A Perfect System

(Cartoon by Yaakov Kirschen and published on 5/30/14 on his blog.  Click on image to enlarge and then trot on back.)

The blurb that accompanies Mr. Kirschen's cartoon says simply, "The system could also be good for America."

I don't often agree with Mr. Kirschen (he's too conservative and too much a Zionist for me), but I enjoy his cartoons a great deal simply because they make me think.  This cartoon especially sent the wheels spinning in my head bone.

My first thought was, "Oh swell.  Just what we need, trusting Congress to select the next president."  But then I got a series of thought in quick order.

Isn't that what we allowed the Supreme Court to do for George W. Bush?  And four years later what we allowed the state of Ohio to do?

And then I realized that for quite some time we've allowed others not part of any government to make that selection:  PHARMA, Big Oil and Big Coal, the Adelsons and the Soros, those with the big dollars to make the choice for us by donating huge amounts of money to 501c4 and SuperPAC committees to pay for nonstop commercials and trips to every boondock town in the country.

Now, every citizen gets just one vote, but somehow our individual votes don't seem to carry the same clout we used to have, especially when it comes to nominating conventions.  The two main parties have seen to that.  Not that this needs to be the case, however.

But when voters tune out and stay home, that's what happens.  In the recent California Primary, slightly over 13% of the electorate turned out.  I think that appalling, especially since voting absentee (by mail) is so easy.

A wise person once told me that in a democracy we get the government we deserve.

I think we're in trouble, folks.

No Real Surprise Here

(Click on image to enlarge.)

That's a pretty apt cartoon by Ted Rall, as were the brief comments accompanying it on his blog:

The US Supreme Court has ruled to abolish overall caps on federal campaign contributions, bringing an end to most meaningful limits on the influence of money on Congress. Yeah, there’s going to be even more corruption. But think of the bright side: Congress can ask their sponsors for even more money! If nothing else, it will stimulate the economy. 

While equally concerned about the possible increase in political corruption, the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times also reminded us that there are still some restraints on campaign donations:

On Wednesday, conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court continued their project of undermining reasonable attempts by Congress to limit the corrupting influence of money in election campaigns. The same 5-4 majority that lifted limits on corporate political spending in the Citizens United decision struck down long-standing limits on the total amount a citizen can donate during an election cycle. As in Citizens United, the majority held that the restrictions violated 1st Amendment protections for political speech.

This decision does not disturb limits on how much a donor can give to a single candidate or committee (so-called base limits). Even so, it will open the floodgates for campaign donations by wealthy individuals. Before Wednesday's ruling, a single donor was barred from giving more than $123,200 in total to federal candidates and party and other political committees. Now a donor will be able to contribute the maximum to as many candidates and committees as he likes (the ceiling for donations to a candidate is $5,200). That sort of largesse will not be ignored.   [Emphasis added]

Furthermore, I do not see that this will in any way affect the federal and state rules on requiring candidates to report on campaign contributions on a regular basis.  Assuming that remains the case,  the electorate should still be able to glean some information on donors from places such as Open Secrets.org. In fact, these good people have several posts up on the issues raised the Court's decision, including this one:

McCutcheon v. FEC, freeing individuals to give to an unlimited number of candidates, parties and PACs, could have a profound effect on this year's midterm elections.
 

The decision overturns the limits on how much individuals can contribute overall to federal candidates, parties and PACs during a two-year period. Until today, the aggregate limit stood at $123,200 -- no more than $48,600 to all candidates and $74,600 to all PACs and parties.

The opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts leaves in place the caps on how much can be given to each of those: $2,600 per election to each candidate, $32,400 per year to each national party committee, $10,000 per year to each state party and $5,000 per year to each federal PAC. But within these limits the totals can add up quickly.   [Emphasis added]

Look, what with the lobbying swinging door and the general ethics of entirely too many congress critters at present, I doubt that this decision will be the end of democracy as we know it, especially these days.  And, Pollyanna that I am, I also suspect that this will be the end of the machinations behind too many 501(c)4 groups.  Now that designation, no longer sullied by the corrupt, will refer to groups truly educating the populace.

And wouldn't that be nice.

 

Let The Sun Shine In

(Cartoon by Jack Ohman published 3/21/14 in the Sacramento Bee and featured at McClatchy DC.  Click on image to enlarge and then be so kind as to return.)

