Charley Memminger launched his new blog, Charleyworld, yesterday with a plea: “Cut me some slack.”

It’s a good thing, since his lead paragraph mistakenly refers to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as “Harry Reed”.

Okay. Cut me some slack. I’ve never blogged before. At least not in public. But just as everyone eventually gets their 15 minutes of fame, in the digital age, everyone eventually will become a blogger. I expect Harry Reed and Nancy Pelosi soon will make blogging mandatory for every citizen of the United States and then institute a Blog Tax. Don’t laugh. It could happen.

But it’s good to have Charley finally joining the Blogosphere anyway. The more the merrier.

I know that I should just sidestep any further comment on the issue of this year’s bills regarding corporate contribution limits, but the Advertiser’s editorial today again feels like a fingernail scratching on a chalkboard.

Given their position, they should just argue directly that corporate contributions should be disallowed. I wouldn’t take any issue with that.

But don’t kid around with the facts and say that the legislature previously adopted a $1,000 limit but “did not set the limit clearly enough for the state Circuit Court”.

In that state court trial on Maui, there was overwhelming evidence that there was no legislative intent to set such a limit. The argument in favor of the existence of a limit, made by the Campaign Spending Commission, was based on, as they say, circumstantial evidence alone. Not a word from any of the relevant committee reports about a bold move to cut out corporate funds.

Then there’s this comment:

Meanwhile, the state Campaign Spending Commission has said the old limit won’t be enforced unless it’s upheld on appeal.

Of course the commission has said that. It’s the law. The court threw out that section of the law, so right now there are no old limits to enforce. The editorial makes it sound like a discretionary action on the part of the commission. I don’t think so.

The editorial then observers: “There’s a lot of political pressure to do nothing.” What they don’t say is that most political pressure is coming from the reformers, who say they would rather see no legislation than any sort of compromise.

At least the Advertiser recognizes the dangers of doing nothing.

The unfortunate thing about the whole episode is that sponsors of the original bill to establish a $25,000 cap on direct corporate contributions were bucking the political tide and, for the first time, trying to openly cap corporate money. Reading the political winds, their proposal didn’t go for a complete ban but, if adopted, would have established both a cap and the principle of limiting corporate spending.

Backers of a ban, though, saw it very differently and branded backers of the $25K limit as tools of the corporations.

I still feel that a legislatively imposed cap, whether at $25,000 or another level, would have been a politically achievable step in the appropriate direction.

I won’t go on. No reason to piss off my friends any more than I already have. My point–It would be best not to seek legitimacy in a mythical past of a $1,000 cap that wasn’t or, at the very minimum, was never intended by the legislature. Argue the issue of the appropriateness of corporate participation in elections directly and bypass all the misunderstandings.

If everything were going to the dogs, that wouldn’t be a bad thing. This is Ms. Emma, one of our newer Kaaawa dogs. Now that the sun is coming up a bit earlier, I’m able to get a few more photos featuring the dogs of our morning walks. Just click on Ms. Emma for a few more.