There’s strong voter support for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and allow restrictions on corporate spending, according to a poll conducted by PPP and paid for by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Ryan Grim of HuffPost has reported:
Nearly a fifth of voters remain undecided on an issue that has only been live since the Supreme Court overturned a century of legislation and precedent in a 5-4 ruling whose effect was visible to anybody with a television through the months of September and October. Of those who have an opinion, 46 percent said that “Congress should consider drastic measures such as a constitutional amendment overturning the recent Supreme Court decision allowing unlimited corporate spending in elections,” while 36 percent disagreed. The survey, which was provided to The Huffington Post, was conducted by the liberal-leaning Public Policy Polling on November second and third and reached 548 voters.
A Constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds vote in both chambers of Congress and must be ratified by three-quarters of the states. But, said Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.), the author of an amendment that would overturn Citizens United, there have been times in American history when amendments have caught fire and ripped right through the land. “The process is very rigorous, and it should be,” Edwards told HuffPost. “But there have been plenty of examples of amendments to the Constitution that have happened, actually, with fairly rapid-fire when they catch on.”
Edwards, an attorney, said she wrote the simple text of her amendment the night that Citizens United was handed down. “I really concluded that the Supreme Court actually put the challenge out to us, here in the Congress. They said, you know, you could make a judgment that this is not really good for the system, but the fact is that the Constitution doesn’t allow you to regulate this. Congress, you have no– the Court told us directly– Congress, you have no authority to regulate. And when the Court says that so directly, it only leaves us one choice,” said Edwards.
In the Senate, John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) have both gotten behind the effort. “Max Baucus and I, probably, if we had to serve in the same body, we probably don’t agree on a whole bunch of stuff. But on this, he really gets it,” said Edwards.
“Max is always willing to work with anyone toward the common goal of making sure Montanans’ voices don’t get drowned out by out-of-control corporate campaign donations,” said Kate Downen, a Baucus spokeswoman.
Adam Green, cofounder of the PCCC, sees the amendment as a winning political issue. “It’s time to stop thinking small-bore. The solution to Citizens United is not merely disclosure, it’s to overturn Citizens United — and even last November’s Republican-skewed electorate agrees,” Green said.
The article goes on to note the barriers such an amendment would face: the parties’ reliance on corporate spending, the GOP takeover of 19 legislative chambers in the midterms, but continues:
But, said Edwards, Democrats need to embrace the idea that the Constitution is a political ground worth fighting on. “A lot of progressives are not accustomed to using the mechanisms of the Constitution. The right has used– has tried to do that an awful lot of times on a whole range of different things in state legislatures and across the board. And as progressives, we’re not accustomed to doing that, and this is one instance, though, where the populist demand is there, and our energy and our policy has to match that demand and a Constitutional amendment does that.”
And it notes:
The amendment has strong support from law professors and former attorneys general.
But one more thing ought to be noted: the barrier of GOP obstructionism on this issue could actually be turned into a blessing–although it won’t be easy to do, at least at first. During the last election, big business managed quite successfully to channel Tea Partiers populist rage at the government, not them. And this won’t be a hard trick to replicate in the future for most of the hardcore ideologues. But repealing Citizens United and directly confronting the untrammeled, anti-democratic power of big business could be just the thing to wreck havoc with the Tea Party narrative for the broader public. Having a clearly-defined fight over a Constitutional amendment to take back our democracy from big business would provide a constant narrative backdrop for all manner of corporate abuses, such as recent revelations of how fiercely the health insurance industry fought against health care reform. There is a real opportunity here–and if it does catch fire, as Donna Edwards points out if possible, that opportunity could huge. The only question is whether we’re willing to think big enough to take advantage of it.
(Very good big picture piece. – promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
by Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger
The votes are in, and while some close races are still being tallied, there is a clear winner from the 2010 elections: Secret corporate cash.
Such unaccounted for political donations may end up allowing those accused of wrongdoing to go free. As Joshua Holland details for AlterNet, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission may have provided a lifetime supply of get-out-of-jail-free cards to corporate criminals.
The Kentucky senate race serves as a prime example. The Democratic candidate, Jack Conway, is currently Kentucky’s attorney general. Conway is also currently prosecuting a nursing home for allegedly covering up the sexual abuse of one of its residents.
But that nursing home is owned by Terry Forcht, a millionaire who gives prodigiously to right-wing causes. He poured money into Karl Rove’s organization, American Crossroads GPS, which ran ads backing Conway’s Republican opponent, Rand Paul. Guess who came away with the victory last night?
