This is exactly why the assine campaign finance reform bill was such a bad idea. The govt can not limit political speech.

Posted by: Chris O'Donnell at April 1, 2004 10:18 AM

Oddly CNN and MSNBC don’t seem to be aware of this yet. More likely they still haven’t decided how this supports the theory that Bush is the antichrist.

Posted by: Warmonger at April 1, 2004 10:31 AM

My mistake. I didn’t recognize this as the same story. CNN has this as “RNC opens assault on anit-Bush groups”.

Posted by: Warmonger at April 1, 2004 10:34 AM

Of course. Whenever conservitives speak its “Hate Speech” but when liberals spew forth its “Free”

Posted by: Brian at April 1, 2004 10:51 AM

Criminal stupidity is a more apt description if either party thinks they can proceed with business as usual.

Too many partisans and concerned citizens are watching the money trail, as financial information is readily available to the public as never before.

Posted by: feste at April 1, 2004 10:53 AM

Money has inevitably been shown to be about the least persuasive political issue out there. Campaigns whine about it because they are looking for another name exposure — no other reason.

See, inter alia: tempest, teapot.

Posted by: Don at April 1, 2004 11:01 AM

What they need to do is to remove all blocks to contributions to political partys, PAC’s and 529’s. and have only 1 simple rule.

ALL dontations have to be publically reported, no matter what size, and from who.

This maintains everyones right to free speech, while not allowing them to hide anonymously behind an organization that they are attempting to contort with huge amounts of money. This ‘outing’ of contributors would make people think twice about bankrolling a Party, PAC or 529 and think that they can remain anonymous, if they didn’t want the media scutiny of why they made the contribution and what they were after.

Problem solved.

Posted by: Headzero at April 1, 2004 11:48 AM

Headzero,
Only if people, whomever they contributed to, have the right to eject people from their property or personal space who harass them over their contributions. Violently if necessary. Otherwise the lone democrat or lone republican in a neighborhood of the opposition party could easily find him or her self the victim of intimidation and threats.

Posted by: Morpheus at April 1, 2004 12:10 PM

Sounds risky to me. This could backfire. I can only assume they have good, hard evidence.

Posted by: Bostonian at April 1, 2004 12:34 PM

Headzero:

Amen. If an individual wishes to entirely bankroll a particular candidate, fine with me. They have, as far as I can tell, the 1st Amendment right to do so. I just want to be able to know which candidate has been bought and paid for by whom before I pull a lever in their favor.

Posted by: Gregory Litchfield at April 1, 2004 12:51 PM

Gregory -

Thats what I am getting at - if they have to publicly disclose where the money came from and how much then people could make an informed decision and no ones right to free speech has been transgressed upon.

Morpheus -

The right to personal property would remain the same. If someone is trespassing and harassing you, you can have them arrested. If you feel an imment threat from them you would have the right to respond with force, as you do now, just make sure you have a good lawyer if you chose to violate their ‘personal space’ as they have violated yours (this would fall under self defense at an intruder).

And I put 529’s in my post above - that should have been 527’s.

As far as I know College Investment vehicles aren’t bankrolling any candidates ;-P

Posted by: Headzero at April 1, 2004 01:04 PM

hurray for irony!

Posted by: x at April 1, 2004 01:25 PM

Why the hell should unions and other groups have any right to use members money to support any political party? It’s not every members choice to support a democrat.
unions who choose this path should give all dues back to members who object.
That would be fair, now wouldn’t it?

thats why unions don’t agree with that.

Posted by: Fat Guy at April 1, 2004 01:59 PM

What irony is there in the Dems being caught in another campaign finance scandal? Is it that the Dems pushed so hard for reform only to violate those restrictions? It’s not like violating campaign finance rules is new ground for the Democrats. It’s more like standard operating procedure.

The funny thing is, they constantly bitch about campaign funds while having the largest contributors, a large base of involuntary contributors in union workers, a larger base of campaign volunteers and the vast majority of the media rooting for them, often openly.

The problem surely isn’t money and resources — If you look at the money raised by all of the serious Democrat presidential candidates, it easily eclipses Bush’s war chest, and they’re not close to done yet.

No, the problem is both their message (or lack of message), which somehow manages to be negative, condescending, patronizing and divisive all at once, and their messengers - a bunch of faux-populist rich phonies.

