Campaign Cash Rules Drown in the Bathtub by Michael Winship

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/12/24


Anti-tax lobbyist Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, file)

I’m speculating here, but as we approach year’s end, I assume that Grover Norquist hasn’t been visited by Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future and found spiritual redemption. Nonetheless, I’m betting that Grover Norquist feels pretty good. Just not in a Santa Claus kind of way; more like one of those evil geniuses in bad movies who rubs his hands together and cackles, “At last, my plan is working!”

Norquist, president of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, is infamous for his expressed desire to shrink government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” And even though the new budget deal takes a feeble swipe at sequestration and the indiscriminate slashing of government funds, his wish may be coming true.

This thought springs from recent indications that what little power the government still has to regulate campaign finance donations — already whittled to a minimum by Citizens United and other court decisions — is being steadily eroded by funding cutbacks, intimidation, bureaucracy and an inability or refusal to enforce the few rules we have left.

In 2012, the Federal Communications Commission announced that commercial TV stations in the top fifty US media markets had to make available online data about who was paying for political advertising and how much was being paid, with the idea that this would become a requirement across the country in 2014.