EVERYONE - Please read this from the March 11 issue of National Review...
Supporters of campaign-finance regulation like to portray themselves as an underfunded, scrappy grassroots coalition. However, a study conducted last year for the American Conservative Union by election-law attorney Cleta Mitchell found that groups dedicated to promoting campaign-finance reform spent over $73 million over the three-year period from 1997 through 1999. By comparison, the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), one of the most prominent campaign-finance-reform organizations, lists total political spending by the "mortgage banking" industry at under $12 million, and by "Health Services and HMOs" at under $14 million, for the four-year period from 1997 through 2000. Even the dreaded drug manufacturers contributed just $28 million over that four-year period, or 40 percent of that spent in just three years by groups promoting campaign-finance regulation. Yet the campaign-finance regulators always portray these industries as colossally and harmfully big spenders.
Later in the same article you find this tidbit...
Assuming it becomes law, the bill will not end the influence of money in politics, but instead will drive such influence further underground. A glimpse of the future may have occurred at a dinner last October that raised $800,000 for the Brennan Center, a pro-reform group. Co-chaired by pro-reform senators Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer, and featuring Sen. John McCain, the dinner was underwritten by corporate donors, who were solicited to attend. Sponsors included over two dozen large law firms with Washington lobbying practices, plus such corporations as Coca-Cola, Philip Morris, and, naturally, Enron.
This National Review Article was entitled, "The Gaggers and Gag-making - Hypocrisy among the campaign-finance reformers" and was written by Bradley A. Smith, a member of the Federal Election Commission.
How true...from Doug Fiedor report on the news Mar 23:
"The bottom line is that if politicians weren't in the business of granting favors and exacting tribute, every single issue surrounding campaign finance reform would be irrelevant. After all, why would anyone spend money for influence, access, favors and tribute if the only thing that politicians do is to live up to their oaths to uphold and defend the Constitution? But, I'm afraid, most Americans want congressmen to do something else -- to violate the Constitution in order to make it possible for them to live at the expense of others." -- Professor Walter E. Williams
Keep up the good work Congressman!
And thanks for the post dittomom.