“Sham”paign Finance Reform, Just Another Dirty Trick It was just another patronizing softball interview on the local Clear Channel station by the nearly forgettable host, but something made me stay tuned in. Though I wanted something more substantive I held off on slipping in a favorite Bob Dylan CD. The familiar double-tongued babble of a seasoned career politician came across the airwaves. His mutterings were made all the more difficult to hear because of the constant glutial smooching the interviewer engaged in at every lull. The subject of the interview was trying to make his Senate bill, The Incumbent Protection Act, sound necessary in order to ‘clean up’ politics—even if it meant squelching a fundamental right to free speech. I was intrigued with wondering how this RINO was going to spin this outright breach of the very Constitution he was supposed to have sworn to uphold and defend. And it was enlightening. I learned that our very own senator’s motivation for this legislative weapon of mass distraction was rooted solidly in his own experience. It seems the wealthy, Wiley brothers opposed the Senator’s election and had the audacity to invest their own personal funds into thwarting such an occurrence. The brothers had heard this ‘living, breathing’ document guaranteed them the unalienable right to express their political opinions without hindrance. But the snowy-haired politico would have no more of that. He had had enough of the common folk interfering with the uber-mensch class, whose role it is to make rules and run the lives of the masses. There you have it. All this so-called ‘Campaign Finance Reform’ nonsense was the result of a couple of brothers who dared raise an economic hand to the Senator’s political ambitions. But his personal wants wouldn’t sell to the public, so what was he to do? It turns out that our sometimes socialist Senator knows very well the old political adage, “If you can get the voters asking the wrong questions, it doesn’t matter what answer you give”. He had to devise a way to get popular backing for his vendetta, but he would have to disguise the truth. What to do….what to do? “I’ve got it!” he thought, with a devilish grin, “I’ll tell the ‘little people’ that dirty money is the problem with politics—that’s why government doesn’t work! But how can I make it illegal for average people to contribute as much as they want to a challenger, and yet leave enough loopholes to satisfy incumbents?” With the inspiration of an evil genius he exclaimed, “I’ll tell them we need another law!” It was a perfect plan. “They’ll all go for it, and while I’m at it, I’ll even get the support of all incumbents if I put in provisions that make it a crime to criticize them at election time”. “And as an added bonus, it’ll make it look like I actually do something back in Washington in having to come up with all this stuff! Wow”. He liked his fiendish plot, so he patted himself on the metaphorical backside. And with that thought he boarded the borrowed corporate jet…for a pleasure trip, not a campaign jaunt, of course. “Selling my silly submission will be tough”, he thought, “so I’ll need the help of some already out-of-the-closet socialists. Perhaps a short sit-down in my Sedona hot tub and spa? It’s a no-brainer that the boys in those long black dresses will go along if my plan is challenged. They’ll bend over backward for me and twist that confounded Constitution into a pretzel, if I ask them ‘pretty please?’”. And the rest is history….. Just the same, there is that nagging problem of the rights of the individual to free and uninhibited political speech espoused in the supreme law of the land. The simple fact is, this stupid Act is just a way for incumbents to attack challengers and tie them up. Much as the so-called Clean Elections nonsense (the mini pre-cursor to the senator’s national bill) right here in Arizona wasn’t about making elections ‘clean’ and free of ‘dirty’ money. It was about a liberal agenda to put socialists into office and to give government total control over elections—and their outcomes. First, they say they want to expand the choices of Arizonans by funding campaigns out of the public pocketbook, and soon it becomes ‘necessary’ to control those same elections, to prevent abuse, of course. Look how the unfounded allegations tied up Matt Salmon’s gubernatorial campaign in 2006 and the attention of his staff while the top socialist played political trickster on the taxpayer’s dime. And the funny part was that Matt and I refused to take stolen tax dollars at all. His money from voluntary contributions somehow made him subservient to the clean elections commission. Go figure. Government should not have any thing at all to say about politics and campaigns, except to count the votes…and you don’t want to get me started on the paperless ballot scam. Fact is, if you want to support any candidate, no one will ever be able to stop you from putting as much as you want into that effort, right? I mean, who’s gonna stop you from buying a bunch of signs or even buying air time to forward a candidate or a cause? See, our snowy-haired senator also thought to throw in the disallowance for you to even criticize an incumbent during the 60-days prior to an election. Pretty clever, huh? He jumped from not allowing a challenger to raise campaign money, all the way to not allowing the challenger—or anyone else, to even bring up the foul deeds of the incumbent while in office—for 60 days PRIOR to an election! Do you want to know the Truth? Remember that thing I mentioned about distracting the public from the real problem early on in this piece? Well, the trick he tried to pull here is to couch the rationale for ‘Campaign Finance Reform’ in the cloak of ‘dirty’ money and ‘unrestrained public input’. Poetic and practical justice demands that you vote this guy out of office next chance you get because, as he is well aware, the real problems aren’t either of those things. The real problem is that votes are for sale, pure and simple. ‘Dirty’ money and influence will always find those that are on the political whore’s market. You’ll never end prostitution by making it illegal to pay someone for sex. The problem is with the seller, not the buyer. Since the same senator said he wanted to get the ‘dirty’ money and influence out of the drug trade by making all privately manufactured drugs illegal, why didn’t his new plan follow the same rationale and simply make selling votes illegal? One has to wonder…. The real problem now, as it has always been, is NOT money, but what it can buy—exceptions to, and favors from the rule of law. Why, I dare say, if both houses would simply follow the wishes of the founders of this incredible nation and allow for no exceptions or favors (at all) to the laws they passed, there would be no incentive for anyone to try to buy one. And if our good senator had really wanted to clean up politics, he would have simply reiterated the original mandates of principle and virtue: What government gives to one—it must give to all, and government is to ‘promote’ not ‘provide’ the general welfare. Barry Hess is the vice-chair of the Arizona Libertarian Party and the Libertarian Candidate for Governor.
