Campaign finance laws are bad because they restrict valuable information, are limiting on free speech, and cause a lessening of citizen awareness and lower voting rates. However, without campaign finance laws elections would be mostly controlled by huge mega corporations like Wal-Mart and McDonalds. Campaign Finance Laws such as BCRA (Bipartisan-Campaign Reform Act) control the amount that corporations can donate to candidates. First, these corporations would have a huge amount of power because they would be able to donate so much that they could swarm the air with campaign ads and drown all other opponents out. Second, the politicians would know this so they would constantly be trying buddy up with these big companies, they would vote how they want them to vote and probably even sneak in side favors to give those companies advantages over their competitors. Third, because there would be so much money in politics corruption would skyrocket. Politicians would do anything they can do for extra cash in order to stay on top of super competitive elections. They will be pulling side favors left and right. (No pun intended) These guys will open up the treasury doors to these companies to all gobble up their share of America's money. Worst of all, campaign ads would be covering TV day and night. Because of competitive elections these ads will probably get really negative. It will get so bad that many people will get turned off from politics all together. This will cause even lower voting rates and the power will slip farther and farther to the huge mega corporations. The Supreme Court is on a bad trend in nullifying our valuable campaign finance laws that keep our elections fair. These ruling are on the pretense that these laws hinder "free speech." These laws however do nothing to inhibit speech. They simply regulate money in order to stop corruption. People are still free to say whatever views they want. It is "free" speech so you shouldn't needs loads of money for it. Also even if it was the case that money=speech, both sides have to abide by the same rules. Candidates may be able to buy less campaign ads but his or her opponents will have to abide by those same rules causing no unbalance to elections.
Well that's the opposite of my paper so don't get mad at me if you disagree with some of this stuff.
I think it is awesome how on top of things you are. You are always the first ( or at least one of the first) of us to do our blog post and you always do such a good job. You're awesome!
ReplyDeleteYou did a way good job of pretending that your were arguing for the opposite view, I was almost convinced! You can really tell that you are passionate about campaign finance laws. :P
ReplyDeleteThat is intense! I don't really get the whole campaign finance stuff, but what you said made sense, even if it was the opposite of your paper.:) Good Job!
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