Eleven Shocking Facts About Campaign Finance (or Why We Need Publicly Funded Elections)

Over at The Nation, they have a list of Eleven Shocking Facts About Campaign Finance (and they’re not pretty):

The amount of independent expenditure and electioneering communication spending by outside groups has quadrupled since 2006. [Center for Responsive Politics]

The percentage of spending coming from groups that do not disclose their donors has risen from 1 percent to 47 percent since the 2006 mid-term elections. [Center for Responsive Politics]

Campaign receipts for members of the House of Representatives totaled $1.9 billion in 2010—up from $781 million in 1998. [Committee for Economic Development]

Outside groups spent more on political advertising in 2010 than party committees—for the first time in at least two decades. [Center for Responsive Politics]

A shocking 72 percent of political advertising by outside groups in 2010 came from sources that were prohibited from spending money in 2006. [Committee for Economic Development]

In 2004, 97.9 percent of outside groups disclosed their donors. In 2010, 34.0 percent did. [Committee for Economic Development]

In 2010, the US Chamber of Commerce spent $31,207,114 in electioneering communications. The contributions for which it disclosed the donors: $0. [Committee for Economic Development]

Only 26,783 Americans donated more than $10,000 to federal campaigns in 2010—or, about one in 10,000 Americans. Their donations accounted for 24.3 percent of total campaign donations. [Sunlight Foundation]

Average donation from that elite group was $28,913. (The median individual income in America is $26,364) [Sunlight Foundation]

Amount the Karl Rove–led Crossroads GPS says it will spend on the 2012 elections: $240 million. []

Amount that President Obama has raised from the financial sector already for his 2012 re-election:$15.6 million [Washington Post]