Campaign Finance Deformity
Campaign finance regulations are supposed to have something to do with
keeping politics clean. By controlling the flow of money that goes into
politics.
Well, it’s a theory.
But if you need money to pay for an ad containing your political speech, and it’s illegal to pay for that ad or run that ad, then CFR is really all about gagging people. Preventing speech or punishing it.
Recently the Federal Election Commission fined MoveOn.org, the Swift Boat
Veterans and a couple other groups hundreds of thousands of dollars. For
allegedly violating campaign finance laws in 2004.
If your organization is large, such fines can be meaningless, just the cost
of doing business. Unless the fines are so high that they destroy any
organization that the friendly FEC tribunal is targeting. This kind of
arbitrary power is obviously chilling.
How can such a regulatory regime be rationally defended? Nobody even WITH a
battery of attorneys and tens of millions of cash can figure out what they
are allowed to say and where and how much they can spend. What are groups to
do who lack millions and that necessary battery of attorneys?
All they can do really is . . . well . . . shut up. If they know what’s good for them.
Which is sort of why we had constitutional protection of free speech to
begin with. So this kind of thing can’t happen. We’ve really got to bring
that Constitution thingie back on line.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
