Show Me the Money

A friend who shall go nameless (old joke coming) but whose initials are David Brock (end of old joke) showed me this piece in Saturday's El País. The reporting is not very good. Still, one datum is worth pursuing: CiU paid a direct marketing firm nearly 150,000 euros for mass mailings. (It's not clear when or to how many homes.) A market price for the same service would be about 4000 euros, says El País's Pere Ríos. (His source for the figure or model for reckoning it isn't clear either.) It does seem like a lot of money for a small party. Grants to parties came to over 81 million euros in 2009, of which CiU got less than 2.5 million. If CiU falls into the general pattern of 80% state financing, its total income for 2009 should be about 3.1 million euros, of which the money spent on direct mailing would be 4.8%--a lot for rubbish. But there may be a catch: in election years, most parties are entitled to a per-voter grant which specifically underwrites these kinds of mass mailings, up to 21 euro-cents per voter. There are over 35 million electors in Spain, over 5 million in Catalunya. The latter figure would give CiU over 1 million to spend on mass mailings in a general elections year. Whether that approximates the real cost is another matter. The real issue is this: if parties are funded as though they were state utilities, why are they audited to see that this money is well spent? I haven't found annual reports or auditors' reports on any party web page. What I have found is the logo for a state infrastructure spending stimulus package on the PSOE website (on this page; look for the Plan E logo and link) and the Transparency International index for 2009. Spain is the 32nd most corrupt country on Earth. Not bad, but not good.