It's silly season again, and campaigns for the June primary are in full swing.  Also in full swing is the pouring of "dark" money into various campaign, including those involving propositions.  George Skelton took a good look at the issue of "hidden" campaign donations in his Los Angeles Times column.  Of course, what he's talking about is the use of 501(c)4 organization to hide identities.

From that column:

There's bipartisan agreement in California's Capitol that hiding the identities of political fat cats is bad for democracy. ...

But they've gotten hung up over exactly when to begin shining the light on shadowy mega-donors.

Democrats say start exposing them during this fall's elections.

Republicans claim that wouldn't be fair. It's "changing the rules in the middle of the game." They're insisting on one more election of donor-hiding.

They're like the drunk who promises to seek treatment, but first needs to go on one last binge.

The GOP stance is indefensible. If a rule is rotten, it should be chucked immediately. Why allow it to continue spoiling the political process?

That said, we are talking about crass politics, after all. Nobody should be shocked by any doublespeak or opportunism. And Democrats should compromise here for the long-term public good.   [Emphasis added]

So, what brought on the flurry of activity in the state legislature?  Well, in the last election, all sorts of money poured in to affect a couple of ballot measures somebody had a stake in:

The measure stemmed from the laundering of $15 million in "dark" money that was dumped into two 2012 ballot measure campaigns. Part of it was to fight Gov. Jerry Brown's tax increase. The rest was to promote an initiative that would have crippled political spending by unions.

The skullduggery backfired, souring many voters against the laundry machines. The tax hike won and the anti-union measure lost, both overwhelmingly.

The state could only trace the money back to such innocuously and disingenuously named sources as "Americans for Responsible Leadership," "Americans for Job Security" and "The Center to Protect Patient Rights." All were legally classified as nonprofits, largely immune to being required to disclose the real names of their donors.

No one still can say with certainty who actually forked out the millions, but the secretive network of nonprofits had ties to right-wing billionaires Charles and David Koch. So virtually everyone assumes it was the out-of-state Koch brothers who were secretly playing in California politics.   [Emphasis added]

While I'm not big on compromise these days, feeling that our president and our Congress have done enough to last a lifetime, I would settle this time if it meant that our November elections wouldn't be so tainted.

And I'd like to see the L.A. Times, S.F. Chronicle, Sacramento Bee, and all other state newspapers make a BIG DEAL of the passage of such a bill so the rest of the nation could start pressuring Congress for a comparable change in the law regarding 501c(4)s.

It's  time to stop the buying and selling of elections shrouded in secrecy.

Much Ado About Something Or Other

(Editorial cartoon by Lee Judge / The Kansas City Star (May 23, 2013) and featured at McClatchy DC.  Click on image to enlarge and then return.)

Michael Hiltzig took a very sensible look at the brouhaha over the IRS's "targeting" of conservative 501(c)(4) groups in his latest column.  He notes the amazing job this agency does overall, even with diminishing numbers of employees, and he correctly assesses what's actually going on here.

Ordinary taxpayers should be skeptical of this sort of theater. The last time the IRS was hauled over the coals for its supposed wrongdoing — in 1998, when the ostensible issue was the mistreatment of innocent individual taxpayers by revenue agents — Congress' true underlying motive was to hamstring its enforcement program against corporations and wealthy taxpayers. And that's precisely how things turned out.

What's the underlying motive today? Most likely to hobble the agency's scrutiny of political organizations claiming legal advantages as "social welfare" groups under section 501(c)4 of the tax code, which allows them to keep their donors secret. Indeed, during last week's hearing, Issa almost gave the game away by observing that the (c)4 designation covers "organizations that perhaps all of us have grown to like." Sure, because they funnel campaign cash to politicians on both sides of the aisle, anonymously. ...

...although the law says a 501(c)4 group must be "exclusively" devoted to social welfare purposes — that is, no politicking — IRS regulations say an applicant is still all right if it's "primarily" devoted to social welfare — that is, only a minority of its work amounts to intervening in campaigns. It was left to the Cincinnati staff to parse terms such as "campaign intervention" and "primarily."

If Congress desires there to be a bright line distinguishing (c)4 eligibility, it will have to draw the line itself. But plainly it prefers that these politically fraught decisions be made by civil servants who can then be hauled to the gibbet and hanged for their "incompetence" if things get hot.

