Follow the Money

[Jim]

Saw this quote from the Citizen's United decision - gotta love it. Reminds me of when that old rainmaker, Trent Lott, was asked about the fairness of moneyed interests having access to the halls of power - his response: "Well, folks can find other ways of gaining access". Uh-huh.

 

..this court now concludes that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. That speakers may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that those officials are corrupt. And the appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy.

 

Money equals free speech advocates in 3, 2, 1..

[Hugh Conway]

Who? Our resident starry eyed Rand thumping evangelists? Posting PFFMIEAFMFOP (That's Protected From Free Market Industry Employees Advocating Free Markets For Other People) - no coincidence it sounds like a turd dropping into a toilet.

[rob]

Public officials should be forced to display sponsorship emblems behind them while on stage, or in commercials, like they do with sponsored athletes. That way, we can see the money behind them. Full transparency, right?

[rob]

Presidential Debate 2012 -- Brought to you by PEPSI! The Choice of the next generation.

[JayB]

Saw this quote from the Citizen's United decision - gotta love it. Reminds me of when that old rainmaker, Trent Lott, was asked about the fairness of moneyed interests having access to the halls of power - his response: "Well, folks can find other ways of gaining access". Uh-huh.

 

..this court now concludes that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. That speakers may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that those officials are corrupt. And the appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy.

 

Money equals free speech advocates in 3, 2, 1..

 

IMO the amount of money that corporations, unions, and interest groups spend in an effort to influence the outcome of elections is dwarfed by the amount of money that politicians have control over and spend for the same purposes. Promising to increase the wages and benefits of public sector employees doesn't count as political spending?

 

Think that there are no political calculations that influence millitary procurements, earmarks, or entitlement spending?

 

Moreover, what incentive do those who currently hold office have to construct campaign spending rules that aren't biased in their favor?

 

Think all groups that run afoul of whatever spending rules get constructed will be subjected to the same level of legal scrutiny irrespective of which party is in power?

 

 

[Hugh Conway]

Gee jay what is a bribe?

[j_b]

The Secret Big-Money Takeover of America

 

Robert Reich

Former Secretary of Labor; Professor at Berkeley; Author, 'Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future'

Posted: October 7, 2010 05:55 PM

 

Not only is income and wealth in America more concentrated in fewer hands than it's been in 80 years, but those hands are buying our democracy as never before -- and they're doing it behind closed doors.

 

Hundreds of millions of secret dollars are pouring into congressional and state races in this election cycle. The Koch brothers (whose personal fortunes grew by $5 billion last year) appear to be behind some of it, Karl Rove has rounded up other multimillionaires to fund right-wing candidates, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is funneling corporate dollars from around the world into congressional races, and Rupert Murdoch is evidently spending heavily.

 

No one knows for sure where this flood of money is coming from because it's all secret.

 

But you can safely assume its purpose is not to help America's stranded middle class, working class, and poor. It's to pad the nests of the rich, stop all reform, and deregulate big corporations and Wall Street -- already more powerful than since the late 19th century when the lackeys of robber barons literally deposited sacks of cash on the desks of friendly legislators.

 

Credit the Supreme Court's grotesque decision in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, which opened the floodgates. (Even though 8 of 9 members of the Court also held disclosure laws constitutional, the decision invited the creation of shadowy "nonprofits" that don't have to reveal anything.)

 

According to FEC data, only 32 percent of groups paying for election ads are disclosing the names of their donors. By comparison, in the 2006 midterm, 97 percent disclosed; in 2008, almost half disclosed.

 

Last week, when the Senate considered a bill to force such disclosure, every single Republican voted against it -- thereby revealing the GOP's true colors, and presumed benefactors. (To understand how far the GOP has come, nearly ten years ago campaign disclosure was supported by 48 of 54 Republican senators.)

 

Maybe the Disclose Bill can get passed in lame-duck session. Maybe the IRS will make sure Karl Rove's and other supposed nonprofits aren't sham political units. Maybe pigs will learn to fly.

 

In the meantime we face an election that marks an even sharper turn toward plutocratic capitalism than before -- a government by and for the rich and big corporations -- and away from democratic capitalism.

 

As income and wealth has moved to the top, so has political power. That's why, for example, it's been impossible to close the absurd tax loophole that allows hedge-fund and private-equity managers to treat much of their income as capital gains, subject to a 15 percent tax (even though they're earning tens or hundreds of millions a year, and the top 15 hedge-fund managers earned an average of $1 billion last year). Why it proved impossible to fund expanded health care by limiting the tax deductions of the very rich. Why it's so difficult even to extend George Bush's tax cuts for the bottom 98 percent of Americans without also extending them for the top 2 percent - even though the top won't spend the money and create jobs, but will blow a $36 billion hole in the federal budget next year.

