"I don't care too much for money," sang the Beatles in a 1964 hit — "money can't buy me love." But if that well-known lyric suggests that money can't buy what truly matters, a worrying trend in American politics suggests a different lesson. Vast sums of unregulated dark money are increasingly used to buy influence in the justice system, opening up a whole new world of possibilities for money to buy something that should be beyond price.
Revelations last week by the New York Times and ProPublica highlight the urgency of addressing this problem. As the Times reported, "A new conservative nonprofit group scored a $1.6 billion windfall last year via a little-known donor…The source of the money was Barre Seid, an electronics manufacturing mogul, and the donation is among the largest, if not the largest — single contributions ever made to a politically focused nonprofit."
