Presidential Auction 2004

At least three times in his Senate career, Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry has recommended individuals for positions at federal home loan banks just before or after receiving political contributions from the nominees, records show.
In one case, Kerry wrote to the Federal Housing Finance Board to urge the reappointment of a candidate just one day before a Kerry campaign committee received $1,000 from the nominee, the records show.

"One has nothing to do with the other," said Marvin Siflinger, who contributed around the time of Kerry's Oct. 1, 1996, recommendation that he be reappointed for another term to the board.

Kerry's office, like the nominees, insists the timing of the donations and the nominations was a coincidence.

...But a longtime government watchdog says it is common for Washington appointees to donate just before or after they are nominated.

"This is just business as usual in Washington," said Larry Noble, the former chief lawyer for the Federal Election Commission who now heads the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.  article

Business as usual. So what's wrong with it if everybody does it?

Noble said while Kerry long has advocated campaign finance reform, he also has benefited from the big money system he now distances himself from on the campaign trail. "It's like a game where you say the people who support me just want good government, but the people who support my opponent are special interests," he said.

Bullshit as usual. So what's wrong with it if everybody does it?

By having specific and equal time slots allotted each candidate for campaign advertising and a series of debates on television (which is public airwaves, I remind you), space specific, equally allotted, taxpayer-paid ads in all major newspapers, and equal space available on the government internet network, we could dispense with the incentive to pander to special interests for campaign finances. Of utmost importance is nationally televised debates - and plenty of them.

If anybody is going to get slighted for campaign advertising, it should be the incumbent president, whoever that may be, because that person has had a minimum of three years' free publicity to advertise how good a presidential candidate he/she is. The dickwad president we've got now must be a lousy one if he has to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for advertising to counteract what he's been doing for the past three years.

Will we make the necessary changes? Hell no. Why not? Because we voters don't demand meaningful campaign finance reform. And we really don't pay much attention to which politician is pandering to whom and how. (Guilty as charged, myself.)

If we can afford $57,000 per hour for Air Force 1 to fly Shameless Campaigner to Iraq for a turkey stunt, tens of millions of dollars for him to tailor a photo op with the Queen of England, and some $12 million dollars for advertisements to rebut criticism of a Medicare bill that we were already ignorant enough to buy, then we can afford to pay for fair presidential election campaigning.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.