KINDER'S COMMENTARY: HIGH-TAXING TOBACCO BILL WAS A BIG GOVERNMENT BOONDOGGLE

Tobacco bill disaster averted

Thank God for the successful effort, led by Missouri Sen. John Ashcroft, to defeat the incredible, high-taxing, big-government tobacco bill. It was unquestionably the worst idea since the Clinton health-care plan which, come to think of it, also once looked unbeatable. It took the moral courage and fierce combativeness of a few energetic senators to stop this one cold.

The tobacco bill would have created 17 new government bureaucracies, handed vast new powers to the Federal Drug Administration and overwhelmed every police and juvenile official in America by requiring them to chase down teen-agers who commit the dreadful crime of lighting up.

Good riddance.

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Campaign $ reform is a crock

A friend from Scott City quipped to me last week that President Clinton's China trip is surely a Democratic fund-raising jaunt, complete with visits to Chinese arms dealers and obligatory stops at Buddhist temples, there to shake down the nuns, who by the way have taken vows of poverty. Anyone seen Al Gore lately?

By all means, sure: Notwithstanding wholesale violation of existing campaign finance laws, let's get busy and pass something Bill Clinton and liberal editorial writers call "campaign finance reform," no matter how blatantly violative of our First Amendment rights to free speech.

Quick: Everyone who wants to make it a crime to criticize a politician within 90 days of an election, raise your hand. Columnist George Will has it right: The effort to pass "campaign finance reform" is the largest and gravest threat to freedom of speech in the history of the republic -- larger than the McCarthy hysteria of the 1950s, larger even then the Alien and Sedition Acts passed at the end of the 18th century. The latter created the crime of "seditious libel," prescribing jail terms for criticizing incumbent government officials. At least the Alien and Sedition Acts were repealed shortly after, once the Jeffersonians took power.

Imagine going to the liberal newspaper editorial boards who favor "campaign finance reform" and proposing to them that we pass a law limiting the amount of money they could spend on news gathering, or writing editorials commenting on issues or endorsing candidates. Great would be their denunciations of this grave threat to press freedoms!

This is exactly what they want to do to ordinary citizens by limiting all our participation in the political process. All Americans possess First Amendment rights -- not just owners of printing presses.

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Another big-spender loses

Speaking of campaign finance reform, once again there is evidence from the field for anyone to consider. This past week saw a New Mexico special election to fill the seat of a Republican member of Congress who died in March. The Democratic candidate was a wealthy young state senator and heir who spent a huge $1.5 million of his own money. He lost badly amid charges that he used that cash to viciously libel his victorious opponent, novice Republican Heather Wilson. This comes on the heels of results from California's primary earlier this month, where every wealthy big-spender in both parties lost to candidates who spent less.

Far more often than the arrogant liberal elites promoting "campaign finance reform" believe, voters can see through the phonies and the fog and decide quite nicely for themselves.

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.