As Holland emphasizes, the mid-term elections are just how the first phase of the justice system’s corruption plays out. Eventually the mere threat of attack ads could be enough to prevent needed prosecutions. Corporate bigwigs could literally get away with murder, and pay for it only through attack ads.
Think this is bad? Just wait for 2012
As David Corn details for Mother Jones, the Supreme Court’s ruling has put American democracy in grave danger. This year’s big spending is just a warm-up for the 2012 presidential election. Karl Rove has already pledged to keep running attack ads after the mid-terms, and there’s no doubt that he’ll make good on that. As Corn emphasizes, this issue doesn’t just affect how campaigns are financed-it will permanently reshape the very nature of American elections.
The permanent, neverending campaign will become even more permanent and neverending. These big-and-secret-money groups will be working 24/7, opposing and discrediting President Barack Obama and the Democrats in the so-called off-year and then revving up for the 2012 presidential and congressional elections. The negative ads never have to stop.
That, ultimately, is the major take-away from last night’s elections. Not the number of seats Republicans picked up in the House, or the Tea Party’s ability to infiltrate the Senate, but the formal incorporation of American politics. With literally no limits on the amount of money they can spend to influence elections, corporations and secret billionaires are going to be tipping the democratic scales wherever they smell profit.
Today is the first election in American history in which corporations have been allowed to spend their own money to buy political favors. This legalized corruption comes courtesy of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which injected massive amounts of corporate cash and unprecedented levels of secrecy into American politics.
And all of this crazy corporate spending will not be restricted to elections. That’s right. As Jesse Zwick reports for The Washington Independent, two front-groups founded by GOP strategists Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie plan to keep running ads attacking Democrats well after the elections are over.
As Zwick emphasizes, this is actually a way to help keep one of the organizations, known as American Crossroads GPS from breaking the law. Many groups that spend money on elections register as 501(c)(4) organizations, which must devote no more than half of their activity to political operations. In return for limiting their political activity-advocacy or condemnation of specific candidates-they don’t have to disclose who their donors are. So groups like American Crossroads GPS plan to run “issue ads” focusing on the budget deficit and immigration reform this fall to balance out the ads directed at specific candidates that they’ve already run.
Under the Citizens United ruling, so long as corporations or wealthy elites launder their political expenditures through a front-group, they can give as much as they want without ever being held publicly accountable. But the high court’s decision also allows these front-groups to keep their actual expenditures secret as well. It’s not just that we don’t know who is funding them-in many cases, we also don’t really know what they’re funding.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s foreign dues
The secrecy surrounding anonymous donors may very well extend to foreign corporations. As Harry Hanbury emphasizes in this video for GRITtv, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce-a lobbying front-group for the largest American corporations-is facing heavy scrutiny over is foreign contributions. Nearly $900,000 in annual dues to the Chamber come from foreign firms, and the Chamber aggressively courts foreign donors who might benefit from weak U.S. laws-particularly environmental laws. The Chamber insists that it’s playing by the rules, but Hanbury catches them lying twice about the nature of the group’s foreign funding.
California’s environmental laws for sale
Corporations aren’t just targeting federal elections to influence public policy. As Tara Lohan explains for AlterNet, big oil companies have financed a campaign to repeal California’s carbon emission reduction law. Two major polluters-Valero and Tesoro-have spent a combined $7 million boosting the repeal, while Koch Industries-a major Tea Party funder-has kicked in about $1 million as well. A full 70 percent of the $10.7 million that has been spent to bolster the anti-environment ballot initiative has come from out-of-state sources.
Even the Tea Party’s worried
When the Tea Party Patriots received an anonymous $1 million donation for get-out-the-vote efforts, left-wing bloggers weren’t the only people upset about it. As Stephanie Mencimer reports for Mother Jones, some of the Tea Party Patriots’ own members were nervous: Who was funding this operation, and where was the money going?
We’ll probably never know, because the Tea Party Patriots aren’t legally obligated report their donors or expenses. The group has only disclosed $15,000 worth of expenditures of the $1 million donation, $10,000 of which was re-granted to another organization run by the father of Tea Party Patriots leader Mark Meckler. The remainder is anybody’s guess.
But wait, there’s more!
