The 62,000 or so folks in that Upper East Side zip code who don’t rent live in domiciles worth, on average, just under a million bucks. And those people in 10128 have donated $1.7 million in the 2010 election cycle to federal candidates, national parties, or PACs. (Sorry, Rush: Your neighbors preferred Democratic entities.)

But the folks in 10128 are cheapskates compared with the real money farther south on Fifth Avenue. The 100,000-plus people who live in 10021 have given $3.3 million. In fact, eight zip codes surrounding Central Park rank in the top 20 zip codes nationally in political giving by individuals for this election cycle, their residents having coughed up $17.4 million. 10021, 10022 and 10024 are the top three individual donor zip codes in the nation.

I was going to tell you this a few months ago. I had intended to point out that zip codes in and around Washington, D.C., where the real money is, ponied up $22.9 million in this election cycle. I’d planned to tell you that individuals in the top 50 zip codes in the nation had so far contributed nearly $74 million to federal candidates or committees.

But these numbers summarizing individual donations direct to candidates or parties have become meaningless. That means I will likely end four years of writing about them.

The totals provided here, courtesy of the Center for Responsive Politics, an organization that aggregates Federal Election Commission records to make them easier to understand, represents donations exceeding $200 by individuals. Federal election law limits individual candidate contributions to $2,400, up to an aggregate total of $45,600 per election cycle. Individuals may also give an aggregated total of $69,900 to national parties and PACs per cycle. Bottom line: An individual may make $115,500 in campaign contributions per election cycle.

Well, that’s chicken feed now, so there’s no reason to write about campaign contributions by individuals any more.

You all know why: The Supreme Corporate Court of the United States struck down provisions of campaign-finance law in its 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, overruling precedents. (So much for stare decisis.) The bottom line: The government may not ban corporations from spending unlimited amounts of money on broadcast political ads prior to primary or general elections. (This is not the first episode of judicial activism by the “pro-corporate wing” of the Roberts Court.) Says The New York Times:

For the first time, though, as a result of the [Citizens United] ruling, corporations will be able to spend unlimited amounts of money on “electioneering communications” (i.e., broadcast advertisements) expressly advocating for a candidate’s election or defeat. While the court upheld the ban on direct contributions from corporations or unions to candidates, it also clears the way, for the first time, for corporations to donate money to nonprofit groups that place advocacy advertisements.

But, because the Supreme Court has not yet struck down the remainder of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, corporations may spend limitless money on ads supporting or opposing candidates while individual contributors continue to face limits on their donations direct to candidates or parties.

That means all those donations by folks in the top 50 zip codes for this election cycle — $74 million and counting — are small change now. Those who used to be big players in the Election Power Grab Sweepstakes are now bit players. Corporations — those newly minted artificial beings with more power than individual human beings — can outspend them.

In fact, perhaps many of those well-to-do folks in the zip codes surrounding Central Park, those able to afford that $115,500 aggregate limit, might be high-ranking executives of corporations. Maybe they’ll just stop donating as individuals and leave it to the corporation to pay the advertising freight charges to influence election outcomes.

The Screw Democracy Game™ — spend large amounts of money on behalf of political parties and candidates with expectations of a beneficial return on that investment — has changed, it seems. We’ll know for sure as the 2010 mid-term elections near. To what extent will corporations pour money into television advertising to support candidates they prefer? Will they overtly or covertly threaten candidates holding positions unfavorable to business and corporations by dumping millions into advertising support for those candidates’ opponents?

Will Congress require full, public disclosure of direct corporate (or union) spending on “electioneering communications” (even though they may be unlimited financially) and include immediate online disclosure? Will Congress mandate a “I’m the CEO, and I approved this message” tag for corporation-funded, televised political ads? Will Congress close the door that allows corporations (and unions) to hide massive financial support of political entities by passing corporate (or union) money anonymously through nonprofit civic leagues and trade associations? Says The Times:

That means that those nonprofit groups, which are not required to disclose their donors, can now use corporate contributions to buy political commercials, and the corporations can potentially operate behind the anonymity of their donations. [emphasis added]

The Court’s ruling means it has become useless for me to continue to root through the records in the FEC’s database of individual donations to candidates, parties or PACs. Similarly, how useful will be such data aggregated by categories provided by the Center for Responsive Politics? True, the center is “a clearinghouse for data and analysis on multiple aspects of money in politics—the independent interest groups called 527s committees, federal lobbying, Washington’s ‘revolving door’, privately sponsored congressional travel and the personal finances of members of Congress, the president and other officials.” It will continue to provide an important public service. Perhaps it will find a way to track this new, unlimited spending on “electioneering communications.”

But in light of five men’s decision to dramatically change the face of election financing, the role I’ve played — finding out what individuals gave how much to whom with what effect — appears pointless.

Political advantage is gained or lost through television advertising. Corporations can now spend unlimited amounts of money on such advertising to influence the outcome of elections with more effect than an individual’s maximum donation of $115,500 direct to candidates or parties can accomplish. More importantly, corporations have the legal means to hide that spending.

But, supporters of the Court’s decision argue, individuals can spend on broadcast political ads without limit, too. They are only constrained on direct donations to candidates or parties.

Yes, if you, as an individual, are sufficiently wealthy, you may spend unlimited money on “electioneering communications” just as corporations now can. But can you, the wealthy individual, match the political ad spending of the wealthy corporation? Or corporations, plural?

This means sorting through aggregations of FEC data on individual campaign contributions has lost interest for me.

Now I need ideas, new techniques, to track all this corporate money that will be spent on “electioneering communications.” Suggestions, dear readers?

But this gets funnier. First, House members determine the legal but unsavory and corrupt behaviors that keep them collecting that $174,000 paycheck with generous federal health and retirement bennies. Then they reverse-engineer the ethics code to make all those behaviors ethical. Every now and then they pass serious, consequential ethics reform and lard up a press release touting it, as Rep. Nancy Pelosi, freshly minted as House speaker, did three years ago:

House Democrats got straight to work this week by passing the toughest Congressional ethics reform in history. We have broken the link between lobbyists and legislation: banning gifts and travel from lobbyists and organizations that retain or employ them, banning travel on corporate jets, shutting down the K Street project, subjecting all earmarks to the full light of day …

Oh, don’t stop there, House felons solons. When public outrage rises again, given that Pelosi’s “serious and substantive steps to ensure Congress governs with the highest ethical steps” didn’t work out so well, pass even more ethics reform. This time, pass a bill in 2008 that creates what Common Cause said was “a monumentally important resolution to create an independent, bipartisan panel of non-lawmakers to help review and investigate possible ethics violations by House members.” [emphasis added]

That’s not working out so well either. The House now has two ethics panels that produce more conflict between them than censure or (better yet) strong cases leading to removal of corrupt House members.

Under its brief, the independent Office of Congressional Ethics can recommend to the House ethics committee (which consists of House members) either that “the matter requires the Committee’s further review or that it should dismiss the matter.” In other words, the independent ethics office is toothless. The House committee can ignore the ethics office’s “recommendations.” And it does.

In 2009, the ethics office told the House committee it should review further allegations that Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.) asked a business associate of his wife’s to testify before the Small Business Committee. The House balked, dismissing the charge against Graves and criticizing the investigation of ethics office — the very panel the House created. The ethics office fired back, rebutting the criticisms.

What should be expected from a House panel of overseers comprised entirely of the overseen? The House ethics panel does not appear to be overworked: Its website lists only 12 reports dating back to the 105th Congress.

This past week, the House panel, formally known as the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, again chose not to act on more ethics office recommendations. So the hilarity continues: From a New York Times story last week by Eric Lichtblau and David D. Kirkpatrick:

The House ethics committee cleared seven members of Congress on Friday of official charges of wrongdoing in a lobbying scandal despite a separate, independent investigation that cast a harsh spotlight on the pay-to-play culture in Washington.

The ethics office, said The Times, found “that private contractors who received millions of dollars in defense industry earmarks from the seven lawmakers generally believed that their political contributions to the members facilitated the financing their companies received.” [emphasis added]

The House ethics panel, that “standards of official conduct” bunch, cleared all seven members of charges. Sayeth The Times : “All served on the powerful defense appropriations panel, which doles out billions of dollars in earmarks.”

Voters can conclude, of course, based on the House ethics panel’s actions, that House members are honest and above reproach. Heck, just ’cause the House ethics panel consists of the foxes watching the foxes, there’s no reason to suspect skulduggery among thieves, is there?

OpenCongress, a project of the Sunlight and Participatory Politics foundations, provides this “index of current and recent members of Congress currently under investigation by the congressional ethics committees, or under investigation, indictment, or conviction by law enforcement authorities, based on credible media reports” [emphasis added]. And there’s a similar list compiled by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Always fun reading is CREW’s annual lists of “the 15 most corrupt members of Congress.” Also delightful is the FAQ section of the House ethics panel’s Web site, apparently intended to guide members to appropriate ethical behavior.

Yep, it’s hysterically hilarious that so many members of Congress, who at one time probably thought that public service meant serving the public, made one little compromise, one small exchange of favor for favor, one itsy-bitsy, wink-wink deal … and look at them now — chasing money to pursue power, and cheating to do it.

Sadly, the joke’s on us.

