A brief follow-up to Tuesday’s piece suggesting that there are no longer any meaningful restrictions on money in politics:

Bloomberg news reports that Super PACs created just this week (to celebrate the official entry of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, into the presidential race) will have $31 million in the bank by Friday. Personally, I have trouble keeping keeping track of how large a money-in-politics number has to be to be impressive, but the Bloombergers write:

Although super-PACs have radically changed the pace at which committees backing presidential candidates can raise money, the Cruz haul is remarkable. There are no known cases in which an operation backing a White House hopeful has collected this much money in less than a week.

Presumably many of the pro-Cruz millionaires will take advantage of the various loopholes available so that their identities need never be disclosed, so that the TV viewers in early primary and caucus states need never be told who is responsible for the highly illuminating “messaging” that will soon be educating them via their television screens.

And, to briefly respond to a couple of commenters in the thread under the previous piece who suggested that it only bothers me when Republicans benefit from the all-loophole regulatory regimen: Yes, Hillary Clinton will officially enter the race with with unimaginably vast resources at her disposal and the disposal of her allied (but not officially coordinated) PACs. The whole system, as evolved, is a blot on our democracy.

Thank you, U.S. Supreme Court for safeguarding our freedom of expression in this manner and making it impossible for Congress, even if it could summon the will to put an end to it, to put an end to it.