On Thursday, Steve Duin wrote a column discussing the need for campaign finance reforms supported by State Senator Vicki Walker, who is running for Secretary of State against Rick Metsger and Kate Brown.

By Thursday afternoon, the OEA had dropped another $25,000 on the race, bringing Brown's total to more than $400,000 - $285,000 more than her two opponents in the Democratic Primary race for Secretary of State combined

Duin from his blog ...

Both Vicki Walker and Rick Metsger called me Thursday afternoon to report the immediate fallout of my Thursday column on the Secretary of State race:

The Oregon Education Association promptly dropped another $25,000 into the Kate Brown campaign. Apparently, the OEA was terrified to learn that Brown -- who has about as much sincere interest in campaign finance reform as Dick Cheney -- only has a $260,000 edge in fundraising on Metsger and Walker COMBINED.

As Metsger said, "It goes to the point that Vicki mentioned: The unions don't really want to do campaign finance reform, because this is how they buy elections."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

This underscores the main problem achieving real reform in Oregon Government. The reformers will never get financed by the organizations and entities that have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, and those organizations have near-limitless resources to pump into the campaigns of those that take direction.

As Chomsky once observed:

"The poor complain, they often do, but that's just idle chatter. The system works, it works for all, at least for all that matter."