He could not have imagined that the exorbitant and still-rising cost of electing the members of Congress would argue that not “all men are created equal.” Rather, men, and mostly men, of considerable financial substance worth in sum about $650 million would sit on Capitol Hill. Nor would he have imagined that the most powerful interests in this nation “conceived in Liberty” would be about to spend $3.7 billion to position those (mostly) men in November to immediately forget, polls might suggest, “the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”

President Lincoln could not have imagined, at least on a 21st Century scale, how the enterprise of government would become precisely that – a business enterprise riddled with corruption brought on by the enticements of money primarily intended to lubricate the interests of the powerful who wish to remain that way.

President Lincoln could not have foreseen that a former member of Congress, already convicted and imprisoned for seven years for bribery and racketeering, would threaten to run for Congress again as an Independent, saying, “I have been a Democrat all my life, and quite frankly I am disgusted with both parties. I hate to say this. My father is rolling over in his grave, a truck driver.”

President Lincoln, a lawyer by trade, probably would suggest that it takes a crook to root out a drift of swine-minded crooks.

Polls of popularity generally assign Lincoln at or near the top of lists of “greatest presidents.” Despite whatever historical flaws he may have as a politician, military tactician or executive branch leader, his reputation for honesty and truth prevail scores of years later. His vision for the Republic was clear. But time and the misuse of money have eroded that vision, rendering it unrecognizable.

In his address of only 265 words, he directed a divided nation to heal the deep wounds brought on by such a divisive war. He said, “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion …” He sought freedom — and all the obligations and responsibilities that entails — as a defining characteristic of the Republic.

What would he think of a Congress so divided and held in such low regard by the voters who elected its members? How would he regard an industry surrounding Congress whose sole purpose is to prey on political and philosophical schisms on behalf of powerful clients who seek primarily to retain and expand their means of holding power? Would he be saddened by the decision of the Republic’s highest court to allow corporations the same rights as individuals?

As he sits in effigy, fatigued in appearance by artist’s intent, looking east toward the Reflecting Pool, he may be considering revising his remarks offered at Gettysburg:

We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain— that this nation, under the god of Maximize Shareholder Income, shall have an enduring vision of Corporate leadership—and that government of the Dollar, by the Dollar, and for the Dollar, shall not perish from the Corporate Boardrooms.

In fact, if New York real estate mogul and media kingpin Zuckerman becomes a U.S. senator, his own wealth would be almost four times the 2008 net worth of all U.S. senators — about $650 million.

Zuckerman, who owns The New York Daily News and U.S. News & World Report, is worth about $2 billion, according to The New York Times. And in a story Friday based largely on “two people told of the discussions,” The Times says Zuckerman is considering taking on lightweight Democrat Kirsten E. Gillibrand, current occupant of that Senate seat. A former Tennessee congressman, Harold E. Ford Jr., is also taking aim at Gillibrand.

So — does the U.S. Senate need a 72-year-old billionaire driving up the age of an already elderly Senate? The Congressional Research Service reports that the average age of senators, a little more than 63 years old, at the beginning of 2009 was among the highest ever.

There’s no suggestion here that Zuckerman is a despicable individual unworthy of sitting in the Senate. In fact, his philanthropy is well known. He has donated about $215 million between 2004 and 2008 to “causes ranging from cancer research to higher education to archeology to child poverty.”

He’s rich and powerful. Now he wants national influence. According to The Times:

Mr. Zuckerman is an outspoken supporter of Israel, and over the last few years, he has become a high-profile student of the national economy, raising his visibility through television appearances on shows like “Meet the Press” and in newspaper and magazine opinion articles. He recently attended a White House economic forum.

Gillibrand, twice elected to the House of Representatives, would face Zuckerman in November. It’s likely, sayeth The Times, Zuckerman would follow New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s decision to switch party affiliation from Democrat to Republican to run.

Gillibrand, in her five-year career in Congress, has raised about $14.5 million, mostly through individual contributions, and spent about $9 million.

For Zuckerman, that’s a financial hiccup. He’d easily be able to follow the examples of fellow billionaires Bloomberg and California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, former eBay CEO. Bloomberg spent only 1.63 percent of his $16 billion fortune — about $261 million — to become and remain mayor of New York.

Whitman has spent about 1.5 percent of her fortune — about $19 million — on her campaign. Zuckerman’s fortune is almost twice Whitman’s. She could easily spend tens of millions more.

If statewide name recognition outside the Big Apple is an issue for Zuckerman, he can easily afford to buy it in all parts of New York.

If he decides to run, he can easily outspend the incumbent Gillibrand. He can independently fund a winning campaign. That fact alone might scare off many other credible, viable contenders for that Senate seat.

Ain’t American politics grand? Apparently, if you don’t have to raise money to run, you can do any damn thing you please — like getting elected to the Senate.

Click here to view the embedded video.

By the way, all that bitchin’ great stuff that Carly Fiorina has done (vaguely alluded to right there at the end of the Fellini Faillini epic)? Best we can tell they have to be referring to her memorable stint as CEO of HP. How’d that go, you ask?

“When Fiorina became CEO in July, 1999, HP’s stock price was $52 per share, and when she left 5 years later in February, 2005, it was $21 per share—a loss of over 60% of the stock’s value. During this same time period, HP competitor Dell’s stock price increased from $37 to $40 per share.”

All of which led the folks at Portfolio to name her the 19th worst CEO of all time.

A consummate self-promoter, Fiorina was busy pontificating on the lecture circuit and posing for magazine covers while her company floundered. She paid herself handsome bonuses and perks while laying off thousands of employees to cut costs. The merger Fiorina orchestrated with Compaq in 2002 was widely seen as a failure. She was ousted in 2005.

I guess they don’t call her “Carly Failorina” for nothing, huh?

But hey, what do I care? I live in Colorado and Carly’s in Cali. Even better, that vid features GOP-on-GOP action, which any aficionado of fine poli-porn can tell you is the hottest kind. You know, hot in a “Jesus H. Tebow, now I have to go scour my fucking eyeballs with Comet and steel wool” way.

One thing’s for sure, though – the 2012 Republican prez primary between Carly and Sarah Palin is gonna be a hoot. Here’s hoping they can get past their differences and give us political comedy fans the Carly/Sarah or Sarah/Carly ticket I know we’ve all been dreaming of…

Overturning key provisions of McCain-Feingold campaign finance law and flouting a century of precedent, the decision opens the floodgates to a torrent of spending by banks, insurance companies, energy companies, automakers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, chemical producers, agribusiness giants and media oligopolies — both domestic and foreign – to sway races by buying candidates. And to trash American democracy in the process.

“Because speech is an essential mechanism of democracy — it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people — political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it by design or inadvertence,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the majority. The irony in Kennedy’s logic is profound, as the Court has in essence granted the status of personhood — of individual citizenship — to corporations, who are the least likely entities on earth to hold officials accountable to anyone but their own interests.

When Goldman Sachs, for instance, finds itself with a $16 billion (that’s with a “b”) bonus pool for top executives, what is the likelihood they are going to make campaign contributions to any political candidate who supports a tax on such bonuses, despite the government’s bailout for Wall Street?

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), who was in the room for the Court’s announcement, condemned it as “the worst Supreme Court decision since the Dred Scott case. It leads us all down the road to serfdom.”

Yet it may be that prospect that offers the only remaining hope to unite a nation so fractured by partisanship and anger. In the face of this ruling, average Americans will become disenfranchised laborers, with no access to any ability to affect the political system in their favor. The grassroots donations of $10 here and $25 there that Barack Obama credited with momentum for his victory will be so much chump change in the face of these new playing rules. While labor unions and other groups will also be exempt from previous spending limits, it is the staggering power of corporations to shout down ordinary citizens through an exponential ability to outspend them that poses the gravest threat to our common welfare.

The real divide in this country is not so much left vs. right as haves vs. have-nots. Most Americans want health care reform. We just disagree on the best route to get it. Most Americans are disgusted at Wall Street’s escape from the economic hardship average people face every day, losing their jobs and homes and worrying about feeding their kids. Some think Democrats should be punished for the banks’ bailout; others insist it’s a Republican legacy for which the right must bear blame. Today’s decision, however, cements the already-entrenched power of the ‘haves’ to control public discourse and thereby the political agenda toward their own ends.  But if anything can galvanize the populist base of this country – and that is our true, uniting base – it must be today’s catastrophic court decision, which threatens to undermine our jobs, our health, our safety, our environment, the air we breathe and the water we drink, our access to information, virtually every element of the quality of life and freedoms we jointly value as Americans.

In the wake of this decision, progressives have more in common with teabaggers than either of us ever dreamed possible. We’ll need a lot more strange bedfellows to come together to save our democracy, fractious and scarred as it is. Congressman Grayson has introduced a set of bills to bite back – learn more here.

They recognized long ago that those who control the definitions of words rule the conversation. They know that rigorous repetition of their memes is akin to selling any product — advertise, advertise, advertise. That meme machine, usually cranked up biennually, now operates full time. In 30-second, televised chunks, the memes spew forth in every market. The messages are paid for by political organizations and single-minded groups quietly but heavily underwritten by those who wield wealth and power as a blacksmith’s hammer, bending comprehension by the electorate over an anvil. In hour-long, prime-time, broadcast soliloquies, their public voices ritualistically denigrate that which does not serve The Meme.

