Campaign Finance Limits and Corruption?

Geroge Will echoes the very good question posed by Chief Justice Roberts,

Roberts asked the attorney general for an example to validate his
assertion that campaign contributions from Vermont interest groups ‘often determine what positions candidates and officials take on
issues.’ The attorney general answered that he could not offer an
example, and said that ‘influence’ would be more accurate than ‘determine.’ People trying to influence elections and government?
Heaven forfend.

I have to agree with the general thrust of this line of argumentation.  If the government wants to restrict campaing spending, then they need to prove that restricting spending will in all probability lead to a better result.  Secondly, to the extent that campaign finance reform is justifiable, it seems to me that its justification rests more with its ability to toy with competitive elections rather than its ability to influence candidates.  When a small NC state legislature district has 1.1 million dollars raised in issue advertising by hog famrers who do not wish to be regulated, the problem is the inability of the other side to fight back against an unreasonable avalanche of spending. 

Perhaps controlling money is not the best remedy for this.  Better disclosure laws on who is paying for advertising, and publicly funded avenues for communiating with people might be more helpful.  Regardless, maximizing the chances that the voters will elect someone who "gets it right" seems the obvious general aim of elections, and unlimited campaign spending in its current incarnation seems no better at stopping this than the pre-Buckley sytem did. 

Trip to Maine

We flew to Maine this weekend.  We drove home.  Greatest decsion ever made.  Now some photos:

Spending quality time with the Easter Seaboard Last Friday at BWI

And Some Random Maine Photographs:

Texas Redistricting

     Just saw the news about the ruling on WaPo.  I haven’t read the Opinion of the Court yet, so I don’t mean this question as a direct assault on the specific ruling the Court handed down today.  But I have a more general foundational question about what the outcome of this case means.  Do you really feel okay with a democratic regime that generates the outcome, "it is illegal to redistrict in a way that disenfranchises racial minorities but it is perfectly legal to redraw districts to make it harder for elections to threaten political leaders with the prospect of replacement?"  The outcome generated seems to indicate that we are okay with combating threats to political equality, but we do not really care about preserving the institutions that provide that political equality with any value.

On Leaking

Once again, the White House is attacking the newspapers and those who have leaked information on a questionable program of acquiring people’s financial records.  So let us return to what I feel are the standard questions that a citizen in a government such as ours would want to ask about this type of situation.

• Shouldn’t the public have the primary right to determine what information should and should not be kept from them? 

• Shouldn’t information regarding activity whereby the government acts upon themselves or their personal property always be a public (as in made in advance by the public, not public knowledge – more on this in one sec)?

• If I were to look upon a governing institution as not just a political body, that is constantly advertising to stay in power, but as a governing body that actually is supposed to manage the power I give to them in trust, what am I supposed to make of all of this? Why are so many people in the executive branch leaking?  Either there are so many people in the bureaucracy who feel that our government is acting in ways that either violate the mores or even laws of the nation that they feel compelled to blow the whistle repeatedly on our executive branch or there are so many people with a personal axe to grind against this administration that they leak out another story like this every few months just to hurt their political enemies.  The first scenario speaks of villainy and the second one of incompetence and ineffective management. 

• Why am I supposed to accept the argument that the newspapers have "done harm" to the war on terror by very generally making us aware of secret programs like the NSA program, the secret prisons "somewhere in Europe", or the general knowledge that we are renditioning prisoners again?  Is our plan for defeating terrorism to lull them into thinking that we are not actually trying to do things to stop them?  Should all references to the existence of our military cease and desist because the awareness of its existence might in fact give the terrorists some bizarre upper hand?  Perhaps even more of a challenge is this last question: "does public knowledge and public consent of standard channels of legal surveillance and the RICO act hopelessly cripple our ability to fight crime?

Now Zoidberg is the Popular One!

"Good news everybody!"  There’s some confusion still as to what is going on with Futurama production, but something seems to be happening.

Terry Henry??

Driving through the pouring rain on the way back to Baltimore, I listened to an NPR commentator talk about the World Cup and racism.  He commented that French star "Terry Henry" has started an organization to combat racism, so let’s bring back the bullet points…

• First off, how can you cover football and not know how to pronounce Thierry Henry’s name?  (Tee-air-ee Awn-Ree (I don’t know phoenetics)). 
• Second, and more importantly, is that the reporter missed the big story here.  Henry is playing against the coach who recieved pathetically light discipline for using racial slurs to describe him to one of his Arsenal team mates IN A SINGLE ELIMINATION GAME TOMORROW!  I declare myself for Henry and Zidane finally linking up and against football nations that refuse to punish racist officials.

Blog Feed of the Week

Since I am allowed one (and only one, at least for now) feed that I can put up on my blog at any given time, I thought that it might be nice to rotate feeds in and out on something resembling a weekly basis.   I thought I’d go with the Washington Post’s World Cup blog for the week.  Enjoy!

Welcome to the New Place…

Welcome to the new Cows and Graveyards.  The Blogger site remains up, but I have been having some real consistency issues with them lately.  Plus, the new site comes with an easy to remember URL that relates to the current blog I’m working on.. all in all, I think this was an overdue move – hope you like the new site.

MOVING THE SITE…

to here. Thanks for updating your links (please)

"You’ve Seen This Episode of ‘I Claudius’"

Yesterday, I linked to the Forntline episode “The Dark Side“. I have seen it, and I think that it lays out a very persuasive case for what has happened inside of the White House since September 11, and the many errors in judgment that have ensued.

• In keeping consistent with pointing out the Frontline show, I submit two WaPo articles of note. The first, on the governments secretly accessing bank records to look for terror connections. The second, on the government’s filing to dismiss NSA phone record lawsuits. I think that all Americans ought to be dissatisfied with this. Just as one cannot sell one’s self into slavery, the American public is not allowed to abdicate its power to self-govern. Again, people are already calling the Frontline piece, predictably, a political “hit piece”. I’m not saying that you should look at this and be a liberal (as I am not one) nor that you should vote for Democrats, or Greens, or whoever. Structurally speaking, the public needs to replace bad representatives and punish them for abuses. If that happens within party or via an alternative party: whatever. The point is that it is unclear how much power the public truly has when arguments for public good, and the public’s ability to act in its own interest and for its own preservation seem so feeble.