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?

[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.