The only way the we're guaranteed to lose this fight is not to fight it.

Paul Ryan – the best lawmaker Plutocrats can buy! Why would a politician threaten the source of their re-election contributions? Plutocracy: Government by the Wealthy. Vote for Plutocracy. Vote Republican!

The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men. -- Plato

As a Senior I can't believe that this has happened to our country again Its 1939 all over again. Why is there no discussion of why we needed all regulations in the first place. Its history repeating itself. Most people don't realize why.

Which correspondant ? was it meant as a factual statement or comment on what Cons think of Ryan ?

Campaign finance is just another disingenuous liberal deception.

Clean Money - Clean Elections (CMCE) is an example of how liberal reformers merely seek to alter the appearance of something that's wrong, rather than end it... only striving to paint over rot that should be removed.

For any true political alternative there were/are many problems with CMCE. It maintains the focus of elections on the cultivation of funds, rather than ideas. It entices emerging parties to channel their efforts toward meeting public fundraising donation thresholds — difficult to achieve for any small party that's actually an alternative to the corporate party, but easily met by any of the corporate party's (R)s and (D)s. The more an actual alternative party focuses upon fund raising the less it becomes an alternative. Small nascent parties are likely to spend most of the funds they raise just complying with CMCE’s detailed reporting requirements. Liberal campaign finance reforms serve to seduce real political alternatives into the corporate party's culture of perpetually fundraising to raise more funds than before.

CMCE advocates have much heralded a few short term gains for alternative parties, in the early states that adopted CMCE legislation. This will change the longer CMCE is in place, especially if it becomes law in all or most states. The corporate party's factions (its Republican and Democrat tag team) will suck up near all the public funding, using it to provide taxpayer subsidization for their sham campaigns, where through districting they have mutually agreed to predetermine the outcome of most elections before any votes are cast. This allows the corporate party to conserve enormous private cash assets for their more important campaigns of mass distraction, where they desire great media exposure; or to crush any true alternative party campaign that poses a serious threat to any corporate party incumbent (R) or (D).

A fundamental flaw with CMCE legislation has been that participation in its reduced spending is voluntary, which allows those with great financial assets to continue to purchase elections. The excuse liberals have used to justify the voluntary aspect of CMCE is the Supreme Court case Buckley v. Valeo, which determined the limiting of campaign contributions (in certain provisions of the 1971 Federal Elections Campaign Act) to be unconstitutional; and in so doing, established the concept of money having a right that should rightfully be reserved only for natural persons — free speech. The logic that follows from that court decision is that any natural (or corporate) person's freedom of speech is determined by how much money they have, and are willing to spend. That concept is an egregious assault upon the ideal of democracy, and in its practice has precluded the existence of any actual democracy.

If liberals ever really wanted elections to have been clean, fair, and about ideas, rather than merely have greater regulation of the bribery and extortion competition between corporate party factions, they wouldn't have merely sought (and still be seeking) only modest campaign finance reforms that simply serve to spread tax revenues around among the corporate party's candidates. They'd have used their massive numbers (back when they could have been successful if they wanted to be) to demand the elimination of **ALL** money from elections, which is something that would have been both technologically and procedurally possible... if liberals hadn't been so irredeemably (D) dedicated to preserving the corporate-state (now a failed-state entity that is just the mercenary military subsidiary of the global Market-State).

Whenever there's ever been the possibility of a popular uprising that might have provided some serious systemic change needed, the liberals have always reliably MovedOn in with their "reforms" to protect the rot that should have be removed.

Democrats haven't done the good they could have when they could have, because they haven't had good intentions.

The Devolution of Liberalism:

http://chenangogreens.org/home/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id...

Them's fighten words!

Liberal? !!!

It's Progressive all the way and it transcends the traditional political spectrum that is no longer very useful.