What Charles G. Koch Can Teach Us About Campaign Finance Data

Lasrick writes "Lee Drutman is a political scientist with the Sunlight Foundation who does terrific work. In this article, he attempts to trace campaign donations made by one of the Koch Brothers and discovers just how difficult it is to do: 'The case of Charles G. Koch is a nice lesson in just how hard it is to determine who is breaking and who is abiding by campaign finance limits. It's hard to make accurate tallies of individual aggregate campaign contributions when the Federal Elections Commission doesn't require donors to have a unique ID, and when campaigns don't always reliably report donor names. Given this, it is unclear how the FEC would even enforce its own aggregate limit rules. The FEC's spokesperson told me that while the FEC welcomes complaints, it does not typically take enforcement initiative."'

Comments

Asinine Article of the Year Award Goes to...

[KalvinB]

Obama is spying on every American with blanket data grabs and still fails to stop terrorist attacks
Obama has the IRS pry into the personal lives of anyone (and high school kids) who is trying to start a conservative non-profit

And you want to bitch about money from people supporting a candidate that DIDN'T WIN the election.

Step 1: Get the tyrant in power
Step 2: Keep the tyrant in power

Posting an article about people who are harassing conservatives for who they dare to support with their money... That's just special. I guess the IRS isn't doing a good enough job, we need to find other avenues to ensure Conservative/Republicans politicians don't get financial contributions to their campaign.

Re:Who cares who donates and how much?

[Trepidity]

If you know who donates to which parties, politicians, and organizations, it can highlight what things you might want to give extra scrutiny to.

You don't have to use the information, but I would like it to be available for analysis.

Re:Why Koch and not Soros?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's much more likely because the Koch brothers quite literally astroturfed the Tea Party into existence. It doesn't take a genius to realize that the agenda being pushed by the Tea Party is obviously pro-corporation and anti-liberty.

If people could detach emotional bias from politics, the Tea Party would disappear overnight when everyone realized how hoodwinked they had been by corporate interests.

Re:Why Koch and not Soros?

[Anonymous Coward]

Deregulation has caused us nothing but trouble. Remember that Enron crisis a decade or so ago in CA? That was caused by deregulation. The 2008 economic meltdown was caused by deregulation. Deregulation only works in some imaginary libertarian fantasy world where greedy sociopath douchebags don't exist.

Re: Who cares who donates and how much?

[drinkypoo]

Where in the Constitution is there a right to privacy for individuals?

The Supremes have repeatedly ruled that the enumerated rights in the constitution add up to an implied right to privacy, since you can't realistically have several of them (including the right to freedom of speech) without it. It is ignorant at best to utilize this argument. It is also highly disingenuous to ask this question in any case because the constitution was never intended to exhaustively enumerate the Human Rights of The People. Your one-liner amounts to nothing more than tired prevarication.

Re: Who cares who donates and how much?

[atriusofbricia]

Where in the Constitution is there a right to privacy for individuals?

4th Amendment prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure, and the 9th Amendment which clearly says that just because a set of rights are enumerated doesn't mean those are the only ones you have, and the 10th Amendment which says that the only powers the Federal government has are those delegated to it, and that all others are reserved to the States (where not prohibited) or the People.

So, the real question which you should have asked is where in the Constitution was the government given the power to snoop through all your crap in the first place.

WTF is income equality?

[KalvinB]

Should we all be paid the same per hour regardless of what we produce in that hour?

The Koch brothers employ 10's of thousands of people.

Obviously they're doing something for ordinary people.

Re:WTF is income equality?

[pwizard2]

Capital gains (how the rich make most of their income) should be treated no differently than regular income. This is one way the current tax code favors the rich. Also, eliminating the cap on social security would keep it solvent indefinitely. Would it be such a bad thing if more industries were nationalized? I've seen how the private sector runs the economy and honestly, I'm not very impressed. (banking and healthcare, I'm looking at you!)

I disagree that our standard of living has improved since the 50s. When the rich paid higher taxes, the country experienced a period of high prosperity. We experienced a similar thing when Clinton raised taxes in the 90s. We ended up with a budget surplus that was soon squandered by Bush. Sure, we have more cheap electronic gadgets nowadays but job security, healthcare affordability, and infrastructure have gone to shit since Reagan came up with trickle-down economics. I'd call trickle-down the most ghastly economic failure in history except it did exactly what it was supposed to do (redistribute middle class wealth upward to the rich).