They are not The Right. They are not The Left. But they perpetrate the meme that the struggle for political power and control is between Left and Right. That’s the remarkable cunning of their strategy: Take two entities that are essentially identical and paint them as vastly different, and one as preferred. Misdirection masquerades as clarity.

They have remarkable resources. They own media organizations that control television, radio, Web entities, and newspapers. They have highly paid minions whose divisive, hateful, meme-managing messages they control. They have massive databases that allow parsing of their memes for different audiences.

They have money. Lots of it. They spend it without reservation in the pursuit of winning. They know that well less than 1 percent of American adults contribute to political candidates. They can outspend those who oppose the meme — and did so, spending $23 billion on campaign contributions in the past decade.

Where will you find them? The paper trails of their political largesse lead to the finance, insurance and real-estate industries; lawyers and lobbyists; ideological and single-issue donors; the health-care, health products and pharmaceutical industries; communications and electronics firms; labor unions; agribusiness interests; energy and natural-resource extraction corporations; transportation; and the defense industry.

They have eroded efforts to reform campaign-finance laws and to curtail and control campaign spending. Now the Supreme Court of All The Land appears poised to remove the last shackles limiting their political spending in service of The Meme. They will be able to spend more money to achieve more power and control over … winning? (What is it, exactly, that they think they’re winning?)

They cannot control what people think. Free will has not yet been fully suppressed. But they can limit what people think about by dunning them with focus-grouped, direct-mailed, oped-paged, demographically diced, Facebooked, tweeted, news-storylined memes. In their world of continuous, mediated shouting, it is difficult to hear an opposing whisper.

They’re winning because they have bought representation — legislators and lobbyists galore. They’re winning because they do not face the electorate — their well-disguised, glad-handing, baby-kissing, well-coiffed, properly memed candidates face the voters.

They’re winning because so many watchdogs are no longer watching. Their natural adversaries are experienced journalists bred in vats of skepticism. But the ranks of professional reporters and editors, never high to begin with, have been thinned to the point of virtual ineffectiveness. They are winning because they can continue to hide in so many dark places.

They are winning. But have they won?

Contributions to all federal candidates for House and Senate seats and the presidency from the 2000 through 2010 election cycles totaled $9.7 billion, according to an S&R analysis of records aggregated by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Contributions to candidates and committees in all 50 states, from 2000 through 2009, totaled about $14.5 billion, according to records aggregated by the National Institute on Money in State Politics.

In this decade, thanks to computerization of records and a few top-notch, non-partisan organizations, we’ve learned how to follow the money. Well, so what? Has vastly increased public visibility of political money changed the way politics operates?

The $24.2 billion spent on campaign contributions is only part of the story. Over the past decade, $23 billion has been spent by corporations, labor unions, and other special-interest entities to lobby Congress and federal agencies, according to records aggregated by the center.

More than $45 billion has been spent in the decade now ending to influence legislation and regulation at state and federal levels of government. It’s only conjecture, of course, but it’s hardly likely that the bulk of those billions of dollars was intended to improve the lot of the 99 percent of adult Americans who did not make campaign contributions or made gifts of less than $200.

Where did the $24.2 billion in campaign donations come from? Only a tiny fraction, generally in the tenths of 1 percent, of Americans over age 18 make campaign contributions of more than $200. Those who give more than $1,000 are even fewer — but the amounts given by those latter donors total significantly higher.

The bulk of the decade’s nearly $10 billion in donations to federal candidates came from special interests and individuals associated with specific special interests who gave $200 or more. According to the center, the top special-interest givers in the election cycles in this decade, generally in this order, were

the finance, insurance and real-estate industries; lawyers and lobbyists; miscellaneous business; ideological and single-issue donors; the health industries; communications and electronics; labor; agribusiness; energy and natural-resource interests; transportation; and the defense industry.

Corporations and individuals associated with these special interests donated more than $8 billion this decade to federal candidates. And the leader in campaign largesse for the decade and in each election cycle, at $1.62 billion, or more than 16 percent of all campaign contributions to federal candidates? The winner, by a wide margin, are the finance, insurance and real-estate industries.

The number of lobbyists has increased from 10,641 in 2000 to 13,426 this year. Now, that’s the number of people who have legally registered as lobbyists. There are plenty of revolving-door people (those who have left the Hill or the executive branch to become lobbyists and vice versa) who are not registered as lobbyists but are as influential. Consider the example of former Sen. Tom Daschle, who claims he’s a “resource” for his health-care industry clients and not a lobbyist.

Those interested in studying campaign finance and lobbing — who’s giving the money and who’s getting it — have two non-profit and non-partisan organizations to thank for ready, intelligible access to FEC and state election commissions data. They are the Center for Responsive Politics and the National Institute on Money in State Politics, which provides “free online access to public records in all 50 states, to document political donor and lobbyist contributions to policymakers.” Also helpful is Earmark Watch, a project of Taxpayers for Common Sense and the Sunlight Foundation, which helps expose what these billions of dollars can buy from legislators.

These groups have become technologically more savvy. Tracking campaign contributions and lobbying dollars can be narrowly focused on such data more easily than using the FEC’s website or state election data websites. The center and the institute now have talented staffers who frequently write analyses of donor data, especially when a particularly topic is in the news.

Congress irritated by the college football Bowl Championship Series? There’s the center’s Dave Levinthal on the Capital Eye Blog, detailing how much money the BCS, News Corp., the NCAA and major football universities are giving to whom for what purpose.

Wondering whether Congress will include legal importation of drugs from abroad (i.e., Canada) in health-care reform? There’s Levinthal again, pointing out that the pharmaceutical and health-products industries have spent nearly $200 million in 2009 to oppose it.

Want to know how much money the health-care industry has spent trying to influence state legislation and regulation? There’s the institute’s Anne Bauer, telling you “[i]n the last six years, major players in the health care industry gave $394 million to officeholders, party committees and ballot measure committees in the 50 states.”

When the short-term, high-vig payday loan industry sought to reinvigorate itself (i.e., screw the borrowers) through the ballot box, there was the institute’s Tyler Evilsizer to explain that in Arizona and Ohio, “donors from the industry gave more than $35 million to support ballot measures that would allow them to continue operating.”

Computerization of records and sophisticated staff allow an organization such as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, aka CREW, to track robocall ethics complaints against Sen. John McCain, develop a list of the most corrupt members of Congress, and keep track of the revolving door moves of White House staffers and cabinet members.

Yes, the governed can quickly track donations to those who govern or seek to govern. Yes, the governed can track the money spent by individuals, corporations, PACs and unions to legally influence those who govern. Yes, the governed can easily see how easy and legal it is for big spenders to influence legislators and regulators.

So what have we gained because we can do this? Not much.

Over the decade, corrupt politicians have been imprisoned for a variety of crimes. Convicted of crimes such as fraud and bribery, they were selfish and for sale. What they did was illegal.

But what remains unabated in the American political system is legalized corruption. The heightened ability to track political money does nothing to prevent the dramatic increase in legal campaign giving and the host of ethical and moral conflicts that so much money places in front of incumbents, challengers, and regulators.

We’ve seen the amounts of money spent to legally attain and maintain political power grow to such amounts that billionaires now spend tens of millions of dollars to finance their own campaigns. Modern elections trivialize issues and maximize dependence on name recognition. That costs money, which forecloses the possibility that better-qualified candidates who are not as wealthy can prosper at the ballot box.

We’ve seen how those with money to spend and an agenda to enact gain access to the levers of power, as did players in the health-care reform debate behind closed doors in the Obama White House.

Consider the consolidation of media, its threat to competitiveness, its anti-trust implications, and its potential to maintain unreasonably high consumer prices for news and entertainment. When Comcast announced its intended $30 billion purchase of NBC Universal from General Electric, its lobbyists flooded the Hill. Through September of this year, Comcast has spent $9.1 million on lobbying. The Federal Communications Commission must approve the sale.

Comcast’s 20-member D.C. lobbying team, reports Politico’s Kenneth P. Vogel, includes “former aides to Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), former Senate Majority Leader and Obama confidant Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Democratic Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps.” (Oh, look: There’s “confidant” Daschle acting as a “resource” again, “aides” notwithstanding …)

Continual increases in media consolidation by conglomerates reduce the likelihood that Americans’ monthly bills for cable, Internet, satellite, and telephone services will decrease.

Earlier this month, the House faced an impending vote on what Paul Krugman of The New York Times called “a quite modest effort to rein in Wall Street excesses.” Three days earlier, wrote Krugman, “Republican leaders met with more than 100 financial-industry lobbyists to coordinate strategies” to sidestep banking reform. All Republicans and 27 Democrats voted against the measure. (Gosh, what wonderfully independent thinking from our members of Congress.)

That means it’s less likely that credit will flow readily and credibly to America’s small businesses and consumers, and that more Americans may lose their homes unfairly.

And the drug-industry lobbyists? We’ve seen how lobbyists for pharmaceutical giant Genentech have written statements that 42 members of Congress from both parties have “revised and extended” into the Congressional Record.

That means it’s likely the out-of-pocket cost (and that inherent in premiums) for prescription medications is likely to grow as a percentage of Americans’ expenditures even as their wages have remained stagnant through the past decade.

We continue to see the fruits of lobbying in which special interests reap financial reward at little cost, such as the American Jobs Recovery Act that provided no jobs but $100 billion in tax breaks for corporations.

