i heard this morning that mccaskill & talent spend a combined $25,000,000 and that another $18,000,000 was spent on the race from outside people.

is that ridiculous? $43 million on one race. and not one thing was learned about either candidate.

end the corruption. cap campaign spending or make political tv/radio/phone ads illegal!

So you're not real big on free speach?

i'm not sure of this "speach" you talk of.....

but i'm certainly not in favor of candidates giving kickbacks, favors and earmarks(with my tax money) to people and company's who give large contributions. and be sure those people and company's wouldn't be giving all that money if they didn't expect to gain something from it later on.

Well you want to outlaw people from getting their messages out on tv/radio/phone. You sure do want to clamp down on people's right to free speech.

The Supreme Court has ruled against campaign contributions as a form of speech. I don't agree with them. You want to go beyond this and tell people how much they can spend to get their message out. Once again attacking people's freedom of speech, muzzling how much they can say.

No one favors kickbacks and they should be punished whenever found. Some people/companies give because the positions of a politician are consistent with what they want. Have you ever given to a candidate? Did you expect kickbacks?

We still have some free speech in this country in spite of your wishes.

i'm in favor of honest politicians and educated voters. the $40 million in tv/radio/phone ads i had to endure for 1 senate race had the exact opposite effect. mccaskill is a crook and not one of those ads truthfully educated one voter.

btw - 1 guy contributed $30 million "for" the stem cel issue in missouri...should that be ok? why is his opinion any more important than mine? just becuase he has that kind of money at his disposal?

The campaign contribution as free speech is garbage. It means that rich people and people in private positions of power have more right to decide which messages get out than regular people do.
But frankly I think we're addressing the wrong issue by trying to limit spending.
The real issue is that American voters tend to be stupid and vote for the same reasons they buy most of the useless crap they buy- name recognition, branding, etc.
If people actually voted based on a consistent ideology or educated self-interest, we wouldn't have this kind of problem because all the commercials would merely be dismissed as noise. If people actually checked out independent voter information websites instead of listening to all the garbage, money wouldn't make as much difference.

That said, I'm all for forcing balanced air time for candidates and prosecuting the living $%#@ out of candidates who accept what amounts to bribes.
But as long as we remain the anti-intellectual, apathy-inducing culture we have become, don't expect any real change.

__________________
"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside