Onkar makes a good point that is perhaps more insightful than he realizes. The first federal law that prohibited corporate contributions to candidates was the Tillman Act, named for “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman. Tillman was a progressive and a segregationist who despised corporations because, among other things, they opposed his segregationist agenda. They didn’t like to pay for separate rail cars, restrooms, drinking fountains and entrances for blacks.

In fact, there’s lots of evidence that campaign finance laws are motivated by the desire to hobble political opponents or simply to censor speech. John Gardner, the founder of Common Cause and the father of the modern campaign reform movement, blamed special interests (often corporations) for the failure of Congress to pass the progressive’s political agenda in the late 60s and early 70s. During the Congressional debates over McCain-Feingold, there was a great deal of discussion about abolishing hated “attack ads” and “raising the level of debate” in campaigns, but almost nothing about actual examples of corruption that the laws were allegedly designed to eliminate.

Anyway, keep up the great work.

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