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a little-known section of the campaign-finance laws, oil companies
are completely exempted from spending
restrictions.
They alone can donate as much money as they see fit, directly to
candidates, in thinly disguised "issue advertising," or coordinated
expenditures. And spend they do. Year in, year out, oil companies
lavish billions of dollars on advertisements promoting their pet
politicians and sponsoring vicious negative attack ads on the politicians
they oppose.
It is no accident that the very first bill taken up by the U.S.
Senate would extend the oil companies' restrictive covenant prohibiting
others from competing with these enormous, vile, polluting conglomerates.
Except it's not really oil companies. The exemption is for a much
more powerful, vile, polluting conglomerate known as the news media.
Section 431(9)(B)(i) of the campaign-finance laws wholly exempts
from the definition of campaign expenditure: "any news story, commentary
or editorial distributed through the facilities of any broadcasting
station, newspaper, magazine or other periodical publication."
That's why the media love the McCain-Feingold bill. That's why "campaign-finance
reform" became the first order of business in the U.S. Senate this
term. That's also why the suppression of political speech by anyone
but the news media is popularly known as "reform" rather than "anti-competitive
legislation protecting an industry cartel."
If campaign expenditures aren't "speech," why is an exception for
the news media necessary?
There can be no meaningful reform of campaign-finance laws until
this completely undeserved monopoly granted by law to a single,
repellant, self-serving industry is repealed. Strip the media of
their exemption from the campaign-finance laws under section 431(9)(B)(i).
Then we'll see how enthusiastic they are about such genius McCain-Feingold
"reforms" as banning any mention of a federal candidate for 60 days
before an election.
More important, there can't even be meaningful debate of campaign-finance
laws until the Section 431(9)(B)(i) loophole is closed. In the past
week, a hard-news item in the New York Times compared John
McCain to Don Quixote ("the quixotic Arizona Republican tilts at
the political money establishment"); Time magazine referred
to McCain as "a chipper warrior," a man "who forgave the Vietnamese
despite his captors' hanging him by his broken arms," and the New
York Daily News called McCain simply "the Vietnam War hero."
Liberals can never just make a principled argument. It has to be
Bambi against Hitler.
Needless to say, with this sort of rigorous debate taking place
in the adversary press, the arguments have been sharpened to a razor's
edge. Sen. Joe Lieberman said the country needs campaign-finance
reform because the current system is "discouraging a lot of people
from coming out and voting." Discouraging people from voting? Why
not claim campaign-finance reform will rescue the NASDAQ?
Even Bill Clinton's favorite journalist, Ron Brownstein of the Los
Angeles Times (as Clinton told Brill's Content), described
Lieberman's insane assertion as "a really hard argument to make."
But Brownstein said "the larger point the senator made" &#!51; that
we need campaign-finance reform — "is correct."
That occurred on CNN Sunday in a program that presented a
total of three opinions: Two from enthusiastic proponents of the
McCain-Feingold bill and one from the guy who pronounced Lieberman's
"larger point" — buried within an idiocy — "correct."
On the same day, ABC's This Week had precisely one guest
on campaign-finance reform. Guess which side he was on? Campaign-finance
"reform" advocate Warren Buffett was hammered with such tough questions
from the adversary press as: "I love your analysis" and "So it's
a shakedown?" Also that day, CBS's Face the Nation balanced
two supporters of McCain-Feingold against yet another supporter
of campaign-finance reform — albeit not the McCain-Feingold
bill.
Evidently, everyone supports the media's exalted role as the sole
disseminators of political information. Everyone, that is, except
a few self-serving and presumptively corrupt U.S. senators. (No
Don Quixotes they.) Americans are clamoring for more restrictions
on their speech. Stop us before we speak again!
A typical news report on McCain-Feingold stated that the defeat
of the McCain-Feingold bill would preserve "a status quo that might
frustrate Americans but serve politicians." The news report sadly
continued that "despite the taint of scandal, the American people
might not care enough to force change."
But deep down, according to the media, the "American people" support
the media 100 percent!
Meanwhile, in endless polls of the long-suffering "American people,"
campaign-finance reform has never ranked among their top 10 concerns.
Taxes are always in the top 10. But the Senate isn't considering
Bush's tax cut. It's spending two weeks on a special-interest bill
to expand one industry's monopoly on information. At least if the
oil companies were granted a monopoly by the government, the media
would report it.
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