Business Week might not be on your regular reading list, so this may have escaped your radar. Lately, the magazine seems to be running more investigative pieces about business people on the wrong side of the law.
One of their most recent issues featured an in-depth expose profile of Tim Durham, who has been dubbed "the Madoff of the Midwest." Durham will go on trial in federal court soon for running an elaborate Ponzi scheme. Prosecutors charge that he siphoned off countless millions for himself and returned very little to the investors he duped.
The article also documents how Durham gave hundreds of thousands to Republican political campaigns, including more than $100,000 alone to GOP Governor Mitch Daniels. The size of the donations Durham shoveled to candidates suggest Indiana, like many states, doesn't have campaign donation limits.
This sort of behavior underscores what I believe is a strong argument for very strict campaign donation limits. No matter the office, I think contributions should be limited to something modest like $100 per donor per election cycle. PACs and soft money should be eliminated.
Much tighter restrictions would force all candidates to take their message more directly to the people. Such an approach would also severely curtail all advertising, which usually means negative advertising. And, it would severely hamper "pay to play" politics would dominates state houses and Washington these days.
A legal eagle friend of mine who practices election law assures me that such restrictions would fit within the parameters of Citizens United. Of course, implementing such restrictions would be near impossible, considering that elected politicians themselves would have to vote to close down the cash trough. Don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.
It could happen, however, in states like California with the ballot initiative process. Too bad the Tea Party didn't focus on real reforms like this that would return control of government to the common person. Then again, the Tea Party was never really a grassroots citizens' campaign -- it was a construct of the Koch Brothers.