Capuano’s embarrassment/Raising the stakes

Yeah, when I lived in his district, I voted for Mike Capuano. Yeah, I

wrote letters to him. Yeah, I got letters back, and I liked those

letters. All in all, I like Mike Capuano.

<a

href=”http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/01/19/capuano_defends_19000_corporate_paid_trip_to_brazil”>This

is just horrible. A $19,000 trip to Brazil, with his wife,

paid for by business interests? Is it true that the Republicans

wouldn’t have funded the trip as a Congressional expense, as Capuano

claims? Did he ask?

Lame, very lame all around. And I’m not going to pretend that this

doesn’t affect his decision-making, any more than I think Romney <a

href=”http://bluemassgroup.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=967″>flying

Air Pfizer doesn’t affect his. Our system is broken by money, and

as far as this goes, it broke Mike Capuano. Just apologize, Mike —

start to heal your reputation.

—–

The problem, of course, is not just special interests paying for

travel, or inserting earmarks into conference committee negotiations,

or any of the awful things that both Dems and Republicans are talking

about banning. As former lobbyist Hilary Rosen says, <a

href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hilary-rosen/proposed-lobbying-reforms_b_14013.html”>it’s

the fundraising, stupid.

The Dems need to raise the stakes, not just call. Why not take

this golden opportunity to propose sweeping, ambitious campaign finance

reform — expand public financing of elections. If taxpayers pay for

campaigns, we’ll have politicians who work for taxpayers. If we have

special interest campaign money, we’ll continue to have special

interest politicians. I’d like the Democrats to realize that they

aren’t, can’t, and won’t ever win the special interest money game in

the current system. There’s just too much dissonance between the more

populist sentiment of the Democratic base (and message), and the

current realities of the campaign money chase. And hell, if you’re a

corporate PAC, money to Dems is extortion; money to Republicans is an investment.

I don’t imagine the K Street project — shaking down DC lobbying firms

to make sure their cash went to the GOP — was too terribly difficult

to pull off.

Besides public financing, there’s got to be an opportunity to get some advantage

on principle and partisan grounds from all this. It’s foolish

for Dems to keep trying to play fundraising catch-up — what can we do

to even the playing field, now that the corruption of the Republican money machine has

come into such high relief?

UPDATE: Liberal Oasis has more — constitutional amendment? Hmm…

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