I sent a letter just last night suggesting that campaign finance reform was important and deserved more coverage. What appeared in today's Pilot in an article by George Will was not what I had in mind. Comparing McCain to McCarthy was an outrage. Perhaps McCain-Feingold is not the ultimate solution to the problem at hand. It is, however, and much needed step in the right direction.

What I find most disturbing about Mr. Will's article was his suggestion that the current limits be raised, allowing people to dump more money into the campaigns. He seems to think that such a change would allow a more diverse group of contributors, thus decreasing the influence that any one contributor would have over the candidate. The problem, though is that nothing would prevent the same groups from just contributing larger amounts. They've got the money, the only thing preventing them from spending it is the current contribution limit. As long as you have groups contributing money to campaigns, you'll always have politicians trying to please those groups in order to stay in office. The bribers-- I mean contributors, have more influence than the voters themselves. All anyone needs to do is look at the bankruptcy code changes just passed by the senate. Nearly every consumer rights group and most, if not all, of the lawyers agree that the new bill will hurt a lot of people. It has made it as far as it has, even getting votes from most of the democrats in the senate, because the credit industry has spent more than forty million dollars on political campaigns in the last year alone. MBNA America Bank was George W. Bush's single largest donor at $3.5 million. Bush has promised to sign the bill as soon as he gets it.