Writing for In These Times, Sam Ross-Brown highlights a potential legislative solution to some of these campaign finance shenanigans. The Fair Elections Now Act would limit individual campaign contributions to $100, and match them by a factor of four-to-one, increasing the spending power of ordinary citizens and helping to level the distorted playing field created by Citizens United.
Kate Sheppard of Mother Jones details who got hit the hardest this election season in the final push leading up to Election Day: Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) got some of the biggest expenditures. This year also smashed previous campaign expenditures, coming in at $443 million.
Suzy Khimm reports on voter intimidation tactics for Mother Jones from a McDonald’s fast food franchise in Ohio’s 16th district. Employees were told to vote for Republicans or their wages would go down. McDonald’s may have been emboldened by Citizens United even though such tactics are still clearly illegal.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the mid-term elections and campaign financing by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit The Media Consortium for more articles on these issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Two Tea Party leaders, Mark Meckler and Jenny Beth Martin, have been jet-setting all over the country ginning up support for conservative politicians. Literally.
They’ve been flying around in a private jet like Wall Street CEOs, except they’re heading to “grassroots” rallies instead of merger talks. Meckler and Martin don’t say how outraged, ordinary citizens can find the money to support such extravagance, and they don’t have to. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling in this year’s Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, they can now accept unlimited funding without disclosing the identities of their donors.
No one would even know about the jets themselves, but Meckler and Martin never counted on Mother Jones, or a reporter named Stephanie Mencimer. Using public flight-tracking information, the Tea Party Patriots’ flight schedule, and some serious attention to details in the group’s own videos, Mencimer was able to figure out which jet the not-so-populist duo were using. She then traced the plane to Raymond F. Thomson, founder and CEO of a semiconductor company called Semitool, which he sold last year for a cool $364 million.
It’s both sad and hilarious to see the secret financial arrangements of the super-rich masquerading as grassroots activism. But it also shows the lengths to which reporters must go to actually report on political spending in the wake of Citizens United. There is no documentation to follow, just the contrails of private jets.
Social groups target state races
And while secret political spending has been dominated by big corporations this cycle, the legal maneuvering that liberated corporate coffers was actually performed by fringe right-wing groups targeting social issues. As Jesse Zwick emphasizes for The Washington Independent:
Groups advocating against abortion and gay marriage have waged a low-grade war on laws restricting their ability to spend money freely in elections since the early 1980s, and their victory in the recent Citizens United ruling has hardly caused them to rest on their laurels.
Our democracy is now more beholden to corporate greed than ever, but at least gays won’t be allowed to visit each other in the hospital.
This is just the beginning of corporate rights
But the implications of Citizens United extend far beyond the (critically important) realm of campaign finance itself, as Jeff Clements and John Bonifaz of the organization Free Speech for People emphasize in an interview with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales of Democracy Now! As Bonifaz notes:
Citizens United was not just a campaign finance case, it was a corporate rights case. In fact, it was an extreme extension of a corporate rights doctrine that has eroded the First Amendment for thirty years.
At its core, Citizens United grants First Amendment rights to corporations on the grounds that corporations are people, just like ordinary citizens. Sound crazy? It is.
The bill of rights for corporations?
As AlterNet‘s Joshua Holland emphasizes in an interview with historian Thom Hartmann, the implications of the view that corporations are people are simply absurd. Now corporations have been granted First Amendment rights, but what happens when they start arguing for Second Amendment rights? And what would it even mean for a corporation to have Second Amendment rights?
A visual map of Campaign Cash
What are the most common themes and issues surrounding the untold amounts of cash flowing into this election cycle? To create that visual, the Media Consortium piped 10 articles by our members through Wordle. While all the articles were generally focused on this topic, they were picked at random and published between October 25-29.
For clarity’s sake, we made “Tea Party” “TeaParty,” “Supreme Court” became “SupremeCourt,” and we also merged the first and last names of key players such as Karl Rove and Jim DeMint. Finally, we removed any extraneous words such as “the,” “and,” and “even.” We did not combine the words corporate/corporation/corporations or Republican/Republicans (but examine the frequency as much as the size). To get the latest reporting on the funds feeding into the mid-term elections, go to www.themediaconsortium.org or follow the search term #campaigncash on Twitter. Wordle research by Amanda Anderson.
But wait, there’s more!
Sarah van Gelder argues in Yes! Magazine why families can’t afford to stay home on Election Day.
And no matter who wins on Tuesday, it seems one thing is clear: Democracy will pay the price, says Henry A. Giroux at Truthout.
