From: Charlie Stross (charlie@antipope.org)
Date: Sat Sep 01 2001 - 15:14:40 MDT
On Sat, Sep 01, 2001 at 04:49:09PM -0400, Mike Lorrey wrote:
> > As a general rule of thumb, government salaries are a pittance compared
> > to their private enterprise equivalents. This gives rise to a problem;
> > governments can't get (and retain) highly competent staff in a competitive
> > market, and those they do retain have an incentive to line their own
> > pockets. The only people who _really_ make money out of government are
> > the contractors ...
>
> Depends on whether you are creative or not with your 'fundraising'. Note
> that the McCain Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act would make it
> entirely legal for private citizens, groups, and corporations to donate
> unlimited funds for senators, presidents, and congressmen to pay for the
> operating expenses of their regular offices (just not their campaigns),
> whereas today they are all limited in staff by law and funding by public
> expenditures. Can you say legalized bribery?
Oh, absolutely. (Minor miracle: for the second time in a day Mike Lorrey
says something Charlie Stross agrees with without reservations.) This is
one area where adopting UK electoral practices would be good for you. In
the UK, there are really strict caps on how much money anyone can spend
on an election campaign for public office -- the combined total for
a general election (equivalent to a presidential and a congressional
race rolled into one) is about 80 million pounds for _all_ candidates
and parties combined. Once someone declares that they're a candidate,
_all_ their expenses must be audited by the election oversight people;
if they over-spend, their candidacy is declared void. Anonymous gifts
or donations, or attempts to evade the auditing, get you disqualified
from an election you've won, and at worst can get you a prison sentence:
it's classified as electoral fraud.
The rationale for this is that the state pays for TV/radio time for all
national parties -- they're not allowed to buy additional advertising --
and the idea is to provide a level playing field for campaigns. Which
in turn means that you can't buy a British election for cash on the
barrel-head.
(You may be able to buy it in more subtle ways -- it's interesting to
note that the bill for Labour's 2001 party conference is being paid for
by McDonald's -- but the electoral process itself is supposed to be
scrupulously fair. Or else.)
-- Charlie
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