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Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger |
Money plus politicians
equals troubleWhy doesn't everybody just get off state Sen. Cal Kawamoto's back?
The man has proposed far-reaching and inspired campaign spending reform (The Cal Kawamoto Preservation Act) which would have allowed Kawamoto and any of his other buddies in the state Legislature possibly under investigation of taking illegal campaign donations to fire the head of the state Campaign Spending Commission which, purely by coincidence, investigates the taking of illegal campaign donations.
Kawamoto's under investigation by that same busy-body commission for making charitable contributions exceeding the $4,000 donation limit allowed Senate candidates. What can you say? The man is a giver.
Campaign financing is not the easiest thing in the world to understand. Quantum physics, by comparison, is a walk in the park. (Or a walk in an infinite number of parks in parallel universes if quantum theory is to believed.)
Campaign financing, on the other hand, has nothing to do with physics or any other laws of nature. It is said that Albert Einstein once considered trying to come up with the Unified Theory of Quantum Campaign Financing but got a brain cramp and decided to work on something easier, like the Special Theory of Relativity.
On the campaign finance equation problem Einstein got as far as e=mc+pwuf(x4)-dfsw/af which stood for electability equals mucho capital plus public workers union funds times four minus deductions for sign-wavers divided by attorney fees and ... well, it's enough to make your hair go all frizzy and white.
CAL KAWAMOTO is one of the few people in Hawaii who understand the complexities of campaign finance, and if small-minded bureaucrats with quasi-police powers would just get out of his way, he would take American electioneering to conceptual plateaus that fanatical gurus like Alan Greenspan and Martha Stewart would not fathom.
In its most basic form, what we are talking about here is best illustrated by the equation P=M+O, or Power equals Money plus Office. It is a circular paradigm by which, if you are in office and have money, you have power; if you have money and power you can be in office; and if you have power and are in office you can have money.
But it is a fragile dynamic.
Say you're Cal Kawamoto and you've got P, M & O and all of a sudden a spoil sport like Robert Watada, executive director of the Campaign Spending Commission comes along and tries to take your M. Well, without the M you lose P and then O's out the window. And with all the unfair publicity Kawamoto's getting, the voters are liable to vote him out of O, at which time he'll have no more P and very little M.
Even Einstein could understand why, from Kawamoto's point of view, politicians should be able to fire whiny campaign-spending fuss-budgets.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com
