Category: Campaign Finance

Unsurprising

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This screen shot is from 2002!

Someone took a look at the record, and confirmed that the Tea Party was created by the Koch brothers and big tobacco:

A new academic study confirms that front groups with longstanding ties to the tobacco industry and the billionaire Koch brothers planned the formation of the Tea Party movement more than a decade before it exploded onto the U.S. political scene.

Far from a genuine grassroots uprising, this astroturf effort was curated by wealthy industrialists years in advance. Many of the anti-science operatives who defended cigarettes are currently deploying their tobacco-inspired playbook internationally to evade accountability for the fossil fuel industry’s role in driving climate disruption.

The study, funded by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institute of Health, traces the roots of the Tea Party’s anti-tax movement back to the early 1980s when tobacco companies began to invest in third party groups to fight excise taxes on cigarettes, as well as health studies finding a link between cancer and secondhand cigarette smoke.

You can see a link to the old web page at the Wayback machine, but I don’t recommend it. It’s flash hell.

So the Teabaggers are both Koch suckers, and stooges for big tobacco.

Heady brew.

The House of Saud Tried to Buy Our Elections

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This is the natural result of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United Decision:

The “American” in American Petroleum Institute, the country’s largest oil lobby group, is a misnomer. As I reported for The Nation in August, the group has changed over the years, and is now led by men like Tofiq Al-Gabsani, a Saudi Arabian national who heads a Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Aramco) subsidiary, the state-run oil company that also helps finance the American Petroleum Institute. Al-Gabsani is also a registered foreign agent for the Saudi government.

New disclosures retrieved today, showing some of API’s spending over the course of last year, reveal that API used its membership dues (from the world’s largest oil companies like Chevron and Aramco) to finance several dark money groups airing attack ads in the most recent election cycle.

Last year, API gave nearly half a million to the following dark money groups running political ads against Democrats and in support of Republicans:

• $50,000 to Americans for Prosperity’s 501(c)(4) group, which ran ads against President Obama and congressional Democrats.

• $412,969 to Coalition for American Jobs’ 501(c)(6) group, a front set up by API lobbyists to air ads for industry-friendly politicians, including soon to be former Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA).

• $25,000 to the Sixty Plus Association’s 501(c)(4), which ran ads against congressional Democrats.

Jack Gerard, the president of API, was a close ally to the Mitt Romney campaign. Like the US Chamber of Commerce, API is one of several large trade associations that has spent heavily in support of Republican candidates.

Seriously, I’d rather have Greece’s Fascist Golden Dawn party involved in our politics than the House of Saud.

I am in the Wrong Line of Work

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Dick Armey just got an $8 million golden handshake from FreedomWorks:

Dick Armey left the deep-pocketed tea party group he helped build over a clash with a top lieutenant who Armey and others in the organization believed was using the group’s resources to pad his pockets, POLITICO has learned.

Armey received an $8 million buyout to step down as chairman of FreedomWorks at the end of last month, but the dispute between him and the group’s president, Matt Kibbe, is still straining the organization.

An $8 f%$#ing million severance?

I need to become a conservative Republican rat f%$#er.

The money might be worth my immortal soul.

I Don’t Think that I Often Say This, But ………

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Props to NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg:

Joe Baca never saw it coming, and neither did Gloria Negrete McLeod.

But as state Sen. Negrete McLeod replaces Baca in Congress, the dueling San Bernardino County Democrats witnessed first hand the beginnings of a change in gun politics, courtesy of billionaire New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

No doubt the strongest gun control advocate on Forbes’ list of the fabulously rich, Bloomberg seized an opportunity to unseat Baca, a pro-gun Democrat, by spending $3.3 million on television and mail attacks. Given his estimated $25 billion fortune, $3.3 million is couch cushion change. But it was three times the sum Baca and Negrete McLeod raised between them. By homing in on a loyal National Rifle Association politician, Bloomberg altered a long-standing element of American politics.