Lobbyists are already buttering up the incoming committee chairs, reports Siddhartha Mahanta in Mother Jones. Time to get to know Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI), who could be the incoming chair of the House Ways & Means Committee.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the mid-term elections and campaign financing by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit The Media Consortium for more articles on these issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Remember that horrible 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ad that helped derail John Kerry’s 2004 presidential bid? Well, Bob Perry, the billionaire tycoon who financed that smear campaign is back, and he’s underwriting a barrage of dirty ads that target politicians he doesn’t like.
War chests from right-wing billionaires and corporate titans are funding tremendous portions of political activity, from the so-called grassroots activism of the Tea Party to the streamlined lobbying assaults of the nation’s largest corporations.
Undue corporate influence over U.S. elections has been a serious problem in American politics for decades, but this year’s Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission made things worse. Worst of all, we may never know the extent of the damage.
Citizens United freed corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money backing specific political candidates, and without congressional action, those expenditures can be completely anonymous. Major corporations are already capitalizing on the new legal landscape by the millions, and the public doesn’t really know who is buying what influence or why.
That’s why The Media Consortium will be carefully watching the effects of this ruling in the run up to this year’s midterm elections. Every day through Nov. 4, we’ll bring you some of the best independent reporting on the effects of corporate spending in an attempt to measure just how widespread the effect of Citizens United will be on this-and the next-election. Keep your eye on “Campaign Cash” as we follow this issue in the coming weeks. If you want to tweet about it, use the hashtag #campaign$.
The impact of Citizens United
As Harvard University Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig explains in an interview with The Nation‘s Christopher Hayes, the Citizens Unitedv. FEC decision represents one of many ways that corporations buy political favors.
Prior to the ruling, companies couldn’t spend money to directly advocate the election of a particular political candidate during election season. They could form Political Action Committees (PACs) to support or attack specific candidates, but those PACs had to be funded by individuals who worked for the company and couldn’t be funded from the corporation’s treasury directly. The executives of Goldman Sachs, for instance, could band together to form GoldmanPAC and spend their money on whatever candidates they wished-and many corporate employees exercised that right and spent freely on elections through their corporate PACs.
Now corporations can spend as much as they want and actual corporate funds-not just organized individuals-can also be deployed, making massive amounts of corporate cash eligible for political purchasing.
But the scariest part of Citizens United, as Lessig emphasizes, is the money that isn’t spent. That is, if a firm makes it known that they are willing spend millions of dollars to fight any politician who opposes them on a particular policy issue, representatives and senators might begin changing their voting behavior in Congress before the company actually has to put up the cash.
And ultimately, Citizens United didn’t just legalize unlimited corporate expenses on elections. It also allows those expenses to be anonymous. If companies launder their political cash through a front group, that third-party spender doesn’t have to disclose who its donors are.
This isn’t your local Chamber of Commerce
As Harry Hanbury details for GRITtv, this laundering scheme is essentially the business model for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce– a lobbying powerhouse in the nation’s capital. Don’t be fooled by its name-the U.S. Chamber has almost nothing to do with the local small business coalitions who help strengthen local economies.
As Hanbury notes, 40 percent of the U.S. Chamber’s 2008 funding came from just 26 corporations. The group represents many of the nation’s largest and most irresponsible corporations, from those responsible for the financial meltdown on Wall Street to BP, the company that spilled millions of barrels worth of oil in the Gulf this summer. The Chamber’s branding allows them to disguise their political as a coalition of local businesses while it does dirty work for corporate titans.
When BP was publicly promising to do everything in its power to fix the massive oil disaster it created in the Gulf of Mexico, it was also funneling money to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And what was the Chamber up to? It was lobbying furiously to protect BP from new rules that would force the company to pay for oil disaster clean-up. The Wall Street banks did the same thing as financial reform legislation moved through Congress, and companies never have to disclose these expenditures to the public.
So it’s no surprise that the Chamber responded to Citizens United by immediately announcing a 40 percent boost in its political spending operations. So much corporate money then flowed into the Chamber that the group chose to boost this budget again by 50 percent, allocating $75 million for its 2010 war chest. So far, the Chamber’s ads have favored Republican’s 93 percent of the time. No entity spends more on politics than the Chamber-not even the political parties themselves.
