The Libertarian Party of Georgia and former Lt. Governor candidate Ryan Graham have appealed a US District Court decision that upheld a Georgia law that allows the Republican and Democratic party candidates the ability to form special committees that can raise and spend funds over the usual campaign limits.
Here is a story on the Eleventh Circuit proceedings from earlier this week.
The only really effective way to limit campaign donations is to limit the authority of politicians over so many areas of our lives and limiting how much revenue is extorted for them to misdirect, misspend, socially engineer, pocket pad, enrich and entrench a parasitic and bloated bureaucrat class and associates species of hangers on, influence peddlers, lobbyists, etc with.
Money will always find a way around campaign limits. Legally and otherwise . Other forms of influencing elections can also substitute for money , such as influence of incumbency, celebrity , mass media approval, charisma , available volunteer time and effectiveness of mobilization, etc.
For instance, say Candidate A is wealthy, or perhaps has wealthy backers. At the same time he’s running against Politician B. She is not as wealthy, and doesn’t appeal as much to wealthy individuals, given that she frequently and unapologetically expresses the opinion they should be murdered and eaten, not necessarily in that order, for being too far above average in wealth.
However, she’s a former Hollywood starlet well known for displaying her physical attributes frequently and immodestly before her involvement in politics. Her professional training and skills as a former professional performer make her extraordinarily effective at manipulating opinion, especially among those voters more swayed by emotion than intellect, evidence, logic, facts, or real world results. She has retained well above average appearance in the opinion of most people despite no longer being a spring chicken. She has many supporters among organized groups of malcontents and government rent seekers with plenty of their hands because they either do not work (students, retirees, homemakers with flexible schedules, recipients of public assistance, out on strike, etc) or whose job actually encourages political activity while on the clock, such as members of government employee unions with excellent job security , a well above living wage, benefits and pensions that are bankrupting hard working private sector employees who are far too busy during work hours to politick unlike our aforementioned public heroes whose actual job duties are in fact quite light;
Given that politician B is quite advantaged in all these other ways, why should candidate A be limited on the one area where he has comparative advantages through interference by government issues election rules and laws – while politician B is given complete free reign to effectively purchase unlimited amounts of in kind support that would have been far more expensive if directly purchased, rather than as on her case, effectively purchased through redistribution of the public treasury to purchase the support of organized rent seeking lobbies, as well as effectively leveraging the advantages of her celebrity, looks, charm, skill at manipulating emotion, well developed contacts and favorable perception among major established media decision makers, influence and support among schoolteachers and university professors in no way above using their positions to propagandize and influence their students and parents thereof as much as possible, etc?
Both the direct use of money and the other factors mentioned have value that can be express in financial terms. Although only one is literal dollars and cents . Government laws which give one legal limitations but the other none tilt the playing field to candidates and supporters thereof more apt to have more of one then the other.
It is, in fact the opposite of what it masquerades as: instead of making the playing field more level, it tilts it further by allowing an added advantage for firms of gaining an advantage in all the ways described and others which combine to appeal more to some kinds of people than others, the whole time creating perverse incentive to sheer tax sheep ever more closely, redistribute ever more fruits of their toil to ever more bureaucrats, idle or semi idle classes of political rent seekers, recipients of government largesse, and people more prone to emotional appeals for a wide variety of reasons, including the professional manipulators of public opinion themselves in fields such as education at all levels, media, entertainment etc.
* plenty of time on their hands
* forms,not firms of gaining advantage