Are Americans better off because of the ease with which they can track who gives how much money to the people who would represent them and propose and pass laws that may help or hinder Americans’ lives, liberties and pursuit of happiness? No. That’s because incumbents and challengers don’t care a whit that this system is so blatantly and transparently stacked toward the influence wrought by so much money.

We point fingers at the financially oiled, undue influence of special interests. Our legislators and regulators just shrug: “So what?”

No legislative intent lies on the horizon of the next decade that would stem the shameful influence of money on the conduct of legislators and regulators and what they do, or fail to do, in the public’s interest. There will be no sufficient, substantial changes in campaign finance laws or congressional ethics policies to end this system of legalized corruption.

No reform candidates exist on the horizon immune to the blandishments the crassly monied political system can promise or proffer.

From 2010 to 2019, expect more of the same. Another $45 billion will speak louder than you or me to those who govern us.

• Blackstone Group (Financial Services)
• Bain Capital
• FPL Group (Energy)
• DLA Piper (Corporate law firm, representing Global 1,000 and Fortune 500 companies)
• Kindred Healthcare
• Beacon Capital Partners
• Comcast Corp
• Brownstein, Hyatt et al (Corporate law firm)
• Venable LLP (Corporate law firm)
• Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
• Apollo Advisors (Private equity firm)
• River Terminal Development
• Time Warner

We’ll have the answer for you at the bottom.

Now, let’s look at a stereotyping process that’s quite popular these days. I used a term in part two of this series that may be new to you: iconography. In his fantastic new novel, Anathem, Neal Stephenson adapts the term to describe “an oversimplified, and in most cases, wildly inaccurate schema used…to make sense” of the cloistered world of intellectuals at the center of the story’s narrative. These schema often take “the form of a conspiracy theory or an allusion to characters and situations from popular entertainments.”

Stephenson is obviously riffing on a common tendency in our culture, which relies on the simplistic type at every turn. Think about the stereotype of the mad scientist. Or popular depictions of the tranquil-but-lethal kung fu master (one imagines that The Real Monks of Shao-Lin lead far less eventful lives than film or television depictions would lead us to believe). Or the trope of the crooked used car salesman. Or the ambulance-chasing lawyer, or the narcissistic model, or the eggheaded professor who doesn’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain. We have clichés for all sorts of types or groups of people, and more often than not these quick, cheap categorizations prevent us from understanding the humans depicted in meaningful ways. That is, iconography is no substitute for character development.

We especially use iconographies to help us deal with types of people that need demonizing.

Meet the Straw Man

Thanks to our popular media and partisan noise machines, the public now has a clear picture of the brie-sucking, hyper-liberal (dare I say socialist) kingmaker conspiring with others of his/her ilk (over a bottle of fine chardonnay) to impose a new Golden Age of Communism on ordinary, God-fearing working folks. (I say noise machines, plural – despite the fact that this phenomenon, in its current incarnation, is a primarily Republican production, we now have muddle-headed progressives reproducing this fictive meme, as well.)

But there are some problems with the Evil Librul Intellectual Elite meme.

First, note that these people all seem to exist in big cities in the Northeast (that’d be New York, the home of Alpha Socialista/She-Demon Hillary Clinton, and the capital of the People’s Republic of Taxachusetts, Boston) or on college campuses. These strange elite enclaves are depicted as alien to “real America,” which seems, in the popular iconography, to correlate with “middle America,” “flyover country,” the “Heartland” or “Red America.” New Yorkers, Bostonians and those who live in college towns apparently aren’t real Americans.

But we might productively argue that you can learn a lot about what’s real and what isn’t by looking at the largest groupings, right? If there are X number of people in location Y and 2X in location Z, it makes no sense to pretend that those in Y are somehow more typical, more authentic and more legitimate representations of the overall population than the citizens of Z.

I’ve lived in New York, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Iowa and Colorado, and I’ve visited a majority of the states in the Union. From what I can tell, and for better or worse, no state or region that I’ve visited is more “real American” than any other. Regarding Boston, for instance, I assure you that my neighborhood just around the bay from Southie was extremely real and American.

Second, these evil librul elites are depicted as having massive amounts of money and power. Well, there’s no doubt that some Northeastern liberals have money and power (John Kerry is richer than Croesus, and the Kennedys come to mind, as well). The iconography also depicts this mysterious group as tax-happy in the extreme. There is a grain of truth in here, in that legislators like Kerry and the Kennedys do support higher tax rates than their GOP and Blue Dog Democrat opponents.

But, the straw man makes no coherent sense. The fact is that the policies these elites explicitly support would take lots of money out of their own pockets while lowering taxes on working class people in “real America” – the people that the anti-librul elite iconographies are targeted to. When talk turns to an issue like health care, the stereotypes present us with all sorts of noise about “government control,” which might make more sense if the puppetmasters weren’t already rich enough to have the best care available. In what plausible way is their personal power and wealth enhanced by policies that cost them money and make them powerful corporate enemies?

It’s easy enough to believe that rich and powerful people want more money and power, but what are we to conclude about politico-apocalyptic narratives that lack basic internal consistency?

Remember, motive matters.

While some intellectual elites may have power and money, a vast majority live their lives far removed from wealth or broad influence. More commonly, performance elites have jobs like teacher or professor or social worker or community organizer or non-profit manager. In the corporate world you’re likely to find them in middle-management, and some of them helm small, medium and large businesses. You’ll find them in IT groups everywhere, and you may even find people working with their brains in marketing departments. Some of these knowledge workers do okay financially, to be sure, but as a rule they’ll laugh until their sides hurt at the idea that they have access to disproportionate levels of power.

The point is that our popular stereotype of the liberal socialist power elitist looking to deliver America into the arms of a new Soviet world order is a laughable fiction. In a country with 300 million people, it would be remarkable if you couldn’t find one or two people fitting just about any description, probably, but in reality the image that we’re being asked to buy is an urban legend that can’t withstand even mild scrutiny. Heck, a good hard look at their election donor lists indicates that even the people who seem to fit the stereotype to a T aren’t doing a very good job of threatening Kapitalism.

Which brings us back to our trivia question. Did you figure it out yet? If not, it’s this guy. Right. One of our most visible effete northern socialist liberals.

So, what do we do with stereotypes that simply don’t square with the facts and that ask us to believe the most improbable things about human behavior at every turn?

More importantly, what do we do with the people who keep peddling these implausibilities?

____________

Next: Elitism vs Egalitarianism vs Freedom

Image Credit: Tennessee Guerilla Women

But viewed in the rarified context of the very wealthy, the amounts are petty cash.

For example, former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman has put $19 million so far into her campaign for governor of California — but that’s barely 1.5 percent of her $1.3 billion fortune.

Whitman has “publicly floated the notion of a record-shattering $150-million campaign budget” — but even if she financed $100 million of that herself, that still would only be 7.7 percent of her billion-dollar-plus wallet.

She wants to be governor of what used to be one of the 10 largest economies in the world. But she takes a back seat to newly re-elected New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg in spending your own money to be somebody big. No one in American history has spent so much of his own money to win an election.

Bloomberg has now spent $261 million to become and remain the mayor of the Big Apple. That works out to $174 per vote this year, $85 in 2005, and $74 in 2001, according to New York Times reporter Michael Barbaro.

Egads — more than a quarter of a billion dollars. But even that amount of political spending represents only 1.63 percent of Bloomberg’s $16 billion fortune. But he had to overturn New York City’s term limits law to win that third term. Ironically, this year fewer people voted for him — 557,059 — than voted to approve term limits in 1996— 586,890. In an election in which he had been expected to coast easily to his third term because of his extravagant spending and the perceived weakness of his opponent, he won by only 4 percentage points.

Bloomberg had argued that New York City needed his — and only his — expertise in coping with the crisis that enveloped the global economy and hurt the city. Yes, he does have a credible reputation as mayoral manager. But to argue that a law must be changed — a law he supported — to allow him to continue in office as the only suitable mayor during an economic downturn is arrogant.

And Village Voice writer Tom Robbins reported that, based on a book by former NYTer Joyce Purnick, “many months before economic disaster struck in September 2008 — the crisis that Bloomberg said prompted his reversal on term limits — the mayor was already pondering the move.” More arrogance.

Size — as measured by wealth — matters in politics. For example, the total wealth of the 50 richest members of Congress is nearly $1.3 billion, an average of about $25 million each. Sen. John Kerry tops the list at $167 million.

But compared with the personal finances of mega-rich political and corporate elites such as Bloomberg and Whitman, Kerry’s ability to self-finance an election pales. This trend has been apparent for nearly 20 years, particularly in the land of 90210.

California, it seems, breeds really rich people who want to buy a political title. One of Whitman’s opponents — state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner — says Whitman’s trying to buy her way into Sacramento. Yet Poizner’s no piker. He “sold a high-technology company for $1 billion in 2000, and plunged $12 million of his fortune into his 2006 election as insurance commissioner.”

Internet entrepreneur, eBay founding member, and venture capitalist Steve Westly spent $35 million of his own $200-million-plus wealth before losing the gubernatorial primary election in 2006. Former Marriott and Northwest Airlines exec Al Checchi burned through $40 million of his $700 million nest egg in his 1998 race, also losing in the primary.

