Talk:Campaign finance reform
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I've moved these links from the article:
- Campaign Bill Sent to Bush, and Its Foes Head to Court, The New York Times, March 21, 2002
- News Analysis: The $2,000 Answer, The New York Times, March 21, 2002
- House Passes Campaign Finance Bill, The New York Times, February 14, 2002
- How the House Voted, The New York Times, February 14, 2002
- News Analysis: A Bid to Change, an Uncertain Future, The New York Times, February 14, 2002
- The Scene: Behind the Debate, the Jockeying for Advantage, The New York Times, February 14, 2002
- Gifts in State Judicial Races Are Up Sharply, The New York Times, February 14, 2002
- Excerpts From House Debate on the Shays-Meehan Campaign Finance Bill, The New York Times, February 14, 2002
You can only read the first paragraph and then have to pay $2.95 to read the article. As such, they're not very useful as external links. However, I'm listing them here in case someone who is willing to pay wants further reading on the topic of campaign finance reform. --Minesweeper 02:39, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Campaign_finance_reform looks like a nearly verbatim copy of this page. WordIQ appears to have the appropriate GNU & Wikipedia acknowledgement & link, although they also claim their own copyright. Note WordIq page has a higher rank from Google, and their proprietary copyright is confusing, if not over reaching. Oh well.
The description of "soft money" here is somewhat problematic. It says that soft money is given to parties ("largely uncapped", which is nonsense -- the whole complaint was that it was completely uncapped), but the term is usually used for any sort of political spending that falls outside of FECA regulation. Later on the article references "soft money not donated to parties". In reality, of course, "soft money" refers to any money that reform advocates dislike... I also don't see what relation Enron has to campaign finance reform. If they've engaged in any unusually large donations of soft money, I'm not aware of it.
The following was just added to this article:
- Opponents of public financing claim there is already too much public financing of elections and that the puchasing of votes with tax dollars corrupts the political system. Politicians who promise increases in welfare, social security and medicare are essentially using tax dollars to purchase votes. If politicians were statesmen, compaign finance reform would be unnecessary. However, since politicians are unlikely to improve, one alternative is to eliminate such a conflict of interest for the voters, by not allowing those who receive entitlements to vote in elections where the level of entitlement payments is an issue, or any other alternative reform should allow increased campaign finance expenditures for small government politicians to compensate for the disadvantage caused by this corruption.
While introduced through nominally NPOV phrasing, this isn't really an encylopedic summary of common objections to public campaign financing, but an individual's personal attempt at arguing against it. RadicalSubversiv E 21:39, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)
This article is really very scantily written; if someone else doesn't work on it, I'll do so some time in the future. First of all, although the article doesn't necessarily have to turn into an encyclopedic summary of arguments for and against campaign finance reform, reading it, it seems very odd that not once is it mentioned what the goal of these types of laws are. I think this can be added to the article without controversy or need to compile arguments. (Although arguments can also be added later) Also, there are a large set of targets for campaign finance reform proponents, the only one that is largely talked about (and in fact made the focus of the article from the beginning) is soft money, and though that has been an issue its usually secondary. The more common focus is an attack on PACs, or political action committees. The history section is also somewhat scant. I just added a sentence about Ross Perot and the Reform Party, because that was a large motivation for their politics, and Perot's run in 1992 and 1996. But thats really the tip of of it. For instance, in Clinton's second term there was a major hearing on campaign finance in the Congress, which tried to investigate violations in campaign finance laws by the 1996 campaigns of Clinton and Dole, alleged by organizations such as Common Cause. / If anyone wants to work on this before I get to it, please take all of these things in account. brianshapiro
Contents |
[edit] State Campaign Finance Reform
There is an option to the over turning of Buckley v Valeo. Clean Elections which is a voluntary system of full public funding is in effect and working well in Arizona and Maine. In that system, candidates who meet a qualifying test (raising a large number of smallcontributions.....$5-10)are provided with a competitive amount of full public funding. Copies of the proposals can be obtained through Public Campaign in Washington,DC (202-293-0222). These proposals in fact represent significant change albeit at the state level. If these state tests prove successful and if citizens get increasingly frustrated with our "fat cat" driven election system (both likely to happen), Clean Elections will grow in popularity even with the "public funding" label. Ben Senturia (bensenten@aol.com)
I re-added some of the criticisms of campaign finance reform. As brianshapiro mentioned, this article definately needs some work but I hope this moves us in that direction.
While these are clear anti-arguments spelled out; I believe they are necessary for NPOV.
[edit] clarity issues
This article has any number of unclear terms. What is an "officeholder?" How about "federal employee?" An "officeholder" could be a Congressman--or even some kind of place-saver. ("I'm holding the office until Bob gets back.") And "the machine" would probably be better referred to as "the party in power."
[edit] John McCain photo caption
Is it just me, or is this POV? I mean, others, including Russ Feingold, were working on campaign finance reform. To simply link it to McCain implies he was the only one involved in it. I'm thinking something more along the lines of "John McCain has been one politician associated with campaign finance reform". Jlove1982 04:04, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Removed "globalize" tag
It is very easy to put the "globalize" tag in and afterwards fail to add any global content; or any content at all as is the case with him who added it. As far as I know "campaign finance reform" as a political buzzword, if you will, is prevalent only in the US; therefore the term and subsequent information is relevant to the US only. The article even begins with "Campaign finance reform is the common term for the political effort in the United States to change the involvement of money in politics, primarily in political campaigns." (emphasis mine) --Zanzor 05:21, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
