Campaign Finance "Reform" (updated)


What's wrong with this picture?
Disclaimer: I was one of those working actively in Arizona against the re-election of John McCain in 2004, and the McCain-Feingold Act was a major reason why.

I've been asked to explain the why I object to the McCain-Feingold Act. Aside from the fact that it is a direct violation of the First Amendment, it benefits incumbents and insulates them from independent criticism in the crucial time just before the election.

But the real annoyance is that the "grass-roots" movement for CFR was a concealed campaign by 8 liberal foundations who provided almost 90% of the funding to convince Congressmen that there was a huge demand for a problem fix.

The original article was published in the New York Post (free registration required). John Fund covers the same material for OpinionJournal.com.

And yes, I can feel some of you cringing because the sources are not liberal-approved. Liberals don't have a monopoly on the news though.

Here are the facts that no one is disputing.

Sean Treglia, formally of the Pew Charitable Trusts, admitted that Pew and other foundations misled Congress.

"The target audience for all this activity was 535 people in Washington, The idea was to create an impression that a mass movement was afoot — that everywhere they looked, in academic institutions, in the business community, in religious groups, in ethnic groups, everywhere, people were talking about reform."

The money figures are really interesting. Eight foundations provided $123 million of the $140 million used by the campaign to get "campaign finance reform" passed. Talk about irony there.

Pew Charitable Trusts ($40.1 million)
Schumann Center for Media and Democracy ($17.6 million)
Carnegie Corporation of New York ($14.1 million)
Joyce Foundation ($13.5 million)
George Soros' Open Society Institute ($12.6 million)
Jerome Kohlberg Trust ($11.3 million)
Ford Foundation ($8.8 million)
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation ($5.2 million)

Even in modern liberal circles, at the time CFR was perceived as a way to keep conservatives expressing their beliefs to the voters. Note that this isn't an attempt to preserve free speech, it is a blatant attempt to control acceptable speech by cutting out the funding for speech that some people find offensive. Even worse, the foundations behind the "movement" couldn't be open about what they intended.

Even the former supporters of the CFR bill like the Congressional Black Caucus have come out against the law.

In all fairness, Pew did deny the charges and claim misunderstanding. Mr. Treglia also apologized to the Pew Trusts. But I have to agree with Ryan Sager, the author of the original article.

"This is what’s troubling. I don’t care what Bob Bauer, Rick Hasen, John McCain and Sean Treglia knew (well, I do, but for different reasons). I care how this all was sold to the American people."
<snip>
"Insiders may have known that this was all an insiders’ game -- but the American people did not know this!"

Thanks to The Volokh Conspiracy for a pretty comprehensive roundup of commentary on the subject.

It may well have been business as usual, a wink and a nod among those in the know, but that is not what people were told. Think about that for just a moment.

For "your own good," someone deliberately set out to deprive you of rights and lied to you about both the reason why and the people involved. Because you couldn't be trusted to make the correct decision, someone decided to hide the truth.

And that is about as undemocratic and anti-individualist as it can get.

UPDATE: Added some links and did a minor rewrite.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Fri - June 17, 2005 at 08:35 PM  Tag


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