Free Speech: Bought and Paid For
Campaign finance reform. What a great idea! Why should the millionaires buy elections?
Except, we were hoodwinked, hornswoggled. Done wrong.
You see, the millionaires bought campaign finance reform. Bought and paid for.
The First Amendment took it on the chin and we didn’t even know it. Our right of free speech, which pre-existed the Constitution and is guaranteed by that very same Constitution, was taken from us by a group of very wealthy men and women.
The people who bought campaign finance reform aimed to buy an election, too. They almost did. These millionaires spent tens of millions of their own dollars in the last presidential election trying to elect John Kerry. Campaign finance reform was invented to permit them this tactic. It almost worked.
According to a recent report by the nonpartisan Political Money Line, Campaign Finance Lobby: 1994-2004, Pew spent an average of $4 million a year over 10 years promoting reform. Seven other foundations — including the Carnegie Corp. ($14 million), the Joyce Foundation ($13.5 million), George Soros’ Open Society Institute ($12.6 million) — cumulatively ponied up another $83 million over 10 years for the same purpose. In his March 2004 lecture at USC, curiously titled “Covering Philanthropy and Nonprofits Beyond 9/11,” a tape of which was recently uncovered by Ryan Sager of the New York Post, Mr. Treglia explained how he operated. “The strategy was designed not to hide Pew’s involvement,” he said, “but most of Pew’s funding.” To accomplish that goal, “I always encouraged the grantees never to mention Pew,” whose tactics were evidently copied by the others. Sure enough, the American Prospect neglected to mention a $132,000 payment from the Carnegie Corp., which financed the magazine’s special issue, “Checkbook Democracy,” which focused on campaign-finance reform. Meanwhile, NPR, which collected $1.2 million from the liberal foundations, failed to disclose that that money was funding a program called “Money, Power and Influence.” John Fund of the Wall Street Journal reports that NPR used some of the money to hire Peter Overby as its campaign-finance reporter. Mr. Overby was a former editor of a magazine published by Common Cause, which aggressively promoted “reform.”
Remember this conspiracy when you see John McCain shilling himself on television. He’s part and parcel of the greatest attempt in American history to cheat Americans out of their right to free speech, and he’s in the pocket of special interests. They’re special, all right, and they’re not in OUR interest.
