Mondays with Mike: Show me the money

I don’t know about you, but the election campaigns have me exhausted. Back in 2012 Illinois really wasn’t in play in the presidential election, and there weren’t particularly hot, high-profile races, so we got off easy. Not so this time. The governor’s race is a dead heat, and there are some house races in play.

I don’t even watch that much TV but I’m numb to the campaign ads. The foreboding music straight from a serial killer movie, the concerned voiceovers warning you that candidate A will dissect and eat your children if elected. And then the same thing, immediately after, about candidate B.

Politics are a mess, we’re more polarized than I can remember in my lifetime. And that has at least something to do with campaign money. As in too much of it. The Supreme Court tells us we can’t put limits on campaign spending because it’s a free speech issue. I tend to think of advertising as commerce, not speech, but apart from that, while I can understand the logic to the argument against limiting spending, there’s also an argument that money backed by big money is crowding out other speech. That can’t be healthy, as the marketplace of ideas can’t work if big money can monopolize that market.

It’s a real problem, and even many of the people who argue against any spending limits acknowledge it, but are hard pressed to find solutions. There are ideas out there, and I’ve had a few of my own.

One of them that makes sense to me in terms of direct campaign contributions, I’m not sure why we can’t limit that to individual citizens. No other organizations—corporations, lobbyists, unions, PACs—none, can contribute directly to any candidate’s campaign fund. Only individual citizens. And they have to be reported, as they are now. Limits? I don’t know…maybe, maybe not.

Another related idea is to allow individual citizens to only contribute to campaigns for offices that affect them. That is, I could only contribute to my state and local races, my own state’s senate races, and the presidential elections. I could not send money to other races. This seems like common sense to me, I could well be missing something.

Now, those organizations that still want to support candidates or issues—they still can buy ads arguing their case, but full disclosure of what organizations are funding those adds has to be part of them. If it’s an amalgamation of funders—a trade group spending the money of multiple donors, every one of those orgs has to be named. If we can ask drug companies to list dozens of possible side effects during every Viagra commercial, I think it’s fair to ask for full disclosure.

While we’re at it, corporations incorporate for good reason—they get many of the rights of an individual. So, if a corporation moves its headquarters to another country, well, they can’t contribute anything.

Smarter people than I have more ideas that are smarter than mine. Just not sure how to get them implemented. Of course, money will always find a way, but I don’t think that’s an excuse for how perverted things have become, or for not trying to manage the influence of campaign money.

Meantime, can’t wait to vote tomorrow morning, even if I’ll have to hold my nose for some of the choices.