American Political Campaigns are Really Expensive

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After reading half a dozen blog posts this morning about mega-billionaire Sheldon Adelson and his support of Newt Gingrich, I got curious about campaign financing laws in other countries, something I know nothing about. In Britain, it turns out, paid political advertising on television is banned (though the parties get a bit of free TV time during election seasons), party expenditures are limited to about $50 million during the year prior to an election, and individual candidates are limited to expenditures of about $10,000 each. But what about third parties, the bane of American campaigns these days? Here you go:

Individuals or groups that aim to promote or disparage electoral candidates are also subject to controls and restrictions on the campaigning that they can do. They may incur expenditure [] by holding public meetings or organizing public displays, or by issuing advertisements, circulars, or publications. They can spend up to £500 (approximately US$700) at a general election “presenting to the electors the candidate or his views, or the extent or nature of his backing or disparaging of another candidate.”

$700! Take that, plutocrats!

Roughly speaking, these limits mean that total campaign expenditures for a general election in Britain amount to $100-150 million or so (it depends a bit on exactly what you count). We have about 5x their population, so this would translate to something in the neighborhood of $500-750 million if the same rules applied here. That compares to actual expenditures of about $5 billion on federal offices during the 2008 campaign.

I don’t have any real point to make here. This is just a pure information dump. Anyone with serious knowledge of British (or other) campaign law should feel free to chime in if I’ve gotten anything seriously wrong here.

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“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things it doesn’t like—which is most things that are true.

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