I’m confused by this Wall Street Journal editorial that accuses President Obama of being a gangster. The author is opposed to a proposed executive order that would allegedly require any corporation that is bidding on government business to disclose their political donations over the past two years. Let’s think about this. Suppose that Kellogg’s is bidding to provide the armed forces with breakfast cereal. They disclose that they’ve given quite a bit of money to the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Department of Defense, Daniel Inouye of Hawaii. Meanwhile, their competitor, Post, reveals that they haven’t made any political contributions at all.
How does this public information influence Sen. Inouye’s decison on who to award the contract? (I’m aware that a decision like this is probably made by some minor official in the Pentagon, but this is just a thought experiment).
Before the executive order, Sen. Inouye would have a theoretical motivation to award his anonymous donors. But now that everyone can see that Kellogg’s gave him money, he has to worry that it will look like pay-to-play bribery if he awards them the contract. In other words, disclosure makes it less likely that Democrats will award contracts only to corporations that give them money. But this editorial argues that opposite. For that to be true, the politicians would have to be ignorant of who gives them money up until the same moment that the public finds out.
That makes no sense to me. It’s such bad reasoning that I am little surprised that anyone would put their name to it. Oh, who am I kidding? There is no shame anymore.
it’s the WSJ, dude…they don’t make sense…they’re only supposed to attack the President.
according to them, Citizens United had no effect whatsoever in political giving.
The “logic” to Republicans is not that Democrats will avoid giving contracts to companies that donate to Democrats, but that any company that donates to Republicans will find themselves stripped of all government business by vengeful Donks.
That’s because Republicans absolutely would use this order to bankrupt any “liberal” company they could.
You see, to Republicans, that’s the only possible purpose of a measure like this. That’s the world they live in.
well, until two minutes ago, corporations had to disclose who they gave money to.
now that they don’t, this EO basically returns things to the status quo ante for government contractors.
If Dems give contracts to companies that pay them lavishly people will notice. So, maybe corporations just should not give any money at all. I’d be cool with that.
I actually think it’s a brilliant idea.