At 08:13 PM 10/22/96 -0700, Declan McCullagh wrote: (snip)

Sure, you can't keep people from talking. However, one way to sabotage the usefulness of telling is to allow everybody else as well to make the same claim, with essentially no way for the candidates to tell who is REALLY giving the money. Make the lie just as credible as the truth, and the value of knowing the truth is destroyed. If nobody can trust anyone else's word, then no candidate could know who REALLY ought to be rewarded for a campaign contribution, breaking the circle of quid-pro-quo.

Sorry, but this would depend upon equal access to a number of things. Primarily, John Q. Public does not have sufficient real world access to politicians to assert that he is the one who donated. Lobbyists, OTOH, most certainly do. Secondly, access to the timing of donations is something only the donor can know. "Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge, Senator. Look at your account balance tomorrow. Never forget the National Association of Manufacturers was there for you" (Obviously a completely random selection 8-)

The candidate still gets the money, of course, and the contributor is still free to both donate and speak...separately. The thing that's been cut off is the association between the money and the speech...which is exactly what the problem is, isn't it?

See above for why the connection is not. And the problem is generally not money, but rather the delivery of votes. A candidate will do whatever it takes to get elected. Often this means $$$ for campaign expenses. More often it means vote delivery. Get rid of the career politician and you get rid of the motivation behind the pursuit of political money and vote delivery. I hate to actually advocate term limits, but a critical vote in Congress is much harder to control when the rep is only interested in serving the public because there is no chance of re-election. After all, it is not donations that are the evil here, it is the control of gov't action, right? (Much of this could all be solved by electing better people as our representatives. Determined will can make a big difference)

Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com

++++==============---------------------------- Matthew J. Miszewski |The information revolution has changed wealth: |intellectual capital is now far more important mjmiski@execpc.com |than money. -Walter Wriston ----------------------------==============++++