The Center for Public Integrity has an important story today on Organizing for Action's money in politics problem:

Organizing for Action, launched by former Obama campaign officials earlier this year, confirms it will not publicly release donors' employer and occupation data despite collecting it through its online donation form.

Lisa Rosenberg made a similar observation recently, in adding incomplete disclosure to the list of problems with the President's dark money group. To reiterate: OFA allows the President to accept unlimited donations (in the name of grassroots organizing), to build political power for the President, while avoiding the reach of campaign finance laws.

Here is President Obama in 2010 (video, transcript), talking about the DISCLOSE Act:

These shadow groups are already forming and building war chests of tens of millions of dollars to influence the fall elections. Now, imagine the power this will give special interests over politicians.  Corporate lobbyists will be able to tell members of Congress if they don’t vote the right way, they will face an onslaught of negative ads in their next campaign.  And all too often, no one will actually know who’s really behind those ads.

Now it's 2013, Obama has his own "shadow group." We already knew OFA's "voluntary disclosure" was ultimately unreliable. (It's voluntary, and there's a reason campaign finance laws aren't designed to be self-enforcing. On top of that, even if they know the donor's identity, donors are still quite capable of laundering their donations.)

And now we get official confirmation that even though OFA collects important information about donors, and they plan not to release that information publicly.  Why would Obama's group want to know this information, while at the same time keeping it from the public? Why does the President seem to have no plan for OFA's structure, apparently making it up as they go?

The President who was so concerned about the corrupting effects of unlimited contributions is surprisingly unconcerned about the effects of unlimited contributions on himself, and his c4 reflects it. OFA's ability to broker access to the President and tap into large donors is only being held back by the threat of public blowback, and not at all by any Presidential sense of accountability. If OFA's structure were motivated by accountability, we'd see a coherent policy about campaign finance disclosure, empowering public oversight of his group's finances and donors. Instead, we see conflicting messages about what kind of access a $50K donor can expect, and a disclosure policy that exists only in proportion to public outrage about Obama's dark money.

President Obama should be leading the way in creating accountability in our politics. Instead he's leading politics to a place with little accountability.

President Obama has reportedly loosened fundraising restrictions, allowing huge corporate donations to support his 2013 inauguration festivities. Obama placed far stricter limits on corporate donations on 2009's inauguration donations.

The decision prioritizes a lavish celebration over the integrity of the office, and bodes poorly for an administration whose first term can be characterized as slowly turning away from a principled approach to money in politics in favor of political expediency and fundraising.

Despite some clarifications from spokespeople about the fundraising procedures, Obama's announcement raises one serious question after another:

What is Obama thinking? At a time when deficits, taxes, and government programs are being negotiated through secretive two-person dealmaking, how can it possibly be a good idea to fund a huge party with huge corporate donations? If it's that hard to raise $40M for the inauguration, why not change the inauguration, rather than loosening the policy? Is this set of celebrations really so important?

In a way, the inauguration is an expo for the biggest money-in-politics players (to paraphrase my colleague Kathy Kiely). Even if Sheldon Adelson doesn't throw a casino-themed gala in Obama's honor, there's a whole machinery in DC built on brokering wealth and influence, and a good party feeds the scene. Neither defending the celebrations nor priming the check-writers presents a good public interest case for this move.

Will the donations be well disclosed? A spokesperson claims that donations will be posted online regularly, but that's a small consolation. Will we know who is donating, reliably, in real-time, online? Probably not. And what's to stop donors with politically troublesome identities from laundering their donations through each other? Until legislation like the DISCLOSE Act passes, the answer is: nothing.

Isn't conflict everywhere? Press accounts are also describing a conflict of interest policy that will vet donors against potential conflicts of interest, and return troublesome donations, including lobbyists.  This is a laughable conflict of interest protection -- if BP's lobbyists can't donate, isn't a donation from BP itself far, far more problematic? Obama's ethics policies continue to rely on vilifying lobbyists while ignoring real influence, like people who leave the White House to direct teams of lobbyists. A conflict of interest policy should actually avoid conflicts of interest; a real conflict of interest policy would refuse  $250K donations from corporations.

What's for sale? Even if the donations are online, we don't know what's up for sale. What kind of access does a $200,000 contribution buy? And beyond parade seats and celebratory breakfasts, what else will the administration be giving up?  Top administration officials were free to participate in fundraisers where unlimited donations were solicited from  dark money c4s in the run-up to the election, and Obama had no disclosure policy or public explanation of how cabinet members were involved.  Who will solicit these donations, and how can we be sure their public service is unaffected?

The Obama administration is likely to, again, justify their behavior by saying that they're following the law.  Whenever their accountability policies have loopholes or problems, rather than fixing them, the administration asks to be judged in comparison to Bush, saying their record speaks for itself. At some point, though, it's time to judge Obama in his own words. Obama said unlimited donations sully our democracy, threaten public service, and weaken representation -- and has now chosen to embrace them.

Maybe Obama's setting the tone for his second term: we're not worried about whether we look like reformers at all.