All Posts Tagged With: "campaign finance reform"
Money Is Not Speech
“The Supreme Court said that money equals speech!” Proponents of campaign finance regulation have thrown this trope around freely since 2010’s landmark Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission. Fortunately, the Court never actually made such an absurd equation. It would be hard to take the Court seriously if it had. But [...]
30Nov2011 | Michael Cummins | 2 comments | ContinuedWelfare for Politicians?: Taxpayer Financing of Campaigns
Imagine a government policy that funds an important civic function, but is not mandatory; which is paid for not through taxes, but through voluntary contributions; and which adds nothing to the government debt. Sound good? This is a description of the United States’ traditional system of privately funded political campaigns. And the best is yet [...]
1Apr2006 | Bradley A. Smith | 0 comments | ContinuedPolitics Corrupts Money
In September the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the heated battle over campaign finance reform legislation—the so-called Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, or BCRA. That law, passed by Congress and signed by President Bush in 2002, has been challenged by a wide array of parties, including such strange bedfellows as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce [...]
1Jan2004 | George C. Leef | 0 comments | ContinuedUnfree Speech: The Folly of Campaign Finance Reform by Bradley A. Smith
Princeton University Press • 2001 • 304 pages • $26.95 Reviewed by John Samples Responding to Watergate, Congress a generation ago passed draconian restrictions on campaign spending and fundraising. The Supreme Court eventually struck down the spending limits, but affirmed contribution ceilings and the legality of the new agency empowered to oversee the regulatory regime, [...]
1Jun2002 | Bradley A. Smith | 0 comments | ContinuedThat’s Not What We Meant to Do: Reform and Its Unintended Consequences in Twentieth-Century America by Steven M. Gillon
The art of economics, as Henry Hazlitt might put it, is to uncover the unanticipated effects of an act. In “That’s Not What We Meant to Do,” historian Steven M. Gillon details the history of five federal acts. He states, “My goal is fairly modest: to tell a few stories of how unintended consequences occur, to speculate about their significance, and to inspire more research and discussion about this often mentioned but infrequently explored theme.”
1Jul2001 | Philip Murray | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Other Political Story
Unfortunately, last year’s presidential election was a mess. Unfortunately, the congressional elections were not.
While it proved difficult to determine who won the presidency, it was not difficult to determine who controlled Congress. Only six House incumbents lost, yielding a re-election rate of 98.5 percent.
1Apr2001 | Doug Bandow | 0 comments | ContinuedMonopoly Politics by James C. Miller III
Hoover Institution Press • 1999 • 157 pages • $17.95 The Founding Fathers were well aware that it takes more than ideas, as important as they are, to permit freedom to flourish. It takes institutions—private property, foremost, and political institutions that will protect rather than plunder it. Thus the political system they established was designed [...]
1Feb2001 | Robert Batemarco | 0 comments | ContinuedWill Campaign Finance Reform Enhance the Power of the People?
A common cry among the reform set these days is that there is too much money in politics. Those who decry the role of money in politics imagine a world where the 535 members of Congress along with the president sit around in togas discussing the best way to serve the people. Rather than being [...]
1Sep2000 | Russell Roberts | 0 comments | ContinuedCampaign-Finance Reform Will End Corruption?
People with an investment in government power will torture logic like a medieval inquisitor rather than face the facts. Consider campaign-finance reform. The standard reformist wisdom is that campaign contributions corrupt the democratic process: Candidates need money to run for office. Corporations and wealthy folks offer to provide the money in return for favors when [...]
1May2000 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedWhy Honorable People Avoid Politics
Supporters of campaign-finance “reform,” meaning, supporters of greater government financing and central planning of electoral campaigns—routinely lament the fact that politicos must raise large sums of money to run for office. This requirement not only risks making elected officials indebted to the interest groups that fund their campaigns, but it also is said to dissuade [...]
1Oct1998 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 6 comments | ContinuedTake the Rich Off Welfare by Mark Zepezauer and Arthur Naiman
Odonian Press • 1996 • 191 pages • $9.00 Aaron Steelman is staff writer at the Cato Institute. Corporate welfare has become a favorite target of political activists across the ideological spectrum. Free-market groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, and Americans for Tax Reform have joined forces with Public [...]
1Feb1998 | Aaron Steelman | 0 comments | Continued-
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