Today's quote of the day is inspired by the lecture I attended over my lunch break.

Panelists included: Denise Cardinal from Alliance for a Better Minnesota, Ben Golnik of Golnik Strategies, Gary Goldsmith, executive director of the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board, and Mike Dean, director of Common Cause Minnesota.

Ben Golnik, who was described as the rising start of the local Republic Party, complained about the uneven playing field, alluding to contributions from politically active labor unions. Denise Cardinal provided a very telling allegory about what a typical labor union member "Susie" (most SEIU members are women) compared to a typical (usually male) company CEO would donate. SEIU's total spending on politics in 2009 was close to 58 million, which is 17% of union’s total funds (including lobbying and nationwide). Now take Exxon Mobil with its 310 billion in revenue, spending at least 27 million on politics. Now that political spending by corporations cannot be banned, had Exxon spent at least 1% of its revenue (3.1 billion) it would be more than a half of Barack Obama's presidential campaign spending (around 5 billion) that was so sharply criticized by the conservatives. And that's just one corporation....As Denise said, "leveling the playing field is like bringing a knife to the nuclear war."

This website was described as the "clearing house" for campaign financing in Minnesota. Starting from the 2010 election cycle, it is required that all reports are submitted in electronic format which will make it easier to track who donated to whom.
http://www.cfboard.state.mn.us/


More on the issue: http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/how-corporate-money-will-reshape-politics/