Democracy For Sale
A Democratic operative active in Senate races sends over this summary, from public sources, of outside television and radio spending on the races from August through last night:
Republican Third Party Groups — $43,664,661
Democratic Third Party Groups — $6,658,236Colorado — Dems: $1.1 million / GOP: $7.6 million
Washington — Dems: $1.5 million / GOP: $4.2 million
Missouri — Dems: $794k / GOP: $7.2 million
Kentucky — Dems: $47k / GOP: $1.7 millionThat’s a more than seven-to-one advantage, if you’re keeping score.
A lot of this money is coming through these 501(c)(4) groups that were created from the Citizens United decision. These groups do not have to disclose their donors. After Target got a lot of criticism for donating to Michele Bachmann and Tom Emmer in Minnesota, I doubt any corporation will do direct donations to candidates. They’ll launder their donations through front groups.
Speaking of front groups, guess who is benefiting directly from the Citizens United ruling?
For three decades, Mrs. Thomas has been a familiar figure among conservative activists in Washington — since before she met her husband of 23 years, Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court. But this year she has emerged in her most politically prominent role yet: Mrs. Thomas is the founder and head of a new nonprofit group, Liberty Central, dedicated to opposing what she characterizes as the leftist “tyranny” of President Obama and Democrats in Congress and to “protecting the core founding principles” of the nation.
It is the most partisan role ever for a spouse of a justice on the nation’s highest court, and Mrs. Thomas is just getting started. “Liberty Central will be bigger than the Tea Party movement,” she told Fox News in April, at a Tea Party rally in Atlanta.
But to some people who study judicial ethics, Mrs. Thomas’s activism is raising knotty questions, in particular about her acceptance of large, unidentified contributions for Liberty Central. She began the group in late 2009 with two gifts of $500,000 and $50,000, and because it is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit group, named for the applicable section of the federal tax code, she does not have to publicly disclose any contributors. Such tax-exempt groups are supposed to make sure that less than half of their activities are political.
Mrs. Thomas, known as Ginni, declined through a spokeswoman to be interviewed without an agreement not to discuss her husband. In written responses to questions, Sarah Field, Liberty Central’s chief operating officer and general counsel, said that Mrs. Thomas is paid by Liberty Central, with the compensation set by the group’s board, and that the group has “internal reviews and protections to ensure that no donor causes a conflict of interest for either Ginni or her husband.”
I sure would like to see these protections and reviews to ensure there’s no donor conflict. How are the rest of us supposed to be sure? I wonder how much she’s paying herself.
Personally, I think corporations are being overcharged. With our screwed up system, they really only need to buy a couple of Senators since single Senators can block bills and with our strange supermajority requirements one Senator can insert or delete a provision in a bill. Just look at the bill to make foreclosures easier that snuck through Congress with no debate recently.
We really do need that Constitutional Ammendment to stop all this. The right to free speech was never intended to put our government on the auction block for the highest bidder. The Robert’s Court has overturned more than a century of judicial protection against selling our electoral process. The ONLY way to stop this is through an ammendment.
“Everyones got a reason for living and a price for dieing”.-I think Clint said this in a movie.
It seems our politicians have reversed the premise. Just how much does it take for them to be able to look themselves in the mirror in the morning after selling out ? And they gotta start dieing inside, a little each day, as the corruption eats away at their souls from within. Tom Carper for one. LOOK how OLD and grey he’s getting.Almost “one foot in the grave and one foot on a banana peel ” territory.
“Virtue is it’s own reward and fools are they who die”.-Mario Puzo
A much better credo to live by and die with.
Dems should try some jujitsu by running ads that ask their opponent who is funding the attack ads. Every Dem should ask this question in debates. Of course it is a rhetorical question, because the candidate isn’t supposed to know. But you can ask questions like: Does it bother you that you are being supported by shadowy anonymous donors? How would you feel if they turned out to be Communists or terrorists? How do you know they aren’t? Don’t you believe in accountability? Will you demand right now that they stop those ads unless they identify the source of the money?
Done right, it could stick some Wall Street/corporate stink onto their opponent.
Maddow provides the prototype script (watch the video). It was really cool how she put up a graphic showing the candidates: the D, the R, and a silhouette representing the anonymous donors who are the third candidate in the race. Dems could go far with this kind of portrayal.
anon has the right idea. I’d think a candidate could get some mileage by refusing all anonymous donations and asking their opponent if they pledge to do the same.
The thing is, they aren’t accepting anonymous donations. The ads are being taken out in their behalf but are not directly given to the campaign. So the candidate has plausible deniability.
The best you could do is ask the candidate to repudiate the ads and ask the sponsor to stop.
It would be interesting for multiple groups to claim credit for the ads, which might smoke out the real donor.
You are all wrangling this issue with nothing in law to support you. It will take a Constitutional Ammendment to stop this. Nothing short. And it will take years of work. But to save our democracy it will be worth it.
Republicans successfully filibustered the DISCLOSE Act, which would have required disclosure of the source of the funding.
Apparently Dems have chosen not to make an issue of it. I haven’t seen any Dems hammering their opponents for blocking this.
Are you kidding me IU? How quickly we forget how Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign reaped 100s of millions from ‘anonymous’donors as well as from Big Labor! Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
Furthermore, the fact that the president of the United States of America is citing a web post from a decidedly liberal think tank (Think Progress)and without any ‘real’ proof (according to the Liberals’ best friend – The New York Times – there ‘ain’t much real proof here’). And here’s what I find the most ironic: The Liberal think tank accusing the Chamber of Commerce, along with Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie for ‘misuse of power’ doesn’t ‘Disclose’ any of its donors to its very own think tank; the very same think tank that purports to be the arbiter of others’ misuse of campaign wrongdoing. Ouch!
Look at this analogy: The filibustering rule in the Senate is as good as who has the Majority in the upper chamber. Each party wants to ‘get rid’ of the filibuster rule in the Senate when it ‘hurts’ their own agenda. The Dems hate the filibuster rule in the Senate now; but, if they were to lose the majority in that chamber, they would LOVE having the power of the filibuster.
The so-called ‘black-eye’ on Democracy, that Obama has been touting recently is nothing but a Red-Herring. He wants nothing more than for unenthusiastic Democratic voters to vote in the Mid-Term election and to ‘forget’ about the horrendous economic plight we are in. ‘Look at these crazed and rich Republicans – they want to ‘buy’ this election,’ paraphrasing Obama’s recent worldwind campaigning of late. The truth is: the Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission (FEC) Supreme Court case of Jan. 2010, came to be because Democrats and other ‘Liberals’ were angry over a ‘pay-per-view’ political mini-documentary focused on Hillary Rodham Clinton during her 2008 presidential run. The Clinton’s and others did not like the ‘fairness’ of this creative form of political advocacy; thus, they sued and Citizens United (the producecers of this anti-Hillary infomercial counter sued and later won the case).
Filibusters hurt Dems more than Repubs.
A Democratic filibuster of a Republican bill is nearly impossible to achieve. It is always possible for Repubs to get some Dems to join their coalition for more free-lunch tax cuts for the rich, and deregulation for corporations. So if you take the filibuster away from Democrats, you really aren’t taking much.
Republicans, on the other hand, depend on the filibuster to block popular bills like progressive taxation, public health care, or regulations on out-of-control corporations. So taking the filibuster away from Republicans would restore the Senate to a functional level.