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Political contributions should be more transparent
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: May 17th, 2011
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/10/...
President Obama is proposing an executive order to require federal contractors to disclose their political spending, and Congress is hopping mad. Twenty-one Republicans (including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor) sent Obama a letter calling the proposed order "a blatant attempt to intimidate." The anger is bipartisan: The second-ranking House Democrat, Steny Hoyer, has come out against it, too. Meanwhile, business groups are firing up their lobbying machines: The American League of Lobbyists, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable all have condemned the order and launched a concerted attempt to prevent Obama from signing it. The voices on the other side are considerably less powerful: ethics groups, watchdogs and the general public. The order is clearly an attempt to roll back some of the damage from the Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case, which allowed corporations and unions to make direct political expenditures without disclosure. The order is a small step toward correcting the outsized influence that wealthy individuals and corporations now have on our political process. That's why it's important for Obama to sign the order. And that's why it's meeting with such stiff opposition. For the sake of the public, the president must make political contributions more transparent.
Note: For an excellent two-page summary of major problems with the electoral system in the US, click here.
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