Campaign Finance Cleaner if Public

We must pay our government bills in the form of taxes, and we must virtually eliminate campaign spending if we are to regain control of our government.

Otherwise we will continue to witness the terrible folly of an airport to mirror John Wayne by spending billion of dollars to change the flight paths from Newport Beach and Corona del Mar to less affluent communities, at the same time depriving our citizenry of the wondrous recreational facilities El Toro could provide. I am thinking of public facilities, not a football stadium.

Politicians seduce the public with the popular proposal of lowering taxes. When taxes are sufficiently lowered to produce a deficit, special interest money plugs the gap, takes control, and sidelines the citizens.

Politicians have become beholden to special interests because special interests have financed the election campaigns of most politicians.

From tobacco legislation to gun control to the proposed commercial development of San Clemente’s Marblehead coastal lands we witness minority positions prevailing, with citizens’ groups scrambling to untie the hands of politicians bound with special interest rope.

I am not for profligate government spending, but I do know that it costs money for government operation, from public projects to employee salaries.

If the public doesn’t pay these bills, special interests will, and we will continue to witness such nightmarish debacles as the filling of the San Juan Capistrano outback with San Diego garbage.

We must initiate legislation to limit campaign spending and contributions drastically. And we must stop being enticed by propositions to roll back revenue, from Proposition 13 to the present car tax. Government spending does not mean waste. Waste means waste. Governments must spend, and if not our money, it will be special interest money, and we will continue to be without control.

JAMES C. WOOLDRIDGE

San Clemente