Posted on 11/03/2004 5:32:40 AM PST by OESY
[O]ne big loser was... McCain-Feingold campaign finance "reform"....
Preliminary reports say a record $3.9 billion was spent on this year's Presidential and Congressional campaigns, 30% more than four years ago. Instead of severing the supposedly corrupting links between big money and politics, the reform's main effect has been merely to channel the cash through different political hands, and with less accountability.
...McCain-Feingold has succeeded in the narrow goal of staunching the flow of contributions from corporations, Big Labor and wealthy individuals to the two major political parties. Labor unions have turned more of their attention to voter registration and turnout. Corporations now concentrate on lobbying Congress....
Just as the campaign-finance limits of the 1970s... resulted in a Senate full of wealthy men, McCain-Feingold made the 2004 election a showcase for the mega-rich.
Six of the top 10 donors to 527s -- including George Soros ($23.7 million), Peter Lewis ($23.1 million) and Stephen Bing ($14 million) -- are billionaires. They've showered their money on such liberal groups as America Coming Together, MoveOn.org and the Media Fund. GOP 527 donors Bob Perry ($6.6 million) and T. Boone Pickens ($5 million) may not have given as much, but their impact has also been significant.
Meanwhile, small donors have had their speech restricted by the limits on advertising imposed on traditional lobbying groups 60 days before an election. Joining with other small donors in one larger cause (the Sierra Club or NRA) is sometimes the only way... that the non-rich can influence politics.
Rather than admit all of this, of course, the reformers are blaming everyone (the regulators, the politicians, the donors) but themselves. Their new solution is to ban 527s....
Instead of wasting more time playing whack-a-mole with campaign spending, the better solution is to dismantle the entire Rube Goldberg campaign-finance legal structure....
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Oh but money isn't speech of course. Therefore the new york times should be restricted to spending 17 dollars a week to publish and distribute its newspaper.
Well...we've got the next 4 years to make sure this gets resolved. There will be at least three vacancies on the High Court. All in good time.
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