People are electing candidates who shun corporate cash

“…Thanks for taking one for the team… show Eli some love — he’s earned it.

Just popped in to say that I sure didn’t miss your article, having been much impressed with last week’s comments on the state of the MSM.

The same problem is currently a hot topic in the UK, thanks especially to the current “cash-for-honours” scandal.

The Tories (conservatives) have proposed a 50000 UKP individual donation limit, which would suit them very well, since the great majority of their income comes from middling-wealthy individuals and businesses who rarely give more than fifty grand, whereas New Labour rely on a small number of much larger donations from trades unions and from the superrich.

My own favoured donation limit would be 1UKP per person per year (with 1UKP added to state benefits so that no-one, however poor, is excluded from, or ignored by, the political process, and with a ban on all donations from organizations).

Since that’s not going to happen, we must all remember that continued freedom of internet speech (net neutrality, etc.) is the paramount issue to anyone who hopes to see genuine democracy re-emerge from the ruins of the now-self-destructing ‘Best Democracy Money Can Buy’.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Collins

Doing public financing of campaigns with everyone capped at the same amount will not fly in the courts.

Ah, but what if candidates don’t have to choose between public financing and their own fundraising? It could be used as a supplement to greatly reduce their fundraising pressures, but they can still opt to raise extra if they want.

The money supply is sucked up by the money demand. A senator has to raise thousands a day to run the next campaign. Many of them hate the strap-on cash register but have to wear it anyway. (It straps on the back, I mean!)

If the money demand drops, the motive to take the supply will drop, and some politicians will behave a little cleaner, because they will have the option.

We have already been down the ‘choking the money supply’ route: there are tons of precedents behind “corporate speech is free speech”. Doing public financing of campaigns with everyone capped at the same amount will not fly in the courts. However, trying it for one election before it gets reversed by the Supremes would be illuminating enough.

But really, to me, the problem is that campaigning costs too much: it has to drop. Apparently some countries ban all campaigning until the last few weeks before the election. This would cut the annoyance factor as well.

That’s all I got.

Agree completely. It was the subject of my previous post, and was much more prominently featured in an earlier draft of this one.

Unfortunately, solutions are somewhat hard to come by, and I’m not convinced that the blogs will ever be able to overthrow broadcast media, which can be passively consumed, even while doing other stuff. But as you say, they might be able to compete with or even replace print media, especially the online editions.

1. No limit on donation amounts.

They have a lot more gazillionaires than we do, and it would make us little people even more insignificant than we are now. If I really sucked it up and tightened my belt, I could probably contribute just as much to a presidential campaign as Lee Raymond or Jack Welch. But if you take the cap off, I might as well not even bother.

I’d happily give away eating turkey and watching football to give thanks to fair voting…

and, ahem, err…..Fitz!

One of my friends has proposed this version of campaign financing regulation:

1. No limit on donation amounts.

2. All donors must be natural persions (that is, can get a driving license or a Social Security card).

3. All donations are reportable (no matter what size).

Zero chance of enactment, of course.