Progressives and political incumbents are aghast at the Supreme Court's recent rulings that one cannot Constitutionally limit the overall amount that any natural or legal person can contribute to political candidates in any one election cycle. Inevitably, the limit on donations to a single candidate will also be rendered void.
The court has said - rightly in my view - that the right to spend money to support a candidate or cause is equivalent to the right to articulate support for that candidate or cause, thus a restriction on spending is equivalent to a restriction on "speech," which is verboten.
Progressives and incumbents now whine that The Rich will now be able to decide who wins elections simply by virtue of contributing enough to the candidate to allow them to "blanket the airwaves" with positive advertising.
Baloney.
The recent history books are chock full of candidates who spent gazillions on their own candidacies and ended up losing, because the public saw what they had to offer and took a pass. Ross Perot, anyone?
The REAL problem in political discourse is the prevalence of lies, distortions, half truths, and nonsense that prevails in political advertising.
The unfortunate fact is that most voters do not take the time to research the issues and the positions (and records) of the candidates, and thus they are inordinately persuaded by the "sound bites" that they hear in these ads.
Obviously, examples of the distortions are too numerous to catalog, but for the moment I will mention a couple that are current here in my home state of Pennsylvania.
In the Democrat primary election for Governor, there are four or five candidates running, all of whom voice the same two reasons for voting Democrat:
First, the claim that the incumbent has dramatically "cut" school spending since he came into office. But this is nonsense. As any cogent American should know, the first Obama "stimulus" sent tens of billions of "one time" dollars to state Education Departments around the country. In PA, some school districts foolishly used these funds to HIRE MORE PEOPLE. When the stimulus ended, the Governor (and both houses of the state legislature, which are all Republican) DECLINED to make up the shortfall with new State spending. The actual State expenditures increased, just not enough to make up for the shortfall. This is not a "cut" in education spending. All of the D candidates are, literally, lying.
Second, Pennsylvania is a hotbed of "fracking." I don't have any exact numbers, but gas wells are sprouting up all over the state, creating tens of thousands of jobs, millions in tax revenues, and so on. I won't get into the environmental aspects of "fracking," which are not under discussion. But Pennsylvania has declined to impose a "severance tax," which is a tax on the value of the gas that is actually taken from the ground. Many states have it, and PA does not. This is ONE reason why there is so much fracking activity here. But still, PA is reaping a mountain of new tax revenue due to the fracking phenomenon.
ALL of the D candidates are touting their proposals to impose a severance tax, and one of them constantly advertises that HE will impose a tax that is twice as high as the others. All of them emphasize that these fracking companies are getting away with murder and will be made to pay. Ignore for a moment that both Houses of the Legislature are in R hands, and such a tax will never be imposed.
What they DON'T mention is that the severance tax will NOT be imposed on the drillers (e.g., Range Resources), but rather on the land owners who are currently receiving royalties from gas production. This would be a "post drilling" fee, which comes out of their take. All of the royalty contracts are the same in this respect.
So Range Resources won't pay a dime of those severance taxes, the "hard working Pennsylvanians," mainly farmers, will have it taken out of their pockets!
And presumably, all of the candidates know this, yet they continue to lie.
But getting back to my point, it's not the MONEY in politics that is the problem, it is the LIES.
It is the JOB of the Fourth Estate to call the politicians on their lies and distortions, but they fail to do so. Most news outlets are so politically driven that they simply carry water for one political party or another, and furthermore, they don't want to antagonize potential advertisers (the candidates) by calling out their lies and distortions on the editorial pages.
I don't know the answer. I certainly don't want some government bureaucrat deciding what is a lie and what is fair comment in political advertising, and such a law would probably be unconstitutional anyway. I'm sure there are websites that honestly try to pick the fly shit out of the pepper of political advertising, but their readership is microscopic, and probably limited to people who are political junkies anyway.
What to do, what to do?
The court has said - rightly in my view - that the right to spend money to support a candidate or cause is equivalent to the right to articulate support for that candidate or cause, thus a restriction on spending is equivalent to a restriction on "speech," which is verboten.
Progressives and incumbents now whine that The Rich will now be able to decide who wins elections simply by virtue of contributing enough to the candidate to allow them to "blanket the airwaves" with positive advertising.
Baloney.
The recent history books are chock full of candidates who spent gazillions on their own candidacies and ended up losing, because the public saw what they had to offer and took a pass. Ross Perot, anyone?
The REAL problem in political discourse is the prevalence of lies, distortions, half truths, and nonsense that prevails in political advertising.
The unfortunate fact is that most voters do not take the time to research the issues and the positions (and records) of the candidates, and thus they are inordinately persuaded by the "sound bites" that they hear in these ads.
Obviously, examples of the distortions are too numerous to catalog, but for the moment I will mention a couple that are current here in my home state of Pennsylvania.
In the Democrat primary election for Governor, there are four or five candidates running, all of whom voice the same two reasons for voting Democrat:
First, the claim that the incumbent has dramatically "cut" school spending since he came into office. But this is nonsense. As any cogent American should know, the first Obama "stimulus" sent tens of billions of "one time" dollars to state Education Departments around the country. In PA, some school districts foolishly used these funds to HIRE MORE PEOPLE. When the stimulus ended, the Governor (and both houses of the state legislature, which are all Republican) DECLINED to make up the shortfall with new State spending. The actual State expenditures increased, just not enough to make up for the shortfall. This is not a "cut" in education spending. All of the D candidates are, literally, lying.
Second, Pennsylvania is a hotbed of "fracking." I don't have any exact numbers, but gas wells are sprouting up all over the state, creating tens of thousands of jobs, millions in tax revenues, and so on. I won't get into the environmental aspects of "fracking," which are not under discussion. But Pennsylvania has declined to impose a "severance tax," which is a tax on the value of the gas that is actually taken from the ground. Many states have it, and PA does not. This is ONE reason why there is so much fracking activity here. But still, PA is reaping a mountain of new tax revenue due to the fracking phenomenon.
ALL of the D candidates are touting their proposals to impose a severance tax, and one of them constantly advertises that HE will impose a tax that is twice as high as the others. All of them emphasize that these fracking companies are getting away with murder and will be made to pay. Ignore for a moment that both Houses of the Legislature are in R hands, and such a tax will never be imposed.
What they DON'T mention is that the severance tax will NOT be imposed on the drillers (e.g., Range Resources), but rather on the land owners who are currently receiving royalties from gas production. This would be a "post drilling" fee, which comes out of their take. All of the royalty contracts are the same in this respect.
So Range Resources won't pay a dime of those severance taxes, the "hard working Pennsylvanians," mainly farmers, will have it taken out of their pockets!
And presumably, all of the candidates know this, yet they continue to lie.
But getting back to my point, it's not the MONEY in politics that is the problem, it is the LIES.
It is the JOB of the Fourth Estate to call the politicians on their lies and distortions, but they fail to do so. Most news outlets are so politically driven that they simply carry water for one political party or another, and furthermore, they don't want to antagonize potential advertisers (the candidates) by calling out their lies and distortions on the editorial pages.
I don't know the answer. I certainly don't want some government bureaucrat deciding what is a lie and what is fair comment in political advertising, and such a law would probably be unconstitutional anyway. I'm sure there are websites that honestly try to pick the fly shit out of the pepper of political advertising, but their readership is microscopic, and probably limited to people who are political junkies anyway.
What to do, what to do?