When the issue of Congress' accepting this responsibility came up in last week's hearing, Issa ran for the hills: It's not his committee's job to write tax law, he said, but the Ways and Means Committee's. "The one thing we don't do is we don't pass tax law," he said, with a hint of relief.   [Emphasis added]

Mr. Issa (Wackaloon, CA) doesn't pass any kind of law.  All he and his Tea Party compatriots are interested in doing is (as the Judge cartoon suggests) raising scandals, imaginary ones.  Governing would be too hard and it would take an honest effort by all parties.  That's sad, because there is something that could be done about this particular issue, according to Open Secrets.  In a handy Frequently Asked Questions about 501(c)(4)s, here is a pretty solid summary of what could be done:

A number of suggestions have been made to try to fix the problem of political organizations gaming the system and using the (c)(4) loophole to shield the identities of their donors. The most straightforward is to ban 501(c)(4) groups from being involved in politics at all. That is in fact what the law says, but the language was, in effect, weakened when the IRS began applying the "primary purpose" test; that put the IRS in the business of making judgments about what activity is political.

Alternatively, social welfare organizations could be required to disclose the identity of their donors if they participated in political activity. Others have suggested that IRS officials draw a "bright line" delineating exactly how much political activity is acceptable, and then enforce it. The current understanding that groups may spend up to 49.9 percent of their resources on political activity was drawn from rules barring groups from having politics as their primary purpose, but exists nowhere in law or regulations.

Both suggestions would require Congress and the White House to act.  I don't see that happening this time around. Neither does Michael Hiltzig.

What's Really Wrong

(Editorial cartoon by Joel Pett / Lexington Herald-Leader (May 14, 2013) and featured at McClatchy, DC.  Click on image to enlarge.)

Michael Hiltzig took a look at one of the three major "scandals" swirling around the White House.  His conclusions pretty much mirror mine.

It's strange how "scandal" gets defined these days in Washington. At the moment, everyone is screaming about the "scandal" of the Internal Revenue Service scrutinizing conservative nonprofits before granting them tax-exempt status.

Here are the genuine scandals in this affair: Political organizations are being allowed to masquerade as charities to avoid taxes and keep their donors secret, and the IRS has allowed them to do this for years.

The bottom line first: The IRS hasn't done nearly enough over the years to rein in the subversion of the tax law by political groups claiming a tax exemption that is not legally permitted for campaign activity. Nor has it enforced rules requiring that donors to those groups pay gift tax on their donations. ...

Our lunatic campaign finance system is what turned the typical C4 from a volunteer fire department into a conduit of anonymous political cash. Big donors were given the green light to spend freely on elections by the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision. That wasn't good enough for some; they wanted to distribute their largess secretly.

C4s were there for the exploitation, and the result has been a wholesale decline of donor disclosure on the national level: As recently as 1998, nearly 100% of all donors to federal campaigns were publicly identified, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a campaign finance watchdog group. By the 2012 presidential election, that was down to 40%. ...

The danger inherent in the latest faux controversy is that the IRS will have its wings clipped before its investigation of C4s is fully fledged. Politicos and pundits are in a lather over the questions the agency put to targeted organizations to determine their social welfare bona fides — things like the identity of their board members and the amount of time and money spent on "electoral issues," and endorsements of candidates. These facts would be pretty fundamental to determining whether an organization is political, wouldn't you say?  

The real crime is the way Karl Rove and the Koch brothers have scammed the system.  This brouhaha over the IRS targeting conservatives is simply to deflect an examination of that crime.  Unfortunately, the Village press is only too happy to cooperate in that deflection.

Or it was.  Let's see if AP is going change its tune now that they've been subjected to a loss of constitutional rights, eh?  Maybe AP and other news organs will start doing their jobs a little more assiduously.

Nah ... that's too much to ask.

Comes The Dawning: Updated

(Editorial cartoon published by Mike Luckovich for the Atlanta Journal Constitution 3/29/11.  Click on image to enlarge.)

I've been waiting for the wackaloons in Congress to wake up to the fact that while they've got nothing when it comes to Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!, they might have something with respect to an IRS targeting of 501(c)(4) groups prior to the last election.  Those groups are registered with the IRS as "educational" entities and don't have to report where they get their funding as long as they don't go over a certain limit in political advertising.  In that regard, see my post here.

