Dark Money.

       I'm just reading an editorial in the New York times about so called 'Dark Money' in politics. Remember the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United? Well in their decision the Court expressed their hope that "public disclosure would deter corruption." A noble concept, but hardly a deterrent. Especially when current members of Congress depend so heavily on that funding.
       An amendment to a spending bill will block the Securities and Exchange Commission from requiring disclosure, another amendment would stop the IRS from reining in the "Social welfare" organizations by requiring disclosure. In the Senate, between 2010 and 2014, $226 million in dark money was raised, most of it going to majority Republicans. $226 million. Even if it was evenly divided among the 100 Senators, that's $2,260,000 per Senator. And nobody, except the Senators, know who gave that money. Wouldn't you like to know who owns your Senators?
       Now, I understand the desire of these politicians to keep those donations quiet. After all, nobody in political life wants the public to think they're beholding to anyone other than the voters, but if you get well over $2 million from somebody, don't you think you'd want to help that donor any way you can? And if nobody else knows about it, doesn't that make it easier to just vote in favor of that donor? I mean, nobody can complain. Nobody knows you're doing it.
       The thing is, the only ones who can easily change the way things are done is Congress and Congress is where all this Dark Money is going, to both parties, but mostly to the majority party. And since everybody in Congress is getting a piece of the pie, who's gonna vote to change that? There are only two other choices that I can see. A constitutional amendment, which would be extremely difficult, or the Supreme court would have to hand down a decision requiring it. Of course that would require that a case be brought against it.