Foundation for Economic Education
Fully Informed Jury Association
Separation of School and State
Federation of Connecticut Taxpayer Organizations
Big Government Attracts Big Money
By Marc Guttman, MD
Regarding the unfair campaign-finance reform bill that has passed the Connecticut legislature, it is not the right to contribute to campaigns that needs reform, but rather the practices of our representatives who sell favorable legislation to cronies, highest bidders and appetizing voting blocks. Our government, income and liberties are not saleable items. The Republicans and Democrats have been the gatekeepers of our government and have been selling out for years.
Our representatives are voted back into office 95 percent of the time, despite their overstepping of legal restraints. The courts, despite knowledge that we are a constitutional republic designed to protect the individual from the tyranny of the majority, the wealthy and the unified, have allowed representatives to do so through legislation. It is because our government has extended its power beyond constitutional limits that special interests are attracted to its power and big spending. Our government was accepted to protect citizens from force and fraud, not to initiate force against its citizens.
A publicly financed campaign system is not fair. It steals from citizens to promote other citizens and their ideas. It would force many to promote Democrat and Republican agendas, for example, that they believe are deleterious, which they are. These parties already pay themselves billions of our money. Their presidential candidates receive millions of taxpayer dollars. The several Democratic presidential candidates in 2004 received hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars until the party's nomination was accepted at the Democratic National Convention, which cost taxpayers $40 million, same as the Republican National Convention.
Connecticut's law would also make it near impossible for independent and third party candidates to compete with the financed, older parties' candidates, as the requirements to receive public funds are not only different for them, but difficult to achieve. Moreover, philosophically principled candidates like Libertarian candidates, who generally do not accept public dollars to promote themselves or even to advance liberty, would find it even harder to compete in a publicly-financed system.
In addition to ballot-access and closed-debates impediments, campaign finance reform such as this is yet another obstacle to Connecticut's third-party and independent campaigns competing in a system already rigged to maintain the incumbent duopoly.
If you prefer to get big money and the corruption it breeds, out of Connecticut politics, vote for Libertarian candidates who understand the appropriate functions and legal limitations of government, who do not sell government power and citizens' rights to those willing to take it. What special interest, other than nonaggression and liberty, is going to buy that?