BIg Brother Lurking

The Michigan Campaign Finance Network has issued a report claiming that more than $23 million dollars in undisclosed cash went towards TV ads during the 2010 election cycle in the state. The people on the receiving end of such expenditures, including failed Democratic candidate or governor Virg Bernero as well as Governor Rick Snyder, supposedly gained exposure through the televised media without dropping a dime from their own coffers.

Granted, the ads did not ask anyone to actually vote for him or any of the others in question. But groups seeking disclosure over exactly who donated the money for the ads are crying foul. They want full disclosure.

Why? Why must someone have to report, or have their donations reported, on the grounds of a presumed public right to know? Why does the public have the *right* to know?

To keep bad old liberals or bad old conservatives at bay? Perhaps; but as the, well, we'll call it secret giving here, happened across the political spectrum, it would appear as though there was a fairly equal distribution of private funding. So if what is driving these people are a fear of smoke filled rooms, well, neither side had any apparent advantage.

“The gubernatorial general election was not a different kind of politics. It was the same old same old: Secret spenders, no accountability,” reports MCFN director Rich Robinson. So who are they supposed to accountable to? Why should a private individual have to account for his actions in the mere support of a political candidate or political creed anyway? It surely is no more than an expression of free speech, isn't it? Is free speech the greatest thing since sliced bread? Should someone wish to keep his face from the public view, why ought we not respect that wish as much as any public expression?

The only even semi-rational defense would be to stave off the buying an election, Yet isn't that the point of any given electioneering, up to and including TV ads? So what's the point?

This is nothing more than self proclaimed public interest groups acting as busybodies for a public which didn't ask for their help in the first place. If there is a real threat to our liberties, it is from them, not anonymous donors to political action groups. When they have the right to tell us as a matter of course how we are to spend our own money, we are indeed under the specter of Big Brother.