Unlike fundraising by the candidates' official campaigns, which tend to rely at least in part on small donations from grass-roots supporters, the super PACs raise massive sums from a very small number of wealthy people. Who those donors are is important because they presumably will have influence with (or on) their favored candidate and potentially the next president.

Priorities USA Action, the Obama super PAC, raised $1.2 million and had 38 individual donors in the second half of 2011. Out of those, 33, or 86 percent, were male. (I did not include corporate or union donations in these calculations.)

The disparity is even wider with the Romney super PAC, Restore our Future, which raised $17 million in the second half of 2011. Out of 146 individual donors, 134, or 92 percent, were male.

This is hardly a new phenomenon.

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One of the big headlines out of the filings Tuesday is that Harold Simmons, a Texas billionaire, gave the Karl Rove-affiliated American Crossroads an impressive $7 million over the course of just a couple months in the fourth quarter of 2011. That's nearly 40 percent of the $18 million the group raised last year; an affiliated group, Crossroads GPS, whose donors are secret, raised more than $30 million.

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Disclosures posted last evening at the California secretary of state's website confirm that a flood of military contractor money has flowed to Patricia McKeon, who is running for an open Assembly seat in a district that overlaps that of her husband, Republican Rep. Buck McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

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Recent disclosures reveal that a federal lobbyist with ties to Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., the senior member of the committee overseeing the Pentagon, provided financial support to McKeon's wife, who is seeking a seat in the California Assembly this year. As defense industry lobbyists scramble to head off looming cuts in the Pentagon budget, they are looking for new ways to ingratiate themselves with McKeon.

Patricia McKeon, Buck's wife, surprised many when she announced her intention last September to run for an open seat that largely overlaps her husband's district. One of the first reported contributions to her campaign came from a political committee called the Fund for American Opportunity, registered to a post office box in Washington, D.C., that donated $1,000. The fund, which is financed by a number of corporations including the drug industry trade association PhRMA, is owned and operated by Mark Valente, a Beltway lobbyist.

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Instead, 2012 seems poised to go down in the history books as the Year of the Super PAC.

Look at the figures: As of Monday, independent expenditure committees had spent over $38 million on the Republican primary candidates. That’s already over three times more than candidates themselves spent on broadcast advertising during the entire 2008 Republican primary season.

The avalanche of outside money is worrying political parties, making candidates anxious and just plain depressing the socks off the rest of us.

But at least one of the hundreds of registered independent expenditure committees out there is trying to use the system in a different way, and maybe – just maybe – building a model for the future.

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The super PACs operating in the GOP primary have managed to delay disclosing their donors until next month, but the identities of who funded these groups will be public. Groups in a different category -- those that don't ever disclose donors -- haven't started operating in any prominent way, but you can be sure they will in the fall.

I've recently explored how we got to this point. But what about the prospects for reform of a system that so many are disillusioned with?

To learn about what's going on, I spoke to Fred Wertheimer, the founder and president of Democracy 21, who has been working on campaign finance issues for more than three decades.

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The brainchild of Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren, the darling of the left—yet prompted by Senator Scott Brown, the Tea Party centerfold who took Ted Kennedy's seat—the key enforcement mechanism is remarkably simple in its conception: the candidate favored in a third-party ad on TV, radio or online must make a contribution worth half of the ad’s costs to the opposing candidate’s charity of choice within three days of broadcast.

The negative air war that was predicted two years ago as a consequence of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling could very well be thwarted in this one key race. It’s the little engine that could, nationally, but if the Massachusetts experiment in self-punishment proves enforceable here, it could catch on elsewhere, sort of like the Pledge of Allegiance against dirty politics, a yardstick that blunts the worst consequences of the high court’s decision.

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Adelson has done it again. He and his wife Marian have cut another $5 million check for Gingrich to go negative on Romney in Florida. The money won’t go as far as it did in South Carolina – TV ads cost a lot more in Florida – but it’s enough to give the Grinch a solid footing.

And, who knows? The Adelsons are billionaires. They might decide to put in another $5 million or perhaps $20 million into Gingrich’s Super Pac. The point is, there’s no limit.

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Now Chris Dodd, senator turned Motion Picture Association of America chief, is out with an informative interview warning lawmakers -- particularly Democrats -- not to count on Hollywood's historically generous campaign contributions. He told Fox late last week:

Candidly, those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don't pay any attention to me when my job is at stake. ...

I would caution people don't make the assumption that because the quote 'Hollywood community' has been historically supportive of Democrats, which they have, don't make the false assumptions this year that because we did it in years past, we will do it this year. These issues before us -- this is the only issue that goes right to the heart of this industry.

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Obama enjoys the three advantages any incumbent president seeking reelection does: four full years to raise money for his own campaign or the national party committees; the political leverage of the office he holds to raise it; and, like incumbents in most cycles, the absence of a primary challenger who might draw down his coffers. Sure enough, and despite a crowded Republican field, by the midpoint of 2011 Obama had already raised more money ($48.7 million) than all of the GOP presidential hopefuls combined ($36.7 million). His campaign has since raised $42 million in both the third and fourth quarters of 2011, with the Democratic National Committee hauling in an additional $51 million during the final six months of last year.

