For those paying close attention to the race for California Governor, there has been a lot of criticism heaped on the candidacy of Treasurer Phil Angelides for failing to have any consistency message or theme throughout his campaign. Actually, all along, one of the reasons why the Schwarzenegger campaign has been so successful in defining Angelides’ campaign is because they have, in fact, discover the single consistent theme of the Governor’s Democrat opponent: Phil Angelides cannot help but support tax increases. Not some of them – ALL of them.
So it really isn’t that surprising or newsworthy that yesterday, the Democrat nominee for Governor endorsed Proposition 89, which imposes yet another tax on Californians — this time he is embracing a corporate tax increase (of course, FR readers understand that a tax on companies simply means that the products and/or services provided by that company will increase costs to we, the consumers).
Of course, every one of Phil’s calls for a tax increase comes with support for yet another program to increase the size and scope of California government. In this case, Angelides is embracing the use of taxpayer dollars to finance the campaigns of politicians running for office. This is a horrible idea. There are a number of reasons why the public financing of campaigns is a bad idea, but the single greatest reason is perversion of the first amendment. It is a cornerstone of American principle that we all enjoy the right to freedom of political speech — you should and can say anything, or express any view or position, as a candidate for office in this country. Whether you are conservative, liberal, socialist, communist, fascist or a cracker (see Perata’s comments today), you have the right to say and express your political views in America.
But for the government to ‘sanction’ what you say by taking tax dollars and giving them to candidates is outrageous.
It is completely ‘un-American’ to have tax dollars used to espouse political beliefs. And it is even more of a travesty to set up a system that penalizes those who object to this kind of system, and objects to rules that are set up to literally drive the Freedom of Speech out of the political system.
There is no doubt that there are problems with how the financing of campaigns has evolved, especially in recent decades. The reality is that political giving these days is overwhelmingly dominated by those who have interests with the government — whether labor unions who are looking out for their public sector employees — or corporations trying to protect a subsidy that aids their particular business.
But the solution to this problem is not a government-created and mandated bureaucracy centered around ‘taking’ money from voters through their taxes and ‘giving’ it to candidates.
The long-term solution to bring campaigns in America, and California, back to how they should be run is more involvement in the process by more voters. If every voter in America would spend just $100 an election on candidates for office, that amount of money that would be injected into the political process would be overwhelming. But the beauty of this ‘solution’ is that it embraces the ‘free market’ aspect of campaigning — it means that those with ideas that resonate with voters will be able to raise the funds it takes to effectively campaign.
Until the tax-and-donate-our-money-to-candidates scheme endorsed yesterday by Angelides, your tax money will be spent on some radical candidates, promoting views that are anathema to anything you believe in. And I say this to you, no matter what your political stripes happen to be.
That said, if you want to see what Phil Angelides is going to do next on his campaign, well, figure out what tax increase out there he has not yet endorsed, and that will be where we find him next. There is no attempt to grow government that is too modest for this ultra-liberal Democrat.
Have a great weekend! FR’s Managing Editor, Nicholas Romero, will be compiling the news and watching over the site this weekend.
Jon
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