The Center for Competitive Politics posted a comment entitled Money well spent? that pointed out that the Pew Charitable Trusts wasted a lot of money underwriting efforts to enact restrictive campaign finance laws. A study by the Trust found that there was no relationship between the professional management of the 50 states and the existence of these restrictive campaign finance laws. So I wrote back the following:
I looked at the Pew Evaluation on Government Performance and indeed there appears to be little correlation between the level of professional management of the States and restrictive campaign finance laws.
But consider that this is not the indicator used by those of us who support reform of campaigns. What is not measured by the PEW study is how the States managed businesses that impact the daily lives of citizens. Was there favoritism to the Cable or Telephone companies on rules for setting rates and services? Likewise for HMOs, Insurance Companies, Banking and Usury laws, Power companies, or Polluters, etc.. This is where folks like me are concerned about the influence of special interests on the judgment of our Representatives.
Born 1950, Married, Living in Austin Texas, Semi
Retired Small Business owner and investor. My political interest
evolved out of his business experience that the best decisions come out of an objective gathering of information and a pragmatic consideration of costs and benefits. I am interested in promoting Centrist candidates and Policies. My posts are mostly about people and policies that I believe are part of the solution rather the problem.