Early last week, the IRS issued an apology for targeting those groups with certain key words in their name to check to see if they were going beyond their allowable limit on political work.

From the Los Angeles Times:

The Internal Revenue Service improperly screened applications from conservative groups that sought tax-exempt status, a senior IRS official said Friday.

IRS staffers selected for more review the applications that included the words “tea party” or “patriot,” Lois Lerner, director of exempt organizations, said in a conference call with reporters.

“That’s absolutely inappropriate and not the way we should do things,” Lerner said.

The staffers also requested information the IRS does not normally ask for, including donor lists.

Lerner first disclosed the improper screening in response to a question she received at a conference sponsored by the American Bar Assn. in Washington earlier in the day. In the conference call that followed, she said that of 300 applications staffers selected for additional review, about a quarter were selected solely because of the flagged words. The rest were selected for a “broad spectrum” of reasons, Lerner said. She could not elaborate on the other groups’ purposes or politics. ...

Lerner said the staffers selected the applications with “tea party” and “patriot” in them for expediency, not out of political bias.   [Emphasis added]

Now, I tend to believe the IRS spokeswoman when it comes to the issue of expediency, as did Libby Spencer in her take on the issue:

I'm also remembering the IRS has been hit by austerity fever same as every other federally funded agency. Also, the applications for this particular status by politically motivated individuals has exploded in that time frame. So you have fewer workers reviewing umpteenth more applications and they took a shortcut to meet their quotas.

Have to agree with Think Progress here. The real problem is they used the wrong keywords. While it's true a lot of these Tea Party groups are fleecing the gullible rubes, they're just the grifters. It's the deep pocket front groups who are cheating on the codes.    [Emphasis added]

 Like I said, the IRS apology was made public on Friday, but it wasn't mentioned by the GOP players until Sunday.  Sen. Collins (R-Maine) and Rep. Issa (Wackaloon-CA) both mentioned it on the bobbleheads on Sunday.  And the Benghazi issue continues to take up most of the oxygen.

Of course, the White House response played along, stating that the Inspector General's report will be reviewed carefully and implied that heads would roll if the IRS was playing politics.  Apparently it hasn't occurred to our president that far more Republicans were abusing the system than Democrats, probably because the Democrats hadn't figured out how to make the system work.

This one is going to be fun to watch.

UPDATE:

From Josh Marshall at TPM:

Marco Rubio just called on President Obama to fire the Commissioner of the IRS. Small problem: the Commissioner in place when all this happened was Bush appointee Douglas H. Shulman. He left just after the November election and there’s an acting Commissioner currently in place.  [Emphasis added]

Like I said, this one is going to be fun.

Shoddy Freud

(Editorial cartoon by Joel Pett and featured 12/26/12 by McClatchy DC.  Click on image to enlarge.)


Ok, I admit it.  This story made me blink.  Not once, but several times.  I guess I really am naive.  It has to do with one of the major Tea Party groups (FreedomWorks), a well-funded one which spent millions of dollars on the last two elections.

Richard K. Armey, the group’s chairman and a former House majority leader, walked into the group’s Capitol Hill offices with his wife, Susan, and an aide holstering a handgun at his waist. The aim was to seize control of the group and expel Armey’s enemies: The gun-wielding assistant escorted FreedomWorks’ top two employees off the premises, while Armey suspended several others who broke down in sobs at the news.

The coup lasted all of six days. By Sept. 10, Armey was gone — with a promise of $8 million — and the five ousted employees were back. The force behind their return was Richard J. Stephenson, a reclusive Illinois millionaire who has exerted increasing control over one of Washington’s most influential conservative grass-roots organizations. ...

“This was two weeks after there had been a shooting at the Family Research Council,” said one junior staff member who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media. “So when a man with a gun who didn’t identify himself to me or other people on staff, and a woman I’d never seen before said there was an announcement, my first gut was, ‘Is FreedomWorks in danger?’ It was bizarre.’ ” ...