 

The good news is average Americans are beginning to understand that when the rich secretly flood our democracy with money, the rest of us drown. Wall Street executives and top CEOs get bailed out while under-water homeowners and jobless workers sink.

 

A Quinnipiac poll earlier this year found overwhelming support for a millionaire tax.

 

But what the public wants means nothing if our democracy is secretly corrupted by big money.

 

Right now we're headed for a perfect storm: An unprecedented concentration of income and wealth at the top, a record amount of secret money flooding our democracy, and a public in the aftershock of the Great Recession becoming increasingly angry and cynical about government. The three are obviously related.

What can you do?

 

1. Read Justice Steven's dissent in the Citizens United case, so you're fully informed about the majority's pernicious illogic.

 

2. Use every opportunity to speak out against this decision, and embarrass and condemn the right-wing Justices who supported it.

 

3. In this and subsequent elections, back candidates for congress and president who vow to put Justices on the Court who will reverse it.

 

4. Demand that the IRS enforce the law and pull the plug on Karl Rove and other sham nonprofits.

 

5. If you have a Republican senator, insist that he or she support the Disclose Act. If they won't, campaign against them.

 

6. Support public financing of elections.

 

7. Join an organization like Common Cause, that's committed to doing all this and getting big money out of politics. (Personal note: I'm so outraged at what's happening that I just became chairman of Common Cause.)

 

8. Send this post to your friends (including any tea partiers you may know).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-secret-bigmoney-takeo_b_754938.html

 

[Crux]

...Useful HuffingtonPost post, thanks.

[billcoe]

Great Robert Reich article jb. Well done and thanks for posting it.

 

Reich didn't mention it but some of these assholes are waging a jihad against the inheritance tax too. (currently for anything over a million dollars on estates over $3.5 million) Claiming that eliminating it will allow family farms to stay in the family...uhh, bullshit, I'd tell mr family farmer -who probably only makes up 1% of those super rich involved: just go get a loan and pay brother bubba off or sell the farm if it's not profitable enough to get a loan on. Mostly it would give the rich an even better chance to pass on the scratch. Like Steinbrenners heirs lucked out on.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/13/taxwise-steinbrenner-pick_n_645163.html

 

I'm sure that Leona Helmsly's dog would disagree though...

[JayB]

That "DISCLOSE" act was quite a beauty.

 

"As former commissioners on the Federal Election Commission with almost 75 years of combined experience, we believe that the bill proposed on April 30 by Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Chris Van Hollen to "blunt" the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC is unnecessary, partially duplicative of existing law, and severely burdensome to the right to engage in political speech and advocacy.

 

Moreover, the Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections Act, or Disclose Act, abandons the longstanding policy of treating unions and businesses equally, suggesting partisan motives that undermine respect for campaign finance laws.

 

At least one of us served on the FEC at all times from its inception in 1975 through August 2008. We are well aware of the practical difficulties involved in enforcing the overly complex Federal Election Campaign Act and the problems posed by additional laws that curtail the ability of Americans to participate in the political process.

 

As we noted in our amicus brief supporting Citizens United, the FEC now has regulations for 33 types of contributions and speech and 71 different types of speakers. Regardless of the abstract merit of the various arguments for and against limits on political contributions and spending, this very complexity raises serious concerns about whether the law can be enforced consistent with the First Amendment.

 

Those regulatory burdens often fall hardest not on large-scale players in the political world but on spontaneous grass-roots movements, upstart, low-budget campaigns, and unwitting volunteers. Violating the law by engaging in forbidden political speech can land you in a federal prison, a very un-American notion. The Disclose Act exacerbates many of these problems and is a blatant attempt by its sponsors to do indirectly, through excessively onerous regulatory requirements, what the Supreme Court told Congress it cannot do directly—restrict political speech.

 

Perhaps the most striking thing about the Disclose Act is that, while the Supreme Court overturned limits on spending by both corporations and unions, Disclose seeks to reimpose them only on corporations. The FEC must constantly fight to overcome the perception that the law is merely a partisan tool of dominant political interests. Failure to maintain an evenhanded approach towards unions and corporations threatens public confidence in the integrity of the electoral system.

 

For example, while the Disclose Act prohibits any corporation with a federal contract of $50,000 or more from making independent expenditures or electioneering communications, no such prohibition applies to unions. This $50,000 trigger is so low it would exclude thousands of corporations from engaging in constitutionally protected political speech, the very core of the First Amendment. Yet public employee unions negotiate directly with the government for benefits many times the value of contracts that would trigger the corporate ban.

 

This prohibition is supposedly needed to address concerns that government contractors might use the political process to steer contracts their way; but unions have exactly the same conflict of interest. So do other recipients of federal funds, such as nonprofit organizations that receive federal grants and earmarks. Yet there is no ban on their independent political expenditures."

