Money and Politics - Koch Brothers

The large part of the stratagey of the Democrats for the coming mid-term elections seems to be to focus on the Koch brothers, the Texas billionaires who are pouring tens of millions of dollars into funding various conservative causes.

The Democrats argue that vast sums of money coming from a few candidates undermines democracy, particularly when coupled with the Supreme Court decision that Corporate campaign contributions cannot be regulated by Congress.  

Republicans (and the Republican dominated Supreme Court) argue this is a freedom issue.  People who work hard to gather wealth should be able to use their money to advance their political goals in a free society.

There is some validity to both positions of course.  But both positions also mask fundamentally wrong principals.

The Democratic position, that rich folk should be banned from spending beyond certain minimal limits (or that longtime liberal notion that Government should finance campaigns) has a couple of serious policy flaws:

1.  It unquestionably undermines the freedom of rich folk.  It is in essence discrimination by government against a class of citizens (the folks who value money above all else),
 2.  It also is the lazy solution that has characterized totalitarian thinking down through history.  If you don't like something, or want to increase your power at the expense of others, limit their ability to participate in politics.

On the other hand, the Republican position focusing on individual freedom ignores a fundamental requirement of a functioning democracy.  Honesty.  Rich folk who want to support various political causes have a dizzying array of ways to hide where the money is coming from.  The can use corporations they control.  Or set up shell corporations and run the money through a whole string of them to hide where the money is coming from.  They can set up organizations with names designed to suggest they are supporting exactly the opposite of what they are in fact trying to accomplish.  

In an ideal world, we should ban an organization that is created under an authorization of government granting special priviliges, such as Corporations, from contributing funds to politics, but we should not ban individuals from contributing as much as they want to political causes, as long as contributions are publicly disclosed in a timely manner.  

For those of us who are not rich our power to counter money from rich folk depends on our willingness to factor who gave that money, and why they are doing it, into our decision making when we go to vote.  If we do our homework rich folks money should not be able to sell us on something we don't really want.

In an ideal world.