The law is stupid.
Politicians have to have money to run campaigns.
So long as they don't take it for themselves and buy mink coats, why do we care so much about it?
We have a byzantine campaign finance law that makes it extremely difficult for politicians to get the money they need for campaigns. And so we have these lobbyists and operatives do it for them. Then just about every politician and lobbyist ends up either an indicted or unindicted criminal violator of the campaign finance laws.
The result? Cover-ups and more dishonesty and corruption.
I don't care who broke these laws. They are too complicated to obey, and anyone who really obeys them will lose to the guy who doesn't. It's a stupid law which should be broken. They all break it. They should repeal it, but until they do, color me completely indifferent as to who is indicted, or accused, or on the list, or why.
If a politician isn't on THIS list, he's on some other list and just hasn't been caught yet. They do what they have to do to get elected, and replacing them with others doesn't make the place any more honest. This is a bad law chewing up public servants, and I don't blame anybody for breaking it. It ought to be broken. The Supreme Court says the law is constitutional, so this is another example of a bad constitutional law that I, personally, do not care if is broken, and don't want to see anyone prosecuted for breaking it.
If we are not careful about these ridiculous legal witch hunts and the criminalization of politics, we are going to end up in Sulla's Republic, and we are going to richly deserve it too.
Stop the madness.
Cease fire!
I have come to the decision that all the stop signs in my town are much too complex to deal with. Hence forth I will no longer obey stop signs.
Amen. Politics costs big money. A few are rich enough to finance their own campaigns (and why do we think that the richest Americans are the best ones to set policy for the rest of us?). The rest have to collect money in nickel and dime amounts (they're not allowed to have big backing from people they know and agree with). I doubt that many of them know much about where their money comes from.
I do not doubt that many do cast votes for causes that their money-raisers tell them to support. I just doubt that they understand the cause or issue.
I'd like to see a complete overhaul of campaign finance laws.