Remember IRS-Gate, or whatever its peddlers were calling it back in the day? This was the outbreak of dumbassery in the Cincinnati IRS office which got AstroTurfed into orbit by the usual network of wingnut activists and their sugar daddies around the issue of so-called 501(c)4 organizations, the phony "social-welfare" groups that turn out to be little more than vehicles for the legalized influence-peddling allowed by the Supreme Court of the United States. There was a reason for all the smoke that was blown, and last week, we found out what it was.

Buried in the budget deal that now has emerged from Congress is a provision by which the IRS will be actively forbidden from enacting new rules in 2016 to rein in the obvious scams in which most of the 501(c)4's engage. I don't care how loudly the flying monkeys howl at Speaker Paul Ryan for "betraying" them by striking a deal at all, this is the real joker in the deck, and the fact that this principle was so easily bargained away says a great deal about the people in power from both political parties. They have accepted the new reality of legalized influence-peddling and are finding ways to prosper in it. This, I guess, is another New Normal in our politics. Absent a constitutional amendment, campaign-finance reform legislation now appears to be as expendable in negotiations—and, therefore as dead—as sensible gun-control legislation is. But, as we always take pains to point out, we still have Justice Anthony Kennedy's assurance that "…independent expenditures do not lead to, or create the appearance of, quid pro quo corruption."

Not if everybody's in on it, they don't.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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