And who can forget Michael Huffington, who spent $28 million of his own money and $100 million overall in losing to Sen. Dianne Feinstein in 1994.

Wealth, combined with time served in office, leads to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. Liberals would argue he’s been one of the most effective senators in American history (although credible conservatives might disagree). Yet he spent little of his own fortune to stay in office, at least since 1998. Kennedy gave only $1.35 million of his own money to his campaigns, compared with $28 million in individual contributions and $2.6 million in PAC money, according to Federal Election Commission records aggregated by the Center for Responsive Politics. But Kennedy was far from a billionaire. His last Senate disclosure estimated his net worth between $43 million and $163 million.

Money has always spoken loudly in politics. But the tens of millions available to billionaires to spend on their own campaigns is deafening.

Billionaires have always spent plenty of money on politics. Since 1978, one aggregation of data says, 82 billionaires have donated almost $62 million to Republican and Democratic candidates.

Some of these wealthy men (only seven billionaire donors were women) would argue it’s a merely a cost of doing business. Others might argue that campaign contributions to worthy candidates might foster social change (according to their definitions, of course). Still others might admit that they donate large sums simply because they can. The last is called really hefty “political throw-weight.”

But the political largesse of these 82 billionaires is miniscule compared with Bloomberg’s $261 million and Whitman’s $19 million. Her spending has been just since January — and the election is still a year away. Whitman’s spending, since she has no political profile and has rarely voted, has only one goal — name recognition. She can afford to spend $60 million, $80 million, even $100 million to have her name on the tongue of every registered California voter.

I have argued (here and here) for a radical overhaul of campaign financing. I have said that Congress should appropriate sufficient monies to adequately pay for every federal and statewide election in America. If candidates or incumbents took the public money, then they could not take a dime from any other source. (Forget the money-as-free-speech argument. The candidate makes the choice, not the donor.)

But is that argument for massive public financing feasible any more? When a billionaire 16 times over spends $261 million be merely the mayor of a city, how could Congress expect taxpayers to cover that stratospheric cost, let alone statewide and federal races?

The arrogance of Bloomberg and Whitman — I can outspend anyone, and thereby buy the political office I want — fosters another dramatic and saddening change in how America elects its leaders. As Bloomberg and Whitman have discovered, they no longer need to press the flesh and make nice to such commoners as mere multimillionaires to raise the money to run. (There are other consequences, too, as Doc Slammy will explain in his “Democracy & Elitism” series beginning today.)

America has plenty of billionaires. The Forbes 400’s collective net worth is $1.27 trillion. Many are shrewd, capable, intelligent people. Others were merely lucky, married well, or inherited wealth. And wealth by itself does not render any citizen ineligible for public office. (Or poverty, for that matter.)

But what massive wealth offers is literally the ability to avoid the voters. Yes, all candidates face the electorate at the ballot box. But wealth affords the ability to artfully mediate or remanufacture the narrative of one’s self, one’s policies or positions, one’s history and biography. Handshakes and baby-kissing at the county fair are no longer a mandatory ritual for a really rich candidate. The wealthy can manipulate elections through the legal means of self-financing a campaign. They can hire the best consultants (and Bloomberg rewards his consultants with $100,000 bonuses) and produce the most effective ads. And they can spend money on polling to parse the electorate for targeted emails and direct mail messages.

Most important, they need not depend on the Republican and Democratic national parties for financing. They need not kiss anyone’s ass.

These are the major leagues that professional egotists Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck wish to inhabit. Despite their large incomes from various media, they’re still in the minors.

But Rush Limbaugh? He’s at or near the billion-dollar mark, thanks to a first eight-year contract for $265 million and a second for $400 million (and the rumored $100 million bonus).

Limbaugh could self-finance a Senate seat from Florida — or any state he chooses to move to and establish residency.

Frankly, I’d rather have Salma Hayek move to New York state, where I live, and run for the Senate. After all, she married well. With a net worth of $7 billion, she could easily buy that seat. Even Caroline Kennedy, with a net worth estimated between $100 million and $400 million, couldn’t pony up enough.

Welcome to the well-funded New American Political Oligarchy — a Bloomberg-Whitman production.

Back in the good ol’ days, you’d merely text your old pal I.B. Loaded, CEO of Amalgamated Rules Bender Inc. Loaded’s given you tons of cash over the years for your campaigns. He, his wife and children, his employees, his vendors — all have seen the wisdom of slipping dough to you, your official campaign committee, and, of course, your “Leadership PAC.”

And, of course, Loaded would have his Gulfstream V (I mean, rather, his corporate-owned private jet) fly into Reagan National to pick you up (after, of course, a taxpayer-paid car and driver deposited you, your luggage, and golf clubs there). Loaded himself would be on the plane to entertain you and see to your every need. After you’d both consumed a few hits from Loaded’s stash of 40-year-old Glen Garioch, he’d probably steer the conversation into an arcane tax-policy issue that would likely benefit Amalgamated Rules Bender Inc. to the tune of millions of dollars.

You’d be the only passenger on a sophisticated jet costing $59 million with an hourly operating cost of about $7,000. Yet, before 2007, you’d only pay the cost of first-class airfare to LA — maybe a grand or less, depending on discounts. Then Congress shut the door to corporate-provided air travel by passing the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act.

And this week, those idiots at the Federal Election Commission reopened the door.

The act plainly states “a candidate for election for Federal office … may not make any expenditure for a flight on [a noncommercial] aircraft unless … the candidate, the authorized committee, or other political committee pays … the pro rata share of the fair market value of the flight.”

But the FEC changed that by redefining when a member of Congress is or is not a “candidate.” Here’s the explanation from The Campaign Legal Center:

Yet the FEC today adopted a final rule nonsensically declaring that a candidate is not a “candidate,” for the purpose of this statute, when that candidate “is traveling on behalf of another political committee (such as a political party committee or Senate leadership PAC).” Instead, where a candidate claims to be traveling “on behalf of” their own leadership PAC, or one of the many committees controlled by their political party, or any other political committee—the old rules apply, allowing that candidate to pay the price of a commercial air ticket instead of the price of the private plane the candidate is actually flying on.

To make matters worse, FEC Chairman Walther published a statement explaining his decision to provide the necessary fourth vote for the final rule put forth by his three Republican colleagues on the FEC. Preposterously, Chairman Walther cited comments filed in the rulemaking proceeding by the Campaign Legal Center, together with Democracy 21, suggesting that we support this new rule gutting HLOGA. Chairman Walther wrote: “The Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 agreed and indicated their support for ‘retain[ing] the existing reimbursement rate structure for non-candidate travel.’” (emphasis added). While we did support retaining the old rate for non-candidate travel, nowhere in our comments did we suggest that candidates should be considered to be engaging in non-candidate travel through the simple expedient of claiming that they are flying “on behalf of” their leadership PAC or other federal political committee. Chairman Walther should know better.

Candidate travel is candidate travel—period.

The FEC’s new rule illegally contradicts the plain meaning of the statute. Unfortunately, gutting or ignoring federal law—that Commissioners would have written differently themselves—has become a recurring habit for the FEC. In an earlier rulemaking, the FEC gutted the intent of another key aspect of HLOGA, allowing lobbyists to easily evade required reporting of bundled campaign contributions.

Provision of non-commercial travel by corporations (and unions) to members of Congress or federal candidates is simply more legalized corruption.

So I wonder how long it will be before enough members of Congress step up to close this loophole by updating the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act. Days? Weeks? Next century?

Well, i have an idea. Call it the Nelson Muntz Initiative…

It’s not exactly mine; many people have proposed it half-jokingly. Why just joke about it and let the grimy politicians have the last laugh when we have the power to make the joke on them?

If the quest for decriminalizing marijuana has taught us anything, it’s that the surest means to political victory is to take the process out of the hands of politicians. State referendums on that issue have spat in the face of Washington D.C. thirteen times so far, and there are more on the way.

Assuming that i’ve got my Constitution understood correctly, if two thirds of states pass a law it becomes federal law whether Congress likes it or not.

I’m shooting for “or not”.

I’d like to see Americans get together and make sure that every state in the union has a referendum by 2012 that forces federal politicians to display their sponsorships. It’ll be just like NASCAR…except, apparently, clockwise. The corporation or lobbyist or PAC that contributes the most to a politician is forced to put the biggest logo on the politician’s uniform. The smaller the contribution, the smaller the logo.

The politicians will be forced to wear the new uniforms whenever they’re are acting in an official capacity. So, they’d wear the uniforms on the floor of the Senate, House and inside the West Wing. They’d wear the uniform when appearing on television, on the campaign trail, at fund raising events and even state visits.

I want to see all the Senators who rail against health care reform do so with insurance company logos all over their expensive suits. I want to see the damned-near-monocled politicians who make the decisions about banking regulations do so with Goldman Sachs embroidered across their backs. And i damned sure want to see the names of the defense contractors on the wardrobes of all the soft-handed sons-of-bitches who send good men off to die without a damned good reason.

Dress them all up like the clowns that they’ve proven themselves — over and over — to be.

As J.S. O’Brien commented on Dr. Denny’s piece, the more mature manner of solving this problem — public financing — has more than a few devils in the details. Not the least of which is that the politicians aren’t going to give up their gravy train willingly, and the fact that rational and mature is the quickest way to political defeat in the USofA. So, fuck ‘em. They can keep the contributions and the shady relationships; we’ll at least get to laugh at them.

