Saturday, February 14, 2009

Campaign Finance reform bill grinds to a halt.

A party line vote, tabled a bill to create public financing, and
other campaign finance reform.

During the meeting, State Senator Dede Feldman said;

“Until we go to some form of a public financing system,
we will continue to do back flips and somersaults to
avert the perception that money buys influence and
access in our political process”.
Is it really just a "perception"?

Is there really some number of back flips and somersaults
that will hide the obvious and undeniable?

Recall that Patricia Madrid lost a close election, in no small part,
because she admitted that large contributors to her campaign
had bought some face time.

Heather Wilson, on the other hand, won, in no small part,
because she was willing to pretend that a large contributor
sitting in her lobby was no more likely to get face time
than someone who had not contributed.

Who's kidding whom?


It strikes me as odd that, everyone seems to believe that
the current campaign finance system leads to corruption.

But no one it seems, will admit that it actually does.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why do you think the Republican legislators in New Mexico usually vote against ethics legislation? They like to complain about how corrupt "Politicians" are, but they won't help pass laws to prevent or fix that.

ched macquigg said...

I am not sure that you can hang all of the resistance on Republicans.

Ethics reform will be opposed by anyone who sees personal disadvantage in the reform.

I will bow to controverting statistics, but I suspect that the resistance to reform is bipartisan.