Information control, or, How to get to Orwellian governance

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Of course, Public Financing of elections would help solve this problem immensely.

Maybe it would help a little, but it would create other problems in its place. Public financing of campaigns is what we have here in Germany. The result is that the party machines end up controlling the process because they end up receiving this money. Judging by what I know about both countries, I'd rather have America's problems than Germany's.

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But wouldn't the American public first want to know how Public Financed money will be used to take away the subjective use of those monies by the party in control?

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cicerone imposter wrote:

But wouldn't the American public first want to know how Public Financed money will be used to take away the subjective use of those monies by the party in control?

It probably would; but if parties make promises in advance to get what they want, the public can't do anything once the they break their promises. At this point, a system is in place where government gives money to parties for their campaigns, and the two big parties make the laws under which they receive these government handouts. Now the public is out of the loop. It has practically no say in such a cartelized campaign finance system.

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But you're making an assumption that only the two major party candidates will receive money. How do you know that will be true?

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Public financing of political campaigns would not have to be organized here as it is in Europe, with it's idiotic political parties. Your political parties have far more control than do either the Democratic or Republican parties here. Each party has a state organization, to which politicians are responsible--they are not responsible to the national committees.

Public campaign financing assistance in the United States comes from a threshold figure which candidates must meet. People like the Shrub don't want public funds, because that limits the amount of money the can raise and spend. I'd prefer to see public financing, and it could easily be tied to verifiable petitions with voter signatures which can be checked against the voter registration rolls. That kind of thing is already routinely done here, and is a method easily accessible to grass roots movement.

I can think of few things more un-American than European-style political parties, and proportional allotment of parliamentary seats. Your system sucks, Thomas.

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Joe ran as an indepedent, and got both republican and democrats to vote for him.

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Setanta wrote:

I can think of few things more un-American than European-style political parties, and proportional allotment of parliamentary seats. Your system sucks, Thomas.

I agree. That's why I'm against initiatives that would make your system more like ours. Increased public financing of campaigns is one such initiative.

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Thomas wrote:

Setanta wrote:
I can think of few things more un-American than European-style political parties, and proportional allotment of parliamentary seats. Your system sucks, Thomas.

I agree. That's why I'm against initiatives that would make your system more like ours. Increased public financing of campaigns is one such initiative.

Not really, for the reasons Set mentioned earlier.

Public financing allows for independence amongst party members, in fact, in that you can be guaranteed a shot at the seat even if you don't vote the way your party bosses want you to during certain elections. That's the way DeLay ran the house for 6-8 years or so.

I can tell you that we have public financing in several state elections... and it seems to work pretty well

Cycloptichorn

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cicerone imposter wrote:

But you're making an assumption that only the two major party candidates will receive money. How do you know that will be true?

No I'm not. I'm assuming that only two major parties will make the laws under which candidates receive money. I am also assuming that campaign finance laws will reflect this, especially when there is more money for the campaign finance laws to govern.

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As Cyclo noted, i already pointed out that we don't need to do it the way it is done in Europe. Matching funds in the United States are already given to individuals, not to political parties. We just need to eliminate or drastically curtail private donations and political action committees.

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Thomas, Read what Set wrote above my post.

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

I can tell you that we have public financing in several state elections... and it seems to work pretty well

Well, I hope you and Setanta are right, and that public financing continues to work well in those state elections. I remain skeptical though.

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Skeptical is okay; I'm skeptical about most things in politics and religion.

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I think every system suffers from a lack of exclusivity. If there were no political action committees (a convenient dodge, such as the Swifties in 2004), and no private donations (or a drastic limit on them), then it might be more feasible. As it stands now, most state systems are like the Federal system, they are additional to private donations and political action committees.

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Thomas wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:
Of course, Public Financing of elections would help solve this problem immensely.

Maybe it would help a little, but it would create other problems in its place. Public financing of campaigns is what we have here in Germany. The result is that the party machines end up controlling the process because they end up receiving this money. Judging by what I know about both countries, I'd rather have America's problems than Germany's.

Well, I've just the opposite opinion.

Which is very easy to explain, since Social Democrats wouldn't get a lot of money from their supporters while the Liberals as the party of big industry and businesses ...

Gell, Thomas :wink:

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

Which is very easy to explain, since Social Democrats wouldn't get a lot of money from their supporters while the Liberals as the party of big industry and businesses ...

Damn, you saw right through me... oh wait, I mean: There you go again with your Marxist habit of reducing every argument to class interest. Wink

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Since you are such a good mood, they obviously didn't search your apartment until now :wink:

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Setanta wrote:

As Cyclo noted, i already pointed out that we don't need to do it the way it is done in Europe. Matching funds in the United States are already given to individuals, not to political parties. We just need to eliminate or drastically curtail private donations and political action committees.

>< Gasp! But then, if you limit the money given, you limit their FREE SPEECH[/size]!!!!!

Which only seems to matter to Republicans right around elections, have you noticed?

Cycloptichorn

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The Supremes have held that the election process is one which can be alleged to be a compelling state interest which outweighs matters of free speech rights. It is a matter of how far they are willing to go with that concept.

The Court has held that you can't stop an individual spending just as much money as he wants (see Joe Kennedy and the 1960 campaign). But if you study electioneering, you'll see that the rich boys like the Shrub don't want to spend their own money--they'd rather spend yours.

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I believe advocates of public financing of election campaigns are indulging in a form of the illusion of Aesop's mice who proposed putting a bell around the cat's neck as a solution to their problem with that predator. As the one skeptic asked, "Who will put the bell around the cat's neck?:

The devil is always in the details. It is easy to assert that dispassionate, impartial public funding of deserving candidates will solve asll our problems. Very hard though to find bureaucrats or public agencies who themselves are dispassionate, impartial, and wise & discerning enough to identify those who are truly deserving.

Moreover it is all too easy for the political consumers of these funds to outsmart the system and use the "non campaign" activities and funds of asllied groups as a way to escape the current spending thresholds for our current spending limits. Perhaps the most visibly egregious example of this is the "political education" spending of the CIO & the teacher's unions, which comprises a major portion of their very large budgets and almost all of which goes for Democrat candidates, but which somehow is never counted as a campaign expenditure. I have no doubt there are Republican equivalents to this, however none of their organizations enjoys the benefit of the law in forcing companies to withold and collect their funds for them at no cost.

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Information control, or, How to get to Orwellian governance

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