Tag: campaign finance reform

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Accountability Common Sense general freedom government transparency too much government

(Un)Intended System Failure

Campaign Finance Follies

The system worked. The problem? The system doesn’t work.

Last year’s successful term limits ballot initiative in Grand Rapids pitted two pro-limits ladies with scant political experience against a united big business/big labor opposition campaign, sporting Dr. Glenn Barkan, professor emeritus of political science at Aquinas College, as treasurer.

Just before Election Day, Professor Barkan’s group stuffed mailboxes with advertisements warning residents: “Don’t let your vote be shredded.” The mailings seemed odd in two more respects: (1) there was no mention of “term limits,” and (2) according to campaign finance reports, the professor’s committee didn’t have enough money for mass mailings.

Then, after the election, the committee filed reports acknowledging big money raised and spent prior to the election.

“It just seemed odd that they could do all the mass mailings with little money,” said term limits advocate Bonnie Burke. “We ran a totally above-board campaign and they have these seasoned people and they weren’t sticking to the rules.”

Michigan’s Bureau of Elections concluded the professor’s committee “deprived voters from knowing the source and amount of more than half of the contributions it received. . . .” The group was fined $7,500.

The system worked! Reporting led to a violation, which led to a complaint, which led to an investigation, which led to the imposition of a fine.

But to what point?

As my colleague at Liberty Initiative Fund, Scott Tillman, who filed the complaint, explains, “Campaign finance laws do not stop connected insiders from gaming the system and hiding donations. Big money can ignore the laws and pay the fines if they get caught.”

Even worse, Tillman warned, “Campaign finance laws intimidate and discourage outsiders and grassroots activists from becoming active in politics.”

Is either result unintended?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Campaign Finance Follies

 

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Common Sense national politics & policies too much government

The Ultimate Result of Campaign Finance Regs

Last Thursday I tried to be magnanimous. Of campaign finance regulation proponents, I wrote, “I suppose a reasonable person could blanch at rich people giving money to political causes . . . if they objected to all super-rich donors.”

My expectation of reciprocity was dashed at the non-reciprocal gambits of the Koch-hating campaign finance regulation advocates. It all really does come down to how they hate having others spend lots of money . . . against their causes.

Hardly democratic, that. Sorta ‘live and don’t let live.’

But they could (and will) defend themselves. They could say something like this: “We don’t like our billionaires having to give so much either. We’d like to cap our billionaires’ giving, too!”

It’s tough to have to keep up with your opponents’ spending, a pain having to give and give to get what you want and want.

We’d all like to get our way without having to spend time and money. But that doesn’t seem to be the way the world works — everything has a cost.

I sympathize. Economists call the problem of political campaign spending a “Tullock auction,” which sports no rational upper limit on spending, because winners take all.

Still, to bitch about your opponents’ spending but never your own gives away your game.

And we all know what the ultimate progressive game is: tax-funded elections. Tightly controlled, with more and more intrusions into how citizens assemble and cooperate to promote their candidates and causes.

So if the promotion, debate, and decision process is to be government-funded, government-controlled, we might as well call it Socialism and be done with it.

Could such a system be biased, just possibly for the pro-government growth side?

All mysteries solved.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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govFundedElections

 

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First Amendment rights ideological culture national politics & policies

Ad Ad Hominem!

Early reports and predictions about political spending in this election cycle claim there’s a 30 percent increase over the last mid-term election. One figure hazards that this campaign will total out to around $3.7 billion. Spending on ads is said to be up 75 percent. Traditional spending via parties and party committees shows Democrats to have an edge over Republicans by about $20 million. Republicans are making up for it, we’re told, by newly re-legalized “outside” spending.

A CBS News report relates the conventional wisdom about this. Watchdog groups “say more ads and information can be good — but voters can’t judge their credibility when donors are secret.” One expert decries this, saying “We just cannot know and we’ll never know who is ponying up the money.”

I say, “so what?”

Information cannot be judged good or bad, nor facts or argument dismissed, depending on where the money comes from to distribute the information and argumentation. The classic fallacy of the argumentum ad hominem judges conclusions by the character of the speaker rather than the truth of the facts or the validity of arguments.

Its dominance in politics is a curse, not a blessing.

Demands for full transparency of citizen activism bolster the nasty politics of a logical fallacy. When we don’t know the economic provenance of an ad or a slogan or an argument, we’ll just have to decide the issue on its own merits.

Horrors!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.