free speech

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8989

This is really the biggest and easiest knock on McCain. It's not the "amnesty" bill or his trademark arrogant 'straight talk'. It's the idea that somehow politics is and has to be 'clean'. It never has been. There's no reason for it to be. What politics does is allow societies to allocate resources on a social level. But people are selected to allocate them, and people can be twisted, contorted, or out right liars. Sometimes this is a good thing, even fulfilling the 'greater good' as McCain sees it, sometimes not.

I agree there are needs to reform the finance arrangements for elections, and that mudslinging or negative campaign ads are generally a waste of time. But that doesn't mean that a candidate cannot run them or that a we should create restrictions and regulations on who and when they can be run. The concept of 'equal time' is pretty ridiculous too. Nobody ever said the election had to be 'fair'. Candidates can and have done just about anything to beg, borrow, or steal elections in America (except kill people, dead people can vote, but murdering them is not so wise). That isn't changing because the government says it should. Otherwise the government wouldn't be staying in charge very long.

There's good reason that I'd prefer a system like a European parliamentary system where coalitions are needed to get anything accomplished at all because it makes it a 'clean government'. It is easier for people to find different points of view in politics somewhere rather than pooling their hopes on one of two choices and assuming that a shared point of view on one particular issue is not accompanied by a radically different view on some other related issue. Ideologically, America really has more view points than is typical because of the diverse cultures from which it has historical roots in and the massive economic and educational differences. We just don't see it because for some reason the public has bullshitted itself into believing that the two parties are radically different. Some of the candidates are, but the parties aren't that different.

What McCain is doing through McCain-Feingold is make it harder to achieve this 'clean' government because it restricts the ability of people to whine and complain (sometimes accurately) about the candidates that are elected. Not to mention putting a ridiculous strain on the ability to police the various resources and outlets available for individuals to voice their concerns (or just to plain old mudsling). Mudslinging is unpleasant, wasteful and distracts the intellectual voter with unimportant information on which to base their decisions. But other than that, it's hardly so much of the unclean function of politics that we must remove it to have a cleaner election. If, as he claims, his motivation is that it fosters distrust of government, I say this is a healthy thing. America was born out of suspicion of government.

Strangely, it's really the one point that the Democrats probably would not be able to hard press him on because they have voiced considerable restraints over conservative talk radio hosts or other major media outlets who cause dismay to their causes (swift boats was apparently the impetus for the law in the first place). Most reasonable people might find it easier to simply create a public resource that demonstrates where or from whom money is coming to a candidate. In the absence of legitimate and meaningful political parties, this is probably the only way to have a 'clean government' because informed people (those that make up the swing votes in close elections) will be able to make informed choices. Considering the random rags that pass for journalism in the supermarkets, it seems to me that the average person is going to be assaulted with a series of worthless and bizarre pieces of information on these candidates anyway. It is the informed consumer of politics to which a candidate must take aim with some information to sway one way or the other. That takes more work than sound bytes and tabloid leaks on their opponents. But it is work that cannot be done with such restrictions on free speech as McCain-Feingold makes. The idea that a government that does not respect the rights of its public as listed in its own Constitution can be a 'clean government' is manifestly ridiculous.



In other news, Moody is considering lowering the US A+++ bond rating (insurance companies are usually satisfied with A+, or A++). We might want to explain to DC that Social Security is a donation to the elderly for people my age. None of that money is coming back unless something is done now to fix it, reform it or otherwise make amends. At the very least, I should be able to write it off as a deduction for charitable contributions.