First, let me preface this discussion with a statement in support of clean money. I wholeheartedly support it, and think it is one of the key reforms that brings the state towards a functioning government. Despite the first amendment restrictions placed upon campaign finance regulations, clean money has been fairly successful where implemented. It is a worthy reform that would improve our political system, tone, and tenor.<\/p>\n
That being said, clean money alone is clearly not enough to fix California’s broken campaign finance system. While I have argued from the day I read the decision in law school through fairly recently<\/a> that Buckley v. Valeo<\/a><\/i> was decided incorrectly, until it is overturned it is the law of the land. Clean money really isn’t all that clean when there are loopholes for “issue ads” and other independent expenditures. We can’t even enforce the relatively lenient laws on the books now, are we sure the FPPC or any other government body could enforce the clean money laws. <\/p>\n Continue reading over the flip…<\/p>\n From today’s Sac Bee<\/a>:<\/p>\n Political interests are funneling massive sums to California’s elected leaders through methods that “legally circumvent” contribution limits, the state’s nonpartisan political watchdog has found.<\/p>\n “The mad scramble for special-interest dollars continues to create profound concerns for the future of representative democracy,” the Fair Political Practices Commission said in a report released Monday. (Sac Bee 4\/14\/09<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n There’s a smattering of these stories today, as the FPPC announced that over a billion has been raised for political campaigns since Prop 34 was passed in 2000 to limit this money. Well over a hundred million of that money runs through the Governor in some form or fashion. He has a labyrinth of campaign accounts, plus a few “nonprofits” on the side.<\/p>\n About $300 million or so of the billion has flowed to non candidate campaigns that are controlled by candidates or elected officials. These ballot measure campaigns have no limits, and end up being slush funds to dole out cash or to use for some other campaign to get themselves noticed.<\/p>\n Money shouldn’t necessarily be viewed as an evil, after all there’s always the old Jess Unruh saying: <\/p>\n If you can’t drink their booze, take their money, screw their women & vote against them in the morning, you don’t belong in this place.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But appearances matter, people like to see the business of governance operate smoothly without needing a few million bucks to grease the wheels every couple of months. Until Buckley<\/i> is overruled, truly clean money is really a mirage in the desert.<\/p>\n And if that weren’t enough, David Sirota highlights another form of the not so clean system of politics that we now operate under: reward politics<\/a>. To put it simply and using his analogy, it is the cookie after the deed. Instead of giving campaign bucks up front, groups offer the possibility of high-paying lobbying gigs after the members leave office. While this is a problem at the federal level (see Lott, Trent<\/a>), term limits make the problem far more acute here in California.<\/p>\n The biggest problem with this reward corruption is that it can’t be stopped via legislation, and after the electeds leave office there is no political pressure to not take the gigs. We just can’t legislate that once you are an elected official you can never again work for anybody who had a position on any piece of legislation before you. <\/p>\n All of these structural dysfunctions (i.e. term limits, campaign finance loopholes, etc.) all mix and mingle to make things worse. We need to get a clean money system, but that is far from the final goal. If democracy is really going to be owned by the people of California, there must be a grassroots demand for it. The Clean Money Campaign<\/a> has done a lot to move this conversation forward here in California, and Larry Lessig and Change-Congress.org<\/a> are doing a lot on the grassroots front on the federal level, it just isn’t enough at this point. <\/p>\n Is it time to simply toss our hands up in the air and say forget it? Do we leave democracy as a playground for those wealthy enough to play in the sandbox? No, I’m not that cynical yet, but as we pass this $1 Billion milestone, it should give us all pause as to the direction of this fight. It is the underlying fight for every other issue fight; solidly progressive reforms just cannot compete. Take a look at Prop 72<\/a> if you have designs upon reforming health care. Or the litany of good bills that die in the legislature at whim of the Governor’s veto pen.<\/p>\n I’m not sure I really can present any way to actually achieve a truly clean campaign system, but I know we must bring attention to the failures of the current system at every opportunity. And I know that we just cannot give up on fixing it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" First, let me preface this discussion with a statement in support of clean money. I wholeheartedly support it, and think it is one of the key reforms that brings the state towards a functioning government. Despite the first amendment restrictions placed upon campaign finance regulations, clean money has been fairly successful where implemented. It is a worthy reform that would improve our political system, tone, and tenor.<\/p>\n That being said, clean money alone is clearly not enough to fix California’s broken campaign finance system. While I have argued from the day I read the decision in law school through fairly recently<\/a> that Buckley v. Valeo<\/a><\/i> was decided incorrectly, until it is overturned it is the law of the land. Clean money really isn’t all that clean when there are loopholes for “issue ads” and other independent expenditures. We can’t even enforce the relatively lenient laws on the books now, are we sure the FPPC or any other government body could enforce the clean money laws. <\/p>\n Continue reading over the flip…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[20,517],"class_list":["post-8537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-20","tag-517"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-2dH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}