I recently read, in the always-excellent Washington Post, that the primary movers and shakers behind our current campaign laws are billionaires who most people have never heard of. These super-wealthy, shadowy individuals have an enormous, and unaccountable, influence on our politics.
Our current system of financing political campaigns (known as McCain/Feingold) is a disaster. It suppresses fundamental civil rights and gives special, unaccountable powers to the super-wealthy. All in the name of "reforming the system" and "getting the money out of politics." What a joke!
There is only one set of reforms that will ever work:
1) Ban all donations by corporations, trade unions, and other artificial organizations--although they can raise voluntary funds from their members/shareholders/stakeholders if they want to.
2) Lift all caps on what individuals are allowed to donate.
3) Require instant disclosure on the internet, in easily-indexed format, of all donations.
Common sense reforms like this would be very easy to implement. Too bad so many vested, monied interests are opposed to it.
I can only disagree with letting organizations raise money. Only individuals should be able to contribute and advertizing controls should apply equally to any advertising designed to influence voting. Even without these changes your proposal is far superior to the current joke.
I would also suggest that campaign finance reform is far less important than election reform. So long as qualified voters are denied a vote or unqualified are allowed to vote any financial reform is meaningless. When the graveyards of Chicago stop turning out 99% majorities for the Democrats then elections will be respectable.
3) Require instant disclosure on the internet, in easily-indexed format, of all donations.
Ah, hear, hear. Great idea. Cheap and easy to do, probably, as well--which is why I won't hold my breath waiting for the government to implement it.
Agree completely with all you say, Dean - especially the part about instant disclosure.
Let the public decide who is beholden & who is not!
The rules you suggest, Dean, should apply to all political advocacy organizations, not just those directly involved in a campaign. If you run any advertising in favor of an issue, party, or candidate, you must disclose where your money came from, even if you are not directly associated with the cause you're promoting.
Simply put, the politicians do not want the money out of politics. They don't want vote-purchasing out of politics, either, because if they can't sell a vote, who will give them money to buy it.
But the people want it.
So everything you will ever see from the government will be an attempt to maintain the status quo of under-the-table payments while making "the people" think something was changed.
The ultimate shell game.
Ken:
Only individuals should be able to contribute and advertizing controls should apply equally to any advertising designed to influence voting.
This would be impossible to enforce without robbing some individuals of their First Amendment rights.
Jerry:
If you run any advertising in favor of an issue, party, or candidate, you must disclose where your money came from, even if you are not directly associated with the cause you're promoting.
Agreed, with the proviso that people who don't receive donations (i.e. self-funded efforts) don't have to disclose anything.
Only individuals should be able to contribute and advertizing controls should apply equally to any advertising designed to influence voting.
This would be impossible to enforce without robbing some individuals of their First Amendment rights.
Which rights would those be that would be getting robbed exactly? Groups don;t have rights. There is no such thing as a group right.
Rick, I'm not sure but I think the First Amendment objection applies to the advertising controls.
Rick:
Which rights would those be that would be getting robbed exactly? Groups don;t have rights. There is no such thing as a group right.
There's no such thing as a group right because there's no such thing as a group. Groups are collections of individuals, and group actions are actions of the individuals within the group.
So when you tell a group that "it" can't do something, "it" ends up just vesting one of "its" constituent parts to act on "its" behalf. Which, as it turns out, is what "it" would have done anyway.
So you're left with restricting the members of the group. Either the restrictions are formalisms ("please remove your employment ID badge before going on-camera"), or they aren't ("CEOs of corporations are not allowed to buy political ads"). Formalisms have no real impact; non-formalisms restrict the free speech/action of individuals.
The money corrupting politics is not in campaign finance. That's a result, and no action on it can improve the situation. THe only way to deal with it would be to closely monitor what politicians are spending money on to try to control vote buying by counter-balancing it with the cost of raising taxes.
The idea to let candidates spend as much as they want, as long as they tell us where they are getting the money is okay, (it at least won't make the situation worse by driving people into hiding) but it's not going to make it any better, unless we start paying attention to what the government is spending money on.
And it all makes not a hill of beans difference when there are less than 20 competitive seats out of 435 in the entire House.