Inaugurals Committee Are A Crude Protection Racket

No self-respecting banana republic would tolerate such obvious corruption.

Inaugural committees were always a form of extortion, but Ronald Reagan supersized them in 1981.

Did you know that the only restriction on shoveling private money into presidential inaugural committee funds is that you can’t be a foreign national? Otherwise, there is no monetary limit, no prohibition against government contractors contributing, no prohibition against lobbyists contributing, no prohibition against corporations contributing … you get the idea. It’s a cesspool. Ronald Reagan supersized it in 1981 and its two subsequent expansions were the work of Donald Trump. That’s the topic of my latest New Republic piece. You can read it here.