Cal Poly's College of Liberal Arts and a group called Citizens Congress 2014 led by San Luis Obispo farmer and former actor William Ostrander held a symposium earlier this evening on "Money In Politics: What Could Go Wrong."

While I could only stay for about 75 minutes due to my second and third jobs (the moderator had suggested that opening comments from the speakers should be 13 minutes each, but Lessig went more than 30), the preview article in the local paper gave an accurate idea of what I would hear. While it claims to be a bipartisan effort at "campaign finance reform" it's more accurately a First Amendment repeal group. A look at the list of invitees is a Who's Who of the political left, with a handful of Republicans names thrown in to give cover.

The sponsors used some audience voting tools to get a feel for the demographics of their audience and their positions on some issues. Unsurprisingly, there were lots of students and lots of blue hairs, but few in the middle of the age distribution. But the first confirmation of the left-leaning bias of the presentation was when they asked the audience to chose the single most important issue to them from a list of 10. The list covered everything from the left end of the spectrum to the far-left end of the spectrum.

1. Closing corporate tax loopholes
2. Controlling power of Wall Street banks and breaking them up if necessary
3. Fixing gerrymandered districts that favor extreme candidates and disenfranchise moderate voters.
4. Inequality of income and wealth in the US
5. Passing a constitutional amendment to give Congress power to regulate campaign spending and roll back Citizens United decision
6. Raising the minimum wage
7. Public support of small campaign donors through matching finds, tax credits or voter vouchers
8. Require disclosure of all political spending during campaigns regardless of source
9. Taking steps to reduce student debt and support college education for more young people
10. Taking strong measures to combat climate change

Needless to say, I was unable to vote for any of them. I could critique each one of them, but #5 is especially rich—yes, let's give Congress the power to control campaign spending and ensure their re-election in perpetuity.

A main focus of the speakers I heard—Lawrence Lessig and Hedrick Smith—was the evil of the Citizens United decision and how it had to be overturned by a constitutional amendment. It's clearly lost on Ostrander, the former actor, that the crux of the Citizens United decision was a documentary film "Hillary: The Movie" that the federal government had banned from being shown before the 2008 presidential primaries.

The inspiration for his political activism was the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case, which ruled that the government cannot prohibit political spending by corporations in candidate elections.

Ostrander was apparently untroubled by Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" which attempted to influence the 2004 election. It wasn't his ox getting gored that time.

Ostrander, Lessig and Smith want to gut the First Amendment as a method of "getting money out of politics." (Has there ever been a time where there wasn't money in politics?) They want to hand the power to regulate how much you can say, when you can say it and how much you can spend to get yourself heard to government bureaucrats. (The media would be excepted, of course, which would mean a lot of money would be spent to make sure you get included under that exception.) This is an odious position.

There's a better way to get money out of politics: Shrink the government. If the government was no longer handing out tax breaks, grants, regulatory favors, etc. to business and special interests alike, then there would be no need to spend millions of dollars lobbying government or getting politicians elected who would do their bidding.

The symposium was being recorded, allegedly for later broadcast.  When it makes it onto YouTube, we'll see if there was anyone who challenged them, or if the exercise was simply a positive feedback loop.