There’s more to this than just guns, McLeod is fairly pro-gun as well, and there is an important bit a few ‘graphs down, that the NRA is basically a partisan organization, where it’s “my cold dead fingers” philosophy now takes a back seat to party:

It skipped Baca’s race, a telling omission. If any candidate warranted NRA support, Baca was that man. In his 20 years in Sacramento and in Washington, Baca rarely if ever wavered from National Rifle Association orthodoxy. There were times when he was the only Democrat who sided with the NRA.

“Joe was a very good friend of the NRA’s,” recalled Steve Helsley, the NRA’s California lobbyist when Baca was in the Legislature.

Baca sought the NRA’s endorsement this year, but said the NRA turned him down because he failed to join Republicans who voted to sanction Attorney General Eric Holder for the ATF’s bollixed Fast and Furious gun investigation, and because he supported Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor as U.S. Supreme Court justice.

I’m not unhappy about the results.  Baca was a Blue Dog, and he had a long history of directing his campaign funds and those of the House Hispanic Caucus for the benefit of his relatives, and then there is the whole thing of his calling Rep. Loretta Sanchez a “whore” (though not to her face) when she confronted him on this and other irregularities.

Here’s what Blue Dogs and New Dems should take away from this whole story:  If you support lax gun ownership rules, good for you, but do not expect the NRA to do anything, even something as minor as an endorsement when you are running against another Democrat.

They are not your political ally.

This Ain’t About the Free Market

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The news that BAE and EADS are in merger discussions has very little to do with the market or market efficiencies.

It’s about EADS purchasing an entry in the the US market, one which BAE purchased when it bought United Defense,  Tracor,  LMCS, LMAES, etc.

Ironically, BAE sold its 20% share in EADS about 6 years ago.

The reality is that the defense market is essentially a monopsony, with governments in general, and the US government in particular serving as a single buyer, though with this merger the other end of the dynamic is heading more towards monopoly as well.

Thus, I find the protestations by BAE management that the French and German governments must not have the ability to exert realistic shareholder rights, together they own about 45% of EADS, to ring a bit hollow:

BAE Systems has insisted it will walk away from talks with EADS unless the combined European champion in aerospace and defence was allowed to operate as a normal company without political interference.

 BAE is also insisting that the combined entity’s defence business would have to be based in the UK if the plan, news of which was leaked on Wednesday before the structure was finalised, is to go ahead.

Gee, a defense contractor must be kept free of political influence?

This deal is all about creating an entity that can manipulate the politics to its own advantage.

The insistence that the French and German governments sell out, if they didn’t they would have about a 27% stake in the merged firm, is all about the company being able to whipsaw governments with  promises, or threats, about defense jobs.

Yet Another Reason Not to Give to the DCCC

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A detailed examination of how they spending their money reveals that DCCC chair, and former Blue Dog, Steve Israel, is favoring long shot conservatives over more competitive real Democrats:

Monday morning the DCCC was strutting around like a rooster bragging about the campaign to hold Republicans accountable, running an ad (below) called “The Millionaires,” against 23 “Republican Members of Congress who are about to vote for another tax cut for millionaires at the expense of the middle class and seniors.” Let’s not even get into the cynicism of the DCCC backing Blue Dogs who vote with the GOP on this and leave that for the day after the vote itself (when we can replay a tape of Debbie Wasserman Schultz defending anti-family ConservaDems because she’s so proud of her “Big Tent party”).

………

Who are these Republicans? Not many people have heard of any of them. They’re basically all a bunch of backbenchers without any power or influence, mostly pathetic freshmen. Fine… someone has to go after them. It’s a shame though, that that’s all the DCCC goes after! But let’s look at the Democrats running in these districts for a second.

………

So what would a progressive campaign look like instead of this attempt by “ex”-Blue Dog Steve Israel to restock the House Democratic caucus with conservatives?