Corporations top the list of big election spenders
But while the future of corporate spending in campaigns looks bleak after Citizens United, corporations are still barred from contributing directly to political campaigns. A company might take out a television ad attacking Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), but it can’t make unlimited contributions directly to Grayson’s challenger, Republican Dan Webster.
Nevertheless, corporate employees and company PACs have already been spending lavishly on elections for decades. In a feature for Mother Jones, Dave Gilson compiles the 75 biggest political spenders, both companies and trade groups, from 1989 through 2010, and breaks them down by industry. Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley are all among the top 20 most extravagant political spenders-but the American Bankers Association, a trade group that all four belong to, is also in the top 10. If you’re wondering how Wall Street was able to secure its massive taxpayer bailout in the face of widespread voter outrage, this is your answer.
To soften the Citizens United blow, Congress has been debating the Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act, which would require companies to disclose all of their political expenditures as well as requiring front-groups like the Chamber to list the identities and amounts of its donors. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Christopher Van Hollen (D-MD) and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), cleared the House this summer but was stymied by a Republican filibuster in the Senate.
Undoing the damage dealt by Citizens United through something like the DISCLOSE Act will help, but it won’t make our democracy totally safe from corporate abuse. As Lessig notes, the day before the decision was handed down, U.S. election financing was already encouraging rampant corruption and in need of serious reform.
Lessig suggests banning political expenditures by corporations altogether, and placing a hard cap on the amount that individuals can contribute. By limiting individual donations to $100, the ability of corporate PACs to funnel cash into the political process would be thwarted.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the mid-term elections and campaign financing by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit The Media Consortium for more articles on these issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
The Democratic Party is spending nearly 100 million dollars raised in part from foreign contributions to help elect more immigration reform minded men and women to Congress.
If you happen to be a conservative of the Grand Old tea Party variety, how does such startling “amnesty” related news make you feel?
Suspicious? Fearful? Angry? Perhaps even more xenophobic than usual?
Each of those emotional responses would be expected from tea partiers had the Democratic Party actually taken this foreign money — it has not.
The “U.S.” Chamber of Commerce however, is a different story entirely.
It’s not the Tea Partiers, as fun as they are. It’s not the debate over whether or not Christine O’Donnell is a witch. It’s not even the passage of landmark legislation like health care and financial reform, with all their historic implications.
It’s that with the Citizens United decision, the flood of multinational corporation money have been unleashed. And when I say multinational, I’m not even talking about American-based companies who sell goods and operate factories overseas, I’m talking about foreign corporations through and through.
Read the story below in its entirety, I am republishing it here to emphasize how big a deal this is. The Chamber of Commerce is raising money from foreign companies and using it to run attack ads here against Democratic candidates.
This progressive populist message that I have been writing about in recent weeks that seriously moves the dial for Democrats in Stan Greenberg’s polling is being used by more and more candidates. Here’s three exciting examples:
1. A growing group of members of Congress are going to be on the Hill tomorrow afternoon at 1:00 PM EST doing a press conference to push a strong reform agenda on behalf of the middle class. They will be endorsing the 3-point platform- strong lobbying reform, public financing of elections, and overturning Citizens United- that MoveOn members overwhelmingly supported in their voting, that 506,832 have already endorsed with their signatures, that 14 groups have signed on to, and that 201 members of Congress and candidates have already signed up for. Confirmed speakers at the press conference include the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Raul Grijalva, the head of the Populist Caucus Bruce Braley, Rep. Chris Murphy, Rep. Paul Hodes, Rep. Paul Tonko, and Rep. Keith Ellison, and more are adding their names as we get closer to the event.
2. Check out this ad from Joe Sestak, attacking all the big corporate money being dumped in his race, and the motives of those spending the money.
3. Finally, check out this great new ad from Tommy Sowers. This is my favorite ad in the campaign so far. It definitely smells of country populism.
The great thing about these ads is that they go directly to the heart of what is going on this campaign cycle: because of the Citizens United decision, and because they don’t like being challenged in any way by even modest reform measures like the Wall Street reform bill, Wall Street, Big Oil, the big health insurers, and the Chamber of Commerce have been on the rampage, dumping tens of millions of dollars like it was going out of style into these campaigns, trying to buy the elections. The only way Democrats have a chance is to stand tall and call them out, to fight directly against them and the economic sins that have destroyed this country’s economy.
