National Post on the “In and Out” Scheme

The National Post all but conceded that the Conservatives broke the election law, but they could not leave it at that.

“In the mean time, it needs to be said that this is a useless and undemocratic law. Like most of our campaign finance laws, it is based on the false premise that severely restricting how much politicians may raise and spend to get elected will take the influence of Big Money out of our elections and create a level playing field for all parties and candidates.

There is little evidence that such limits produce the benefits claimed for them. Indeed, in the United States, which has the most expensive elections in the world, for every free-spending campaign that wins thanks to its ability to saturate the airwaves there are almost two more that lose.”

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=461930

Not only is this nonsense, the candidates that raise and spend the most money have a far better chance of winning, it is also irrelevant. The issue at hand is the influence of Big Money and whether there is a perfect correlation between a candidate outspending his opponent and winning. In the States the problem is both parties are heavily indebted to big money. A lack of party discipline, the ridiculously stupid bicameral system in the States partly explains why the US is the only Western country without universal health care or mandated vacation time and big money explains the rest.

“What is required to make elections "fair" is transparency -- letting voters see who is contributing to which campaigns, and how much."

Good one. The National Post wants one and all to believe that even though corporations are spending hundreds of millions of dollars each US election cycle that this buys them no influence.