About the only thing most of them have is obscene levels of vanity, we might as well hit ‘em where it hurts, eh? And they wouldn’t be able to fool so many of the uniformed if their wardrobe did the media’s job.

I might be crazy, but would you be surprised if my plan worked? This isn’t a Left or Right issue. My guess is that the majority of Americans would be on board and would vote “yes” on Nelson Muntz…if for no other reason than our national love for enjoying the misfortunes of others. And who really likes politicians? Allow Americans a real chance to give the politicians a swift kick to the taint and they’ll take it.

Who’s with me? We need some lawyers to write the referendums and cadres of cynics in all fifty states to collect the petition signatures. After that we’ll let democracy decide. It may suck only marginally less than other forms of government, but i believe that it would come through for us on this.

As a felon, Jefferson has had equally despicable company: Rep. Andrew J. Hinshaw, R-Calif. (accepting a bribe); Rep. Charles Diggs Jr., D-Mich. (payroll kickback scheme); Rep. Michael Myers, D-Pa. (accepting bribes from FBI agents impersonating Arab businessmen); Reps. John Murphy, D-N.Y., Frank Thompson, D-N.J., John Jenrette, D-S.C., and Raymond Lederer, D-Pa. (Arab businessmen bribery scandal, a.k.a. Abscam).

And Rep. Mario Biaggi, D-N.Y. (extorting money from a defense contractor); Rep. Mel Reynolds, D-Ill. (sex with underage campaign worker, bank fraud); Rep. Walter Tucker III, D-Calif. (accepting and demanding bribes); Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill. (felony mail fraud); Rep. James A. Trafficant, D-Ohio (bribery, conspiracy and racketeering); Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (accepting bribes from defense contractors) and Robert W. Ney, R-Ohio (Abramoff scandal). I’m sure readers can name more.

The collective misfortune of these men is that they got caught. Each undoubtedly said to himself, “I am invincible. I am a member of Congress.” They all assumed membership in the biggest-of-all-members-only clubs provided a get-out-of-jail-free card. But the real reason they believed they could get away with accepting bribes and committing extortion is that members of Congress have been doing it legally for years.

Jefferson may serve 13 years. Prosecutors say he probably earned less than $400,000 despite seeking millions in illegal bribes from “oil, sugar, communications and other businesses, often for projects in Africa,” said The New York Times. But he’s raked in about $6.45 million in campaign contributions since 1990, half from political action committees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics database. More than $600,000 came from lawyers and law firms. (Wonder if the sharks will return his calls now.)

Prosecutors focused on the $90,000 federal agents found in Jefferson’s freezer. The public should have been more focused on Jefferson’s legal sources of campaign bucks, in the same way it should have paid less attention to the penis of that other two-faced Louisiana legislative poseur, Sen. David Vitter, and more attention to the sources of his campaign funding.

We the voters, the people who have watched health-care costs starkly climb ever higher, who see taxes rising exhorbitantly at all levels, who witness the quality of education for our children wither, who watch jobs vanish overseas and unemployment rise, and who are frightened that decades-old safety nets are tattered beyond repair, have become so inured to the corrosive role of money in politics that we forget that politicians are continously but legally bribed by monied interests. And it should stop.

Ask Glenn Greenwald of salon.com. In a video for Larry Lessig’s change-congress.com, he explains how Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Evan Bayh, D-Ind., are threatening to filibuster any health-reform plan with a public option. Lieberman, says Greenswald, is “drowning in campaign contributions” from the health-care industry — more than $2.5 million — and his wife landed a cushy job in 2005 with PR flacksters Hill & Knowlton, representing pharma giant Glaxo. Several months later, Lieberman sought to steer incentives to Glaxo to develop vaccines.

“This is the kind of legalized corruption, legalized bribery, that runs the United States Senate,” says Greenwald. “Only in this case it is particularly sleazy and transparent because Lieberman is ready to gut the major initiative of the Democratic Party.”

Bayh’s wife, says Greenwald, “sits on the board of directors of WellPoint, one of the largest health-insurance companies in the nation. [The Bayhs] own, by their own disclosures, between $500,000 and a million dollars in WellPoint stock. … When Sen. Lieberman threatened to filibuster the public option … the value of the stock of the health-care industry skyrocketed … and personally benefited the finances of the Bayh family.”

Bayh’s wife was paid more than $2 million between 2005 and 2008. Bayh, in 2008, received $500,000 in campaign contributions from the health-care industry, says Greenwald.

“It’s really clear corruption,” says Greenwald.

Politicians defend their financial associations with large corporations (and unions) and wealthy individuals. They call it “campaign financing.” Sadly, we’re too accustomed to this shameless dance now, aren’t we?

A member of Congress, or someone who aspires to be one, gets on the phone and calls people who have lots of money. Often those people run very large enterprises, such as corporations (or unions). Those corporations, driven by the dictum “maximize shareholder income” (or, increasingly, “maximize CEO compensation”), would like members of Congress to make those tasks easier. Politicians say such donations only provide access to their ears, not their actions. The big corporate and PAC donors — or their hired lobbyists — say they’re only legitimately promoting the causes of their companies and clients.

Bullshit. It has been known for decades that lobbyists are often in the room, helping congressional staff write — or writing themselves — legislation. Earlier in this decade, tax-law experts from General Electric shaped an export tax reform bill that saved GE hundreds of millions of dollars.

Lobbyists’ dictation of politicians’ words and deeds has become even more blatant. New York Times reporter Robert Pear wrote Nov. 14 that lobbyists wrote and sought to have supportive statements about health-care reform placed by members into the Congressional Record prior to the Nov. 5 vote:

In the official record of the historic House debate on overhauling health care, the speeches of many lawmakers echo with similarities. Often, that was no accident. Statements by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world’s largest biotechnology companies. … Genentech, a subsidiary of the Swiss drug giant Roche, estimates that 42 House members picked up some of its talking points — 22 Republicans and 20 Democrats, an unusual bipartisan coup for lobbyists. [emphasis added]

A lobbyist created the messages and supporting documents and e-mailed them to members. Lobbyists denied any malevolent intent. Said one, quoted anonymously by Pear: “This happens all the time. There was nothing nefarious about it.”

In the past five years, Genentech has spent nearly $10 million on lobbying expenses. In the past decade, Genentech has contributed more than $1 million to federal candidates. Pear reports Genentech’s PAC has made contributions to some of the members who used its talking points and that company officials had hosted fundraisers for some.

And, of course, there’s no quid pro quo, right? Wrote Pear: “Evan L. Morris, head of Genentech’s Washington office, said, ‘There was no connection between the contributions and the statements.’” [emphasis added]

Bullshit again. It is, as Greenwald says, legalized corruption. Imagine if I, as an individual voter living in a rural district, had asked my congressman to insert under his name words I wrote about health-care reform into the Congressional Record. He would say no. (Or rather, the staff member I’d get shunted off to would say no.) But when Genentech said jump, 42 members of Congress asked, “How high?”

Don’t kid us. It’s legalized corruption. Remarks members of Congress revise and extend into the Congressional Record, we now see, have been actually written by lobbyists. So what do the clowns we elect to office do for the $174,000 we pay them (and with very nice health-care bennies, too)?

A handful of Republican senators, led by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C, think they have an answer — a constitutional amendment to limit how long a person may serve in Congress. Apparently, senators would get 12 years, while representatives would get only six years. (Imagine that bill’s conference committee, eh?) On his Senate website, DeMint writes:

As long as members have the chance to spend their lives in Washington, their interests will always skew toward spending taxpayer dollars to buy off special interests, covering over corruption in the bureaucracy, fundraising, relationship building among lobbyists, and trading favors for pork, in short, amassing their own power.

Don’t be misled. After all, what’s to prevent the current system of lobbyists, legalized corruption, and greed from buying new sets of politicians every six or 12 years? Being new, they’ll come cheap, too.

Members of Congress need mountains of money to obtain and retain political power. They spend hours each day dialing donors and asking for, or demanding, campaign contributions. That’s the extortion part of the equation. Donors demand at least an ear and now, we see, actual words printed in the Congressional Record. That’s the corruption part. All that separates many uncharged and unjailed members of Congress from Jefferson and his imprisoned pals is an FBI wiretap.

Changing the politicians through term limits has little merit. Instead, get rid of the current system of campaign finance. If members of Congress were willing to bail out banks with hundreds of billions of dollars, demand that they allow the public to outbid special interests. Lobby members of Congress (yep, I said lobby) to drastically and dramatically overhaul public election financing. Demand that members of Congress place in the federal budget each year sufficient billions of dollars to pay for every federal and statewide election in the country. Give incumbents and challengers alike plenty of public money. But cut them off at the financial knees if they accept a single dime of corporate, union, or PAC money.

If our politicians continue to insist on being bought, let the public do the buying.

Those 267,574 people who voted “no” — which would approve the same-sex marriage law — were not dissuaded by an anti-gay coalition of conservatives and churches wielding more than $3 million, including more than $2 million from out-of-state donors, according to a report by the National Institute On Money In State Politics.

Much of the sparring over the referendum was funded on both sides by groups outside the state of Maine. Given that gay marriage has been a wedge issue for years, that’s hardly surprising. But in Maine?

