My former colleague, Meredith McGehee, has a scathing, incisive piece on the pathetic Federal Election Commission in Roll Call today ($$ - but an excerpt here from Josh Z).  In it she says:

Who was a key player in the design of the FEC 30+ years ago?  A US Rep long forgotten to history, but a fearsome power in the House at the time.  Wayne Hays chaired the House Administration Committee and the DCCC, wielding power over everything from campaign laws to campaign money and office furniture -- and abusing his power to a degree that would make Tom Delay envious.

When Hays did not succeed in blocking reform legislation entirely, he made sure that the FEC would not be able to enforce the law.

He was brought down in a scandal - hiring a "secretary", Elizabeth Ray, who later said, "I can't type, I can't file, I can't even answer the phone."  But part of his legacy, the FEC, lives on.

It turns out a good defense does make a pretty good offense.

The Connecticut Legislature wrapped up its 2008 session early Thursday morning. Although it was generally dubbed a "Do Nothing" session, Connecticut Common Cause was able to pass one essential bill and make sure a number of other bills aimed at either turning the clock on reform didn't head to the governor's desk.

Sure, it's easier to kill a bill than push a bill, but in the crush of the final days of session it is always possible to sneak a rat into a marginally related bill. Connecticut Common Cause checked every bill passed by the Legislature. While we chuckled at "An Act Concerning Beer Cooler Accessibility," which passed both chambers unanimously, we found nothing that would chisel away at any hard-fought reforms. 

That said, there were a number of bills that didn't make the cut this year and a few that did. For a short session where only supposedly essential are to be called, it was a good year.

The Connecticut General Assembly concludes its 2008 legislative session at midnight tonight, and for the first time in a long time, Connecticut Common Cause is playing defense as opposed to trying to shoehorn a reform at the last minute (in 2006, a critical campaign finance reform bill passed in the last two minutes.)

Bills that we were pushing for have either passed and been enacted into law, been tied down on the calendar with no hope of salvation or caught in internecine feuds between the House and Senate.

Now, we have to make sure that the so-called "Do Nothing Session" does nothing to turn back the clock on important reforms.

Today, the WaPo highlights the continuing embarassment to our democracy - or, at least, one of those embarassments: no agency to enforce campaign finance laws.

Of course, the hangup is still the highly controversial FEC nominee Hans von Spakovsky.  We've asked the presidential candidates and the Senate leaders to end the deadlock over the FEC nominees.  No movement.  No enforcement of campaign finance laws in a year with record-busting amounts of money being raised.

From The Hill:

Campaign Finance Institute: Presidential Fundraising in 2007 Doubles 2003

Over the coming year, Common Cause is going to be directly addressing the issue of poverty and inequality and how certain features of our democratic system create an environment which produces public policies that fail to reflect the needs of the poor and increasingly insecure middle class.

The U.S. has a high level of inequality as compared to other countries around the world. If ranked by Gini coefficient, the United States would rank 71st in the world, tied with Turkmenistan and Ghana, according to the 2007/2008 United Nations Human Development Report. The report estimates that the income of the richest 20 percent in the U.S. is 8.4 times that of the poorest 20 percent, compared to ratios of 6.7 in Malawi, 4.9 in Bangladesh and 4.3 in Pakistan.

As part of the American Political Science Association's (APSA) Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy, Jacob Hacker of Yale University with several other scholars documented several trends in policy development in the U.S. over the past three decades that could help explain our exceptional levels of inequality as compared to other rich nations. Hacker et al. point to the scaling back of a variety of welfare state policies that most affect the lower- and middle-income groups:


According to APSA, only 12 percent of American households had incomes over $100,000 in 2000, but 95 percent of the donors who made substantial contributions were from these wealthiest households.

Coincidence?

If you look at the breakdown of contributions to each of the leading presidential candidates, it is striking how top-heavy Hillary's campaign fundraising is compared to both Obama and McCain.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, one-third of the contributions to Clinton (7,411 contributions) have come from donors who gave the maximum amount allowed by law - $4,600. This is compared to just 10 percent for Obama and 9 percent for McCain.

By contrast, McCain and Obama's percentage of contributions from donors who gave $200 or less is 22 percent and 26 percent, respectively. Hilary clocks in with only 12 percent of contributions coming from donors who gave less than $200.

And just as a point of reference, only 0.16 percent of adults in the U.S. give more than $200 in political donations in a given election cycle, so we are already talking about a relatively small group here.