July 01, 2004
More Campaign Finance Reform Follies. . .
Unbelievable. Now this abomination! Forget the PATRIOT Act handwringing. McCain-Feingold turns its regulatory head to preventing the Sierra Club (and other groups like the NRA) from political advocacy in a (hopefully still) free country. Personally, I loathe Greendom and all its works, but they have or ought to have an equal and unfettered right to campaign for the rights of fish and chlorophyll against any political candidate they don’t like.
A strange system -- the First Amendment, the Supreme Court has just ruled, protects one's right to spend limitless wealth to put sexual imagery on the internet, though children might readily access it, but an organization of people of common viewpoint who peacefully assemble to petition their government for redress of grievances cannot spend even limited wealth to advance their political opinion about who should run the country, because that's not what's meant by free speech. A last strand of hope makes me refuse to say: only in America.
Posted by Matthew Hogan at July 1, 2004 03:56 PMBut it’s sooo important that money not influence elections.
I was entirely baffled when Bush signed this travesty of a bill. I still don’t understand why Bush would sign it and let it become law. As I recall there was some talk about how it would never get past a supreme court test. But if you knew or believed it was unconstitutional why would you support it?
We’ll just have to wait until it does go through another court challenge.
I don’t often agree with both this side of the board and the Wall Street Journal, but yes, it is ridiculous that Supreme Court believes that the First Amendment protects pornography but not political advertisements. What is the point of free speech if you can’t tell King George to get stuffed?
Posted by: Woody Mena at July 2, 2004 11:05 PMMatthew, the issue is whether democracy should be run by those with the most bucks, or by the people who have the greatest concensus.
Individual person’s voices should not be drowned out of representatives ears by the din of vast money organizations - not if you want to continue to call the system a democracy!
