From The Baltimore Sun
By David Sirota

Money is not a bad thing. And secrecy doesn’t have to be, either. But when the two mix, you can bet someone is going to get bilked.

Look no further than Congress’ corruption scandals and corporate America’s excessive pay packages to know this is the case. Though the situations seem unrelated, they revolve around the confluence of money and secrecy. Lawmakers and executives are making out like bandits while taxpayers and company shareholders are getting ripped off.

In Congress, corruption is emanating from the appropriations committees - the panels overseeing federal spending. Lawmakers there are responsible for “earmarking” federal dollars for specific projects. That powerful privilege to earmark lately has been demonized as the problem. It’s not. It’s the secrecy that is causing the trouble.

Appropriators are allowed to earmark taxpayer money anonymously, meaning they can direct spending without having to take public responsibility for their actions. Lobbyists, of course, know this, and thus lavish committee members with thousands of dollars in campaign contributions in order to get them to anonymously earmark taxpayer dollars to their corporate clients.

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