Regarding the Supreme Court’s ruling on campaign finance reform, referred to as the incumbent protection act by AlphaPatriot, the gist is that:

Parties can’t have unfettered access to some money.

Special interest groups have to limit their political ads depending on how far away the election is.

Some special interest groups can do whatever they want as long as they oppose something (like MoveOn.org). But some special interest can’t do anything because they oppose something (like the NRA).

And the court sees no problem with this? I realize that the desired effect is to have the appearance that congress is doing something about campaign finance reform (note: I didn’t say that the desired effect was to actually do something about campaign finance reform. Trust me, the money will find its way to them no matter what laws they pass) but this means that during election times, it’s all about press coverage.

As one who believes that all politicians are bought and paid for by someone, I am all for limiting money contributions. But the rest seems entirely inconsistent, entirely unconstitutional, and generally stupid.

Posted in uncategorized on December 10th, 2003 by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |