Posted on 05/10/2005 7:28:59 AM PDT by Gipper08
The biggest loophole in the laws regulating big-money campaign donations is the runaway spending by unregulated shadow-party advocacy groups. The $400 million that poured through these thinly disguised party operations - called "527 committees" after a section of the tax code - included funds for the campaign by the supposedly independent Swift Boat Veterans for Truth against Senator John Kerry, and the checkbook politicking of George Soros, who spent $24 million trying to defeat President Bush. The loophole obviously needs plugging, but the going is getting rough in both the House and Senate.
Forum: Today's Editorials In the Senate, a strong bill by John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Russell Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, has been freighted with retrogressive amendments. Senator Charles Schumer, an original supporter, tried to eliminate a key provision that would bar this soft-money pipeline for voter registration drives by partisan organizers feigning party independence. When Mr. McCain accused Mr. Schumer, the New York Democrat, of a "cave-in to special interests," he said he was simply responding to Republican amendments that would allow freer campaign spending by corporations. In this case, everyone is right. All the amendments should be scrapped or an effective bill will never survive.
In the House, the reform effort is in worse shape, with G.O.P. leaders allowing a fast track for a proposal that would gut existing controls, some of them dating to the Watergate scandal, on huge donations. The bill - offered by Representatives Mike Pence, an Indiana Republican, and Albert Wynn, a Maryland Democrat - would let a donor now restricted to a total of $40,000 for federal candidates across a two-year election cycle spring for more than $2 million. Money bagmen from both parties are salivating at the possibility that Congressional spinelessness is inviting a return to the benighted past. The right solution is the McCain-Feingold bill, unencumbered by tangents of party greed.
Whatever the Slimes says, the opposite must be done.
NYTimes: We are the gatekeepers, you little pissant motherf**kers. If we wanted to know your opinion you little pricks, we'd give it to you. Now get back in your f**king place.
Money in evil is politics, unless we're spending it. Unrestricted 1st amendment rights within 60 days of an election are evil, unless we're the ones speaking. The free flow of ideas in the political media is evil, unless it's our ideas and in our media.
This is the enlightened Progressive Socialist Liberalism that guides the Democrat party in this country. I consider this piece an open call for Fascism. A call for the incestuous relationship between politicians and the media industry to become the formal institutional government-enforced government-monitored monopoly that the "journalists" and editors at the NYT cream over in their wildest fantasies.
Repeal CFR, boot McCain, villify Bush, indict Soros.
Did I forget to insult anyone yet today? Oh yeah, publicly denounce the Supreme Court for it's interpretation of this law during it's review of CFR. Use that decision to block any current Justice from becoming the next Chief Justice.
Mike Pence is leading this charge against facism and for Freedom.We must support him.
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