When the Fresno County GOP was fined $29,000 for taking contributions from a San Diego family and donating them to a State Assemblyman, I said at the time that the primary function of political parties today is to "launder money". You would have thought I revealed a deep secret of politics, and of course, I was right, as today’s California Watch documents, there is significant money laundering on both sides of the aisle.
I was particularly amused by being taken to task for my statements by one Steve Maviglio, who is mostly famous for defending the records of such "effective" poltiical leaders as Gray Davis and Karen Bass. In his "California Majority Report" (why would they even be proud of being the majority when they’ve bankrupted the State?) he refers to money laundering as a felony, which is true.
I guess the entire political system is full of felons – except the system has been given a legal way to launder.
For example, when the local SEIU makes a poltical donation, do we know the source of the funds? Do we know what individuals contributed to the SEIU political action committee? When there are multiple committee transfers, such a from the Sierra Club to Karen Bass to the California Democrat Party to Henry Perea, how do we identify the source of the original donations without a team of forensic accountants? Can’t be done.
There is very little transparency in campaign finance. The system is worse now than ever before. And it is a legal form of money laundering. Case closed.
Steve, you can go back to defending your team of Bernie Madoffs now.
January 3rd, 2010 at 12:00 am
The current law, Prop. 34, legalizes money laundering of this nature and the Democrats knew it when they wrote the law. It makes a farce out of the so-called contribution limits. Far too many Republicans voted for this.
January 3rd, 2010 at 12:00 am
The detailed California Watch study seeks to prove a point far different from what I perceive from it. The purported point of the California Watch study is there is widespread abuse of the “spirit” of Prop 34. And a close review of the report demonstrates that Democrats have taken advantage of the situation far more than Republicans. However, the real point to be made is that as a campaign finance reform, Prop. 34 has not done much at all except to help crafty lawyers, accountants and political consultants to make their livings. The whole system should be dumped in favor of simple, real time public disclosure of contributors, and no more.