I came up with this while in law school and working as a volunteer on California's then Proposition 9, which was California's first post-Watergate campaign campaign contribution reform (it was disclosure only). And I ran it by my father, who was then Unruh's chief hatchet man, to work out the bugs. Pop felt that the taxes raised this way should be used to provide matching funds for the untaxed contributions so none of it would be kept by the treasury save for administrative purposes.
The elected officials he checked it with all said it would work but had no chance of ever being adopted, because they and all the special interests would oppose it.
Which is pretty much the story for campaign finance and other reforms. The presidential line-item veto enacted by the congressional GOP majority under Gingrich/Lott was deliberately written to be flat-out unconstitutional as well as unworkable.
IMO political reforms in campaign finance and other fields, such as the line-item veto, can only come from outside the normal political process.
This bill was passed while much of America was sleeping and under the cover of darkness. This is when cowards come out of their caves and do their handiwork, when nobody is around to see them shred the First Amendment. If this was being reported as it should be - and if the media didn't stand to gain so much power from this bill - people would be outraged.
The House decided, among other things, that you and I (and any groups that we belong to or contribute to) should no longer have the right to criticize or question congressional candidates in paid ads 30 days before a primary election or 60 days before a general election.
Of course, most people don't start paying attention to elections until two weeks prior. It's just people like us, the junkies, who pay attention to it all the time. So exactly when most people are paying attention is when you can't exercise your free speech rights. I get so fed up with people talking about the "big money" in politics. Why do the NRA, or NAACP, Sierra Club have no right to join together and speak? We spend more money on advertising diapers in this country than we do on campaigns!
For years I've been saying that this bill, given the deceptively feel-good name "campaign finance reform," was nothing less than an assault on your First Amendment rights. Some of you said I was crazy, but you were wrong - and proponents of this bill proved it. Yes, the House rejected a Dick Armey amendment to this bill that stated simply that nothing in the bill could violate the First Amendment. They rejected that, which means they know that they're in violation of the First Amendment.
Again: in the last 60 days before a general election, and the last 30 days before a primary, you cannot run an ad about an opponent or a challenger. The political class now has succeeded in placing themselves in charge of the electoral process, guaranteeing, for the most part, their own reelection. My friends, that's not what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they dreamed up this Constitution and this country. That is not American in any way.
Money is like water. It'll find its way wherever it wants to go, no matter what obstacles you try to put in its way.The money in politics, supposedly such a huge scourge, is not going to be reduced at all by this bill - and I will apologize if I'm wrong about this. I will apologize if there's one less dollar in politics after this reform than there was before it. Instead, all that will happen is that the same editorialists who misinformed you in 2000 about George W. Bush being a frat boy, a dim light bulb, a man who couldn't lead anyone anywhere, will now be able to mislead you with a freer hand.
((((((RUSH)))))))