Eccentric Flower:199811/danger contains campaign finance
From Eccentric Flower
«November 1998 «Eccentric Flower
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four eleven ten danger - contains campaign finance At home temporarily with an upset stomach and the election results. No, the two aren't connected. Although .... I note that the Massachusetts voters approved an initiative which will create a new and massive system of public campaign financing. If candidates agree to certain rigidly defined (there's a table of them IN the text of the initiative) spending limits and a limit of $100 on individual contributions, they are allowed to receive a set amount of public money for their campaigns, beginning with the 2002 election. In order to qualify, you have to be able to get a minimum number of contributions from voters, all under the $100 limit, and they have to have been collected during a limited amount of time before the election. Then, "subject to appropriation," (i.e. if the state can't afford it, tough), you get some public money, which you must spend only on campaigning and of which you must return any unspent portion. For the governor's primary, for example: If you opt out of the entire system - you campaign, but refuse to play by these rules - then if you spend above the cap, the state will match funds for the other candidates who are playing along, to bring them up to your extravagant levels, up to twice the cap amount. There are also limits on in-kind individual donations, adjustments for inflation, et cetera, but there's the meat of it. Can you believe this was an initiative? That the voters proposed it by petition, and that it didn't originate from some smoke-filled room somewhere? I know the intention is to take the exorbitant spending out of elections, but really. Number one, lowering individual contributions to $100 or less just forces the campaigners to spend more time stumping for money and making calls from their office phones and renting the Lincoln Bedroom - and not enough time doing their job. Politicians view their job as getting reelected, and they'd rather work full-time on that than reform the tax code, if they must. Number two, I don't want any of the politicians to have any of the taxpayer money so they can campaign. That's just wrong. You really want campaigns sane again? Fine. Be really Draconian. Set an absolute cap. Set it so low that no politician will have trouble coming up with that kind of money on his own. If you're a city politician, even in a poor area, and you can't raise half a million for a big race, you're not very good, are you? Figure out what these acceptable low limits are, and make them absolute. Doesn't matter where you get the money from. You can get the whole pile from your favorite lobbyist if you like. There are only two rules: Note that I believe the limits should be set low enough to prevent television advertising, and not even much advertising of any kind. I feel that when politicians campaign, it should not be an announcement on a loudspeaker. I want politicians to be forced to get out and stump - to go to events, shake hands, debate, make nice with the people. I'd reduce their budgets to zero if I thought it would get them to wear out shoe leather more often. Would someone please tell me where the flaw in my idea is? Where's Molly Ivins when I need her for a reality check? On the good side, this weird idea about the salaries of the legislators which I mentioned below passed - that should be fun to watch - and Al D'Amato finally got kicked out of office in New York. A lot of Democrats won across the board, but I'm so disenchanted with both parties that I no longer automatically consider that a Good Thing.
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