The N&O goes there, again

Truth to power, baby:

The attackers, or sponsors, are those who run some outfit called Americans for Job Security. It's one of a multitude of groups doing political business these days as professional gunslingers for big business interests that essentially oppose regulation and common-sense accountability rules protecting American taxpayers from free-wheeling greed exercised in the name of free enterprise.

This is not a byline piece, folks; it's an Editorial Staff article, and one of the strongest I've read in quite some time. And it's incredibly important for our Democracy that mainstream media have these conversations with their audience.

Thanks to an unfortunate Supreme Court ruling that opened the floodgates for corporate money flowing directly to political causes, and to the anonymity that is provided donors to groups such as this one, the public is denied a very important piece of information: what special interests are behind these types of ads? That would be informative, because it would allow people to know all the players in a given political contest.

Congress has considered requiring full disclosure of sponsors and financing in the public's interest; Republicans have stood against it. Given that such action wouldn't put further limits on contributions, wouldn't stop the ads, wouldn't do anything to curtail this free speech (that is far from free), what's the problem?

Likely it's that if people were to know that, for example, insurance companies were funding attack ads on those who supported health care reform, they might not take the ads as seriously. And what the people don't know won't hurt the candidates the ads are supposed to support. Or perhaps the GOP fears that if the donors behind these groups were to be disclosed, they might not be as inclined to risk some negative exposure and thus might not kick in for candidates.

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I usually don't quote so much, but this one deserves recognition.