{"id":3438,"date":"2010-01-27T12:04:07","date_gmt":"2010-01-27T17:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=3438"},"modified":"2010-01-27T12:07:34","modified_gmt":"2010-01-27T17:07:34","slug":"does-restricting-speech-lead-to-better-government-nope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/3438\/does-restricting-speech-lead-to-better-government-nope\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Restricting Speech Lead to Better Government? Nope."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Or at least that\u2019s the conclusion one can take away from a recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/01\/24\/weekinreview\/24kirkpatrick.html\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><em>New York Times<\/em> article<\/span><\/a> examining campaign finance reform laws across the globe.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>Times<\/em> reported:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThere is no evidence that stricter campaign finance rules reduce corruption or raise positive assessments of government,\u201d said Kenneth Mayer, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.\u00a0  \u201cIt seems like such an obvious relationship but <strong>it has proven impossible to prove<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The article also notes that Australia imposes no restrictions on the amount of money corporations and individuals can give, yet Australia is hardly a failed state.\u00a0  In fact, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.heritage.org\/Index\/\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">according to the Heritage Foundation<\/span><\/a>, Australians enjoy more economic freedom than Americans.<\/p>\n<p>If the First Amendment doesn\u2019t support opponents of free speech and neither does social science research, where else will they turn?  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/3036677\/vp\/34985508#34985508\" target=\"_blank\">Olbermann<\/a>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Or at least that\u2019s the conclusion one can take away from a recent New York Times article examining campaign finance reform laws across the globe. The Times reported: \u201cThere is no evidence that stricter campaign finance rules reduce corruption or raise positive assessments of government,\u201d said Kenneth Mayer, a professor of political science at the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[716,503,96,251],"class_list":["post-3438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-first-amendment","tag-free-speech","tag-keith-olbermann","tag-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3438"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3440,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3438\/revisions\/3440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}