It looks obvious

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the first federal campaign-finance law, the Tillman Act. Named for its sponsor, South Carolina Democratic Sen. Ben Tillman, the act banned corporate contributions to federal campaigns, and as such remains the backbone of federal campaign-finance regulations. "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman advocated lynching black voters and had a big hand in establishing Jim Crow. His law fit neatly with his segregationist agenda, since corporate "money power" primarily backed anti-segregationist Republican politicians.

"I have come to doubt that the masses of the people have sense enough to govern themselves," wrote Ben Tillman, the founder of federal campaign-finance reform, in 1916. Many years later, in 1997, House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt famously described the battle over campaign-finance reform as "two important values in direct conflict: freedom of speech and our desire for healthy campaigns in a healthy democracy. You can’t have both."

Many a tax- and regulation-prone politician, stymied by real political debate, would agree with both men. But Norm Feck and his Parker North neighbors, the Texas dentist facing $30,000 in fines, and tens of thousands of NASCAR fans realize that free speech is not a bar to healthy democracy, but is its cornerstone. It’s imperative that we speak up to defend freedom of speech — before that very speaking up becomes impossible.

According to the New York Daily News, Mayor Bloomberg is launching a $700,000 ad campaign to promote tap water. Taxpayer dollars will fund a total of 1,400 advertisements on New York City subways, bus kiosks, and check-cashing stations. Ironically, this campaign comes one month after the city raised water rates.

Moreover, a wholesale shifting of healthcare from the private to the public sector simply means replacing rationing by wealth with rationing by number, and a drastic decrease in individual freedom on both sides of the medical equation. You’d replace insurance company bureaucrats who deny care with government bureaucrats who deny care. Removing the financial incentive from doctors simply means they will provide sloppier treatment. They’re not saints. They’re human beings. And slashing the profit motive from the drug companies will simply mean fewer new drugs for fewer illnesses. This is the trade-off the left will deny till they’re blue in the face. But it’s a real trade-off.

The European health systems have, of course, been free-riding on private U.S. drug research for decades. Name a great new drug developed in Europe these past ten years. Their own pharmaceutical industries have been decimated by the socialism Moore loves (and many of Europe’s drug companies have relocated to the US as a result). But I fear the left is winning this battle; and the massive advantages of private healthcare are only appreciated when you lose them. 

ON THE face of it, he is an odd choice. Tony Blair’s reign as Britain’s leader has been blighted—indeed, it has been brought to an early end—by the unpopularity he incurred at home and abroad, especially in the Muslim world, for his part in creating the turmoil in Iraq by helping to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Why, as he leaves national office, would he want to jump straight back into the Middle East cauldron? And why would the peace-seeking “quartet” of countries and international clubs—America, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union—agree to make him their roving broker, just when the chances of peace between Arabs and Jews seem even slimmer than usual?

The first answer is that Mr Blair has huge confidence in his powers of persuasion and has been saying publicly for nearly a year that he wants to help the cause of peace in the Middle East. Second, he must dearly wish to shake off the burden of failure in Iraq and leave a legacy of peace rather than misery, albeit in another part of the region. And he looks, of course, to his success in helping to make peace in Northern Ireland, using his vaunted qualities of patience, tenacity, charm, persuasiveness and cunning.

A PROPOSAL making its way to the House floor would hurt everyone from the average American taxpayer to the struggling African farmer. It would enrich a small number of big businesses in a few dozen congressional districts. It would claim money that could otherwise go to priorities the Democratic majority supposedly champions: environmental conservation, student loans, Head Start, food stamps or children’s health insurance. Even President Bush wants to reprioritize the spending.

So what will the Democratic leadership do about it?

Last week a panel of the House Agriculture Committee snubbed a growing group of lawmakers critical of federal farm payouts by reapproving a massive system of subsidies in place since 2002, the last time Congress thoroughly examined agricultural policy. The 2002 farm bill is a monument to craven interest politics and federal waste. Its commodity supports are too often misdirected: High-income farmers collect increasing shares of the largess, and, by The Post’s calculations, between 2000 and 2006 about $1.3 billion went to Americans who do not farm at all.