The Corruption is Positively Disgusting

I’ve been paying a LOT of attention recently to the Federal Election Commission’s Report of Receipts and Disbursements for the current candidates for President of the United States. What has become apparent to me as I sift through the data is that they reveal a high degree of corruption. I would like to compare the candidates using some mathematical analysis based on employer contributions. I hope to derive a “corruption quotient” (CQ) by revealing the percentage of each candidates contributions that are in some way illicit.

To do this is a simple matter. I will take the number of campaign dollars received by each candidate for which no employer was reported. If this was a simple matter of some private donors failing to fill out a form properly or choosing to omit their employer, the rate should be at least approximately the same for each candidate. But as we will see, this is not how it turns out at all.

To derive a final “corruption quotient,” I will divide the number of “no employer was supplied” dollars and divide it by that candidate’s total received funds for the quarter. This will tell us what portion of each candidate’s funds require such secrecy that the donor must remain anonymous. The breakdown is as follows:

CLINTON <– (These are hyperlinks to the FEC website campaign profiles)
$2,125,251.11 / $27,021,358.06 = 7.8%

OBAMA
$11,645,363.26 / $33,120,439.80 = 35.1%

EDWARDS
$3,347,317.66 / $9,097,494.93 = 36.8%

GIULIANI
$2,667,131.75 / $17,599,291.85 = 15.2%

MCCAIN
$2,207,402.39 / $11,591,043.81 = 23.6%

ROMNEY
$2,740,696.85 / $20,997,715.31 = 13.1%

An astounding level of corruption from all of the front-runners. Even Clinton’s 7.8% leaves me feeling slightly queasy. But there’s no such thing as an honest politician, and this is to be expected, right? I mean, who could possibly set a better example than Hillary Clinton? Your answer is right here:

RON PAUL
$1100.00 / $2,369,452.95 = 0.00046%

Not one percent. Not one tenth of one percent. Not one hundredth of one percent. An astounding four and a half THOUSANDTHS of a percent. How often do you get to use the word thousandth? Thank you, Dr. Paul, for giving me the opportunity to use one of the only two words in the English language containing the string “dth.”

But as I compiled these data I thought to myself, perhaps there’s a scale bias occurring? Maybe these kind of tremendous numbers only occur when you start talking about total contributions of a scale that only the front-runners show? To test this theory, I calculated the “corruption quotient” of the Senator from my home state, Senator Joe Biden, who happens also to be a Presidential candidate. Here’s what I found:

BIDEN
$138,476.67 / $2,451,179.70 = 0.06%

Okay, sure, it’s not measured in the THOUSANDTHS of a percent, but at least he’s under one percent, right? He may be 130.5 times more corrupt than Ron Paul, but at least he’s well below Billary Clinton. Perhaps it is just a matter of scale, to some degree, since Biden ranks so far below the front-runners as well in CQ.

But no, wait! Behold:

BROWNBACK
$654,337.15 / $1,425,766.58 = 45.9%

Brownback! How COULD you? Nearly half of your campaign contributions don’t list an employer? So much for the theory that proportion doesn’t hold in this calculation.

Ron Paul is a staunch defender of American liberty, a bulwark against the corruption that plagues Washington, and perhaps our last chance to save our government from the poisonous involvement of special interests and political action committees.

Please, for our liberty and for our country, donate anything you can to the Ron Paul campaign and volunteer your talents for the cause!