To: The Dallas Morning News
Date: October 17, 2006
Subject: Financing for political campaigns
Result: not printed

Dear Editor,

It is fashionable among Republicans to criticize the Democrats for accepting campaign funds from wealthy personal injury attorneys. I myself am no lawyer lover, and wish the Democrats were able to get financing for their campaigns without having to turn to attorneys.

But at the same time, if rich attorneys don't give the Democrats the money they need, who will? About all the Democrats have left besides that is poor people, movie stars, and a few renegade billionaires. The Republicans have many affluent and rich people giving them money – much of which was not earned because the donors are so great and wonderful, or ever created anything. At best, most of them just got lucky, so they now have the money to advance their personal interests *see note below. Certainly few of them are to be counted among the benefactors of mankind. And of course there's been a crook or two supporting Republican politicians.

There is an easy solution to the problem of how to finance political campaigns with fairness and equity. Whenever anybody makes a donation to a political candidate, out of rightful concern that their message should be heard, then half of that money should be divided among the opposing candidates. So that, in the case of the current Texas gubernatorial campaign, if somebody makes a donation to Rick Perry, then half of those funds should be divided among Chris Bell, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, and Kinky Friedman. Likewise, the Governor would get a share of the contributions made to his opponents.

Actually, I was going to say that all donations should be divided equally among all viable candidates – and I think that would be fair – but I am willing to let Governor Perry keep half of his, which will still give him an advantage.

Under this plan, nobody's special interests will have undue influence on political elections, and all donors will support the interest of our democracy.

Concerning your idea in today's editorial that all campaign contributions should be limited to $10,000, the problem with that is there are a lot more Republicans than Democrats who can give $10,000 to a political campaign.

Thank you, John Vehon

* I realize that a lot of people who have great success in life say they are not "lucky", but that it's due to their talent and ability and intelligence and tenacity and hard work.  Concerning talent, ability, and intelligence, and even tenacity, those are qualities that nobody gave him or herself, but they were lucky to be born with them.  Concerning hard work, many people in life work very hard, and may also have all the other qualities just mentioned, and moreover, they may even have all kinds of great ideas, but there still has to be the good luck needed to bring it all together, including basically just being in the right place at the right time.   Of course, then, concerning all the affluent people I mentioned above, again, they weren't the creators who were lucky  to be able to create, but just ones who are lucky enough to be attached to them in one way or another.