Really Free Speech… for Them

Former colleagues Adam Thierer and John Samples have a new study attacking a proposal to subsidize political speech. Golly, you mean I could get to pay for Dennis Kucinich's campaign ads? Where do I sign up?

Comments

[Mark S.]

Great. It's bad enough that I'm taxed to pay the salaries of politicians I didn't and wouldn't vote for. Now I have to be taxed to keep help keep them in office?

[Stmack]

But not 30 days before an election right?

[Plutarck]

Brilliant - let's subsidize a system so broken you can't vote for who you want without facing the spoiler effect, if you don't agree with the majority of a constituency you don't have any real representation (no proportional representation), there are only two parties which are different only on a few issues and approaches, and where the two parties continually conspire to keep the battlefield all to themselves, among other things.

Oh, but I'm sure putting more control of the election process and political debate in the hands of the government will surely improve things. Riiight - they surely won't use it just to rig the game even further and further restrict competition, right?

Pbbbth. Free airtime my ass - nothing is free, _especially_ this.

[Amy Phillips]

Well, you already can sign up. Just check off the little box on your tax return to divert $3 of your tax money from things like national defense and paying down the debt to public financing of campaigns. The program is so unpopular that many pols are proposing to raise it to $10 because not enough people are checking the box, so they want to give a small number of people even more power to siphon off needed funds for political campaigns.