Rich Poor or just Confused?

I can never figure out how the left thinks. So often, logic seems completely irrelevant when making points.

This is not good for our democracy. On the first point, I take it as axiomatic that we have a right to know who is trying to buy our politicians. And while parties sneer at such “trivial” sums as $10,000, to anyone outside their tiny elite, that looks like a hell of a lot of money (by way of comparison, its about 40% of the median income). Assurances by parties that donors are not receiving political favours in exchange for their money, or that “$10,000 isn’t enough to buy anything” simply don’t wash (and the latter shows how out of touch parties are with the general public; to almost all of us, $10,000 buys you a hell of a lot). They need to prove it. And that means a high level of transparency, declaring all but non-trivial donations so we can check to see that everything is above board.

That makes no sense. If I approach a political party with a $100, glowing about the vast amount of money I’m giving them, they’re going to laugh if I think that’ll buy influence.

If parties think $10,000 is trivial, it doesn’t matter how much money the public thinks that is, that figure isn’t going to get you anything more than a few chuckles. I can’t remember who blogged it, but someone revealed that MPs on a select committee agreed that at least 4 times that much would be the minimum to have any influence.

It would be nice if limits could come down, but then the “Clark Factor” comes in – politicians who have vendettas against donors to the opposition. NRT doesn’t ever seem to care about that.

As for spending limits, there’s no suggestion that the existing spending limits for parties or candidates are inadequate; the average winning candidate spent just 60% of the limit, while only the two major parties even begin to approach the party limit, with most spending far less. The purpose of spending limits is to level the playing field and prevent money from being a disproportionate advantage. Raising them undermines that purpose, giving the large parties free reign to try and buy victory, and kicking off an arms race of spending and donations. The result will be to transfer even more power to donors.

So when the Alliance can afford $2.4m, we can increase the limits. Get real, the election is primarily between National and Labour and rules are not intended to make sure that contest has limits, not that National has no advantage over  the Workers Party.

This is exactly the sort of “reform” I expected National to make. It serves their interests – and those of their wealthy donors – and no-one else’s. And ordinary voters like you or I will be the losers.

Those would be the wealthy $10,000 donors that the parties are laughing at.

I’m confused.

Anyway, didn’t the Green party get all the big donations last year?

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