WASHINGTON — It’s an absurdity too gross to be insisted upon.
The Supreme Court majority must have missed their morning paper before again ruling that the more money that comes into politics, the better.
Right on the front page: Washington’s mayor was booted by voters due to money-fueled corruption, including benefiting from the city’s largest contractor.
Still, the court’s majority persists in believing that more money from more people with more money will improve democracy.
The decision isn’t as big as one four years ago that ditched curbs on what corporations and unions can spend.
“But this is part of a direction that, although nominally in the name of free speech, is fundamentally warping and endangering the system of American democracy,” said Geoffrey Stone of the University of Chicago Law School.
The parties, and thus the status quo, are big winners.
Coincidentally, President Obama, a Stone friend and former colleague, hosted two fundraisers in Chicago on Wednesday. That makes 359 fundraisers since he took office in 2009, according to Mark Knoller, the data-filled White House correspondent for CBS News.
In the 2012 election, federal candidates and the parties spent $5.2 billion, compared to $1 billion by outside groups. Now that spending will soar.
For sure, we’re better off with Watergate-inspired regulations. That scandal included Dwayne Andreas, founder of Archer-Daniels-Midland, showing up at the White House with a covert $100,000 in $100 bills for President Nixon.
It’s all cleaner today but still unseemly. And one cottage industry is another big winner.
“Good for consultants, bad for democracy,” said Eric Adelstein, a national Democratic consultant in Chicago.