………

The progressive target list, unlike the DCCC target list, includes vulnerable senior Republicans (Goliaths) like Paul Ryan and Buck McKeon, whose district’s Obama won, as well as vulnerable Republican incumbents with national reputations as especially hateful assholes, like Eric Cantor, Joe Pitts, Mike Coffman, Patrick McHenry, Ed Royce, and Mike Rogers. No one ever even heard of any of the DCCC targets beyond maybe the congresswoman in Palm Springs who used to be married to Sonny Bono after Cher and now lives with her braindead husband– a candidate for the U.S. Senate– in Florida. It’s a pretty unheroic list of targets– and not even one where there are many “sure things.” In fact, some of these people have absolutely no chance of winning whatsoever, like the poor schlemiels running against Vicky Hartzler (MO-04), Larry Bucshon (IN-08), Tim Murphy (PA-18), Kristi Noem (SD-AL), and Scott DesJarlais (TN-04). The money the DCCC will waste in those 5 districts alone could probably make the difference in defeating Paul Ryan, Buck McKeon and Ed Royce, 3 seats ripe for the plucking that the DCCC refuses to contest.

One lesson to be learned here is that while the Blue Dogs, and to a slightly lesser degree the New Dems, may not like Republicans, but they hate real Democrats.

Pick and choose your candidates, and vote for, and donate to, real Democrats.

If you delegate this to Steve Israel and the DCCC, we will get an affirmative action program for DINOs.

Rmoron

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I’m generally not a superstitious person, but I have 2 rules:

  • I will not have anything to do with the Hope diamond. (Like that would happen)
  • I’ll avoid doing substantial on Tisha b’Av.  (Literally the 9th of the Hebrew month Av) The history is just too bad:
    • The reports of the spies, which led the Jews to spend 40 years in the desert.
    • The destruction of the 1st temple.
    • The destruction of the 2nd temple.
    • The crushing of the Bar Kokhba rebellion.
    • The first crusade, which set of an orgy of pogroms and murder.
    • The expulsion of the Jews from Spain.
    • The expulsion of the Jews from England.
    • The start of WWI.
    • Etc.

So, making a political trip to Israel on Tisha b’Av is not something I would do.

I’d move it a week one way or the other.

It is the saddest on the Jewish calendar, and it is observed by a day of fasting, and by listening by the chanting of Eicha (Lamentations).

One of the peculiarities of Tisha b’Av is that if it falls on a Shabbos, as it did this year, the observance is moved to the next day.

Whether you subscribe to my particular bit of superstitious silliness or not, it is self evident that if you decide to hold a $50,000 a plate fundraising banquet that starts while the fast is still ongoing, you don’t have a bad luck problem, you have a “Your an idiot problem”:

Presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney will host a fund-raising event in Jerusalem this month at $60,000 or more per plate, The Jerusalem Post learned on Wednesday.

Delegates are set to fly in from the US for the event on July 29, which a Republican source said would be “a small meeting, but a big fund-raiser” as the Tisha Be’av fast ends. Immediately after the fund-raising meeting, Romney will host a conference in Jerusalem, where he will lay out his Middle East policy.

To be fair, the actual serving of food was not to start until after the fast was technically over, and once it blew up in Mitt’s face, they moved it to a breakfast get together the next morning.

But still, what sort of Rmorons does Mitt Rmoney have working for him?

‘Phants Ceding PA

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It looks like both the Rmoney campaign and the super PACS that support him, are pulling out of Pennsylvania:

One of the early peculiarities of the advertising campaign is the half-hearted effort in Pennsylvania—a state which figured prominently in the electoral calculus of the last three presidential elections. Despite that place in recent electoral history, Romney hasn’t aired any ads in Pennsylvania since the general election began. And although the Obama campaign and the super PACs have waged a low-intensity ad war in Pennsylvania, the most recent data suggests that even these limited efforts might be winding down.


For the first time in the campaign, Republicans are completely off the air in Pennsylvania. According to The Washington Post’s ad tracker, neither Crossroads nor Restore Our Future have aired ads in Pennsylvania since the beginning of July, and although Americans for Prosperity purchased buys for the early half of July, they appear to have gone off the air as well. This could be temporary, of course: there were weeks when the GOP went off the air in Michigan, only to return a few weeks later. Americans for Prosperity isn’t airing any ads this week, and they were carrying the load in Pennsylvania before dropping off the air, so they might start contesting Pennsylvania again once they return to the presidential race. But the decision to cease advertisements shouldn’t be overlooked: ads quickly lose their punch once the airwaves go quiet, so it’s important to remain persistent once advertisements begin.


