How many times have you heard a career politician say, “I want to get the money out of politics and get the special interests out of politics?”

I think we could search the internet and find at least 100 videos of career politicians as diverse as Barney Frank to John McCain, saying something like that. The real way to get money out of politics is to shrink the size and scope of the government. That changes the incentives. Without the (fill in the blank) government industrial complex that surrounds funding and bureaucracies, the incentive to put money to work there would evaporate.

As a person who has loathed politicians their entire life, I have found out it takes conviction to actually get out of your chair, quit complaining, and put your name on the ballot. It is very intimidating to look at the wall you have to climb in order to be successful.

That being said, I am following the alleged Minnesota fraud thing closely. First, I own a small amount of property that I pay property tax on in Minnesota. A portion of that tax goes to the state, and apparently, is distributed by the state to Somali day care centers and other organizations that have allegedly perpetuated fraud.

It bugs me to see taxpayer dollars wasted like that. Why even pay? Consumption taxes are the best taxes if you decide to tax. That’s one reason we moved to Nevada.

There is a bigger issue, though. Here is a tweet from Peter Berneggar.

But something brand new: by next week I will have filed an FEC complaint against US Senator Amy Klobuchar.
KLOBUCHAR FOR MINNESOTA takes $3,946,364 USD in 46,448 Smurfing Contributions, from 5,160 Contributors.
AMY FOR AMERICA takes $4,880,382 USD in 66,796
Smurfing Contributions, from 7,724 Contributors.
AMY KLOBUCHAR VICTORY COMMITTEE takes $807,166 USD in 309 Smurfing Contributions, from 239 Contributors.
Totaling $9,633,912 of her federal campaign committees Smurfing, i.e. criminally laundering money into her campaigns. And I know it is higher yet.
Meaning Klobuchar cheated, she committed massive election fraud and in no way is the duly elected US Senator from Minnesota. Resign now Klobuchar

I want to ignore the people involved and instead look at the mechanics and economics.

If politicians “smurf”, or cheat the election rules on donations, it’s wrong. However, it is worse than that because of the economics and economic incentives involved.

The first thing you realize is that cheating raises the costs of all elections. What’s the opponent supposed to do? They have to raise more money to compete. That forces everyone in the race to raise more money, and the competition for dollars gets fierce.

What’s the next knock-on effect of fraudulent donations (assuming they exist)? Let’s frame a hypothetical example just to make the point.

Suppose there are 10 people thinking about running for office. When they see, or know, or assume, that there will be fraud around raising money that will give one or two candidates the edge, the decision tree that they use to calculate the probability of whether to run or not run changes.

They have to decide if they can overcome the potential fraud. Each of them will calculate their decision by their own personal costs/opportunity costs. Can they raise enough money? Are there other ways to strategize? There are all kinds of decisions to make.

Hence, if there is fraud perpetrated by establishment political parties, it is a way of keeping potentially good candidates out of the race and limiting potential competition in a similar way gerrymandering does.

Even without any fraud, if running a race becomes prohibitively expensive, the pool of candidates willing to engage shrinks. Here is a Grok query on Nevada Senate races. Nevada is a small state, and the media markets are cheaper. Now imagine that same race in California, New York, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, or Illinois.

How many times have you heard a career politician say, “I want to get the money out of politics and get the special interests out of politics?”

I think we could search the internet and find at least 100 videos of career politicians as diverse as Barney Frank to John McCain, saying something like that. The real way to get money out of politics is to shrink the size and scope of the government. That changes the incentives. Without the (fill in the blank) government industrial complex that surrounds funding and bureaucracies, the incentive to put money to work there would evaporate.

As a person who has loathed politicians their entire life, I have found out it takes conviction to actually get out of your chair, quit complaining, and put your name on the ballot. It is very intimidating to look at the wall you have to climb in order to be successful.

That being said, I am following the alleged Minnesota fraud thing closely. First, I own a small amount of property that I pay property tax on in Minnesota. A portion of that tax goes to the state, and apparently, is distributed by the state to Somali day care centers and other organizations that have allegedly perpetuated fraud.

It bugs me to see taxpayer dollars wasted like that. Why even pay? Consumption taxes are the best taxes if you decide to tax. That’s one reason we moved to Nevada.

There is a bigger issue, though. Here is a tweet from Peter Berneggar.

But something brand new: by next week I will have filed an FEC complaint against US Senator Amy Klobuchar.
KLOBUCHAR FOR MINNESOTA takes $3,946,364 USD in 46,448 Smurfing Contributions, from 5,160 Contributors.
AMY FOR AMERICA takes $4,880,382 USD in 66,796
Smurfing Contributions, from 7,724 Contributors.
AMY KLOBUCHAR VICTORY COMMITTEE takes $807,166 USD in 309 Smurfing Contributions, from 239 Contributors.
Totaling $9,633,912 of her federal campaign committees Smurfing, i.e. criminally laundering money into her campaigns. And I know it is higher yet.
Meaning Klobuchar cheated, she committed massive election fraud and in no way is the duly elected US Senator from Minnesota. Resign now Klobuchar

I want to ignore the people involved and instead look at the mechanics and economics.

If politicians “smurf”, or cheat the election rules on donations, it’s wrong. However, it is worse than that because of the economics and economic incentives involved.

The first thing you realize is that cheating raises the costs of all elections. What’s the opponent supposed to do? They have to raise more money to compete. That forces everyone in the race to raise more money, and the competition for dollars gets fierce.

What’s the next knock-on effect of fraudulent donations (assuming they exist)? Let’s frame a hypothetical example just to make the point.

Suppose there are 10 people thinking about running for office. When they see, or know, or assume, that there will be fraud around raising money that will give one or two candidates the edge, the decision tree that they use to calculate the probability of whether to run or not run changes.

They have to decide if they can overcome the potential fraud. Each of them will calculate their decision by their own personal costs/opportunity costs. Can they raise enough money? Are there other ways to strategize? There are all kinds of decisions to make.

Hence, if there is fraud perpetrated by establishment political parties, it is a way of keeping potentially good candidates out of the race and limiting potential competition in a similar way gerrymandering does.

Even without any fraud, if running a race becomes prohibitively expensive, the pool of candidates willing to engage shrinks. Here is a Grok query on Nevada Senate races. Nevada is a small state, and the media markets are cheaper. Now imagine that same race in California, New York, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, or Illinois.