Questioning campaign finance

Campaign finance reform is a joke. There will always be people wanting to spend big money to get their candidate in office. So, the more laws you make, the more creative people wil get in finding ways around it. You are niaive to think you can take money out of politics. FULL DISCLOSURE PEOPLE! I don't care how much you spend I just want to know where it comes from and how much.. If you get campaign contribution over a certain dollar amount, you can't cash the check for a week. It must be posted on your website or a government website with the amount, name of organization, and a list of that organizations's top five or so board members. Then, after a week, you can cash the check. There will be enough watchdog groups on either side of the aisle monitoring this. So if you are getting big bucks from billionares like George Soros, or big unions like the teamsters or education lobby, or abortion rights groups, or the trial lawyers, every knows where your bread is buttered.

Yes, I always wonder why someone would pay millions out of their own pocket to get a job that pays less than $75,000 grand a year.

Anyone can run, but, as always, you either gotta have money or know enough people who will give you money. When has that really changed? Oh, sure, we can think warm fuzzy thoughts about how nice it would be that the average Joe or Jill down the block could run for US Senate, but that aint gonna happen. The NRA, Greenpeace, Drug company lobby, AFL-CIO, and every other lobby out there has got money to spend on influence.

Lets not be so niaive, a law just makes someone figure out how to get around it.

Do you think anyone will object to George Soros' boat loads of money given to political campaigns at the Policy and a Pint meeting?

Sounds like a liberal love fest to me.

Do they open with Kumbaya or "I'd like to buy the world a Coke"?

I'll give you the Cliff Note version. I really don't care how much money there is in politics. I want better candidates. Can that be done with campaign financing. Not likely. The more campaigns are restricted, the more often incumbents win. And someone, somewhere, once won a race being bland, boring, passionless and uninspiration, and had a catchy ad, and voters were lazy enough to vote for the person based on it. Politics is like TV, I guess. When something works, everybody copies it.

Is it asking too much to have candidates who inspire people to vote?

Apparently so.

I wrote more at Stirrings from the Empty Nest or http://stirringsfromtheemptynest.blogspot.com/
if this doesn't recognize html.

Bob, I didn't see if the audio was up, but when it is I'll nab the link to post here...

Gary, do you think it is a matter of "messaging costs"? There will always be money and the influence it brings, as long as people are people...but can we resolve or minimize that? How?

We don't race around on the back of a train making whistle stop tours. We don't stand on soap box and spout of views. Messaging costs, what do you propose we go back to? Kids handing out flyers on the street corner?

TV costs money, mailings cost money, do you expect the papers and TV to run stuff for free? They are already, I think, having to run campaign ads at discount. Why should we force someone to sell their product at a discount or give it away, especially when they might not agree with the candidate.

Or, I have my hard earned tax dollars taken from me with the threat of force to be given over to a candidate whom I don't agree with or that money then given to a newpaper or tv station who I don't like? We then are really just subsidizing the media outlets.

Why should we reduce or resolve "messaging costs" to the candidates? They will be working with large dollars if they are elected and need to realize that it is my hard earned money, not the "governments" money. Why do so many people want to compassionate with someone else's money? Is that virtious? Running for office costs money. Period.

No proposals - I'm just asking you what you think and pondering. What if the spending caps were so tight you or I could afford to run for office, and we had to run on the virtue of our platform and on volunteer support?

Oh man, I meant to share the link to the feature/audio:

Policy and a Pint: Elections 101

Know your issues, know your candidates. I think the people running for local office are the most accessible and transparent, and perhaps the most deserving.

The question was raised "what do you propose we do." I propose you throw out the pollsters and the communication consultants and all the "safe" babble and rhetorical and have a message that is passed from voter to voter, to the point that you inspire people to inspire others to vote for you.

The mass media today is used to create candidates who have nothing to say and, unfortunately, millions of dollars to say it.

They're dull. They're boring. They're relatively useless.

In the PnP discussion, I also proposed an answer. Candidates don't get to negotiate the terms of debate. If they're on the ballot, they MUST appear on a debate and if they don't, they're off the ballot.

They don't get to dictate how the questions will be asked; they show up or they don't for X number of televised debates.

And every quesitoner is required to memorize the following words, "you didn't answer my quesiton." Their inability to do that is what gives us the poor field of candidates and, unfortunatley, elected officials we have today.

Oh, and if you're a candidate, you also have to spend at least 1 day out of every week of the campaign with your mouth duct-taped shut, while you work as a supermarket check-out person, or a bartender, or a factory worker or some job where you actually have to know how average people live.

That's my plan, anyway. Sorry for the length of time it took to respond; I've been on vacation.