Armey appeared out of touch and unsure of how FreedomWorks operated when he took over that Tuesday morning, according to interviews with more than a dozen employees on both sides who witnessed the takeover. Sitting in a glass-walled conference room visible to much of the staff, he placed three young female employees on administrative leave, then reversed himself when they burst into tears; his wife lamented aloud that maybe they had “jumped the gun.”   [Emphasis added]

Now, a lot of the blogosphere has been commenting on the outright extortion accomplished by Dick Armey.  Of course, this would fit with Armey's reputation back in the day when he was House Majority Leader.  That man could out-hammer The Hammer (Tom DeLay), so this really comes as no surprise.

In this iteration of the stetson wearing yahoo, he headed up a group sponsored by billionaire Libertarians which snookered in millions of people under the aegis of The Tea Party, and then Armey decided to leave, taking $8 million of those bucks others donated with him.  Grifter.

According to the WaPo article, Armey was upset that some of the groups leaders were making money for private projects (i.e., a book).  I guess he was upset that such projects might cause the IRS to take a closer look at the groups 501(c)4 status, which would kill the golden goose.  Besides, he wasn't getting a cut.

Either/or, that isn't what caused me to blink.  It was the way it was accomplished:  with a gun.  He had an aide, whom no one knew, escort the two leaders of the group out in front of everyone else.  That would scare me to death.  It certainly intimidated everyone in the FreedomWorks office at the time.

That's what guns do, no matter who is carrying them.  And yet, none of the Tea Partiers are apparently willing to make the connection.  Neither Armey nor his aide are presumably mentally ill.  And presumably the aide had the legal right to own and openly carry the weapon.  And a bunch of people suddenly feared for their lives.  That's not the way I want to live my life.

I think Atrios had the best comment on the story I've seen:

Dick Armey stages armed coup, gets rewarded with $8 million severance.

Conservatives is weird.

Ayup.

I'm Not So Sure

(Political cartoon by Matt Wuerker and published at Daily Kos.)

There's a very interesting article up at the Los Angeles Times on the effect of super PAC spending in the 2012 election.  The authors seem to be indicating (at least from their lede) that the outrageous sums spent during this election really didn't make a difference when it came to the outcome.

In the end, the old truism held: Money isn't everything.

Deep-pocketed "super PACs" and other independent groups dumped more than $1 billion into the 2012 election, largely on behalf of Republicans, injecting a harsh tone into races across the country and driving record spending. But they failed to have the dramatic impact both sides anticipated after such intense saturation of the airwaves.

Tuesday's results challenged the notion that GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney had a strong edge because of heavyweight allies such as Americans for Prosperity, Restore Our Future and the two Crossroads organizations that were cofounded by Karl Rove, the political strategist and former advisor to President George W. Bush.

In fact, groups allied with President Obama claimed more success, even though they were outspent. Unions gleefully noted that they exceeded the number of voter contacts made in 2008 — one result of the Supreme Court decision that allowed corporations and unions to spend money on direct political activity. ...

The election exposed a limitation of super PACs and tax-exempt advocacy groups: Prohibited from coordinating with candidates, they served primarily as a weapon to mow down opponents, rather than a means to communicate a positive vision. And the preponderance of groups working on Romney's behalf may have overloaded voters.   [Emphasis added]

I would be willing to accept that conclusion but for the fact that President Obama also availed himself of super PAC  money even after he claimed he would eschew it.  Still, however, there's an argument to be made that the super-saturation of television, radio, and the internet caused voters' eyes to glaze over.  I think what won the election for Obama and down-ticket Democratic candidates was the spendid ground-game of the Democrats, something the GOP failed to do this time around, apparently counting on the ads to rouse their base and basest-base to show up.

That said, the L.A. Times article notes that and suggests, albeit implicitly, what we can expect in the future (presumably in 2014):

Even as they reflected on their losses, top conservative groups said Tuesday's results would not slow them down.

"We are not about just one year or one election or one issue," said Tim Phillips, president of the nonprofit advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, which spent more than $190 million in the two-year cycle — a large share on ads pummeling Obama on the debt and his energy policies. "It's about building for the long haul, and that's what we're committed to doing."

AFP's contributors are not discouraged, he said. "They tell us this is a long ballgame."   [Emphasis added]

So, the super PACs and 501 (c) 4 groups will be back, presumably with a little more discipline and a little more coordination.  We're not there yet.

And the Republican governors and state legislatures will continue to try to suppress the vote.

The president better do a better job over the next two years.

A Billion Here, A Billion There ...

