New Rules for 'Soft Money' Groups in 2006

[Rose Siding]

WASHINGTON - Non-party groups spending millions of dollars in unlimited donations on ads and get-out-the-vote drives in the presidential race will face some new ground rules starting with the 2006 election.

The Federal Election Commission (news - web sites) voted 4-2 Thursday to require groups that raise more than $1,000 by telling donors the money will be used to support the election or defeat of a particular presidential or congressional candidate to accept only limited donations from individuals and to divulge their contributions and spending to the FEC.

The commission also placed new spending restrictions on groups that collect both "soft money" — corporate, union and unlimited donations — and so-called hard money, limited donations from individuals.

These groups would have to use the more difficult-to-raise hard money to cover at least half the cost of their overhead, nonpartisan voter drives and any ads, phone banks and mailings that refer to a federal candidate, the commission said.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20040819/ap_on_go_ot/campaign_finance

[Scro]

1. It's telling that such a crucially important thread gets no responses

[JusticeForAll]

2. The rules are changing....

What type of a response are you looking for?

It's telling that your response wasn't much of a response which is maybe why no one else is giving a response.

[tlcandie]

3. LoL... great come back!

Well, we knew they would change it because it goes against the house of *! They can't have the American people outgiving his elites!

The problem is this: The elites always find a way around it and this is no exception.

All we can do is hope and wait for Kerry to stop this kind of nonsense!

[bemildred]

4. Blather.

We'll just have to stop raising money by:

"telling donors the money will be used to support the election
or defeat of a particular presidential or congressional candidate"

The whole "soft-money" vs "hard-money" distinction is a sham anyway.
As Fat Tony said, money is "speech", either let everybody "talk"
all they want to, or let's go to a public finance system where
nobody gets to "talk" except when it's their turn.

[cprise]

5. Do not threaten the dominance of the anchors and pundits

...with populist fundraising to obtain airtime.

Also, you must align completely with party politics (not issues) and announce it so the (dominant) news people can efficiently deal with you.

(Clearly the peasants still have too much money for this plutocracy to function the way we need it to.)