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703460404575244772070710374.html?KEYWORDS=disclose+act

 

If what democrats *really* wanted was disclosure of all political contributions they could have tabled a bill one paragraph long. That clearly wasn't the case.

 

"Politics" A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles."

~Ambrose Bierce.

 

 

[Jim]

 

Right now we're headed for a perfect storm: An unprecedented concentration of income and wealth at the top, a record amount of secret money flooding our democracy, and a public in the aftershock of the Great Recession becoming increasingly angry and cynical about government. The three are obviously related.

What can you do?

 

1. Read Justice Steven's dissent in the Citizens United case, so you're fully informed about the majority's pernicious illogic.

 

2. Use every opportunity to speak out against this decision, and embarrass and condemn the right-wing Justices who supported it.

 

3. In this and subsequent elections, back candidates for congress and president who vow to put Justices on the Court who will reverse it.

 

4. Demand that the IRS enforce the law and pull the plug on Karl Rove and other sham nonprofits.

 

5. If you have a Republican senator, insist that he or she support the Disclose Act. If they won't, campaign against them.

 

6. Support public financing of elections.

 

7. Join an organization like Common Cause, that's committed to doing all this and getting big money out of politics. (Personal note: I'm so outraged at what's happening that I just became chairman of Common Cause.)

 

8. Send this post to your friends (including any tea partiers you may know).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-secret-bigmoney-takeo_b_754938.html

 

 

Thanks. Good points. The refute from the Party of No Clue is either simpleton (trickle down BS) or some oragami explanation as to why this is good for 'Merica.

[j_b]

If what democrats *really* wanted was disclosure of all political contributions they could have tabled a bill one paragraph long. That clearly wasn't the case.

 

If it were true, Republicans would have proposed a one-paragraph bill that demanded disclosure. But they didn't for the simple reason that they don't want their corporate sponsors known.

 

what's the ratio of corporate to union money? (2 orders of magnitude difference?) Aren't Unions democratic organizations with a voting membership by opposition to corporations? Nice try but you fail in being convincing that Unions are the same as corporations.

Edited October 13, 2010 by j_b

[billcoe]

What law ever made it through congress without having 20 more paragraphs tacked on? In fact, litigation, for the sole purpose of interpreting and determining what a lot of these numerous and onerous laws say; is a thriving and massive industry in this country. Of course that benefits the big money people, no matter if they are big unions or big business.

 

Yet despite this and the recent supreme court decisions as it relates to the first amendment: how many of us believe that campaign contributions should be able to be made in a dark back alley with no reporting or visibility to the end user...us, the citizens.

[Jim]

 

Yet despite this and the recent supreme court decisions as it relates to the first amendment: how many of us believe that campaign contributions should be able to be made in a dark back alley with no reporting or visibility to the end user...us, the citizens.

 

Unfortunately, 5 out of 9 Supreme Court justices.

[JayB]

There's a subtle but important difference between contributions made directly to a politician for use at his discretion and spending by groups with a political agenda.

 

If the Sierra Club or Greenpeace spends a few million dollars on adds that state that Congressman or Senator X has voted to subsidize oil production every time it's come up for a vote, or if the ACLU takes out an add saying congressman X was a principal architect of rendition policies - then it's not clear to me that the public has the right to force those organizations to personally identify all of the people who gave them the money to put them on the air. Maybe their being funded by a Halliburton trust funder who wants to keep his activity secret because he doesn't want to get written out of the will, etc.

 

Then there's the matter of, say, an editorial that's written by an employee of the New York Times corporation. Should they be put on a Congressional leash because they make statements that are critical or full of praise for a particular politician? How about the talking heads on Fox? Both have significant reach and influence, and have the potential to help or harm the prospects of particular politicians. Are either cases of corporate speech that should be subject to congressional regulation and censure?

 

 

[Jim]

This current parlor puzzle is asinine.

[JayB]

As an ecologist you should be comfortable with complexity, no?

 

There's no single, clear standard that divides speech with political implications from "political speech," and any attempt to draw a line where none exists will be gerrymandered to suit the interests of whichever party has the upper hand at the moment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Nitrox]

The entire discussion is disingenuous at best. Its only being brought up to distract from real issues this close to an election. Issues that happen to be a real thorn in the side of Democrats. Campaign contributions (and paid ads) are pretty murky for both the Republicans AND the Democrats.

 

 

[j_b]

"Interest groups are spending five times as much on the 2010 congressional elections as they did on the last midterms, and they are more secretive than ever about where that money is coming from.

