Monday, June 09, 2008

Mayor vetoes campaign finance reform

Forced. That was the word Luke used in his description ... labor would be 'forced to' blah, blah, blah.
Mayor vetoes campaign finance reform: "Under the current bill, the labor community, whose funds are raised at the small dollar level from working men and women, and distributed through PACs, would be forced to find 50 PACs to contribute at the maximum levels proscribed by this bill to match the wealthy, anti-labor candidate.'
First of all, many labor unions force their members to give to their political action committees. Unions often extract money by force from the ranks of the union's membership. Some of those incomes are spend in PACs.

If Luke wants to talk about 'force' -- let's talk about it.

Furthermore, and more to my core of being, is the feeling that unions would be forced to match up to a wealth opponent in the spending department. The amount of money raised does not guarantee votes.

If 50 PACs each donate the limit to a candidate to match, dollar for dollar, what the wealthy opposition has invested / spent, so what. Money can't guarantee votes. The boots on the street and the people going to the polls are much more valuable than the capital in the check book of a wealthy opponent.

Finally, the PAC can give the limit and then pass the word that each of the members of the PAC give from personal accounts. The members of the union can write a check for $50 or even up to $2000 each.

The donation from the PAC to the candidate is just the tip of the point. The wood behind the arrow's point is the additional donations from individuals to the candidate directly.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

John K. says: Mayor did the right thing. Even Bob Barr disagrees with campaign finance reform. Only people who favor this agenda are those losers who can't get their message supported by money. And of course money is not going to back a loser. You should have learned that Rauterkaus. But then if you can't convince people to back you, force the other guy to sink to your level and justify it by saying, "Its not fair."

Mark Rauterkus said...

The loosers are the taxpayers and residents.

The one's that govern learn to burn money in a campaign and then burn more after being elected.

I don't complain about fairness. Rather, the gripes are with dishonest, spending and thoughtlessness.

I've had more than 8,000 votes -- at great economy. I have gotten greater than 10 x the number of votes than the number of voters of my party.

The backing is not a problem.