When the campaign finance laws were tightened there was the hope that by making it illegal for corporations to give money to support a political candidate for election or re-election, the political process would be cleaned up and money would be less important.
Then it was discovered that these regulations could not be applied to interest groups whose focus was not a particular candidate, but a particular issue that they and the candidates they favored supported. Thus the rise of 527 groups, of which DFA is one, I think.
Perhaps, I should state at this point that I do not favor any limitations on what people do with their own money. On the other hand, political contributions by corporations should not be permitted, unless that corporation is in the business of funding and promoting candidates. We call them political consultants.
If I had my druthers, I'd impose strict limits on office holders and potential office holders to stipulate that they can only accept money from individual citizens who are qualified to vote for them. In other words, the Town Council candidate can only take money from registered voters in his town and the candidate for president of the country can take money from the 200+ million qualified voters in the country.
Anyway, the unintended consequence. Perhaps because the legislation specifies "support" for candidates, those who spend money in opposition to one or more candidates have no limitations on them at all. Which is probably why we have just been witness to a political season where negative stuff has been more abundant than ever.
In addition, a whole new industry is springing up, staffed by people who have discovered that they can make a living year in and year out being against things and no longer have to rely on the campaign cycle to make a lot of money. In fact, a lot of the "consultants" and "pollsters" and "pundits" are getting rich by playing on the fears and antagonisms of ordinary citizens. In a sense, they're a secular version of the denizens of various flavors of organized "religion" who seem to thrive like kudzu.
Of course, when you consider that people with very modest incomes manage to pump billions into one-armed bandits, lotteries, and "gaming establishments," there's obviously a large market to be tapped.
I mentioned Eberle in an earlier post. That's because he's one of those milking the conservative, pro-family, anti-p!rn community at the same time that he's promoting p!rn on cable under the guise of the free speech movement.
Now I don't much care about p!rn on cable, though I do object to women being forced to give up their natural sense of privacy in order to make a living, but the deception that is being perpetrated against the modest and hard-working and church-going people in the heartland needs to be stopped.
Interestingly enough, it's actually the ghetto mentality that's responsible. There's a particular pattern. It involves people being isolated in their community and then preyed on by the very people who claim to protect them.
What we need is some potent law enforcement. I had actually hoped Kerry would provide that. Guess we'll have to deputize someone else.
Who's going to be the new sheriff in town?
Posted by Hannah at March 22, 2005 12:06 PM