Yep. This kind of propaganda has been going on for a very long time. In WWI, the British press contained stories of German soldiers parading around Belgian towns with babies on their bayonets.
One learns to be skeptical of these claims.
The first casualty in war is the truth.
Why digitally add the logos. Have them sewn on to their suits. And they should be required to mention their sponsors, like NASCAR drivers do.
Then you can hear the Congressman say: I'd like to thank the United Auto Workers, Service Employee's International Union, National Education Association and the American Dairy Association for making this possible.
Do people really change the way they vote just because of advertising, or lack thereof?
They wouldn't spend the money on advertising if it didn't work. Does the UK have negative political ads? You know, like the one where the Paul Ryan lookalike pushes granny in her wheelchair off of a cliff? Those are very effective in the US, but are almost always paid for by an outside group.
You are assuming that a significant amount of money is needed to "finance" a campaign. If no one has any advertisement money then you have a fair playing field for rich and poor candidates and it may also lower the barrier of entry for third party candidates. You could also have some standard fixed amount paid for by taxpayers to any candidate with a sufficiently large number of signatures to run.
If you limit what the politicians can spend on their campaigns, the money will just be spent by outside groups. Given the First Amendment protection of speech in the US, there is no way to limit what (and how often) outside groups say about a politician. So, you end up disarming the politicians and having all the power be in the hands of outside groups. I fail to see how this is an improvement.
This "one size fits all" approach also fails to take in to account the size difference in congressional districts and states. It takes a lot more to mount a campaign in say Chicago than it does in Montana.
Campaign contributions are not a bribe. People, and groups of people, show support politicians by making contributions to their election campaigns.
How else would you fund political campaigns? Public Financing, aka welfare for politicians??
Great. Taking your rule to its logical conclusion, I look forward to the day when teacher's unions no longer make campaign contributions to local school board members, too.
This notion that we can somehow wall off representatives from their constituents is laughable. And Labor Unions and Teacher's Unions and the NRA are also their constituents.
Those inefficiencies can be almost impossible to remove, because the Union will want something back from management in exchange for what they view as a concession.
This is the mind set that has the Detroit Water and Sewage Department still having blacksmiths on the payroll long after the horses have gone. http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/17404
How times have changed.
"Gentlemen don't read other gentlemen's mail." That's what Henry L. Stimson said in 1929 when he shut down the State Department's code breaking operations. Stimson was President Hoover's Secretary of State at the time.
Real Programs don't use shared text. Otherwise, how can they use functions for scratch space after they are finished calling them?
