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Ruth: Campaign finance enforcement by Barney Fife

 
Published May 15, 2015

Imagine what would happen if law enforcement agencies announced that they no longer had the resources, or even the interest, to investigate bank robberies.

Well, meet Ann M. Ravel, a marshal without so much as a pea shooter to go after a cartel of desperadoes who are about to pull off the heist of the century right under her helpless nose. Say, that's a pretty nice looking democracy you got there. It would be a shame if something happened to it. And it's about to.

Ravel is the chairwoman of the Federal Elections Commission, which is supposed to be in charge of investigating violations of campaign finance laws and making sure the process of casting a ballot is on the up and up. How quaint. How archaic.

In a recent interview with the New York Times, Ravel indulged in a rare bit of Washington candor when she admitted she has given up any remote hope the FEC will be able to do its job in reining in campaign finance abuses during the 2016 election cycle. "The likelihood the laws will be enforced is slim," Ravel told the newspaper, adding: "I'm not under any illusions. People think the FEC is dysfunctional. It's worse than dysfunctional." This is a bit like Eliot Ness telling Al Capone, "Can I help with some beer deliveries?"

The FEC has become the Barney Fife of election law because the agency is equally divided between three Republican and three Democratic commissioners, who barely speak to each other. The FEC has an annual budget of about $65 million and pays each of the six commissioners $155,000 a year. To do what? Absolutely nothing. How much of nothing? In 2014, the New York Times reported more than $7 billion was spent nationwide on federal elections. And yet the FEC could only find enough campaign finance infractions — in the entire country — to levy a new all-time agency low of $597,429 in fines. That's less than the combined salaries of the commissioners.

It's altogether possible that by the end of the 2016 election cycle the worst thing a scofflaw candidate will face from a gelded FEC is a stern glare of disappointment.

The devolution of the FEC into the Sheriff Buford T. Justice of campaign finance enforcement couldn't come at a worse time for the body politic or a better time for the plutocrats of the hustings. Since the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, the electoral system has been drowning in unlimited and largely unaccountable money as well as a steady increase in secretive super political action committees.

In theory, at least one of the reasons former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has not formally announced his presidential candidacy is that, by law, once he actually enters the race Bush would no longer be able to have direct contact with his super PAC, Right to Rise. But until then he is perfectly free to openly hustle for money to the PAC, a hustle that by all accounts is expected to pull in $100 million by the time Bush drops the laughable charade of being a coquettish noncandidate.

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Meanwhile, announced Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has issued a robust "Attaboy!" in the general direction of the Priorities USA Action super PAC, which is hoping to raise between $200 million and $300 million on her behalf.

Bush and Clinton are hardly alone. Sens. Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and virtually every other presidential dreamer all have super PACs grifting for big money. And even if Tony Soprano walked into any one of these candidates' headquarters and plopped down a grocery bag filled with $1 million in blood-soaked currency, for all practical purposes the FEC would be powerless to do very much about it.

While the FEC may have some very lovely boilerplate verbiage prohibiting — under pain of scorn — announced presidential candidates from having any direct coordination with the super PACs shilling on their behalf, does anyone truly believe there isn't more twitching, winking and nodding going on here than a Saint Vitus Dance convention?

When the Koch brothers alone pledge to spend at least nearly $900 million during the 2016 election season it is highly unlikely they — or the candidates they are about to buy off — are going to unduly fret over the prospect of an at best wrist-slapping FEC stink eye if they flout the law and conspire together on stump strategy.

This isn't a campaign for the White House. It's the dystopian version of "All the President's Bagmen."