Legislating through food

Well, let’s get this started, shall we?

Washington Monthly has an interesting article about the “toothpick rule”, where lobbyists aren’t allowed to have meals with legislators anymore, so they instead serve up lots of appetizers now.

My thoughts on this:

1. I’m all about free food. Consequently, one of my first acts as President would be to overturn this. It’s clear that this rule isn’t doing any good anyways - lobbyists are still talking to legislators and, instead of giving nutritious meals, they’re instead serving up hors d’oeuvres. A healthy legislator is a happy legislator, and a happy legislator (I hope) is much less inclined to take out their hunger-induced frustrations on their enemies.
2. Hors d’oeuvres shall be renamed - they shall be referred to as “Victory Snacks”. Hors d’oeuvres is too difficult to spell and Americans shouldn’t have to deal with remembering something like that.
3. I personally think campaign finance reform is a bad idea. Limiting access to money only makes it more difficult for people outside the system (like myself) to get in - after all, I don’t have the mindshare of an incumbent to draw from. Consequently, I need to be able to get my name out there. How can I do that? Part of it I can accomplish through cheap grassroots efforts, like this blog, for example. However, not everyone reads a blog and I can’t count on the news or other information sources to give free advertising to my existence. Even if I could, I most certainly can’t count on them being able to convey the message that I necessarily want conveyed. Consequently, if I’m going to get my message out there, I need to be able to raise money to purchase advertising that gets snippets of my message across. Unfortunately, I’m somewhat hamstrung on that thanks, in part, to bills like McCain-Feingold. My only hope of getting my name out there now is to either find a political action committee to support me and have them get my message out (think “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth”) or to create one of my own that isn’t *officially* my own, and the people in those organizations are almost certainly more ‘fringe’ than I am on my positions, which just makes an already divisive election process even worse.

Besides, no matter what we do, people with money will find some way to talk to politicians. That’s a guarantee that’s been as old as time itself. Whether that conversation happens directly in the Lincoln Room or indirectly by the rich person purchasing large amounts of airtime to get their message across (pretty much what a 527 is all about these days), they can do this. The best part is, the Constitution says it’s okay - that’s what free speech is all about. You’re allowed to say what you want to say how you want to say it - just because I can yell louder than you doesn’t mean that I have to lower my voice when you’re around, for example. However, that doesn’t mean this communication is consequence-free for either side. Consequently, what I would rather see is:

1. Full transparency on campaign contributions. All money to a candidate should be trackable and traceable, openly and freely.
2. Full access to any (legal) campaign contribution source for candidates, provided the candidate keeps track of where that money comes from per #1. I qualify with ‘legal’ because it stands to reason that we don’t want our candidates being directly funded by, say, Hezbollah or something, though, if they were, as long as they reported via #1, that’s still fine by me. If my opponents are stupid enough to publically get funded by a terrorist organization, that certainly helps my cause, no?

That’s all we need to do. It allows people to exercise their rights to free speech as they see fit and it allows us to keep track of why our candidates and politicians are saying what they’re saying.

So, to summarize, I’d like to repeal McCain-Feingold, get the needless laws and regulations about lobbying off the books that only support rule-fudging, let free speech reign in politics, and get full transparency in all campaign contributions.

Who’s with me?