Those who backed the gay marriage law ponied up 12 to 1 over donors to the anti-gay donors and had more money — $5 million. But they lost. The institute’s report, written by Tyler Evilsizer, says:

The measure pitted conservative groups and churches against gay-rights groups, a few wealthy donors, and more than 10,000 smaller donors from Maine and around the country. Question 1 attracted over $9 million, or 72 cents of every dollar raised around Maine’s seven ballot measures. [emphasis added]

But press attention, money, and political capital focused on a wedge issue to divide people of good conscience and faith and divert their attention from far more pressing matters. Maine needs more attention to the condition of its roads, bridges and airports than it does in the bedrooms of loving, consenting adults who wish to make a lifelong commitment.

The blunt end of the money hammer used in Maine against gays was primarily wielded by a group called Stand For Marriage Maine. Like all political communicators and niche interest groups these days, it has a website. But its site is notably deficient. It does not have links such as “About Us” or “Who We Are.” Such links usually provide a list of financial supporters, coalition partners, and the names and contact data for organization officers and staff. Stand For Marriage Maine does not provide such information on its website.

Wading through the organization’s press releases and media stories is needed to learn that Marc Mutty is chairman of Stand for Marriage Maine, that Scott K. Fish is communications director (releases provide a phone number) and that Bob Emrich is a member of the group’s executive committee.

That lack of clear, easy-to-find disclosure makes it difficult for those interested in the issue to find out more about the bona fides of donors and supporters who worked to repeal Maine’s gay-marriage law.

Why not explain “Who We Are”? Only conjecture is possible. It is, perhaps, easier to operate in ideological shadows. According to Mr. Evilsizer’s report, here are the principal sources of money that drove the effort to repeal gays’ right to marry in Maine. A few groups are well known outside Maine.

StandForMarriageMaine.com | $2,650,052
Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland | $553,608
Focus On The Family Maine Marriage Committee | $114,500
Family Research Council Action | $25,000
Maine Marriage PAC | $11,539
Maine Grassroots Coalition | $9,410
Marriage Matters in Maine | $2,678
Maine4Marriage | $230
Proponents’ total $3,367,018

Fred Karger, founder of Californians Against Hate, asked Maine ethics officials to investigate the organization. He said it was laundering money. His August letter

contained allegations religious organizations are hiding contributions to the Stand for Marriage Maine campaign. The letter reports how the National Organization for Marriage, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, the national office of the Knights of Columbus and Focus on the Family had contributors give the money to their organizations, and in turn gave the money to the Stand for Marriage Maine to hide the donors’ identity.

But a federal judge ruled on Oct. 29 that the “state can compel the National Organization for Marriage to disclose the identities of donors who contributed to its effort to repeal Maine’s gay-marriage law.” In that story, the Portland Press Herald said NOM — based in Washington, D.C. — had funneled $1.6 million to Stand For Marriage Maine. A resolution of the lawsuit was “months away,” the story said — well after the Nov. 3 referendum. Mr. Evilsizer’s report contains a breakdown of donors to Stand For Marriage Maine showing NOM’s $1,622,152 donation.

But his report notes that financial supporters of gay marriage in Maine “from Away” were also plentiful. Those who supported the gay-marriage law raised $5,678,579.

The Human Rights Campaign, which bills itself as “the largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization,” donated $267,589 to the principal umbrella organization, No On 1 Protect Maine Equality. The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force gave $139,056. Esmond Harmsworth, a founding partner of the Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary Agency in Boston and New York, gave $100,000. Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders of Boston gave $91,258.

The website of No On 1 Protect Maine Equality also has a “Who We Are” page that lists its coalition partners. Its “Contact Us” page list its physical address, mailing address, phone number and e-mail address. Its campaign manager is clearly identified as Jesse Connolly.

The gay marriage caravan now moves on, it seems, to New York state. Gov. David Patterson wants a same-sex marriage bill, passed twice in the state Assembly, on the floor of the Senate for debate on Tuesday.

And the money, both for and against, will likely move on as well.

According to The New York Times, former Sen. Daschle has been spending quality time in the White House holding forth on health-care reform. Reports The Times: “He still speaks frequently to the president, who met with him as recently as Friday morning in the Oval Office. And he remains a highly paid policy adviser to hospital, drug, pharmaceutical and other health care industry clients of Alston & Bird, the law and lobbying firm.”

He says he’s not a lobbyist. He says he’s a “resource” for his clients and former legislative colleagues. “I do not tailor my views to any specific group or client.”

How believable — or unbelievable — is that claim?

The 900-lawyer firm he works for has received more than $5 million in lobbying fees so far this year, much of it from companies and associations with an abiding interest in influencing the outcome of health-care reform efforts. From 2005 (when the firm’s lobbying revenues nearly tripled) to 2008, the firm’s lobbying fees totaled $24.2 million, according to the lobbying database of the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Mr. Daschle joined the K Street firm after losing his Senate re-election bid in 2004 to Sen. John Thune. Mr. Daschle is an expert in health-care matters; Alston & Bird has numerous clients interested in health-care reform; and the firm’s annual lobbying fees skyrocketed. Surprise!

The Washington Post pegged Mr. Daschle’s salary at $2 million. He also received $2 million last year from business partner Leo Hindery, whose gift of a car and driver led to Mr. Daschle’s withdrawal from cabinet consideration.

“We know that many power brokers never register as lobbyists, but they are every bit as powerful,” said Ellen Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation watchdog group.

Over his congressional career, Mr. Daschle has enjoyed considerable financial support from the health-care industries. Since 1998, he has received $1,517,020 in campaign contributions from PACs and individuals associated with the health-care fields.

After amending his tax returns for 2005 through 2007 for failing to disclose income (the car and driver) from Mr. Hindery, he paid $101,943 in back taxes plus interest. Then he withdrew from consideration for secretary of Health and Human Services. In this post, he would have served as point man for the president’s health-care reform plans.

But, reports The Times, he appears to have sufficient access to the president’s ear to be an effective advocate on health care. But for whose benefit?

White House officials say they appreciate his help. “He is one of a number of people that provides outside advice to the White House, and the president greatly appreciates that advice and Tom’s friendship,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a spokesman for the White House who previously worked for Mr. Daschle. Mr. Pfeiffer added that the former senator was “a recognized expert on health reform who knows more about the legislative process than just about anyone.”

Critics, though, say his ex officio role gives Alston & Bird’s health care clients privileged insights into the policy process. They say Mr. Daschle’s multiple advisory roles illustrate the kind of coziness with the lobbying world that Mr. Obama vowed to end. If he had been confirmed as health secretary, Mr. Daschle would have been subject to strict transparency and ethics rules. [emphasis added]

Mr. Daschle has not registered as a lobbyist. Nor does he have an enviable track record of disclosing the health-care clients in his portfolio when addressing public-policy issues — as he failed to do on Aug. 16 on NBC’s Meet the Press. He told host David Gregory this:

Well, David, I guess the, the basic question is, are we building this new system for the American people or for the insurance companies?  I mean, that’s really the key question.  How will they be better served?

But, complains Time’s Michael Scherer:

Left unmentioned was the fact that Daschle, in his capacity as a high-paid consultant at the law firm Alston and Bird, is once again working closely with lobbyists for UnitedHealth, the largest U.S. industry player, aiding the company’s effort to convince moderate Senate and House Democrats to, among other things, kill the public option and keep company profits high.

(BusinessWeek’s Chad Terhune and Keith Epstein think the insurers have already won.)

Here’s how his employer describes Mr. Daschle’s role:

Senator Tom Daschle is a Special Public Policy Advisor in Alston & Bird’s Washington, D.C., office, and is a member of the Legislative & Public Policy Group. As a non-attorney, Senator Daschle focuses his services on advising the firm’s clients on issues related to all aspects of public policy with a particular emphasis on issues related to financial services, health care, energy, telecommunications and taxes. In addition, he advises on trade and international matters. He spends a substantial amount of time providing strategic and policy advice to clients in renewable energy.

Mr. Daschle could not formally lobby for a year after leaving the Senate because of ethics rules. Five years later, he has not registered as a lobbyist. Yet he maintains a portfolio of health-care industry clients, gives paid speeches to health-care industry groups, and has, apparently, unlimited access to the White House and its decision makers — including President Obama.

If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck. Mr. Daschle should register as a lobbyist.

Flip, from 2007:

I promise that when I am elected to Congress, I will always put the American public above everything else. Unlike 99.9% of Congressional Candidates, I have never accepted a single cent of Corporate PAC money … [emphasis added]

Flip, from 2007:

I believe if you’re going to talk about campaign finance reform, you have to be willing to do it to prove your point. And I did and I would not be able to look myself in the mirror if I took money from ExxonMobil. My opponent gets over 70% of his money from PACs… Of all the issues we face, the core issue has to be campaign finance reform because nothing will change til we get the Board Room out of the voting booth. [emphasis added]

Flop, from 2009:

I’m not going to go to the working families of the 29th Congressional District and ask them to fund a congressional campaign when my opponents aren’t willing to do the same thing. I believe in playing on a level playing field [emphasis added].

Rep. Massa argues that he must accept corporate PAC money because the GOP does. He hides behind the “level playing field” argument. Why now? He beat the GOP incumbent without it. His only announced Republican opponent, Corning Mayor Tom Reed, has yet to be offered serious money from the National Republican Congressional Committee — which heavily funded the incumbent he defeated.

