"John D. Giorgis" wrote:
>
> At 07:19 AM 2/5/01 -0800, Matt wrote:
> >Where would you find such a group of people, anyway?
>
> You must have missed the previous discussion a few months ago.
>
> Here it is from previous times:
>
> >The candidacy of John McCain has brought campaign finance
> >reform to the forefront of American Political Consciousness.
> >American's look at the amount of money it takes to run for
> >elected office in this country, and are rightly concerned
> >about the time, energy, and above all *the committments*
> >expended to raise this money.
There was a candidate who demonstrated how to raise money
while at the same time reaching the public -- by holding
rallies and speeches in large stadiums and charging <$50
per ticket.
> >McCain, like almost all other observers, have proposed solving
> >this problem by attacking the money- the source of money, how
> >money is raised, how it is spent, etc. I think McCain has
> >got it all wrong, however. Besides the fact that getting
> >money out of politics is virtually impossible thanks to our
> >1st Amendment, I think attacking the money is akin to taking
> >on the flu by finding a cure for the runny nose.
But the "flu" is undue influence on the eventual president. How
would reducing the number of people who make that decision fix
the problem?
> >The problem is that it is entirely reasonable that a candidate
> >should need to expend lots of money to reach a nation of 270
> >million people. Shouldn't spending so much as $5 or $10 per
> >voter be entirely resonable for a man or woman who would want
> >our votes to become President?
It is *not* entirely reasonable to have to buy time on media
which is really part of the public domain. Perhaps each candidate
should get a minimum commercial-free allotment of time to address
the nation, pre-empting whatever programming would have been on
at the time.
> >Why not, then, eliminate the need for one person to try and
> >reach so many voters at once? It has been identified time
> >and time again that the more local the election, to less
> >important is the money to success. Rather, in local elections
> >things like personal contacts, even personal meetings
> >with candidates, matter a lot. Phone calls, town hall
> >meetings, electioneering, etc. can all really turn a local race.
What you describe has the same flu as national elections. The
only difference is the scope is so small that it's hard for
anyone but the victims to care about it.
> >So, how do we make all of our races local? Easy...
<snip description of process>
You still didn't even address concerns over fairness,
accountability, or participation. I'll ask again, would
you stand behind and endorse whomever this group chose as
candidate, even if they chose the very, very last person
you would ever want to see become president?
All you would be doing is reducing the number of people
that a potential candidate has to bribe and/or coerce,
as our squatting president did by promising money to the
populous when it really could have been better used
elsewhere.
-- Matt Grimaldi
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