Posted by: TL at April 1, 2004 03:09 PM

This story has not received a lot of press. Am I the only person who thinks that it should be front-page news? Conspiracy is a serious accusation.

Posted by: Bostonian at April 1, 2004 03:42 PM

Actually, the best way to do campaign finance reform is to limit political speech of a partisan nature to the print media.

It would cut the cost of elections, because paper is MUCH cheaper than TV, thus enabling candidates with small bank accounts to be competative.

Plus, it would force politicians to speak in whole sentences, not soundbites.

Posted by: eric at April 1, 2004 03:52 PM

With regards to unions: This is another reason they should be disbanded. Your typical union memeber has no real choice but to be a member of the union. No union card, no job. So he pays his union dues for lack of a better choice. Now some of that money is going to be spent to support a candidate he may or may not like. Just as bad, that same union is now running around claiming that he (along with the other 1243 members of the Brotherhood of Clockwatchers) all support that candidate.

Posted by: a different Bill at April 1, 2004 04:41 PM

I did a bit of research on celebrity donations in FundRace on the Rantblog.

80% of celebrity donations (of what I could find) went down the toilet to non-Kerry Dem candidates.

The Dem spending seems to FAR exceed the $2000 limits that are legally required.

Something doesn’t wash.

Posted by: Aaron's Rantblog at April 1, 2004 05:19 PM

I am flabbergasted at the amount of schemes Democrats will go through to push Kerry through America’s throat. Kerry is an ill man. Yesterday I heard Kerry had his prostate removed last year. What’s this all about? I googled Kerry and prostate. It is true. Kerry is impotent. How can we elect a US president who is impotent without being the laughing stock in the world of macho and male chauvinist world politics? Is any terrorist going to be afraid if the US president is a Eunuch? Is any testosterone driven soldier going to respect the Commander in Chief who can’t even make his own little soldier get up and salute? Kerry is the wrong man at the wrong time. No amount of soft money will persuade Americans to elect Kerry, when they know the real Kerry deal.

Posted by: Ricky Vandal at April 1, 2004 05:51 PM

Speaking of big contributors….

I’m not a big believer in conspiracies but something about the recent spike in gasoline prices just doesn’t sit well with me.

Connect the dots…

1. George Soros has vehemently vowed to get George W Bush out of office.

2. He has backed that up by sponsoring MOVEON.ORG with MILLIONS.

3. George Soros runs the largest currency and commodity hedge funds in the world, all of which are minimally regulated due to their derivative
nature. These funds were partially responsible for the Asian Crisis (or Asian Meltdown) some years ago.

4. Gasoline prices have been rising rapidly since the Presidential campaign heated up.

5. Gasoline prices are now a campaign issue.

6. The Saudis and OPEC are complaining of speculation in the oil futures markets…

Is there a connection between at least part of the spike in Gasoline Prices and George Soros affiliated hedge funds???????

Interesting, is it not?

Posted by: AlamoObserver at April 1, 2004 09:01 PM

Long ago, my grandfather told me that the political fight between the parties over anonymous money was like a cat fight in a brothel, with the hookers accusing the whores of being prostitutes.

The old man was right on.

Posted by: Jrm at April 1, 2004 09:14 PM

Oh the Democrats are only allowing us to outspend them by 2-1 instead of the 10-1 we think should be stopped from getting their message out. boo hoo…Another Republican misleader. Just days ago Frist was saying that Clarke was commiting perjury as would be revealed by his 2002 congressional testimony. Then he told reporters that he hadnt actually read the transcripts and didnt know if in fact Clarke had actually contradicted himself, so I dont think anyone should be in a rush to believe the Republicans on this one…If they have something- it will shake out.

