While the nation marks the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in later this year, some observers say our political leaders have already forgotten a key lesson of Watergate: that anonymous money corrupts political campaigns.
It is truly something to behold how one can so thoroughly misinterpret and misrepresent the key lessons from Watergate.
The real key lesson, which this OpEd author completely overlooks, is that absolute power corrupts absolutely. The author rightly notes that large campaign contributions are the result of extortion by powerful politicians and then fails to address the corrupt power to extort that exists at the federal level due to the immense amount of power which has been purposefully centralized there in direct opposition to law as established by the Constitution.
There can be no doubt that the framers intended a federal government of limited powers as opposed to a national government with unlimited ones when the record of the Philadelphia Convention and the ratification debates are examined. A proposal was put forth by the Virginia delegation, led by James Madison, for a national government complete with the power to nullify state laws and it was thoroughly rejected. Alexander Hamilton sought a national government where the president would appoint all the Senators and governors of the states and this too was rejected outright. During the ratification debates those seeking to have the new constitution adopted argued that the federal government would only have those powers expressly delegated to it by the Constitution and premised their support of it on these very terms. The reason we have a 10th Amendment at all was that the anti-federalists didn't believe what they were being told and wanted it codified as an amendment to the Constitution as a condition of ratification - which Chief Justice Marshall managed to sweep aside by inverting what the 10th Amendment said and interpreting his desire for the federal government to have any power not directly prohibited to it instead of the States retaining that power.
Chief Justice Marshall was right in one thing. The power to tax is the power to destroy. Witness what the limitless power to tax at the federal level resulting from opinions replacing law has wrought. You really want to stop large political donations:? Tax them with the nearly unfettered power to levy taxes that has been granted to the Congress by the decisions of the Supreme Court. That which you want less of you tax heavily. That which you want more of you tax lightly or not at all. Remove the tax exempt status of political candidates, campaigns and PACS and tax any and all contributions totaling over $20 from any individual or organization to advance a political thought or agenda at 90%. That is the only way to fix the problem short of returning the federal government to the powers it was actually delegated, which would remove the benefit of paying such huge amounts of money extorted to achieve and retain political power at the general government level.
If that doesn't chill the protected political speech of everyone, nothing will; and at least with that failure we will get the money extorted by the representatives seeking federal offices into the treasury and these entities will only be getting their own money back instead of ours when the general government dispenses its rewards back to the entities from which it was originally extorted.
