"Deadlock by design hobbles election agency; The FEC was born of idealism after Nixon era excesses, but its GOP members have all but shut it down" by Christopher Rowland | Globe Staff, July 07, 2013
WASHINGTON — A pattern of paralysis....
As usual with the Globe, it's the Republicans fault.
In essence, according to critics, the FEC has been rendered toothless, and at the worst possible time, when powerful special interests are freer than they have been in decades to exert financial influence on Washington politicians....
The story of how an agency went from being a model of good-government intentions to a symbol of broken Washington stretches across the nation’s capital, from the Congress that created the FEC and then stymied it, to the White House that failed to nominate new commissioners, to the Supreme Court that gutted campaign finance laws.
Today, the agency is among the nation’s most dysfunctional federal entities, with leaders who rarely speak outside the confines of formal meetings, a staff of investigators who are routinely ignored, and a mandate that is rarely fulfilled....
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