but the staffer I just spoke to didn’t know if the DISCLOSE Act required office holders or contributors to disclose political contributions.
I called the senator’s Washington office to ask how he would vote on the act and the staffer said that it had, “special carve outs for unions and other favored interest groups,” and that’s why the senator would vote against it. I had a nice chat with the young man and told him that I agreed with the senator’s regular calls for transparency and that was why I hoped he would vote for the bill. As we discussed the carve-outs, as he referred again to exclusions for unions but didn’t mention the exclusion for the Chamber of Commerce, and I wondered out loud if the campaigns couldn’t just disclose all of their donors. That’s when I asked the question about who the onus is on in the DISCLOSE bill, campaigns or contributors. And the staffer was pretty straightforward in telling me that he didn’t know and it was a good question.
It reminded me of an interview Brown did with Jim Braude on February 15th about the Blunt Amendment in which Brown appeared either not to know or not to understand what was in the bill saying “that’s your interpretation” when Braude quotes the bill: http://www.necn.com/pages/video?PID=0zPdFJJtnvLQvI4vNmvni4UKlkzaCyCR
Maybe that’s part of a campaign strategy: 1) Make up whatever you want; 2) Deny anything you actually did or said; 3)Keep staffers in the dark so they can’t elucidate or incriminate.
Sadly, it’s working for about half the voters.
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