“I feel extorted. Every time I wrote a check I felt that it was a form of extortion, the price of entry, because of the reception that you got when you contributed versus the reception when you did not contribute… We talk about corruption in Third World countries. In this case, the corrupters have written a law to make it legal to the corruptees. And I consider that atrocious in the name of democracy.”

John Hofmeister, who ran Shell Oil USA from 2005 through 2008, talks to CNN about the country’s political fund-raising system.