Upon reading the comments of an acquaintance on another blog, I decided to take a look at the contribution pages for the campaigns of both Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Each of them has a series of conditions you have to agree to. Such as being of a minimum age, donating your own money, etc. Most of the conditions were similiar between the campaigns except for two.
Obama's campaign required you to swear that...
-This contribution is not made from the funds of a political action committee
and
-This contribution is not made from the funds of an individual registered as a federal lobbyist or a foreign agent, or an entity that is a federally registered lobbying firm or foreign agent.
Hillary's campaign had no problem accepting money from political action committees and lobbyists for corporations or even foreign agents.
Is anyone really shocked?
But it's certainly something in plus column for the Obama campaign.
Update: His foreign policy mindset is worth a look too.
2 comments:
What makes one lobbyist acceptable and another shameful? I'm wary of those who paint all lobbyists as bad people. Lobbying is a wide-ranging term, both as a noun as a verb.
Attacking "lobbying" is like attacking "judicial activism." All sides do it, but it's only bad when the others do it.
Mark,
You raise some interesting points so here goes.
It's important to bear in mind that the issue is not lobbying, but campaign contributions.
As such, I believe the following...
Campaign contributions to candidates should be strictly limited.
Specifically, the only campaign contributions that should be allowed are from someone who is legally able to vote for that candidate.
In other words, an elected official should only be accountable to his constituents, who are the only ones who should be allowed to bribe him.
This would ban campaign contributions particularly from:
-foreigners and other people who live out of the jurisdiction of the candidate and
-all non-persons, including corporations and unions.
I don't accept for one second the absurd premise that money is speech (and thus unregulatable).
In every context, money is property. And property (including money) not only can be regulated by the state but is done so all the time. To the extent that the state actually fabricates money.
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