To paraphrase the immortal Chico Escuela, politics has been very, very good to Carl Bearden.

Since 1993, he’s gone from representing the Harvester area on the St. Charles County Council to representing rich people who want to influence elections and public policy in Missouri without the public knowing who they are.

Along the way, he served seven years in the Missouri House while simultaneously building his lobbying business. Despite the massive potential for conflict of interest, it’s become common for lobbyists and political consultants to serve as legislators. Mr. Bearden was one of the pioneers.

He resigned from the House in 2007 to join a new lobbying firm, Pelopidas Inc., a major client of which is Rex Sinquefield, the retired financier and free-market crusader.

Mr. Bearden also became director of the Missouri office of Americans for Prosperity, one of many pro-industry astroturf front groups linked to billionaire industrialist David Koch of New York.

In July, having studied stealth politics from the masters, Mr. Bearden founded United for Missouri, organized under Section 501(c)4 of the Internal Revenue Service Code (for “civic welfare groups”), and a sister group, United for Missouri’s Future, organized as a Section 501(c)3 “charitable organization” under the IRS code.

Mr. Bearden is an affable and unapologetic soul. He visited us last week, telling us that United for Missouri is a “grass-roots” organization that has 50,000 people on its mailing list. But mailing lists are cheap. What he would not tell us is where its money comes from.

Mr. Sinquefield has been identified as one of its founding donors. He usually is quite brazen about his political donations, which include more than $10 million to the effort to change St. Louis and Kansas City’s earnings tax laws, and millions more to Republican and Democratic politicians alike.

But 501(c)4 corporations have become popular with donors who don’t want to leave a paper trail. If you see a campaign ad paid for by, let’s say, the National Toxic Waste Association, you might be disinclined to vote for its candidate or support its issues.

But if toxic waste guys give money to a 501(c)4, and it runs an ad, you’ll never know who paid for it. You could wind up supporting their candidate or issue without knowing that it’s a sell-out to toxic waste producers.

These stealth organizations have helped drive spending in the current election cycle — much of it for attack ads — to record levels.

The IRS says 501(c)4s cannot be used primarily for partisan political purposes, a rule that appears to be being observed more in the breach than in the observance. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., has asked the IRS to investigate whether 501(c)4s are abusing their tax-free status.

Contributions to 501(c)4s are not tax deductible, but the groups don’t have to pay income taxes and donors don’t have to disclose their identities. Contributions to 501(c)3 “charities” are tax-deductible, and the groups are not allowed to engage in partisan politics.

They can “educate” on issues, but the “education” often is indistinguishable from advocacy. Much of this is a tax scam, pure and simple.

Mr. Bearden vowed that his groups will be “focusing on state and local issues,” particularly the issue of “transparency.”

You read that correctly. This utterly opaque organization will focus on government transparency.

His first target will be municipal employee, fire district and school district salaries. “We believe that information the public is paying for should be made public,” he said.

We fully agree; in fact, the STL Info section of the Post-Dispatch website, stltoday.com, contains many databases on public employee salaries.

But if knowing what the fire chief is paid is important to democracy, how much more important is knowing who’s paying to elect people to office and influence debate on issues?

Without full transparency of all political spending, the public will be suspicious. And should be.