Contributions in Kind and Politics

Monday, August 4th, 2014

There’s much discussion about money and politics, David Foster notes, but not much about contributions in kind and politics:

It would be difficult to put a financial value on the in-kind contributions being made by the media to the Democratic Party and the Left in general, but surely to purchase equivalent coverage at commercial ad rates would run into the multiple billions of dollars, probably the tens of billions. Additional in-kind contributions to the cause on the Left are being made by many academics, who choose to use their taxpayer-and-tuition-provided salaries and classrooms for political preaching or at least subtle brand-promotion activities.

Placing tight restrictions on explicit political contributions would have the effect of further increasing the power — greatly further increasing the power — of those institutions which are in a position to directly conduct political speech, those who own a microphone instead of having to pay for access to one.

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