As the Tea parties flourish, people everywhere are giving voice to the frustration with the government machine.  California is center stage for a machine that taxes and spends out of control.  I'm convinced a number of institutional rules allow it to do so.  One that has frustrated me the most (even more than the horrible gerrymandering) is so-called campaign-finance "reform".  These "reforms" (McCain-Feingold at the fed level, and Prop. 34 at the state level, plus all the tin-cup like non-sense at county levels), really just serve to entrench the established players.

On a policy level, these are horrible laws that push the average citizen out of the political process (until occasionally, like today, they rise up in frustration.)  What's worse is that these "good government" measures are pushed as a way to reduce "special interests" to the benefit of the average citizen.  In practice, nothing could be farther from the truth.  These confusing and cumbersome laws and regulations simply add to compliance costs and complexity.  The average guy has no chance of figuring it all out; so those with enough money to run the compliance gauntlet stand alone to control the machine, and get those elected that like the status quo.

Of course the Supreme Court has guaranteed an individual the "right" to spend as much on his/her own campaign as they like, but not the same amount on someone else (what if a wealthy person actually thought his neighbor would be a better elected official than himself?)  Because you and I cannot ask that same wealthy person for a huge contribution, but they can "self fund" their own race, the deck is stacked against those that would go out and raise by nickels and dimes what a "self funder" could raise in the stroke of the pen.  Plus, the big institutions can donate in big ways, whereas individual small donors cannot.  Again, the deck is stacked.

But beyond the policy, and not surprisingly, practically the regulatory scheme simply does not work in its aim to foolish limit money in politics.  That point is made clear in this Dan Walters article.  Here's his take on the effectiveness of Prop. 34 in limiting money in California politics (we can leave the question of why you'd want to limit money--participation--in politics for another day, but it seems to me that more participation, debate, and energy is better than less), with my emphasis added:

[Ross] Johnson, as a state senator, helped draft Proposition 34 and voted for it, well aware – like everyone else involved – that it would undermine Proposition 208's tighter campaign limits. The loopholes that Johnson decries now were written specifically to give special interests a way to pump money into politics without writing checks directly to politicians – making it just that more difficult for the public to know who was giving to whom.

Political decisions have multi-billion-dollar economic consequences, and those affected positively and negatively will always seek to influence them. One cannot effectively limit campaign contributions without repealing the Bill of Rights. Measures such as Proposition 34 merely drive the business underground.

The only campaign finance reform that makes sense is requiring full and immediate reporting of contributions with severe penalties for violation. Everything else is just wishful thinking, or a Proposition 34-like sham.

As a citizen, I want to have more money in the political system--and to know who is putting it there.  (As a political treasurer, I wouldn't mind simpler regulations and laws; much like taxpayers probably wouldn't mind a straight-forward, easy-to-comply-with tax system today.)  In short, I think Walters is right on this issue.  I'd suggest that unlimited contributions with immediate disclosures is the best way we have to "fix the fix that is in" up in Sacramento these days.  If we don't, expect more of the same.