“There are really no limits on the amount of money you can give to a campaign,” explained Chuck Todd on his MSNBC program, The Daily Rundown. “We could claim there are limits, but they don’t really exist because of the way the system works.”
Todd isn’t talking about you and me. We have limits. By law, each person in each election can give no more than $2,600 to any single candidate.
He’s focused on billionaires. You know, the Koch brothers we hear so much about, or gambling magnate Sheldon Adelson. And, on the Democratic side, the super-rich Tom Streyer, Michael Bloomberg, George Soros and others.
But billionaires have limits, too. Their advantage is simply being able to afford the work-arounds. They can hire lawyers to advise them through the maze of speech and finance regulations. They can fund a SuperPAC or an independent expenditure or start a whole new organization if necessary to get their message out.
I’m not complaining. Billionaires have an inalienable right to flap their jaws and spend their money.
I’m only saying that we merely aspiring billionaires — the great American mostly washed middle class — should also be free to flap our jaws, to make our big political contribution and to have our say.
But we don’t. It’s a federal crime for you or me to donate one dollar more than $2,600 to the general election campaign of a congressional candidate we deeply believe in.
That it is a crime is the biggest campaign finance scandal of all.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
4 replies on “Let Us Give, Too”
OT Another example of the political spectrum being a circle instead of a flat line from left to right. When politics and economics get as out of whack as they are now, you find those on the far right and those on the far left coming together to push out the status quo as is starting in Europe. Elizabeth Warren tells it like it is on the big banks in this interview. Obamah (and the republicans would have done the same thing) chose big banks over people during the crisis. They saved the banks, pumped prices right back up(housing and everythign else) because to not do so, those who made bad loans everywhere, sold bad products everywhere, got saved and as a result, our kids coming out of college can’t afford a house or almost anything else in this economy:
“I’ve made no secret about my disagreements with the administration’s policies, particularly as they relate to the largest financial institutions,” Warren told HuffPost Live. “Like I say in the book, the president chose his economic team, and when there was only so much time and so much money to go around, his economic team chose Wall Street instead of American families who were in trouble.”
The only thing that will keep money out of politics is to limit the economic power of the politicians.
With the bastardization of the Constitution through the liberal construction of the commerce clause the genie is out of the bottle.
Until the federal government is compelled to stay within its enumerated powers, and the states and municipalities are forced to compete with one another the concentration of powers within the various governmental entities must continue until the same thing eventually happens, as a result of governmental collapse.
The major and first fallacy is that the politicians believe that they can control economics, as opposed to realizing that economics actually controls them.
Take the longer view.
Government agencies are so corrupt and actually inefficient that they are imploding anyway. We are in the process of unwinding and new and different types of solutions will prevail. Exciting times we live in.
JFB – I agree.
The reason being that by “regulating” commerce, politicians essentially control it, and company bottom lines. That ability leads rent-seekers to offer campaign cash for government favors that shouldn’t be sold. And it leads those who want to be left alone by government, to contribute for that purpose. All these costs go to the bottom line costs of the products/services sold.
Effects of this include the increased costs, reduced innovation, less competition, and companies here becoming less competitive globally (the decline of the US automakers comes to mind).
Lynn, I’ve yet to see a government agency implode. Certainly I see scandal, inefficiency, lawlessness, cronyism, and other maladies.
What I haven’t seen are enough voters or politicians calling for dismantling them.
But I do hope I’m wrong and you’re right.