Karl Rove said Monday that efforts by state treasurers to make hedge funds that manage state pension funds disclose donations to “super PACs” are meant to intimidate donors, comparing the situation to efforts by segregationists to scare NAACP donors in the 1950s. [...] “I think it’s a sign of their fear of democracy, and it’s interesting that they have antecedents and those antecedents are a bunch of segregationist attorneys general trying to shut down the NAACP, it goes to the philosophy behind most of this.”

Did you know Wall Street is the new black people? Or maybe conservative special interest groups are the new black people. In any event, trying to get transparency on which companies are donating unholy gobs of cash to Super PACs in an effort to sway elections in their favor is definitely just like segregation, because Karl Rove says so:The Unholy Maw of Sponsored Plutocracy may have a point here, if you consider that ... um ... hmm. No, there's no goddamn way he has a point here. I don't think saying that maybe corporations doing business with state pension funds maybe ought to disclose how much money they may be blowing to "anonymously" influence elections and legislation in those states really counts as oppressing anyone. The Republican Party, of course, feels very differently, and is pretty sure that corporations are the most oppressed people on the planet, much more oppressed than those nasty actual citizens that are always hectoring them.

I think we have to remember, every once in a while, that we really should be astonished when the movers and shakers of the conservative movement say such asinine and offensive things. It's hard to do, since there's been so much of it, but really: does Karl Rove really think campaign finance disclosure laws represents a form of segregation? Really? Or is he just peddling bullshit because, by golly, a group of entirely anonymous corporations get to pay him cash to peddle bullshit on their behalves, happily knowing they can hide said bullshit-peddling from the public so as to not tarnish their brand name by associating with it? Good Lord, what a happy prostitute this man is. I bet with enough of a cash donation, there's literally nothing we couldn't get him to say. All it would take is some billionaire with deep pockets and Karl Rove would start advocating liberalism, free love or to return the Fed to the Cheese Standard.

The ability for corporations to write our laws and elect our leaders should be a national disgrace, which is exactly why they're so determined nobody find out quite how much they're spending, and for what. But truly, what a cowardly position.