Author Topic: Campaign Financing  (Read 768 times)

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Offline Z95raven

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Campaign Financing
« on: October 14, 2011, 02:35:23 PM »
Hello,

I was curious what people here thought about on the issues surrounding campaign financing and lobbying.

I. How do you feel about the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (known also as the McCain-Feingold bill while being discussed in the Senate)?
(C&P from Wikipedia's Citizens United page: "On January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court overturned the provision of McCain-Feingold barring corporations and unions from paying for political ads made independently of candidate campaigns." )

II. What are you opinion on term limits in Congress?
According to Senate Report in 2008 "The 110th congress: The average length of service in the House at the beginning of the Congress was about 10 years (5.1 terms); in the Senate, 12.8 years (slightly over two terms).")

III. What are your opinions concerning lobbyists(corporate, union, non-profit, etc)? Would you support caps or bans on the amount lobbyists can spend on politicians in campaign contributions, gifts or other compensations?

IV. What are you opinions on probationary or cool-down periods for Senators or Representatives leaving public service and reentering the private sector? (I.e. statesmen are regulated, watched or banned from certain areas of the private sector that they may have influenced laws pertaining to while in office. This is a bit of a grey area so I will just ask for general thoughts and impressions on the topic.)

Offline Eupher

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Re: Campaign Financing
« Reply #1 on: October 14, 2011, 07:54:16 PM »
Hello,

I was curious what people here thought about on the issues surrounding campaign financing and lobbying.

I. How do you feel about the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (known also as the McCain-Feingold bill while being discussed in the Senate)?
(C&P from Wikipedia's Citizens United page: "On January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court overturned the provision of McCain-Feingold barring corporations and unions from paying for political ads made independently of candidate campaigns." )

II. What are you opinion on term limits in Congress?
According to Senate Report in 2008 "The 110th congress: The average length of service in the House at the beginning of the Congress was about 10 years (5.1 terms); in the Senate, 12.8 years (slightly over two terms).")

III. What are your opinions concerning lobbyists(corporate, union, non-profit, etc)? Would you support caps or bans on the amount lobbyists can spend on politicians in campaign contributions, gifts or other compensations?

IV. What are you opinions on probationary or cool-down periods for Senators or Representatives leaving public service and reentering the private sector? (I.e. statesmen are regulated, watched or banned from certain areas of the private sector that they may have influenced laws pertaining to while in office. This is a bit of a grey area so I will just ask for general thoughts and impressions on the topic.)

More importantly, what do YOU think about each of these issues?

Oh, and it's considered good form to introduce oneself in the Introductions forum - just open a thread and offer up a few comments about yourself, what drew you to CC, that sort of thing.

And welcome.
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Offline SSG Snuggle Bunny

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Re: Campaign Financing
« Reply #2 on: October 14, 2011, 09:29:33 PM »
I. People are free t have a policy preference. They are also free to ban together with like-minded individuals. Just because they have done so doesn't mean they have to expose their personal finances to frivilous lawsuits by every malcontent that disagees with them.

II. Good idea that does not address the real issue. See III, below

III. The reason we have lobbyists is because we have politicians that keep dicking around with regulations. If you don't want to be regulated to death you hire a lobbyist. If you want your competitor regulated to death you hire a lobbyists. If you want favorable, or just non-punitive, treatment in the tax code you hire a lobbyist.

In fact, every vile intrusion of money into politics can pretty much be traced back to politicians passing laws in the name of fairness (tax codes and regulations).

Flatten the tax structure. Prosperity should not be penalized and those who are allowed to vote need to share the exact same tax burden they would inflict on others.

Regulation should be geared towards standardized weights and measures and protection from fraud, force and catastrophic harm. The Article I, Section 8 and 10th Amendment would be a good brake on the current nonsense

IV. See III above. If taxes are flat and regulation subject to constitutional justification then corporations won't hire former pols because it would be pointless.
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