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7/6/2006 Stacking the Deck By Jack Lohman The column below reflects the views of the author, and these opinions are neither endorsed nor supported by WisOpinion.com. We all know that you can get poll numbers to say virtually anything you want them to say, as was recently demonstrated in the poll by the conservative Wisconsin Policy Research Institute. If that was the intent, the public deserves better than a disingenuous effort to tilt the playing field toward a right wing political system that relies on corporate cash, special interest funds and outright corruption to keep its politicians in office. WPRI should go stand in the corner. WPRI claims that -- by a margin of 65% to 26% -- respondents opposed replacing the current system of private campaign contributions with one financed by taxpayers. Duh!!! Of course you would get this response if you ask a random set of 600 uninformed people “Would you favor or oppose using tax dollars to finance Wisconsin political campaigns?” By its own numbers, WRPI showed that people don’t trust politicians. Why would they want to fund their elections? But ask 600 people who know that the true cost of the current political system -- i.e., that the method of financing the public electoral system with private dollars -- is costing $1300 per taxpayer per year in state assets being given to the special interests who fund the elections, compared to a bottom line cost of $5 per taxpayer under a publicly funding system that would level the playing field between all candidates, and you will instead get an honest answer that is exactly opposite of what WPRI published! WPRI got the numbers that they knew (or should have known) they would get with a loaded question. Unfortunately, asking uninformed people also got an answer the politicians will now use to justify their current system of payola. For informed taxpayers that know they are paying for the elections anyway - through back door government giveaways and at hundreds of times more than if they paid for them up front -- the choice for public funding is a no-brainer. There are only two types of campaign money, public and private, and the only difference between them is that the latter too often requires a quid pro quo. Good businessmen usually don’t give money unless they get something in return, and the government giveaways can result in a return-on-investment of about 100-to-1. Good legislation does not require political money to change hands, but bad legislation does. Thus if bad legislation can only be had with money changing hands, that’s the process special interests will turn to. What is it about back-door money that conservative poll-takers don’t understand? In Mexico or Italy we’d call our system corrupt, but America’s politicians like to call it “freedom of speech.” But speech is not free when only the rich can afford it. Our state legislature should be ashamed that they have allowed this corruption to continue, but it keeps them in office so what else can we expect? The real shame of this poll is that it gives them cover to leave it the way it is. The same poll showed that 62% of the people think that we need new blood in the capital, and an informed set of 600 respondents would have shot that number through the roof. That’s why we’ve started the web site www.ThrowTheRascalsOut.org. It is time for the entrenched politicians to find another job, and voter-initiated term limits are the way we can help them move on to a new career. -- Lohman is founder of http://www.ThrowTheRascalsOut.org and can be reached at jlohman@execpc.com. |
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