Asleep at the switch

If you support a progressive agenda, then support a progressive candidate.

It's no secret that corporations have a stranglehold on our democracy. This is thanks to a bizarre and perverse interpretation that somehow equates money with speech. The mental contortions required to defend this are quite astounding, especially since money and speech are not equated in any other context except politics. As a result, non-citizens (such as corporations and unions) can bribe political candidates in broad daylight and in (more or less) complete legality.

But even when feeble legislative attempts are made to impose token regulations on this madness, it's often not even enforced.

This piece from the Albany Times-Union's Capitol Confidential blog offers an illustration.

Last year, the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) sent evidence to the state Board of Elections (BOE) of 61 corporations that donated illegal amounts to political campaigns. Twelve months later, the BOE is still investigating the matter.

(Good government group like NYPIRG along with some media constitute the only real check on the chummy culture of corruption in Albany.)

Recently, NYPIRG relased evidence of another 118 violations to the bipartisan (not to be confused with non-partisan) BOE.

The BOE is supposed to enforced the law but “They still haven’t done anything about it,” said NYPIRG’s legislative director Blair Horner, one of the true white knights in Albany.

A BOE spokesman whined that their workload has increased in the last few years as the number of electronic reports has skyrocketed. But if they are not going to bother enforcing the law, even when a watchdog group does a lot of their legwork for them, then what purpose does the state Board of Elections serve?