thedrifter
11-15-04, 08:36 AM
THROTTLING FREE SPEECH
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November 15, 2004 -- Not content that the First Amendment still has some life, Sen. John McCain is going to try again to kill it.
Just days after the presidential election, McCain announced that he would introduce a new bill, meant to fix "loopholes" in the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance legislation.
But the best "fix" for that disastrous law would be to scrap it altogether.
McCain wants more limits on independent "527 groups" and their use of "soft money" — large sums of unregulated funds.
That's because these groups — named 527s after the portion of the tax code that covers them, they include the anti-Bush Media Fund and Moveon.org and the anti-Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth — hogged the microphone big-time this past election.
But the groups themselves were an inevitable outgrowth of McCain-Feingold.
That law sought to get money out of politics.
So much for that: Some $1.5 billion is said to have been spent this presidential election cycle.
When McCain-Feingold limited political parties' soft money, big donors simply channeled their funds to the 527s. Billionaire George Soros became the Democrats' No. 1 sugar-daddy.
McCain doesn't like being bypassed.
He even called the Federal Election Commission a "failed" agency, because it chose not to intervene mid-campaign to stop the 527s from operating.
McCain wants a "new enforcement agency" to police campaign funds.
Oh, please.
The last thing that politics needs is another regulatory structure.
The problem is that, ultimately, money in politics is like river water: Damn it up in one place, and it finds new routes in which to flow.
As McCain is learning.
In its seminal Buckley vs. Valeo ruling in 1976, the Supreme Court rightly argued that, in politics, money and speech are invariably connected — because the former is needed to give the latter sufficient voice.
Limitations on political spending inevitably infringe upon speech.
If McCain is serious about reform, he should scrap cash limits and simply insist on prompt and thorough public disclosure of who's giving what to whom.
That is, give folks all the information, and then trust them to sort it all out.
In the process, let free speech reign.
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/34139.htm
Ellie
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Email Archives
Print Reprint
November 15, 2004 -- Not content that the First Amendment still has some life, Sen. John McCain is going to try again to kill it.
Just days after the presidential election, McCain announced that he would introduce a new bill, meant to fix "loopholes" in the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance legislation.
But the best "fix" for that disastrous law would be to scrap it altogether.
McCain wants more limits on independent "527 groups" and their use of "soft money" — large sums of unregulated funds.
That's because these groups — named 527s after the portion of the tax code that covers them, they include the anti-Bush Media Fund and Moveon.org and the anti-Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth — hogged the microphone big-time this past election.
But the groups themselves were an inevitable outgrowth of McCain-Feingold.
That law sought to get money out of politics.
So much for that: Some $1.5 billion is said to have been spent this presidential election cycle.
When McCain-Feingold limited political parties' soft money, big donors simply channeled their funds to the 527s. Billionaire George Soros became the Democrats' No. 1 sugar-daddy.
McCain doesn't like being bypassed.
He even called the Federal Election Commission a "failed" agency, because it chose not to intervene mid-campaign to stop the 527s from operating.
McCain wants a "new enforcement agency" to police campaign funds.
Oh, please.
The last thing that politics needs is another regulatory structure.
The problem is that, ultimately, money in politics is like river water: Damn it up in one place, and it finds new routes in which to flow.
As McCain is learning.
In its seminal Buckley vs. Valeo ruling in 1976, the Supreme Court rightly argued that, in politics, money and speech are invariably connected — because the former is needed to give the latter sufficient voice.
Limitations on political spending inevitably infringe upon speech.
If McCain is serious about reform, he should scrap cash limits and simply insist on prompt and thorough public disclosure of who's giving what to whom.
That is, give folks all the information, and then trust them to sort it all out.
In the process, let free speech reign.
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/34139.htm
Ellie