It will come as no surprise to Coloradans force-fed a fire-hose stream of ugly and untrustworthy campaign election material over the last two years that independent spending– spending directly tied to no candidate and mostly free of accountability– more than tripled in the state from 2008 to 2010. This according to a recent report released by watchdog group Follow the Money, which singles out Colorado for study. The authors report that, although the state has relatively strong disclosure laws, larger changes in campaign finance rules have let loose here as everywhere in the country a storm of money and a sea of roiling paperwork that can cover over as much as it reveals.

The report makes clear that independent expenditures will continue to pour into the state in the tens of millions, generating high-volume few-strings-attached propaganda. Groups affiliated with other groups spun off from still other groups will continue to set up front companies to buy air time, create ads, and then essentially disappear. The ads will be a mess of exaggeration and distortion and it will become increasingly difficult to hold anyone responsible. We are living through a turbocharged age of Floyd Brown‘s “Willie Horton.”

In 2006, in statewide and legislative races, independent spending equaled only 2 percent of money donated directly to candidate campaigns in Colorado. Independent groups spent $380,000.

In the 2008 statewide, legislative and judicial races, independent spending shot up to 76 percent of money donated directly to candidate campaigns. Independent groups spent $7.5 million.

In post-Citizens United 2010, independent spending overtook donations to candidates to reach 130 percent. Independent groups spent $26 million.

In 2010, on the right, the big spending came from corporations and their representatives. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent $4 million. American Justice Partnership, which pushes anti-regulation legislation, spent $1.7 million. Karl Rove’s American Crossroads spent $1.2 million and Altria, a tobacco industry group, spent $1.2 million.

On the left, advocacy and union groups doled out the cash. Top spending groups included Twenty First Century Colorado, which gave $2.7 million, Accountability for Colorado, which gave $1.5 million, and The Neighborhood Project, which gave $1.4 million.

Adding to those menacing statistics, the Follow the Money authors write that the state’s tough transparency laws are being absurdly undermined by well-funded groups who bungle their disclosure forms.

“Filers seem to be filling out the independent expenditure and electioneering forms incorrectly,” they write. “For example, several conservative groups, such as Focus on the Family and Colorado Citizens for Accountable Government, reported spending in support of Democrats, an unlikely event.”

The Follow the Money report is worth reading in full. It includes links to donations made by the organizations listed.

Fix Congress First is one of the groups formed in the last election cycle to try and do something to combat the waterfall of corrupting money in politics.

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This week, mailers brought out by Colorado Citizens for Accountable Government attacking Democratic House Rep. John Soper accuse him of wanting to release sex offenders from prison and imply that Soper would turn them loose in the district’s school yards.

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In conversation with the Colorado Independent, Soper was clearly shaken by the mailer. He defended himself against the smear and guessed at the origin of the attack.

“I’ve sponsored youth groups for 40 years. This is not my reputation. People who know me, know better than to believe this. I have a long record of voting for tough sentences and monitoring of these kind of criminals.

“I think this mailer is about an amendment that was attached to a 2007 senate bill, SB 114 (pdf). This was a bill about the criminal code. I voted for that bill. But there was an amendment attached by [GOP House Rep.] Frank McNulty meant to kill that bill. I voted against that amendment. Now it looks to me like that was a gotcha amendment where now they could say I was against being tough on sex offenders.”

Soper provided a list of seven bills he voted for in the last four years that stiffen sentencing and monitoring of sex offenders. SB 114 mentioned above, for example, fights internet predators; 2006′s HB 1090, spawned by cases involving molestation by priests, eliminated the statute of limitations for certain sex crimes; 2008′s 1178, he said, targeted pornographers.

Colorado Citizens for Accountable Government is a Denver-based so-called 527 group run by Andrew Nickel. The group will likely have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars targeting candidates by Election Day in November.

Earlier this month, Soper’s Republican opponent, Brian Vande Krol, was hit by the lefty 527 Accountability for Colorado, which sent out a mailer reportedly saying Vande Krol believed sick children should be denied health care because he opposed federal health care reform legislation.

Accountability for Colorado was also behind an ad in District 50 targeting Republican Bob Boswell. The flier it sent around in Greeley pictured a nuclear mushroom cloud and said Boswell would risk nuking northern Colorado because he was in favor of bringing “all of America’s nuclear waste to Colorado.”

Soper and Vande Krol lamented the ugly turn in the race brought by the outside groups.

“I committed to my opponent early in this race to not attack like this. I said that the first time I met him,” Soper said. “I try to be a gentleman and statesman. That’s what I try to be. My opponent wouldn’t stoop to this. I knew it was an outside group when I saw it,” he said of the sexual offenders mailer.

“I’ve seen the attack mailer on my opponent and I don’t like it,” Vande Krol wrote to the Colorado Independent in an email. “I don’t know if there is any more truth in this attack piece than in the attack pieces about me. I can’t control the 527s, and I think it’s sad that both attackers talk about accountability, when neither is accountable to the voters to present accurate information. I trust that voters will pay attention to the substantive issues…”

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According to the Daily, Hasan has raised more than $191,000 and spent more than $190,000 — all but $950 of that his own money. His Democratic opponent, incumbent Christine Scanlan of Dillon, has raised just under $31,000 and spent just under $11,000.

But now Hasan, who lives in the wealthy gated resort community of Beaver Creek and is the son of wealthy managed health-care pioneer and Pakistani emigrant Malik Hasan, is miffed because a 527 group called Accountability for Colorado is paying for mailers in support of Scanlan.

Hasan told the paper he hasn’t received 527 support because he doesn’t make promises to special interests in Denver, and his campaign manager, Kaye Ferry — the former Vail Chamber director who resigned after calling Front Range skiers riff-raff — said part of the reason 527s stay away from Hasan is because they give money to people who “need help.”

Scanlan told paper she doesn’t know anything about Accountability for Colorado, but wishes they would stay away: “(527s) are just a very weird part of our political process, and I would much prefer that they wouldn’t be involved,” Scanlan said.