The Pittsburgh Comet & Campaign Finance Reform

The Pittsburgh Comet: "If the ship leaks, we can look to where it's leaking.

My second comment at another blog goes like this:

If pay to play is the problem, then fix pay to play. You don't fix pay to play with campaign finance reform.

As you said, "If the ship leaks, we can look to where it's leaking." EXACTLY.

If you have a leak on the roof of your house, don't put in cement floors. Fix the roof.

The pay part should be okay, within reason. Don't make it criminal to give a donation to a candidate. We want people to be invested in self-government and the American process -- generally. However, we don't want special favors to be delivered to anyone. We don't want certain players to get the ball and our money all the time at the exclusion of others. Government isn't about making the rich richer despite effective operations.

The play part of pay to play is where the taxpayers get screwed. The play part is fixed with the elimination of all no bid contracts.

If you want to do business with government, we need to have a competitive bid process to insure that we buy the most and best for the money -- open to all.

Gaming the system is solved when the contracts and purchasing elements are with sealed bids and competition.

Campaign finance reform is another matter. It needs attention too. But, trying to make Campaign Finance Reform a wonder drug, magic bullet, and fix-it-all-solution, is sure to bog everything down and fail.

BTW, this was one of the failures of Peduto 2004 thinking. We're past that now, I dare say.