Posted on 03/17/2005 5:35:21 AM PST by oldtimer2
CAMPAIGN-FINANCE reform has been an immense scam perpetrated on the American people by a cadre of left-wing foundations and disguised as a "mass movement."
But don't take my word for it. One of the chief scammers, Sean Treglia, a former program officer of the Pew Charitable Trusts, confesses it all in an astonishing videotape I obtained earlier this week. This is an amazing story. I combined part of Ryan Sager's editorial and the transcript of the tape.
The tape of a conference held at USC's Annenberg School for Communication in March of 2004 shows Treglia expounding to a gathering of academics, experts and journalists (none of whom, apparently, ever wrote about Treglia's remarks) on just how Pew and other left-wing foundations plotted to create a fake grassroots movement to hoodwink Congress.
"I'm going to tell you a story that I've never told any reporter," Treglia says on the tape. "Now that I'm several months away from Pew and we have campaign-finance reform, I can tell this story."
That story in brief: Charged with promoting campaign-finance reform when he joined Pew in the mid-1990s, Treglia came up with a three-pronged strategy: 1) pursue an expansive agenda through incremental reforms, 2) pay for a handful of "experts" all over the country with foundation money and 3) create fake business, minority and religious groups to pound the table for reform.
"The target audience for all this activity was 535 people in Washington," Treglia says 100 in the Senate, 435 in the House. "The idea was to create an impression that a mass movement was afoot that everywhere they looked, in academic institutions, in the business community, in religious groups, in ethnic groups, everywhere, people were talking about reform."
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
No, the recital of the leftist/MSM cant was put there to illustrate a point. Bush is basically a big-government liberal.
While he occaisionally makes a decent move, like nominating Bolton to the UN, some conservative judicial appointments (which he then sabotaged by supporting Arlen Specter to chair the judiciary committee) - his whole MO has been to talk conservative and act liberal. It's a sad state of affairs when the two parties give us a choice of a rabid, treasonous Marxist (John Kerry) and a great-society, open-borders liberal (Bush). While I voted for the man twice, I am very unhappy with the constant flim-flam. The reason Bush signed this outrageous, unconstitutional law is simply that he believes in it. He does not care about the 1st amendment, but in keeping the ruling elite in permanent power. This republic is all but finished. Tyranny is just around the corner.
I fear this story will go nowhere. Remember the tainted blood scandal that involved Clinton while he was governor of Arkansas? (Selling Hep C+(and sometimes HIV+) blood from state prisoners, killing off untold numbers of hemophiliacs) Well, Liddy Dole was also head of the Red Cross at the time, so blasting Clinton would also have involved the GOP leadership. It's perverse, but if everybody's guilty, nobody's guilty. Federalist 10's reliance on counterbalancing factions breaks down if everybody has a finger in the pie.
You are excessively cynical.
I'm amazed you ever hear anything from McCain except when he's raising $$$! He never replied (nor had anyone in his office do so) on any of the issues I asked about by phone, letter, or email.
He, and many, many of our legislatures are the poster children of why we should clean house. IMO the founding fathers deliberately set a low salary for representatives and senators to encourage them to get the countries business done and return to their homes to get on with their families business... this wasn't to be a full time nor long term profession. This was civic duty only. It has turned into a profession with outrageous salaries and benefits as well as raises given to themselves by them. Now it seems they aren't even making their own laws...they seem to be allowing the judiciary to make/bend the laws to suit themselves (apparently guided by Pew) and they nor the Presidential overview has no power to set it aside.
The American public should be ashamed of itself. We have not paid attention to our jobs of supervision over the government and now the foxes are guarding the hens.
Do you give an AZ address? I have gotten a reply to every email that I have sent, though not exactly prompt.
I did for 25 years... our only address. We came back to Texas recently.
All one needed to know about "Campaign Reform" was that McInsane was involved...
McInsane has been a scam artist his ENTIRE political career.
There is not one single bill he can point to with pride - that HE initiated and got passed for the IMPROVEMENT of America..
Semper Fi
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Which increases the price of the advertising time.
See tagline.
Good point.
But of course, only greedy money-grubbing (republican) corporations think about money.
Fine, upstanding couragous liberal organizations don't ever do that.
Media loves democracy, because the power to influence majority pulbic opinion can control winners and losers in the marketplace. Power to influence then becomes power for sale.
The only antidote is limited government.
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