Why is Pennsylvania falling off of the radar? Although the state is typically characterized as a white working class state reminiscent of the Midwest, the Democratic coalition in Pennsylvania is far more diverse and upscale than Ohio or Michigan. Democrats also have a large registration advantage in Pennsylvania, and a Romney victory would require a degree of crossover appeal that he has not yet demonstrated. Instead, Romney and his allies appear more interested in testing the waters of the Great Lakes, where demographics or electoral history are arguably more promising than Pennsylvania. Obama is more dependent on white working class voters in Michigan than Pennsylvania, and recent polls provide cause for Republicans to be hopeful about their chances. This week, Crossroads turned up the volume in Michigan and spent nearly $600,000 on advertisements. That’s not as much as other battleground states, but it’s a hefty investment. For comparison, Obama spent $1 million in Ohio—a slightly larger state, generally considered more likely to decide the election. The RNC has also announced it will invest in Wisconsin, a state where Obama looks strong but that Kerry won by just 14,000 votes in 2004.

This is unsurprising.

The last time that Pennsylvania went Republican was in 1988, and that was close.

For all the talk of it being a swing state, it isn’t.

Merkel Blinks

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Thank God:

Under intense pressure at the G20 summit in Mexico to take more decisive action to contain the European sovereign debt crisis, eurozone leaders were reported last night to be preparing to allow the Continent’s bailout funds to intervene directly in the capital markets to ease the pressure on Spain and Italy.

G20 sources suggested that Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, was preparing to allow eurozone institutions to begin buying bonds issued by member state’s governments. The purpose of the intervention would be to bring down sovereign bond yields of weaker eurozone states, which have been pushed up to unsustainable levels by wary investors in recent months. Spanish 10-year yields this week hit their highest levels in the history of the single currency at 7.28 per cent.

An impending move was hinted at by the Chancellor George Osborne last night. “We will see what the eurozone announce in the next couple of weeks, but there is no doubt that they realise that individual measures in individual countries are by themselves not enough,” he said.

Whoever knocked some sense into Merkel’s head should be commended.

IRS Yanks 501(c)4 from Phony Charity

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About f%$#ing time:

An Internal Revenue Service decision revoking the tax-exempt status of a small political nonprofit organization may foreshadow an investigation into groups such as Crossroads GPS and Priorities USA that spend millions on the 2012 U.S. presidential election.

At risk would be the groups’ nonprofit status, which lets them collect millions of dollars from individuals and corporations while keeping donors anonymous.

…………

The IRS decision released last month involved a so-called campaign school in which a partisan group trained candidates.

“You are not operated primarily to promote social welfare because your activities are conducted primarily for the benefit of a political party and a private group of individuals, rather than the community as a whole,” said the IRS letter telling the group it was losing its exempt status.

Unfortunately, it looks like there won’t be major action this year.

H/t Susie Madrak.http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-08/irs-denial-of-tax-exemption-to-u-s-political-group-spurs-alarms.html

Edwards Not Guilty on 1, Mistrial on 6

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Considering the fact that the judge bent over backwards for John Edwards, this is a win for Edwards.

Considering the fact that the judge was clearly in the prosecution’s pocket, allowing testimony that had nothing to do with the underlying crime for the squick factor, and forbidding the presentation of an FEC ruling which said that the expenditures were legal, the prosecution has to be thinking that this case is a loser.

You Have It Backwards

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Howie Klein wonders, “Do ALL The Members Of The House Financial Services Committee Take Bribes From The Banksters?“

He has it backwards. The HFCS is a bloated and overstaffed committee, with two or three times the members that it actually needs, and it does this, because it’s known as a “money” committee.

Basically, people are put on it so that they can fund raise from the banksters.

It’s less of a bribe than it is a shakedown.

The purpose of the committee at its current size is to facilitate taking legalized bribes from the financial services industry.