Rep. Massa knows the GOP wants this seat back. He wants a fat war chest and he wants it fast to deter any serious GOP challengers (and, perhaps, a Democratic primary one). That’s what incumbents do. That reflects his swift, dramatic shift from principled challenger to Beltway insider.

To disguise this, he suggests he does not want to return to hitting up district voters who are hard-pressed economically, “the working families,” as he labels them.

But that argument is disingenuous. He didn’t depend heavily on the “suffering middle class,” those he now says he wishes to protect from being dunned for contributions.

Federal Election Commission records, aggregated by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, show that Rep. Massa raised $2,151,657 for the 2008 election cycle, $600,000 more than the GOP incumbent. He did not rely as heavily as he claims on the “suffering middle-class” district residents: His top 29 contributors gave him nearly $680,000. And ActBlue contributed nearly half of that. The list of these 29 contributors is dominated by labor unions ponying up $10,000 each.

Sliced another way — by industry totals— $1,292,621 of his total $2.1 million came from the usual suspects of campaign finance: Democratic and liberal organizations; leadership PACs; retired individuals; other candidate committees, lawyers and law firms; industrial, building trade, public sector and transportation unions; the securities and investments community; real estate and health professionals; and others.

As of the June 30 FEC quarterly filing deadline, Rep. Massa has raised $515,119 for the 2010 election cycle. More than half — $284,975 — has come from PAC contributions. His leading contributor is, again, ActBlue, with $73,000. The list of top industries for 2010 is similar to that for 2008. Those industries have given $310,772 so far.

Rep. Massa will need much more than the $2.1 million he raised for 2008. The national GOP wants that seat. And 2010 will be the year that New York state loses one seat in the House due to redistricting. Rural districts like the 29th are always convenient targets to be cut. If the 29th gets whacked, he’d have to run against, perhaps, longer-term New York congressional incumbents. Perhaps that influenced his change of financial heart.

Rep. Massa has said that he would not take corporate PAC money from harmful interests, such as cigarettes and Big Oil. Perhaps he’ll post a clear definition of “harmful” on his re-election website — if and when he announces for 2010.

Congress is taking a vacation from its hard work of fixing health care (yes, sarcasm intended). All the members are town-halling like mad, trying to divine the will of the electorate. Which Rep. Massa will tour District 29 this month?

This one, from June 2007:

I believe that we also need to address the problem of lobbyists in Washington, and as such, I do not accept Corporate PAC money. Thus I am reaching out to all of you to support my grassroots campaign. I am asking for 1000 people to step up and donate $100 to my campaign so we can tackle the issue of global warming in Washington. I need you to join me. Together, we can change the world.

Or this one, from February 2009:

[GOP critics] want to attack me for taking legitimate political action money that they are taking 10 times more of. I don’t quite get why the pot is calling the kettle black.

photo credit: Esquire

These 27 nominees contributed $144,431 to President Obama and $57,900 to once-rival and now Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, reports the center. They have bundled (collected, as middleman, donations from others) at least $5 million for the president’s campaign and at least $1,782,500 for the president’s inauguration.

The president’s most recent nominee as ambassador to Germany, former Democratic National Committee finance chair and former Goldman Sachs executive Philip D. Murphy, and his wife “have contributed nearly $1.5 million to federal candidates, committees and parties since 1989, with 94 percent of that sum going to Democrats, according to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis. They also contributed an additional $100,000 to Obama’s inauguration committee.”

But this isn’t the real news. According to figures kept by the American Foreign Service Association, President Obama is making political patronage nominations to ambassadorships at twice the rate of the previous nine presidents.

The president has made 59 ambassadorial nominations as of July 1, according to American Foreign Service Association records — 35 are political nominees (1 confirmed, 19 nominated, 2 announced, 2 rumored); 24 are career Foreign Service nominees (4 confirmed, 21 nominated, 4 announced, 6 rumored).

According to the association, 110 of the current 175 ambassadorships are filled by career Foreign Service professionals (63 percent) and 45 by political nominees (nearly 26 percent). So far, the president’s record on nominations is reversing that ratio.

About 60 percent of President Obama’s ambassadorial choices so far, according to the association’s data, have been non-career, or political patronage, nominations. That’s nearly twice the average percentage of political nominees in previous administrations. The 40-year average, from presidents Kennedy to Clinton, for nominees is 30 percent political patronage and 70 percent career Foreign Service, according to the association.

Even President George W. Bush, who led the previous nine presidents in political patronage through ambassadorships, made only 36 percent of his 370 ambassadorial nominations political.

In its “Statement on Ambassadors,” the association argues:

The primary authority for choosing Ambassadors rests with the President, and the United States has a long tradition of public service by private citizens. This is appropriate and valuable, and private citizens should continue to serve in the diplomatic field. However, the value of this tradition of public service is undermined when individuals are chosen as ambassadors primarily for the size of their contributions to political campaigns, or for their personal friendship with the President. [emphasis added]

Twelve days before he took office, President Obama said:

I want to recruit young people into the State Department to feel that this is a career track that they can be on for the long term. And so, you know, my expectation is that high quality civil servants are going to be rewarded. You know, are there going to be political appointees to ambassadorships? There probably will be some. [emphasis added]

So far, some is an understatement. If the president continues to nominate political loyalists and fundraisers at this early rate, he’ll easily surpass President Bush’s 36 percent rate of political nominees. Perhaps the Senate, which must confirm nominees, should take note of this trend.

President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to change the way Washington works and curb the influence of lobbyists. … During the campaign, federal lobbyists could not contribute to or raise money for the campaign. … [T]he president-elect is taking those commitments even further by announcing the strictest, and most far reaching ethics rules of any transition team in history.”

Presumably, that means President Obama wishes to end the pay-to-play philosophy that pervades the practice of politics. Well, he’s got some explaining to do, because what he promises is not always what he does.

Case No. 1: Yes, the president said he’d nominate some of his financial backers as ambassadors. But the number’s growing. According to the Center for Responsive Politics:

President Obama announced another 10 names for ambassadorships last week, and in doing so, he awarded another set of big donors and bundlers with plum positions representing U.S. interests abroad. The new nominees for ambassadors to Belize, Belgium, Liechtenstein, Romania and Switzerland — along with their spouses and dependent children — have contributed at least $637,800 to federal candidates, parties and committees since 1989, CRP has found. Nearly that entire sum has gone to Democrats, including $32,775 to Obama himself and $8,300 to former primary opponent and now-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. These individuals also brought in at least $1.1 million for Obama’s presidential bid as bundlers, and at least another half-a-million as bundlers for his inauguration.

To date, this brings the contribution histories of Obama’s ambassador nominees to roughly $1.8 million in donations since 1989. The 19 ambassadors that CRP has found in our campaign contribution database, along with their spouses and children, have given more than $98,200 to Obama personally, bundled at least $3.4 million for his 2008 presidential run and bundled another $1.4 million for his inauguration.

Do these nominations transgress on his promise of change? Well, these people paid — and now they get to play. To be fair, however, presidents have rewarded financial backers with ambassadorships since the birth of the Republic. Let’s wait a bit and see how his record stacks up against the nomination histories of Presidents Bush I and II and Clinton. But President Obama’s nominations of financial backers are troubling in light of his promise of change.

Case No. 2: Jeff Zeleny, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, reported this earlier this week:

When President Obama arrived at the Mandarin Oriental hotel for a fund-raising reception on Thursday night, the new White House rules of political purity were in order: no lobbyists allowed.

But at the same downtown hotel on Friday morning, registered lobbyists have not only been invited to attend an issues conference with Democratic leaders, but they have also been asked to come with a $5,000 check in hand if they want to stay in good favor with the party’s House and Senate re-election committees.

The practicality of Mr. Obama’s pledge to change the ways of Washington is colliding once more with the reality of how money, influence and governance interact here. He repeatedly declared while campaigning last year that he would “not take a dime” from lobbyists or political action committees.

So to follow through with that promise, Mr. Obama is simply leaving the room. [emphasis added]

I have written about campaign finance for years. I never expected any politician, including President Obama, to live up to any promise to curb the influence of money in politics. Is he following the letter or spirit of his promise of change with regard to political money? Or has he merely developed a system of sidesteps to maintain the appearance of sticking to a promise?

Does this matter? Should we care that the president of the United States promises reform over the influence of money in politics but balks at bold, transparent steps to achieve it? Yes, on both counts.

Surely he will seek re-election. Recall, please, that presidential candidates in the 2008 cycle spent $1.8 billion. That’s more than double the $883 million presidential candidates spent in the 2004 cycle.

Is there any reason to believe — with out-of-power Republicans wanting back in and a Democratic president seeking re-election — that the cost of the 2012 election won’t be twice as high as 2008?

President Obama will need a boatload of bucks. He may philosophically wish to curb the influence of money in politics, but he will continue to be ruled by the need for the money to maintain power … as his opponents will be in their attempts to regain power.

On the president’s “Ethics” page at the White House website, this phrase is repeatedly used: “in the spirit of transparency …” So far, it’s mere fiction.

He will continue the charade of “stepping out of the room” because he needs the money. Can’t say I blame him … but I expected better.