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To answer your timely and pertinent question, we went to the laundromat. The Soft Money Laundromat that is, the first "Site Match" we found through a Yahoo! search on "soft money." This database of special-interest contributions to the Democratic and Republican parties proved quite illuminating. First, a few facts: Since 1907, it has been illegal for a corporation to spend money on political campaigns. And since 1974, it has been illegal for a single person "to contribute more than $1,000 to a federal candidate, or more than $20,000 per year to a political party, for the purpose of influencing a federal election." Of course, everyone knows that huge corporations
and well-to-do citizens (and non-citizens) regularly contribute millions of dollars to political campaigns. How do they do it? Through a little-known legal loophole drafted by the Federal Election Commissio n in 1978 that allows for large contributions for "party building" purposes -- new water coolers, wall-to-wall carpeting, advertising, etc. According to the Laundromat, "Soft money exploded from $86 million in the 1992 election to $260 million in 1996, and it could well triple again to $750 million for the presidential campaign in the year 2000." That's a lot of new water coolers! Happily, you can find out which special interests are contributing most to the current presidential election, and which groups seem to have been rewarded for their generosity by legislation in their
interest. Search the Laundromat's soft money database by donor name, location, or industry; or visit Open Secret.org's Soft Money Contributions with graphs by sector and by party for the 1990s. We're sure you'll find the data intriguing...
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