Cato Policy Report

Here is a link to a very interesting conference put on by Cato Institute, particularly John Samples and Michael McDonald.

Bradley Smith, one of my favorite people, was there. Good to talk to him. I really think that campaign finance, at both the federal and state levels, is going to be one of the most difficult and important policy problems we all face in the next decade. If people don't trust elections, they start to think of government as simply a means of exercising power.

Libertarians hardly trust government, but a government that muddles through with mediocre policy inititatives is better than a government that tries to solidify power for the majority, and for organized interests. The key to understanding good campaign finance law is to recognize that we require an INDEPENDENT source of power. Private contributions, from private citizens, control government excess. Public financing, or other protection for the state-sponsored parties, is a recipe for tyranny. I made some of these arguments in my Senate testimony on McCain-Feingold, and it is something I will talk about now and again in the future.