RE: Free Speech

[Denise Hood <hoodsx3@aol.com>]

Don,

Your item # 2 smacks of elitism, doesn't it? Basically, you are saying that the higher your income, and the higher the tax-bracket you belong to, this entitles you to a proportionally greater influence over your elected officials than the 90% of Americans who pay less than 50% of the taxes (your calculations, not mine).     

These "unlimited" contributions you propose would NOT be buying influence with the 90% of Americans who are not as fortunate as you, but with the elected officials, themselves. This flies totally in the face of the idea of "one person, one vote" and equal representation for ALL Americans. 

Under your scenario,whose phone call is a congressman more likely to return, yours, when one of his aides reminds him that you contributed $100,000 to his campaign, and you are probably on a first-name basis with each other, or mine? Someone who scraped together $200.00 of my hard-earned money, at great personal sacrifice, but who is equally involved in the system, equally informed, equally passionate, but lacks the ability to "buy" influence. This is just an illustration. It doesn't take a genius to know that I'll be sitting there for a VERY long time waiting for that phone call.....