Peter DeFazio is an independent-minded progressive who’s been representing Southern Oregon in Congress since 1987, and was one of the original opponents of NAFTA and other “free trade” legislation. He only takes Social Security-scale cost-of-living increases and donates the rest of his salary to local community colleges and federal debt reduction. He was re-elected with over 80% of the vote last time.
Yesterday, he appeared on a local Pacifica program here in Los Angeles because he’s caused a bit of a stir taking on a shadowy Citizens United-spawned entity that was created solely to defeat him, in a support of a rightwing crank who’s partly responsible for one of the more prominent global warming denialist hoaxes of all time (more on this below). The Citizens United decision was bad enough in itself, but it did leave some purported restrictions in place–such as forbidding the influence of foreign goverments and corporations. But with no disclosure whatsoever, it’s impossible to know if even these restrictions are being honored.
DeFazio tries to find out who is behind mysterious attack ads
By Karen Tumulty
Saturday, September 25, 2010; A3
Even in this anti-Washington political climate, 12-term Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio had not been on anyone’s endangered list. He generally breezes to reelection in his southwestern Oregon district by 60 percent or better.
But last Tuesday, something curious happened.
A group calling itself Concerned Taxpayers of America started running television spots – a substantial ad buy of $86,000 – contending that DeFazio had been in league with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in wrecking the economy. It also touted DeFazio’s Republican opponent Art Robinson as “a new voice, a smarter choice, the independent leader we need.”
As attack ads go, that is pretty mild fare. But its origin puzzled both DeFazio and his little-known opponent.
“I’m delighted to have their help, but the truth is, I have no idea who is doing this,” said Robinson, a chemist who is popular on the conservative circuit for his work casting doubt that global warming is manmade.
Robinson’s benefactor has spent more on advertising on his behalf than his own campaign has. But there seems to be no record of an organization called Concerned Taxpayers of America, outside a few filings at the Federal Election Commission. The filings list a Capitol Hill address and the name of a treasurer, Republican political consultant Jason Miller.
Miller declined to say who is funding the group. He described the backers only as “folks who are concerned about the direction this country’s economy is going and want to make their voices heard.”
The names behind those voices apparently will remain a mystery – at least until the organization has to make a quarterly filing to the FEC in October.
“Is this a corporation? Is it one very wealthy, right-wing individual? Is it a foreign interest? Is it a drug gang?” DeFazio said. “We don’t know.”
Amanda Terkel also wrote about DeFazio and his attempt to find out who was attacking him at Huffpo last Friday, and included this eye-openning video as well:
As for DeFazio’s opponent, Art Robinson, DeSmogBlog has quite a little dossier on him in their disinformation database:
Politico’s article today is the latest in a string of articles about the massive edge in money pro-Republican outside groups have over pro-Democratic groups. The article cites a $23 million to $4 million dollar ratio in advertising so far. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that outside groups tend to be trusted more than political party advertising.
The article makes pretty clear that some Democrats on the Hill want to blame the outside groups on our side for not doing enough, and we will see more of that kind of blame game in the coming weeks. It is certainly understandable that individual members who take tough votes are frustrated when big corporate interests dump money on their districts for ads that in many cases are just blatant lies, and no one comes to their defense. I know the party committees are pulling their hair out with the barrage of corporate money being thrown into targeted races everywhere. But here’s the deal: congressional leaders need only look down the street, Pennsylvania Avenue to be precise, to find the answers as to why there isn’t more money going into independent expenditure efforts on the Democratic side.
This is in part a historical problem, a pattern in the party leadership that I sometimes refer to as the curse of the control freaks. Republicans for many years have understood far better than Democrats that outside issue and ideological groups ought to be empowered, not discouraged. Haley Barbour, Karl Rove, and other top Republicans have for years happily worked hand in hand with Grover Norquist, the NRA, the Christian Coalition, the Chamber of Commerce, the Koch Industries front groups, and the entire right-wing infrastructure. Republicans came to their strategy meetings, attended their fundraising dinners, signed their direct mail pieces and emails and Tweets and text messages. Republican operatives have for decades understood that conservative organizations with well-known brands had more credibility with key blocs of voters than either political party and most candidates.
The same is true with progressive groups and key voting blocs as well, but the Democratic Party has never paid these groups much attention. Polling shows quite clearly that many swing suburban voters find ads or mailings from Planned Parenthood, the League of Conservation Voters, and groups like them far more credible than ads from the Democratic Party. Union members are far more likely to read and respect a mailing from their union than a partisan mail piece.
