For a couple of years, I checked the little box on Form 1040 that authorized the Feds to devote $1 of my tax burden to a national fund for Presidential campaigns. It should surprise no one who knows me that once I saw some actual Presidential campaigns, I quit checking the box. Federal funding of political campaigns has long been a goal of reformers, but I am persuaded that it's time the government backed away from regulating elections in the first place. Quite apart from the matter of governmental support for people who shouldn't be in government some of these guys shouldn't be running a roadside fruit stand, fercrissake the current election laws have proven to be a boon mostly for the people who develop ways to get around them. We are now awash in "soft money", a euphemism for contributions which dance around the letter of the law while crapping upon its spirit. True reform, I suggest, requires two changes:
All in all, a win-win situation. The Congress, acting in its so-called "bipartisan" mode, would probably kill it for that reason alone. |
![]() #26
|
Copyright © 1996 by Charles G. Hill