Yeah, when I lived in his district, I voted for Mike Capuano. Yeah, I
wrote letters to him. Yeah, I got letters back, and I liked those
letters. All in all, I like Mike Capuano.
This
is just horrible. A $19,000 trip to Brazil, with his wife,
paid for by business interests? Is it true that the Republicans
wouldn't have funded the trip as a Congressional expense, as Capuano
claims? Did he ask?
Lame, very lame all around. And I'm not going to pretend that this
doesn't affect his decision-making, any more than I think Romney flying
Air Pfizer doesn't affect his. Our system is broken by money, and
as far as this goes, it broke Mike Capuano. Just apologize, Mike --
start to heal your reputation.
-----
The problem, of course, is not just special interests paying for
travel, or inserting earmarks into conference committee negotiations,
or any of the awful things that both Dems and Republicans are talking
about banning. As former lobbyist Hilary Rosen says, it's
the fundraising, stupid.
The Dems need to raise the stakes, not just call. Why not take
this golden opportunity to propose sweeping, ambitious campaign finance
reform -- expand public financing of elections. If taxpayers pay for
campaigns, we'll have politicians who work for taxpayers. If we have
special interest campaign money, we'll continue to have special
interest politicians. I'd like the Democrats to realize that they
aren't, can't, and won't ever win the special interest money game in
the current system. There's just too much dissonance between the more
populist sentiment of the Democratic base (and message), and the
current realities of the campaign money chase. And hell, if you're a
corporate PAC, money to Dems is extortion; money to Republicans is an investment.
I don't imagine the K Street project -- shaking down DC lobbying firms
to make sure their cash went to the GOP -- was too terribly difficult
to pull off.
Besides public financing, there's got to be an opportunity to get some advantage
on principle and partisan grounds from all this. It's foolish
for Dems to keep trying to play fundraising catch-up -- what can we do
to even the playing field, now that the corruption of the Republican money machine has
come into such high relief?UPDATE: Liberal Oasis has more -- constitutional amendment? Hmm... |