I can't wait for Tuesday to be over, assuming (of course) that the election will be wrapped up late Tuesday night.  I'm sick of an email box stuffed with fund raising requests.  I'm sick of media telling me dozens of times a day how close the race is, what the polls say, what the polls don't say, and what the campaigns say about polls and their candidates. 

I'm sick of popcorn.

And I'm disgusted, primarily by all the money being thrown around in this election from the top of the ticket on down.  How much money?  Even Open Secrets doesn't know exactly, thanks to Citizens United, but at least that group has a pretty good idea.

The 2012 election will not only be the most expensive election in U.S. history, the cost will tower over the next most expensive election by more than $700 million.

Earlier this year, the Center for Responsive Politics estimated that the 2012 election would cost $5.8 billion -- an estimate that already made it the most expensive in history -- but with less than a week to go before the election, CRP is revising the estimate upwards. According to CRP’s new analysis of Federal Election Commission data, this election will likely cost $6 billion. ...

"In the new campaign finance landscape post-Citizens United, we're seeing historic spending levels spurred by outside groups dominated by a small number of individuals and organizations making exceptional contributions," said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics.

Not only is the total cost of the election record breaking, but the rate at which spending has increased -- and continues to increase -- in the closing weeks of the election is as well. In particular, outside groups are spending furiously.  Spending by these groups, for and against the two main presidential candidates, has grown from $19 million per week in early September to $33 million per week in early October to $70 million during the week beginning October 21.

 $6 BILLION.

That's a huge chunk of change in this economy, especially when just about all the candidates are wedded to the idea that we need to reduce the deficit.  They differ only on whose ox gets gored and how big the scar is going to be.

$6 BILLION.

And we're not even sure who's floating that kind of money, at least some of it.

What remains unknown -- and may never fully be accounted for -- is how much money secretive “shadow money” organizations spent, with some investing massive sums on ads, but also on unreported and purportedly "non-political" activities, as the election neared. It may take years to determine how much they spent. Furthermore, it likely will never be known who provided the vast majority of this money, which includes at least $203 million in the last two months.

"One thing we can say for certain is that the transparency the Supreme Court relied upon to justify this new framework has been sorely lacking," said Krumholz.

In addition to the spending reported by nonprofits, however, at least $100-200 million more has been spent by these groups on "issue advocacy" that identifies a federal candidate, but was not required to be reported to the FEC. This is of concern because a number of these organizations -- particularly those that have organized since the Citizens United ruling, are spending huge sums and have super PAC counterparts -- are primarily political in nature. More disturbing than the secret spending (some of which can be pieced together based on studies of political ads and will eventually be summarized in tax reports to the Internal Revenue Service), is the secret source of this money. With no requirements to disclose where the money is coming from, voters in 2012 have been left with no real means to judge the credibility of the message or consider any hidden agendas leading those donors to give.   [Emphasis added]

Lewis Carroll would have been so proud.

Me?  Not so much.

 

Now, If *I* Ruled the GOP

(Editorial cartoon by Kevin Siers / The Charlotte Observer (August 22, 2012) and featured at McClatchy DC. Click on image to enlarge and then be kind enough to return.)

The GOP seems to have lost control, something which really surprises me, especially when it comes to Congressman Akin's campaign in Missouri against incumbent Claire McCaskill. Yes, Akin's remarks about the female body's ability to block conception in the case of "legitimate" rape was off the wall, so far off the wall that the media (print, television, internet) exploded. But, the damage control exercised by the GOP regulars was just as off the wall. They demanded that Akin withdraw as a candidate, allowing the party to replace him.

Now,me, I would have taken him aside and told him "Dude, you fucked up. Just apologize by saying you misspoke and that what you really meant was that abortion in cases of rape adds another wrong to the already horrible situation."

But no, instead, the entire apparatus came down on Akin, demanding he go away. He refused. I mean, what does he have to lose? At his age, this is his last hurrah, especially since there was no way short of a write-in campaign to get on the ballot for his congressional seat. Apparently the party was unwilling to front the costs for that.

The stance has to have pissed off the Tea Party which voted for him in the primary, along with other Republicans who liked him better than the other two candidates. Their votes mean nothing to the party?

