When I first read the headline, I read it as I have put it in the subject of this blog post.  I was going to say to readers in Massachusetts that I bet you think this is about Charlie Baker and Chris Christie.

After reading the story, and  then went back to reread the Naked Capitalism headline which is State Street, Governor Elect Rauner Both Implicated in Pay-to-Play Scandals.

Rauner’s aides tried dismissing the revelation arguing that these firms were already feeding at the public fund management trough. That argument doesn’t cut it from a legal or common sense standpoints, as Sirota explains:

But legal experts, former SEC officials and campaign finance lawyers interviewed by IBTimes said the [SEC] rule applies over the entire life of a pension fund investment because those investments can be terminated, sold off or extended at any time. The point is to prevent political contributions from influencing not just the original decision to invest, but the ongoing choice to continue or terminate the investment.

David Melton of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform said pension “contracts come up for renewal periodically,” and that it’s therefore “inconsistent with the spirit and purpose of the law” to rely on the argument that the donations are acceptable because they were made after the original investment decision.

In the case involving Baker and Christie, bake was the fund manager at the time and Christie was the governor of New Jersey.  This case has been under investigation, but the results are being withheld from the public until well after the election is in the past.