Blocking a poison pill isn’t as good as taking medicine, but it will do

[mithriltabby]

The California Clean Money Campaign alerted me to the fact that tonight’s Sunnyvale City Council Meeting would be discussing an advisory measure about the public financing of electoral campaigns... one which had been crafted as a poison pill that would pretty much guarantee that no one would vote for it. A number of people turned up to speak against the wording and for public financing, and the matter is postponed until January 2008. For the record, the only councilmembers who raised their hands when asked if they supported clean elections were Christopher R. Moylan and Melinda Hamilton; I suspect the poison pill is the result of a collaboration between Anthony Spitaleri and John Howe. Honorable mention to Otto Lee for bringing discussion of the measure from “last” to “#5 out of 9”.

Comments

[chuckles48.livejournal.com]

I guess we'll have to disagree aboutt public financing = clean elections. I tend to regard it as an incumbent protection measure, much in the vein of McCain-Feingold.

Mind you, I'm not against full disclosure. Just against efforts that lock in the major-party candidates, and screw everyone else. Which is one of the (IMHO) unintended consequences of public financing.

[mithriltabby]

Public financing reduces the influence of wealthy interests in government; if a politician doesn’t have to worry about pleasing backers so they can afford re-election, that’s one less source of corruption. It doesn’t address the problems with our electoral system that lock in the major-party candidates, leading to the “we only have to be different enough from the other party and don’t have to actually bother with doing a good job” syndrome afflicting the Democrats and Republicans. Ranked-choice voting, which would make third parties viable, would help with the latter problem.

[chuckles48.livejournal.com]

Ummm, if you really think public financing reduces the influence of moneyed interests, I have a nice piece of view real estate you might be interested in.

Seriously, this stuff's already been demonstrated. If you choke off hard donations, they shift to soft donations. If you choke off that, it shifts to issue advocacy. You CAN'T choke that off. Cut off gifts, and you get junkets. Ad infinitum.

I see a lot of the 'campaign reform' effort as an attempt to undo Unruh's First Law. "Money is the mother's milk of politics". Which, honestly, is like pushing water up hill.

Seriously. Money _will_ make itself felt in a campaign. Public financing simply chokes out the non-incumbent candidates. I'd actually like to see a study of turnover rates in publicly-funded campaigns vs. non-publicly-funded campaigns. There's #s on fundraising, and time spent in the campaign, but no on turnover rates.

And, as I've commented elsewhere, pitching the two-dominant-party system we have may change things, but that doesn't mean that it will do us any better. Look at multiparty parliamentary systems - Canada, Italy, Israel, Iraq, Germany, and so forth. They're no less screwed up, just differently so. IMHO, in this case "different =/= "better".

[mithriltabby]

Public financing simply chokes out the non-incumbent candidates. I'd actually like to see a study of turnover rates in publicly-funded campaigns vs. non-publicly-funded campaigns. There's #s on fundraising, and time spent in the campaign, but no on turnover rates.

Ask the folks at California Clean Money Campaign or Public Campaign. Incumbent candidates already have a huge advantage under the existing system; I’d be surprised if they’re favored under public funding.

We can’t keep money out of politics entirely, but we can limit its influence. If you want to take the ultimately cynical view, let’s just have an honest plutocracy: one dollar is one vote. You buy laws by sending money to the government earmarked for a bill; the government puts the “yes” and “no” votes into the treasury, and whichever came up with the biggest amount (pick a cutoff on voting like “maximum bid did not increase by more than 10% in 24 hours”) passes or quashes the bill. Allow voting via Internet and 1-900 numbers, and count all such money spent against your tax payments.

[chuckles48.livejournal.com]

You said it yourself - incumbents have a built in advantage. If you go to public financing of a campaign, all you've really done is cement that advantage. McCain-Feingolf was supposed to be about doing exactly what you've suggested - public financing to eliminate the impact of private money. So, look at the results (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41360-2004May19.html). Instead of a publicly-financed, "clean" campaign, we got HUGE amounts of money rolling in, and tons of 527-based issue advocacy using large amounts of undocumented soft money.

Honestly, I don't think you can limit the impact of money without severely running afoul of constitutional issues. And, courtesy of that dain-bramaged Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific precedent, corporations are people too.

Want to do some good, in restricting the impact of money? Get that SCC vs. SP precedent overturned. And make sure unions are thereafter just as hamstrung as corporations.

[mithriltabby]

McCain-Feingold is only a small step; look at what they’re doing in Maine, where you can get a bunch of $5 contributions to show you’re viable and then run entirely on public funds. That still won’t stop 527’s from running all the ads they want, but it cuts off the direct link of hard money to a candidate. It also opens up the opportunity to demonize anyone who isn’t running on clean elections by pointing out that they’re pawns of their backers. (It’d also help if the Fourth Estate would get its collective thumb out of its collective butt and do some more aggressive fact-checking and debunking of the lies coming from each campaign.)

I’d love to see someone pass a law establishing that neither corporations, unions, political parties, nor 527 organizations are persons and do not automatically possess constitutional rights given to people. Of course, getting someone elected who’s willing to introduce that legislation (and enough representatives to vote for it) would be tricky.