Greeks to Hold New Elections

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Roll Stewart!

They couldn’t form a coalition, so there will be a caretaker government followed by a new election. It appears that the left leaning SYRIZA party rejected the proposal for a “government of technocrats”.

What a surprise, the group they are saying here is to allow the EU (the Germans, really) to take over the country and democracy be damned.

Jon Stewart nails it when he notes that nearly 70 years after the end of WWII, the Germans rule Europe.

Appeals Court Rules That Disclosure required for 501(c)4 Contributions

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The DC Circuit has refused a stay from a circuit court decision requiring that 501(c)4s disclose donors if they make political ads:

Big news from the D.C. Circuit in this order and opinion. The opinion for two of the three judges explaining the reasons for denying the stay lean heavily on how the challengers to the district court ruling are unlikely to succeed in their legal arguments on appeal. The court also stresses the values of disclosure, reaffirmed on an 8-1 vote by the Supreme Court in Citizens United. [UPDATE Bloomberg BNA reports: “Attorneys for two groups sponsoring political ads, which intervened in the case to try to preserve FEC rules allowing them to keep their donors confidential, had no immediate comment about a possible appeal of the stay ruling by the D.C. Circuit panel.”]

But this open a host of unanswered questions about how 501c4 groups and other groups which run issue ads will deal with these new disclosure requirements.(I’m talking here not about political committees such as Crossroads GPS, which masquerade as social welfare groups, but real 501c4s that occassionally get involved with issue adss.) I expect this stay request to now end up before the Supreme Court, where the outcome may be different.

If further stay attempts fail, and if there are no emergency FEC rules put in place (and the FEC’s frequent 3-3 deadlocks mean new rules are unlikely), we could well see 501c4 groups [UPDATE: and importantly 501c3 groups] creating new separate funds to run these ads, so that the groups need disclose the names of only those donors funding these ads (rather than all of their donors).

You need to remember that before Karl Rove’s super PAC used the 501(c)4 fig leaf to hide its donors, they raised a pitiful amount of money (IIRC, less than 100 Grand).

For real non-profits, if they want to participate in electioneering, it’s just a matter of separating the funds and donations. For something like Rove’s Crossroads operations, which serve primarily as a way to launder money, it really complicates things.

Why Not to Give to the Democratic Establishment

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The biggest political contest in the United States in the next month is the Scott Walker recall, and the Democratic National Committee is refusing to supply resources for the all critical GOTV effort:

Top Wisconsin Democrats are furious with the national party — and the Democratic National Committee in particular — for refusing their request for a major investment in the battle to recall Scott Walker, I’m told

The failure to put up the money Wisconsin Dems need to execute their recall plan comes at a time when the national Republican Party is sinking big money into defending Walker, raising fears that the DNC’s reluctance could help tip the race his way.

………

According to the Wisconsin Dem, the party has asked the DNC for $500,000 to help with its massive field operation. While the DNC has made generally supportive noises, the money has not been forthcoming, the official says — with less than a month until the June 5th recall election. The DNC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

………

“Scott Walker has made this a national election,” the Wisconsin Dem tells me. “If he wins, he will turn his victory into a national referendum on his ideas about the middle class. It will hurt Democrats nationally. The fact that [national Dems] are sitting on their hands now is so frustrating. The whole ticket stands to lose

******************************************

UPDATE: Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Mike Tate goes on record about the dispute in a statement:

“Having received absolute support from the Democratic Governors Association, we also are in conversation with the Democratic National Committee to help in this battle against Scott Walker, a right-wing diva who has the full backing of the national corporate Tea Party movement.”

UPDATE II: Wisconsin Dems say the problem isn’t with the Democratic Governors Association, which has already committed more to the recall fight than they’ve ever committed to a Wisconsin gubernatorial election in recent history. Still no comment from the DNC.

I’m thinking that the DNC is having a hissy fit because labor is not interested in funding their national convention in a right-to-work state, but stupidity and evil are nearly as valid explanations.

