From: "Matthew J. Miszewski" <mjmiski@execpc.com>
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1996 08:58:25 -0700 (PDT)
To: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Subject: Re: Stopping the buying of candidates
Message-ID: <199610231558.KAA25043@earth.execpc.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



> At 08:13 PM 10/22/96 -0700, Declan McCullagh wrote:
(snip)

> Sure, you can't keep people from talking.  However, one way to sabotage the 
> usefulness of telling is to allow everybody else as well to make the same 
> claim, with essentially no way for the candidates to tell who is REALLY 
> giving the money.  Make the lie just as credible as the truth, and the value 
> of knowing the truth is destroyed.  If nobody can trust anyone else's word, 
> then no candidate could know who REALLY ought to be rewarded for a campaign 
> contribution, breaking the circle of quid-pro-quo.  

Sorry, but this would depend upon equal access to a number of things. 
Primarily, John Q. Public does not have sufficient real world access 
to politicians to assert that he is the one who donated.  Lobbyists, 
OTOH, most certainly do.  Secondly, access to the timing of donations 
is something only the donor can know.  

"Wink, wink.  Nudge, nudge, Senator.  Look at your account balance 
tomorrow.  Never forget the National Association of Manufacturers was 
there for you"  (Obviously a completely random selection 8-)

> The candidate still gets the money, of course, and the contributor is still 
> free to both donate and speak...separately.  The thing that's been cut off 
> is the association between the money and the speech...which is exactly what 
> the problem is, isn't it?

See above for why the connection is not.  And the problem is 
generally not money, but rather the delivery of votes.  A candidate 
will do whatever it takes to get elected.  Often this means $$$ for 
campaign expenses.  More often it means vote delivery.  

Get rid of the career politician and you get rid of the motivation 
behind the pursuit of political money and vote delivery.  I hate to 
actually advocate term limits, but a critical vote in Congress is 
much harder to control when the rep is only interested in serving the 
public because there is no chance of re-election.  After all, it is 
not donations that are the evil here, it is the control of gov't 
action, right?  (Much of this could all be solved by electing better 
people as our representatives.  Determined will can make a big 
difference)

> Jim Bell
> jimbell@pacifier.com
 
++++==============----------------------------
Matthew J. Miszewski |The information revolution has changed wealth: 
		     |intellectual capital is now far more important 
mjmiski@execpc.com   |than money.		-Walter Wriston
                         ----------------------------==============++++