More on Pay to Play and Wheeling

Money is like water and air. It will always find its way through the cracks. If there aren't any cracks, it will make some.

All the noise about pay to play, wheeling and campaign finance reform is nonsense. It will never keep money that wants to be spent on a campaign from being spent. From McCain-Feingold on the federal level, to the various laws and proposed laws throughout New Jersey, it's all b.s. that creates more bureaucracy and unproductive work for lawyers and bean counters.

Proposed laws are not about reform. They are about the party in power trying to hamstring their opponents while protecting their own flow of funds, all the while patting themselves on the back as reformers to voters to don't buy it and don't care.

In addition to violating the rights of free expression for those who do contribute, these laws create a massive amount of work and additional expense for the campaigns and contributors. They actually make it more difficult to track who is giving to who, because of all the committees, PACS, 527's, etc that the parties and contributors have to create in order to fund their campaigns and comply with the laws.

I say scrap all attempts to limit free speech and the free flow of money. Let whoever wants to give do so. But do require full disclosure of all contributions. That way you can at least track who's buying off who.

It will never happen. It makes too much sense, and there's too much money in controlling the money.