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Never has the ruling been as salient as it is now in the national political discussion. The Occupy movement has taken aim at the decision, blaming it for allowing the "1 percent" to exercise unprecedented control over the political process. Meanwhile, the decision has been widely cited as paving the road for the super PACs that are dominating the Republican primary, now even outspending candidates' official campaigns in South Carolina.

All of which contributed to my interest in a letter sent to the New York Times this week by Floyd Abrams, a longtime First Amendment lawyer who represented Sen. Mitch McConnell in the Citizens United case and argued that part of the McCain-Feingold law was unconstitutional. Abrams has been involved in many landmark cases, notably representing the Times in the Pentagon Papers case in the early 1970s.

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“There are probably fewer than 100 people who are fueling 90 percent of this outside money right now,” said David Donnelly, national campaigns director at the Public Campaign Action Fund, an advocacy group favoring limits on political spending. “When you think about the amazing impact that this small number of people have on deciding the election, on the information that people will have on who to vote for, it’s mind-boggling.”

…

In total, these new and unrestrained political action committees [super PACs] spent more than $15 million supporting GOP candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire and are now outspending the official campaigns in South Carolina by 2 to 1, according to advertising and expenditure data.

(Emphasis added.)

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“There’s a lot of movement at the White House,” said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen. “I just had a meeting at the White House counsel’s office, trying to encourage them to move forward with the executive order. They have the perfect window of opportunity to get the executive order done.”

“It’s simple—any company that is paid with taxpayer dollars should be required to disclose political contributions,” said Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-California, who has pushed for the White House to issue the order. “With public dollars come public responsibilities, and I hope President Obama will issue his executive order right away.”

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Romney’s Free and Strong America PAC and its affiliates states have lavished close to $1.3 million in campaign donations to federal, state and local GOP politicians, almost all since 2010. His recipients include officials in the major upcoming primary states of New Hampshire and South Carolina, and in three southern Super Tuesday states where he was trounced four years ago.

In New Hampshire, a U.S. senator, a congressman, 10 state senators and three executive councilors shared $26,000 in donations from Romney’s Free and Strong America PAC in 2010 and 2011 combined. All 15 have showered Romney with endorsements leading up to Tuesday’s primary

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley came out for Romney last month – a year after his Free and Strong America PACs funneled $36,000 to the Tea Party darling’s 2010 election bid. And 19 state and Washington, D.C., lawmakers in three Super Tuesday states – Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia -- are backing Romney after his PAC poured a total of $125,500 into their coffers for elections held in 2009 and 2010.

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In the case, which was spearheaded by the state's Democratic Attorney General Steve Bullock, Montana's top court restored Big Sky country's century-old law banning corporations from directly spending on political candidates or committees. Legal experts believe that upon appeal, this case will come before the nation's highest court. While there, it could serve as the first test of the precedents in the infamous Citizens United decision that essentially allows unfettered corporate spending in campaigns.

This week on my weekday morning radio show on KKZN-AM760, I spoke with Bullock about the case. What follows is an edited transcript of our discussion (you can find the full audio podcast here).

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Americans have never much liked government. After all, the nation was conceived in a revolution against government.

But the surge of cynicism now engulfing America isn’t about government’s size. The cynicism comes from a growing perception that government isn’t working for average people. It’s for big business, Wall Street and the very rich instead.

In a recent Pew Foundation poll, 77 percent of respondents said too much power is in the hands of a few rich people and corporations.

That’s understandable. To take a few examples:

Wall Street got bailed out but homeowners caught in the fierce downdraft caused by the Street’s excesses have got almost nothing.

Big agribusiness continues to rake in hundreds of billions in price supports and ethanol subsidies. Big Pharma gets extended patent protection that drives up everyone’s drug prices. Big oil gets its own federal subsidy. But small businesses on the Main Streets of America are barely making it.

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Cablevision's Optimum cable pulled the ad, which claimed that Tester voted against banning the EPA from regulating farm dust. The supposed EPA rule was completely imaginary and the vote was about Chinese currency manipulation.

I bet Crossroads is super embarrassed about this awful mistake, right? Of course they are:

Nate Hodson of Crossroads said in defense of the pulled ad, "It was a very small cable system. The four largest broadcast stations in Montana reviewed the facts supporting the ad and will continue airing it."

He said later, "We are communicating with the cable system and expect that the ad will be back up and running on cable soon."

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Abramoff pleaded guilty to defrauding his lobbying clients through over-billing and double-dealing. He admitted to bribery and wire fraud. In his interview, Abramoff explained basically How He Did It, and it turns out that it's really not that hard to "bribe" a member of Congress. Offer their staffers jobs and give the members lots of gifts and campaign donations. Then you can write whatever you want into pending legislation, more or less.

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Naturally, I take out my iPhone and begin snapping pics.

On the other side of the bridge, three soldiers standing in wait in the middle of the road, rifles slung over their shoulders, direct my Kampalan driver Godfrey and me to pull over.

“You were photographing the bridge,” one of them announces, coming up to my open window.  “We saw you.”

“Taking photos of the bridge is expressly forbidden,” the second offers by way of clarification, as the first reaches in and grabs the iPhone out of my hand.  “National security.  Terrorists could use such photos to help in planning to blow up the bridge.”

“Do I look like a terrorist to you?” I ask.  “And anyway,” I shout as Soldiers One and Two walk off with their prize, oblivious, “I wasn’t photographing the bridge.  I was photographing the rapids.  The bridge was precisely the one thing I wasn’t photographing!”

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