{"id":31034,"date":"2011-08-11T08:20:56","date_gmt":"2011-08-11T14:20:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=31034"},"modified":"2011-08-12T07:06:34","modified_gmt":"2011-08-12T13:06:34","slug":"a-sense-that-washington-doesn%e2%80%99t-serve-most-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2011\/08\/a-sense-that-washington-doesn%e2%80%99t-serve-most-people\/","title":{"rendered":"A sense that Washington doesn\u2019t serve most people"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Heath Haussamen<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s no wonder that many average Americans stop paying attention to politics when a donor can spend $1 million anonymously in a presidential race and almost get away with it.<\/p>\n

The story of a company called W Spann LLC being created in March, giving $1 million<\/a> to a Mitt Romney<\/a>-supporting political action committee in April and dissolving in July is outrageous. The only name listed on the corporation\u2019s paperwork was its attorney, and she refused to name her client.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the national media and groups on the left cried foul. You can\u2019t give $1 million in secret without disclosing your identity, can you?<\/p>\n

In this case, the answer is no. After two groups filed a complaint with the FEC, a longtime Romney friend, Edward Conrad, came forward<\/a>, saying he was the man who formed and funded the corporation.<\/p>\n

Romney was quick to declare the situation over. \u201cI think the whole controversy with regards to his contribution certainly sort of disappears when he came forward and said he was the contributor,\u201d the GOP presidential candidate said.<\/p>\n

The attempted anonymous donation is outrageous, and so is Romney\u2019s comment.<\/p>\n

The situation raises all sorts of questions. Did Conrad violate federal law? And, perhaps more importantly, are others who are giving large sums of money also trying to make it difficult to learn their identities? Mr. Romney, why don\u2019t you seem to be concerned about these issues?<\/p>\n

Difficult to figure out who\u2019s funding who<\/h3>\n

Of course, we all know that there are many wealthy political donors who try to make it hard to discover their identities. It\u2019s incredibly difficult to figure out who\u2019s funding who in Washington, despite the efforts of groups like the Center for Responsive Politics, which publishes OpenSecrets.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Stories about anonymous donors giving $1 million are discouraging to people who struggle to find the motivation to even vote, let alone scrape together $100 to give to their preferred candidates. The reality is that money is sometimes passed around and around before it\u2019s ever spent to support a candidate, so even if there\u2019s a trail of named donors in finance reports, it\u2019s difficult to track where people are making donations and how those donations end up being spent.<\/p>\n

The public\u2019s dislike of Washington is largely due to a sense that Washington doesn\u2019t serve most people; it only serves the wealthy. Romney\u2019s declaration that the Conrad situation \u201cdisappears when he came forward and said he was the contributor\u201d misses the point, but is it any surprise that the wealthy Romney would miss the point?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not like Barack Obama<\/a> has done any better. He claimed during his 2008 campaign that he wasn\u2019t taking a dime from lobbyists, but the reality was that his fundraising team included dozens of members of law firms that were paid more than $100 million combined to lobby the federal government in 2007.<\/p>\n

And, according to the USA Today analysis<\/a> that made the situation public, 31 of the 38 lawyers were law firm partners who \u201ctypically receive a share of their firm\u2019s lobbying fees.\u201d<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t take money from lobbyists. But let the lobbyists raise money for you.<\/p>\n

Obama pledged a new level of transparency and reduced special-interest influence in the federal government; it\u2019s a promise he hasn\u2019t delivered. Mitt Romney, currently the GOP frontrunner to challenge Obama next year, doesn\u2019t seem to even understand the need for campaign finance transparency.<\/p>\n

Where do we go from here?<\/h3>\n

Politics is full of promises to make government better serve people and be less beholden to special interests, but this nation\u2019s people have a strong sense that the opposite happens regardless of which political party controls things. It makes people feel like their voices and their votes don\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n

One of the first steps toward convincing more voters to participate in the political process would be mandating full transparency in campaign financing. Donations and expenditures should be put online in real-time or close to it, and the system should be simplified so there are fewer loopholes. Washington needs to aggressively close loopholes as they are discovered and go after those who break the rules.<\/p>\n

Of course, changing attitudes about transparency in Washington would require a reduction in the influence of the wealthy special interests that don\u2019t want transparency. So where do we go from here?<\/p>\n

Haussamen bio<\/a>\u00a0\u2502\u00a0Commentary page<\/a>\u00a0\u2502\u00a0Feed<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s no wonder that many average Americans stop paying attention to politics when a donor can spend $1 million anonymously in a presidential race and almost get away with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,10],"tags":[156,116],"class_list":["post-31034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-haussamen-columns","tag-2012-election","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31034\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}