The liberals do not like PACs (Political Action Committees). That’s because more Americans contribute through PACs toward the election of conservative candidates than toward liberal candidates.
So the liberal busybodies have devised a three-point plan to outmaneuver democracy in order to advantage their candidates. (1) Get their liberal friends in the media to publish endless “news” stories, features, interviews with prominent persons, and editorials complaining about the large amounts of money donated through PACs. This is designed to have the subliminal effect of convincing people that PACs are something evil.
(2) Pass legislation severely restricting the amounts of money that PACs and political candidates may receive and spend. Label this legislation a “reform” or a “clean campaign” bill and hope that this semantic trick will expedite passage.
(3) Bring about taxpayer financing of elections to replace voluntary financing of elections through PACs. In other words, make the taxpayers pay for what the PACs are paying for now.
The current anti-PAC bill in Congress is sponsored by Senator David L. Boren (D-OK). Its many new restrictions would cut in half the amount of PAC donations made in 1984.
The lobby called Common Cause is leading the pack against PACs. Common Cause wants to restrict your right to help elect candidates so that Common Cause, through its big mailing list, can exert more influence over the Congressmen who are elected.
More than 150 newspaper editorials in favor of restricting PACs have appeared recently in the expectation that the Boren anti-PAC bill will soon be voted on. The New York Times professes indignation that there are now 4,000 PACs raising campaign contributions and pouring $100 million a year into Congressional campaigns.
It’s quite an exercise in campaign chicanery to try to force citizens to finance the political campaigns of candidates they don’t like, while prohibiting citizens from making voluntary contributions to the political campaigns of candidates they do like. It’s quite a demonstration of the liberal dialectic to try to restrict First Amendment rights for political speech, while the entire liberal apparatus is working overtime to try to extend First Amendment rights for pornographic speech.
One gets the feeling that, if PACs were promoting pornography instead of personal political views, the liberals might be supporting PACs. But the First Amendment was not written to protect pornographers.
PACs are simply one manifestation of your personal First Amendment right to express your political beliefs and to participate personally in the political process. This is vastly more important to the maintenance of freedom than pornographic speech and activity.
PACs are just campaign committees set up by like-minded individuals to donate money to the candidates of their choice. They are the best way for the average citizen to participate in the process of self-government.
Ponder a moment on the fact that there is NO limit to the value of contributions that can be made to political candidates by the big corporations which operate newspapers and magazines. They can effectively contribute an unlimited amount to the candidates of their choice by publishing favorable news stories and features, as well as editorials, about candidates of their choice, along with negative items (or the silent treatment) about candidates they oppose.
Newspapers can even accept the paid advertisements of candidates they want to help, and refuse to print the paid advertisements of candidates they want to defeat. That’s called “freedom of the press,” and there are no limits on it. The dollar value of this type of contribution is vast, and there is no way to measure it.
PACs enable the individual American, who doesn’t own a newspaper or magazine, television or radio station, to participate effectively in the political process. Since the media enjoy and exercise such enormous power to support the candidates of their choice, it comes with exceedingly poor grace for any newspapers to try to restrict private individuals from making their voluntary contributions to the candidates of their choice.