These trends are even bigger in an election cycle like 2010, when both parties’ brands are in the mud. Independent group messages have far more credibility and clout than those from party and candidate committees- even groups with generic-sounding names no one has heard of. Republican strategists like Rove got this early, and went about methodically organizing a network of corporate money to get involved in independent expenditure ads in swing races all over the country. But the Obama White House, sure of its fundraising ability and organizing genius, has consistently sent the signal to Democratic donors to not support outside efforts. They did it after they won the primary in 2008; they did it when they set up OFA to operate solely inside the DNC in 2009; they did it during the health care fight when they felt HCAN was being a little too independent in pushing for a public option, sending a clear signal to donors not to give to them at crucial times during the fight; they did it when ACORN had some bad publicity, very quickly making the decision to distance themselves and let them die even though no group has registered more voters or turned out more people in the last 10 years than ACORN.
I have been fighting this battle inside Democratic strategy circles for 15 years now, but the problem is worse with the current team at the White House. The folks running the Obama political operation have always believed they could control the message and the resources of the party better than anyone else, and that they didn’t need or want to empower outside progressive groups. Now embattled House and Senate candidates are paying the price, and it is a bitter price to have to pay. The groups that do have resources that are pro-Democratic- labor, MoveOn, Emily’s List, the trial lawyers- are doing their best to stem the tide. But corporate money in the post-Citizens United era is swamping us, and unlike in some cycles in the past (2004, 2006), wealthy progressive donors were sent signals not to engage, or just not cultivated at all, and the result is that we are being badly outspent.
One final note on all this: the irony of outside progressive groups being blamed for not doing enough to help the Democrats when the White House has been complaining about the “left of the left” and the “professional left” for many months- and de-motivating donors the whole time- should not be lost on anyone. You can’t attack progressives for being too strident and then wonder why they aren’t doing more and still have much credibility.
As I have written in recent days, I still have hopes that Democrats can do better this cycle than the conventional wisdom suggests, especially if the Democrats use a pro-reform populist message that is actually effective. But the curse of the control freaks is not helping anything.
A while back, a couple of us here at Sum of Change got involved in meetings with a great group of folks about working together to provide insider reporting of Capitol Hill with an outsider perspective. In time, we became Main Street Insider. Today, Main Street Insider released a new show, 90 Second Summaries.
The purpose of 90 Second Summaries is simple, provide citizens on Main Street with a quick synopsis of what a bill is all about. The first three episodes come out today, tomorrow and Thursday, with new ones every following Monday. Each video comes with a one-page summary (which you can view online or download as a pdf) containing everything you will need to learn even more about any piece of legislation.
Without further ado, presenting Season 1, Episode 1: H.R. 4790, Shareholder Protection Act
Big business, bolstered by the terrible Citizens United decision allowing them to spread corporate money to buy elections, is throwing money around like there is no tomorrow. Here are a couple of the most egregious examples:
1. Target has become the poster child for bad corporate behavior in the CU-style corporate spending in elections realm, giving over $150,000 to an effort to help elect far right wing Tom Emmer in the Minnesota Governor’s race. Emmer wants to abolish the minimum wage, gave money to a group that condoned the death penalty for being gay, and loves Arizona’s immigration law. MoveOn.org, LGBT groups, and other progressives have pushed back, launching a campaign to target Target for this behavior. We need to show corporate America that if they want to spend their corporate money backing right wing candidates, it will hurt their brand and their bottom line.
Check out the MoveOn campaign, add your name, and get involved here.
2. The Chamber of Commerce is sliming Alexi Giannoulias with a nasty personal attack ad. Giannoulias has been making his campaign about taking on big corporate interests – his reform platform echoes MoveOn’s Clean UP Washington Corporate Corruption campaign. He has been making these very strong reform proposals the centerpiece of his campaign so far, and because he takes on special interest corporate control of DC, the Chamber has decided to make an example of him.
The political problem is that Alexi doesn’t have much money, and the Chamber has a ton, mostly raised from the very biggest corporations. This is a crucial time for the progressive community to get behind Alexi and make a major push for him. Sending him some money is a good way to push back at a Chamber of Commerce that is working hard to keep DC safe for corporate lobbyists.
The same conservatives who spent the past year senselessly screaming about the U.S. budget deficit are now demanding an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the rich. The extension simply doesn’t make sense, and the policies implied are a recipe for massive job loss in the middle of the worst employment crisis in 75 years.
