You are very confused.
"Checks and balances" has nothing to do with campaign finance "reform".
The Founders would have recoiled from your view as completely as you do from knowledge and logic. Their plan was to preserve a republic - not democracy, as you incorrectly state. In fact, many of the checks and balances that you incorrectly cite were aimed precisely at limiting the dark side of democracy - the mob. If you're one of the mob you can't see its dangers.
The present bill, McCain-Feingold, is really an incumbent protection act with has manifestly unconstitutional elements. It is being pushed by overt demagogues, who, if they are intelligent enough, realize that much of it will be aborted by the courts - a check that balances - and by time - as people find a way around whatever is left. McCain-Feingold is consumer fraud:
....Congressional "reformers" have seized upon the Enron debacle in an attempt to push this unconstitutional bill over the top. They are cheered on by liberal big-city newspapers, such as The Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, and by the demonstrably liberal broadcast networks. Not coincidentally, the influence on politics of both newspapers and television networks would increase greatly at the expense of the neutered parties and non-labor interest groups.
It doesn't matter that all the available evidence shows that several Cabinet officials and other high-level members of the Bush administration summarily rejected numerous desperate entreaties for indirect financial support by officials of the now-bankrupt Enron Corp. — despite the fact that the corporation contributed a whopping $3.6 million in soft money since 1990. Soft money did not corrupt politics and policy. It is not the problem. Nor is the information provided by issue ads.
Conversely, as the Clinton-Gore administration demonstrated repeatedly, politicians willing to peddle their power to the highest political bidder — even if that bidder risks U.S. national security, as Loral Space and Communications Corp. did with its unauthorized transfer of ballistic-missile technology to communist China — are the most corrupt factors in American politics. Too bad Shays-Meehan, in its misguided attack on the means of broadcasting indispensable political information, ignores the blight of political corruption.
washingtontimes.com
Blaming "the system" and advancing bogus "reform" are diversions from reality and responsibility - but it serves a purpose - to insulate demagogues from the consequences of their corruption. And they will fool much of the mob.
It is bad people that corrupt the system, not the other way around. |
