How About That First Amendment Thingy?

Senator Clinton is racking in the donations from Chinatown dishwashers, Senator Obama and Governor Romney are drawing four-digit checks from "the children." The Washington Post notes the trend:

Elrick Williams's toddler niece Carlyn may be one of the youngest contributors to this year's presidential campaign. The 2-year-old gave $2,300 to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

So did her sister and brother, Imara, 13, and Ishmael, 9, and her cousins Chan and Alexis, both 13. Altogether, according to newly released campaign finance reports, the extended family of Williams, a wealthy Chicago financier, handed over nearly a dozen checks in March for the maximum allowed under federal law to Obama.
[...]
A supporter of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R), Susan Henken of Dover, Mass., wrote her own $2,300 check, and her 13-year-old son, Samuel, and 15-year-old daughter, Julia, each wrote $2,300 checks, for example. Samuel used money from his bar mitzvah and money he earned "dog sitting," and Julia used babysitting money to make the contributions, their mother said. "My children like to donate to a lot of causes. That's just how it is in my house," Henken said.

It's time to cut and run from the quagmire of campaign finance reform. All of it. It lives in opposition to transparency, which would be good. It contributes to establishment candidates and the much-decried dynastic Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton trend.

Here's my campaign finance laws: Everybody can give all they want to anybody they want. Candidates who do not provide a good public accounting of the support they receive should not be voted for. Understandable, enforceable, and Constitutional.

Politics Posted by jk at October 24, 2007 12:30 PM