And I’m not the only one who says so. Writes Bill Moyers:
Ask any magician and they’ll tell you that the secret to a successful magic trick is misdirection — distracting the crowd so they don’t realize how they’re being fooled. Get them watching your left hand while your right hand palms the silver dollar: “Now you see it, now you don’t.” The purloined coin now belongs to the magician.
Just like democracy. Once upon a time conservatives supported the full disclosure of campaign contributors. Now they oppose it with their might — and magic, especially when it comes to unlimited cash from corporations. My goodness, they say, with a semantic wave of the wand, what’s the big deal?: nary a single Fortune 500 company had given a dime to the super PACs. (Even that’s not entirely true, by the way.)
You can read more here.
And thanks Cynical for the link, and thanks to DickG., and Jac, too.
Dating Jesus 
Does it matter…really?
What good is it knowing Candidate X is in the pocket of Corporation Y when Voter Q is powerless to change that?
Transparency without accountability isn’t much more than political voyeurism. Vicarious participation doesn’t make for much of a democracy.
Perhaps if Voter Q knew Candidate X was in the pocket of Corporation Y, that voter would be more inclined to act.
Act how?
Voter Q knows Candidate X is owned by Corporation Y, and that ownership is completely legal as per the Supreme Court’s rulings in Citizens United and American Tradition, Inc.
Voter Q could vote for Candidate K owned by Monopoly B.
Voter Q could vote for Candidate L owned by Aristocrat O.
I suppose knowing what deep pockets a candidate reports to could be useful when choosing which deep pockets are most popular, but it does little to take any power away from the deep pockets.
I don’t see a Supreme Court ruling as infinite or forever. I think we currently have the democracy we deserve. We’ve let this happen by attrition.
Did you see Uncle Antonin’s latest romp through the media?
His message to the disillusioned, “I’m not going anywhere. Get over it.”
I think that’s pretty much the attitude of the whole court.
He is going somewhere. They all, and we all, are. Maybe he needs to get over the fact that he’s not immortal.
THIS is what voting in America is becoming.
The only problem here is ThinkProgress doesn’t tell us what products to buy to support Obama’s attack ads.
And I don’t care what they say…I’m not giving up my Angel Soft…
Speaking for myself, it’s impossible to follow the millions of intertwined trails of money. I think transparency is good because it promotes honesty and anyone could use the information and interpret it any way s/he wants. For me, I vote according to position on issues and past actions. What bothers me more than anything about the donations is the enormous amount of money spent on election campaigns. It’s disgusting when you think of all the good that money could do for people if spent on something else – even if all that was done was to give all regular employees of a company a small raise. The escalation in spending each election has gotten out of hand.
And the one thing that is generally true of most corporations is they will do what leads to higher profits, not what is good for the average American. That could be said for some individuals, too. Having said that, as an investor in some mutual funds (gotta plan for college expenses & retirement), I am certain I am part of the problem. I don’t know what is “owned” by those funds and it’s too complicated to figure it all out. Whether we buy the products or invest, we’re a part of the corporate machine in some way and I doubt very many of us can say we aren’t. We need them, but we don’t need them influencing public policy, which should have a conflicting agenda.