Back on track: The WaPo article doesnt actually explain whats going on in a way that can be followed but my understanding is this: The new campaign finance laws allowed certain non political groups to run ads so long as they werent working in concert with the political parties. Now the pro-dem groups- ones organized by labor unions, environmentalists, and moveon.org have been running anti bush ads- labor groups can run ‘bush costs american jobs’ ads for example. The key point is that they can not communicate to plan their advertising with the political parties. So they run ads and the ads are appearing in the same markets as kerry and seem to be complementing his- i.e.: kerry hits nights, the non-political groups hit days….and in the same market. How can these groups not be coordinating with the Kerry campaign, and or DNC? Thats the Republicans arguement, as I understand it.
Here’s the problem: lots and lots of money is at play here in these ads, and these groups- they arent dumb. They are running their ads of computer models. Registered voters in a district, independants, swing voters and they are targetting their advertising as closely as possible based on these computer databases. So the Kerry campaigns ads are obvious. You can turn on the tv and see when they are on or you can check with a media monitoring service… So the non politico’s are running their ads seemingly in lock step with Kerry’s. I believe the president of Moveon.org already stated flatly they have no communication with Kerry’s campaign. I understand that all the Republicans have is an inference and their own self righteos indignation that this alleged illegal activity has occured and no actual evidence.

Now if the Republicans can actually prove that something illegal happened- good for them. Laws should be obay’ed. In the meantime- werent the Republicans controlling the house, the senate and the presidency when the current campaign finance law was written? Or was it during Clinton when they only controlled 2 out of 3? Im not sure. Also- the individual hard money limit doubled 1000$ to 2000$ a measure that disproportionately benefitted the Republicans. Last I heard though- Bush had over 100$ million in the bank over Kerry. But overall, counting RNC money, then non politico’s, et al- the money race was dead even. Sounds like a fair fight to me.

Meanwhile I hear Tom Delay, Republican Senate majority leader, is making plans to step down from his leader position becouse of a possible pending indictment in Texas. Seems he may have violated some of Texas’s campaign finance laws when they Gerrymandered the state to give Republicans 75% of the house seats when they Republicans are only 55% of the population… I guess we’ll see on this one too.

Posted by: typhonus at April 1, 2004 11:14 PM

“Tom Delay, Republican Senate majority leader”

Typhonus=what2 ???

any takers?

Posted by: jones at April 2, 2004 06:33 AM

One of the most damaging large-scale frauds in the United States is the misuse of union endorsements and mandatory union membership dues to fund the political campaigns of the most extreme socialist and even Marxist political candidates without the permission of the union members. Even though a substantial percentage (40%) of union members are Republicans or conservative Democrats and oppose socialism and marxism, their First Amendment rights are violated and their hard-earned money is taken by force to support opposite views and political agendas.

Labor unions throughout the U.S. consistently send out slate mailers at election time telling their members to vote straight Democratic party line, even when the Democratic candidates promote laws and policies that are very damaging to everyone including union members and their families. For example, the Democrats typically promote ever increasing excessive, confiscatory taxes that destroy worker’s take-home pay and often force both heads of household to work full-time plus over-time. labor unions use massive false advertising campaigns, claiming that businesses were out-spending them by a ratio of ten-to-one. However, the union leaders actually out-spent businesses and their own members by a factor of four-to-one using the union members own money.
Unions should NOT be allowed to donate ANY money, or run ads favoring ANY political party.
This includes endorsements, because they do not speak for the whole membership.

Posted by: Fat Guy at April 2, 2004 10:11 AM

Jones- My Bad, “House Majority Leader Tom Delay”- Duhh.. Frist the cat killer is the Senate Majority Leader…

Fat guy- thanks for bringing us a nice fact free statement.

Posted by: typhonus at April 2, 2004 02:51 PM

Fat Guy……That union issue has fried my a— for years. You’re right and I don’t understand why the union members don’t stand up and put a stop to it. I hear enough of them complaining, but evidently none of them stand up to get it changed. Is it the same problem the Iraqis had? They are strong enough to overthow their leader? Maybe they need our help……

Posted by: Jeff B at April 2, 2004 05:42 PM

Actually the unions are outdated. They served their purpose 60-70 years ago. Then they just became cripplers to our industry by mafia techniques and used the funds of their members to finance their lifes of leisure and casinos in Vegas. If the company you worked for did that with your money, they’d be on their way to prison as we are starting to witness.

Posted by: Jeff B at April 2, 2004 05:46 PM

Aren’t union members entitled to get a refund of a portion of their dues (the part not used for collective bargaining activities)? I thought there was a Supreme Court case that said that. Anybody know of a good source for finding out how you go about doing that?

Posted by: TL at April 2, 2004 07:25 PM

One name - SOROS.

Posted by: Cap'n DOC at April 3, 2004 07:57 PM