is compleat crap. The freedom of speech is an individual right, only an individual can exercise it, there is nothing in history, tradition or any concept of rights that allows one to offer their freedoms by proxy which is what your advocating with the money = speech equation. Current jurisprudence on this issue is a compleat perversion of our constitution to preserve a status quo that is corrupt to the core. And to support the idea is to support the continued corruption of our political process.

In my humble opinion.

Jerry Kindall:

If I wanted to make sure the candidate knew that I gave him a whopping donation, I'd simply send the check directly to the candidate so he could see whose name was ...

Stop!

It's called "public financing." Check it out.

It may be the only way out of this fiasco.

As a former employee of lobbyists, I'd hesitate to outlaw lobbying outright. Lobbyists can often inform legislators and other government officials on issues with a depth that many individual constituents can't. On the other hand, I don't like the fact that lobbyists are often backing up their well-reasoned arguments with campaign cash.

Keep lobbying legal -- and believe me, the most important form of lobbying is individual constituents talking to legislators, something that happens much too rarely -- but outlaw PAC donations. If you want to persuade with argument and public education, great, but I think that the velvet glove of campaign finances should be left to individuals, not groups.

I don't buy the union/corporation analogy. If a shareholder doesn't like the politics his company is subsidizing, he can sell his stock and invest his money elsewhere. It doesn't work that way for a laborer working at a union shop, who cannot quit his union without also giving up his job.

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