[hrothgar]

Good article:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/...ance/index.html

Well worth reading

[pbleighton]

Good idea, with a snowball's chance...

Peter

[pclayton]

Then what's to prevent people from assigning their stipend for a little caish?

I like the idea of publicly financed campaigns myself, although restricting access to candidates smacks of limiting free speech.

[mike777]

What is so wrong or bad with a candidate taking money from a pro or anti abortion group or other advocacy group if it is disclosed and they agree to keep their promise to the people who are giving the money?

Do you really want people to not donate to a cause and expect the donors to have the gal not vote their way? I prefer the full disclosure, no other limit avenue. I think this is the best for an imperfect world.

[pbleighton]

"What is so wrong or bad with a candidate taking money from a pro or anti abortion group or other advocacy group if it is disclosed and they agree to keep their promise to the people who are giving the money?

Do you really want people to not donate to a cause and expect the donors to have the gal not vote their way? I prefer the full disclosure, no other limit avenue. I think this is the best for an imperfect world."

The way I read the article, this approach wouldn't prohibit any contributions in addition to the $50.00.

Mike, I agree with you on this. I've never been enthusiastic about campaign finance reform, and the experience so far backs up my skepticism.

This appraoch, as I read it, is "in addition to".

Peter

Peter

[pclayton]

pbleighton, on Feb 5 2007, 01:42 PM, said:

The way I read the article, this approach wouldn't prohibit any contributions in addition to the $50.00.

Peter

Then what would be the point of the whole thing? All it would do is ratchet up the budgets for election. In 'contested races' I'll get 6 mail pieces PER DAY on a candidate during crunch time.

[hrothgar]

mike777, on Feb 6 2007, 12:40 AM, said:

What is so wrong or bad with a candidate taking money from a pro or anti abortion group or other advocacy group if it is disclosed and they agree to keep their promise to the people who are giving the money?

Do you really want people to not donate to a cause and expect the donors to have the gal not vote their way? I prefer the full disclosure, no other limit avenue. I think this is the best for an imperfect world.

From what I can tell, nothing in this suggestion would prevent special interest groups from contributing to candidates. Groups like Planned Parenthood and Right to Life would still be able to fund whatever candidates they want. However, there was an explicit statement that this system was intended to significantly decrease the power of these types of organizations. $50 per US citizen is a LOT of money. There are relatively few special interest groups that have enough resources to compete against that type of money. Equally significant, the proposal included a poison pill provision. Assume that Planned Parenthood was able to raise enough money to start impacting politics: The proposed bill would simply ratchet up the per capital contributions during the next political cycle. This type of provision is important because it destroys any incentives to try to "break" the system.

Personally, I like this system much better than what we have now. You might like a system where politicians are bought and sold like any other commodity. I would hope that this type of system would permit politicians to worry more about policy and spend less time fund raising. Personally, I think that this system is far from perfect. My main worry is the amount of advertizing that would be necessary to convince people to vote with their dollars. However, by and large, I think that this type of system would make politicians less accountable to large monied interested and more accountable to a distributed group of citizens. I can't help but believe that this would represent a significant improvement over what we have now.

[mike777]

If I have family members in the military and think the Commander-In-Chief is doing a terrible job why limit how much of my after tax dollars I can spend on his opponent?

If others choose to spend their after tax dollars on other stuff ok but why limit me?

Yet I am limited in what I can spend and have to go through all kinds of contortions and complicated devices to try and vote people out of office.

[pbleighton]

"If I have family members in the military and think the Commander-In-Chief is doing a terrible job why limit how much of my after tax dollars I can spend on his opponent?

If others choose to spend their after tax dollars on other stuff ok but why limit me?"

It doesn't limit you.

Peter

[mike777]

Yes Peter there are limits.
See McCain/Feingold

[hrothgar]

pbleighton, on Feb 6 2007, 01:09 AM, said:

"If I have family members in the military and think the Commander-In-Chief is doing a terrible job why limit how much of my after tax dollars I can spend on his opponent?

If others choose to spend their after tax dollars on other stuff ok but why limit me?"

It doesn't limit you.

Peter

From the sounds of it (I'm not sure) Mike is claiming that family members of military personnel are limited in the types of political contributions that they are permitted to make...

I've never heard anything about this before. It might very well be true.

I would assume that the goal is to ensure a strong separation between the military and the legislature. Civilian control of the military, that sort of thing.

[mike777]

We are all limited in the type and amount of funding..see McCain/Feingold
You just have to go through all sorts of contortions to try and kick these guys out of office.

[hrothgar]

mike777, on Feb 6 2007, 01:36 AM, said:

We are all limited in the type and amount of funding..see McCain/Feingold

Why did you bother bringing up the all garbage about famility members in the military if it wasn't germane to your point?

For what its worth, I don't particularly like the McCain - Feingold spending limits. I agree with the basic goal, but I think that the implementation is flawed.

[mike777]

I bring it up because so many people seem to be for limits on spending because they are worried that the pols will be bought off, this is the argument all the time.
My point was to counter this point, we should be able to give money to kick people out of office if they vote for a horrible war or conduct the war in a poor way. We should not be limited. I disagree with their basic goal.

Many disagree and say we should be limited or agree with the bills basic goal.

[pbleighton]

"We are all limited in the type and amount of funding..see McCain/Feingold"

Mike, the subject of this thread is a new approach described in the article Richard provided a link to.

McCain/Feingold is a red herring.

Peter

[hrothgar]

mike777, on Feb 6 2007, 01:43 AM, said:

I bring it up because so many people seem to be for limits on spending because they are worried that the pols will be bought off, this is the argument all the time.
My point was to counter this point, we should be able to give money to kick people out of office if they vote for a horrible war or conduct the war in a poor way. We should not be limited. I disagree with their basic goal.

Many disagree and say we should be limited or agree with the bills basic goal.

Silly question Mike:

Am I to assume that you've actually run into the "hard limits" set by McCain-Feingold?

Are there any examples where you've donated $2000 to a single candidate and wanted to donate more?

Alternatively, are you just blowing wind as usual?

[mike777]

Why is everyone so cynical or personal. We are debating freedom of speech for everyone including you. This article is not just about one simple financing debate point. It raises at least 50 or a hundred complicated issues to discuss.

If you just want to call names forget it.

[jtfanclub]

mike777, on Feb 5 2007, 06:04 PM, said:

Why is everyone so cynical or personal. We are debating freedom of speech for everyone including you. This article is not just about one simple financing debate point. It raises at least 50 or a hundred complicated issues to discuss.

But the concept is to either completely or almost completely eliminate hard spending limits in return for forcing everybody to donate and making it anonymous. In other words, it would supercede McCain-Feingold.

I don't see the point to this idea. Instead of donating Donald McDuck, I'll just donate to Swift Boat Veterans For Donald McDuck, which happens to be run by the guy who would have been the campaign manager for Donald McDuck under the old system. It actually sounds worse than the current system.

[Winstonm]

Is the problem actually about campaign finance or is the real culprit the cost of running for office?

Instead of compaign finance reform, I would rather see a flat figure of top-end spending per office per candidate. If no office were worth more than $1,000,000 to occupy, candidates would have to find alternate means to get their messages across other than t.v. ads - and there would be a reduction in the influence on the office holders, less pressure to raise money, and more emphasis on their message.

[Al_U_Card]

Here's a thought.....everyone who runs for office (all official like with party affiliations or public support...etc.) is given say $1,000,000 from the public purse to spend as they see fit. After the election, they get to keep the leftovers. The winner gets to accumulate his carry-over but not to use more than the $1,000,000 limit per election.....Interesting perspective.....