 

The $80 million spent so far by groups outside the Democratic and Republican parties dwarfs the $16 million spent at this point for the 2006 midterms. In that election, the vast majority of money - more than 90 percent - was disclosed along with donors' identities. This year, that figure has fallen to less than half of the total, according to data analyzed by The Washington Post.

 

The trends amount to a spending frenzy conducted largely in the shadows.

 

The bulk of the money is being spent by conservatives, who have swamped their Democratic-aligned competition by 7 to 1 in recent weeks. The wave of spending is made possible in part by a series of Supreme Court rulings unleashing the ability of corporations and interest groups to spend money on politics. Conservative operatives also say they are riding the support of donors upset with Democratic policies they perceive as anti-business.

 

"The outside group spending is primarily being driven by the political climate," said Anthony Corrado, a professor of government at Colby College who studies campaign finance. "Organized groups are looking at great opportunity, and therefore there's great interest to spend money to influence the election. You've got the possibility of a change in the control of Congress."

 

The increase in conservative spending has come both from established groups and from groups only a few months old. On the left, major labor groups such as the Service Employees International Union have also ratcheted up their expenditures compared with 2006 but are unable to keep up with groups on the right.

 

One of the biggest spenders nationwide is a little-known Iowa group called the American Future Fund, which has spent $7 million on behalf of Republicans in more than two dozen House and Senate races. Donors for the group's ad campaign have not been disclosed in records the group has filed with the Federal Election Commission.

ad_icon

 

The group recently entered a previously sleepy race in its home state of Iowa, announcing that it would devote up to $800,000 to campaign against Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley of Waterloo. The campaign kicked off with a commercial alleging that Braley "supports building a mosque at Ground Zero." Braley denies supporting construction of the proposed Islamic cultural center near the World Trade Center site, saying it's a zoning issue for New Yorkers to decide.

 

The ad, part of a nationwide campaign of similar mosque-themed spots, is the brainchild of Larry McCarthy, a media strategist who gained renown for creating the racially tinged "Willie Horton" commercials against Democratic presidential candidate Michael S. Dukakis in 1988.

 

"Folks across America should be worried about these anonymous groups that go into an election and try to buy a favorable result," said Braley spokeswoman Caitlin Legacki. "People have no idea where the money came from. It's difficult to take recourse."

 

[..]

 

While the interest-group money has primarily helped Republicans, Democrats have proved better at raising money for the party itself and for individual candidates. Those donations must, by law, come from individuals and are limited in size. Much of the interest-group spending, by contrast, has been based on large contributions from well-heeled donors and corporations.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/03/AR2010100303664.html?hpid=topnews

[JayB]

So if an ad is financed by 10,000 people giving a hundred dollars a piece that's substantively different from a billionaire funding it with a million dollars?

 

What arbitrary numerical thresholds for participation and wealth should be exempt from political control - and what specific modes of political expression should be regulated?

 

Should the billionaire be prevented from buying ads on broadcast media, but permitted to self-fund distribution of a political film in theaters? What about direct mail? Internet ad campaigns? Airplane ads over stadiums?

 

How on earth would any of the above emerge from Congress free of the self-dealing and partisan game-rigging that characterizes every single....highway appropriations bill.

 

Determining what constitutes permissible and impermissible political speech, how those restrictions should be implemented, monitored, and enforced is vastly more complicated than laying down pavement. What reason is there to believe that the political forces that distort something as straightforward as determining what highway construction projects to fund won't compromise any legislation that tries to do something infinitely more complicated and laden with so many subjective value judgments?

 

As a general rule, when something is impossible for the government to accomplish at all, let alone in a fair and impartial fashion, we're better off when the government doesn't attempt to do it.

 

 

[j_b]

"Democracy is so complicated. It'd be so much simpler if the plutocrats could buy all the votes they needed"

 

[Jim]

It's a free market thing, you wouldn't understand.

[Peter_Puget]

Perspective......

 

Proctor & Gamble Revenue 2010 ~ $79 Billion

Proctor & Gamble Net income 2010 ~$13 Billion

P & G Advertising Spend 2005 ~$5 Billion

 

Total money spent onthe last pres election year (all races) 5.3 Billion

 

Est GDP US $14.3 trillion.

 

What's shocking is that so litle is actually spent on our elections.

[kevbone]

Time to lighten the mood.

 

 

[video:youtube]

[Jim]

Perspective......

 

Proctor & Gamble Revenue 2010 ~ $79 Billion

Proctor & Gamble Net income 2010 ~$13 Billion

P & G Advertising Spend 2005 ~$5 Billion

 

Total money spent onthe last pres election year (all races) 5.3 Billion

 

Est GDP US $14.3 trillion.

 

What's shocking is that so litle is actually spent on our elections.

 

I know, let's compare it to something kicked out by a random numbers generator for a really high correlation. Oh, wait...