Meanwhile in the American Elections

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It looks like Obama’s big donors from 2008 are sitting on their wallets:

President Obama’s re-election campaign is straining to raise the huge sums it is counting on to run against Mitt Romney, with sharp dropoffs in donations from nearly every major industry forcing it to rely more than ever on small contributions and a relative handful of major donors.

From Wall Street to Hollywood, from doctors and lawyers, the traditional big sources of campaign cash are not delivering for the Obama campaign as they did four years ago. The falloff has left his fund-raising totals running behind where they were at the same point in 2008 — though well ahead of Mr. Romney’s — and has induced growing concern among aides and supporters as they confront the prospect that Republicans and their “super PAC” allies will hold a substantial advantage this fall.

With big checks no longer flowing as quickly into his campaign, Mr. Obama is leaning harder on his grass-roots supporters, whose small contributions make up well over half of the money he raised through the end of March, according to reports filed Friday with the Federal Election Commission. And Mr. Obama is asking far more of those large donors still giving, exploiting his joint fund-raising arrangement with the Democratic National Committee to collect five-figure checks from individuals who have already given the maximum $5,000 contribution to his re-election campaign.

“They clearly are feeling the pressure,” said one major Obama fund-raiser, who asked for anonymity to characterize his conversations with campaign officials. “They’re behind where they expected to be. You have to factor in $500 million-plus in Republican super PAC money.”

This is what happens when your message shifts from “Hope and Change” (whatever the F$#@ that means) to “The Guys on the Other Side are Terrifying,” which, while true, (an improvement on the 2008 message in that one respect) is not something that drives people to open up their check books or canvass door to door.

Not Enough Bullets…

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And Louis Freeh is at again, trying to make sure that the money stolen by the banks from MF Global customers stays stolen.

In this case, he is attempting to pay hush money large bonuses to MF global executives:

Three top executives at MF Global Holdings Ltd kept on since the commodities firm’s collapse could receive performance-based bonuses under a retention plan being prepared by a court-appointed trustee, people close to the trustee said.

Trustee Louis Freeh plans to ask a bankruptcy judge to approve the employment agreements, said these people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan is still being crafted.

The plan will include bonus payouts for Chief Operating Officer Bradley Abelow, General Counsel Laurie Ferber and Chief Financial Officer Henri Steenkamp if they meet certain targets.

The formation of a plan does not necessarily mean bonuses will ultimately be paid or that the executives will earn as much total compensation as they have in the past.

Still, it has garnered attention from at least one key politician. Sen. Chuck Grassley, the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement it was “hard to believe that Mr. Freeh would consider bonuses to these select few while customers and investors are still trying to recoup their losses.”

Because, of course the people who stole the money in the first place.

Seriously, the casual corruption of Loius Freeh and His Evil Minions™, which are in tern a reflection of the endemic levels of corruption of our financial system, just boggle the mind.

It’s got me agreeing with a Republican Congressman, Timothy Johnson, wants blood:

I would wager the combined assets of these executives, along with those of Mr. Jon Corzine, would go a long way towards paying back their customers. That’s what would happen in the world I grew up in.

And on the other end, where we have another trustee allegedly trying to recover money for account holders, we have the other end of the bankster protection racket:

MF Global Inc.’s trustee asked futures customers to release claims on the defunct brokerage in return for money they are owed, demanding an “unwarranted” transfer of legal rights, a group of customers said.

The customers, including William Fleckenstein, Thomas Wacker and Summit Trust Co., said in a court filing yesterday that they were notifying the judge supervising the firm’s liquidation of their “concern” in case he wasn’t aware that trustee James Giddens had mailed his demands to some customers along with his determination of their claims. One of Giddens’s demands may require customers to release claims made in class- action lawsuits, they said.

“It may be interpreted to release claims being asserted in the numerous class action lawsuits filed by aggrieved customers,” the customers said in the filing. “It could also potentially be asserted as a bar to recovery by some or all of the defendants joined in these lawsuits, including claims in the suits against parties alleged to be responsible for the misappropriation of customer funds.”

I’m not sure which is worse, the level of corruption, or the brazenness with which they operate.

H/t Atrios.