Additionally, the party leaders not only demanded he withdraw, the funders also withdrew their support: no more Karl Rove and Koch Brothers millions for ads. They pulled the trigger too quickly, in my opinion. Sure, the Democrats were going to make hay with the comments, noting that this member of a House science committee was spouting this nonsense, and noting that Akin and VP-designate Ryan co-sponsored a bill limiting abortion to cases of "forcible rape." But it would have died down after a week or so, especially if campaign ads focused on Akin's position of deficit spending and the economy.

Instead, the ad money is gone (at least for the time being -- I have no doubt that at this point the Roves and Kochs of the party are busy inventing a new SuperPac and/or 501(c)4 group to funnel money back into the campaign), and Claire McCaskill, who really was vulnerable has a shot at keeping her job while Akin tries to raise funds as a new Don Quixote.

And even worse, the platform committee has decided on a plank which forbids abortion in all cases. Now the Dems have the hypocrisy two-by-four to wield, which Kevin Siers has graphically displayed.

But, hey! I'm not a Republican. I'll let them arrange their own destruction.

The only thing is that regardless of the outcome of this particular election, the rest of us won't win much if anything.

The Best Money Can Buy

The Center for Responsive Politics continues to track expenditures for election ads for this cycle. Once again, the group's Open Secrets blog takes a look at those groups contributing millions for ads without having to reveal the source of the money.

As of today [August 6, 2012], spending reported to the Federal Election Commission by groups that aren't required to disclose the sources of their funding has nearly tripled over where it stood at the same point in the 2010 election cycle, according to research by the Center for Responsive Politics.

By Aug. 6, 2010, groups registered as social welfare organizations, or 501(c)(4)s, as well as super PACs funded entirely by them, had reported spending $8.5 million. That figure has soared to $24.9 million in this cycle.

In 2008, nondisclosing groups reported spending $8.3 million at this point in the campaign season. ...

Any group claiming 501(c)(4) status under the Internal Revenue Code is supposed to spend less than half its budget on political activity, such as independent expenditures. However, as OpenSecrets Blog has described, some groups spend much of their money on issue ads, and also fund other tax-exempt groups with similar political philosophies that in turn spend their money on advertising.

The increase in the overall reported spending by nondisclosing groups this cycle is likely attributable in great part to the fact that this is a presidential election year. An additional factor may be that this is the first full election cycle since the January 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC and other legal developments freed up fundraising and spending by outside groups. ...

Much more spending is yet to come, if 2012 is anything like 2010. Nondisclosing groups reported to the FEC that they spent $130 million for the whole 2010 election cycle, and 93 percent of it was unleashed after Aug. 6.

If that pattern holds true, more than $300 million in political spending will be reported to the FEC by groups that do not have to disclose their donors and are not supposed to have politics as their primary function. Much more money will never be reported, except in vague summaries months -- or even years -- from now, when these groups file their tax forms with the IRS. [Emphasis added]

And that money is being targeted carefully. Progressive candidates like Sherrod Brown are facing a deluge of nasty ads without being able to match the money spent. In other words, the rest of us are being shut out of the process without knowing who is financing the opposition.

I'm not a big Obama fan, but I'll tell you what: I'll still show up on election day and vote for him and the Democrats in the hopes that one of the members of the conservative wing of the Supreme Court will either retire or die. Justice Kagan is not exactly my cup of tea, but a Romney appointee will no doubt mirror Scalia and Alito.

Like I keep saying: I'm getting too old for this.

Why We Can't Have Nice Things

(Political cartoon by Ruben Bolling and published 8/2/12 at Daily Kos. Click on image to enlarge and then please return.)

Ruben Bolling's cartoon really nails it, doesn't it? I'm just sorry I couldn't get a larger image to load. I suggest you click on the Daily Kos link: you might have better luck in getting a larger image than I did. Keep the cartoon in mind for the rest of this post, because there really is a connection.

Because of the Citizen's United decision, campaign spending this election cycle has skyrocketed. Corporations and the wealthy are perfectly free to pour whatever they choose into SuperPACs and 501(c)4 organizations and they have done so, on both sides of the political spectrum. Open Secrets has published its latest report on campaign expenditures and have included a prediction for the totals.

The 2012 presidential and congressional elections will be the most expensive on record, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics estimates -- though not by much. The Center predicts, based on data from 18 months of fundraising and spending, that the elections will cost $5.8 billion, an increase of 7 percent from the 2008 cost of $5.4 billion. But outside spending, which is soaring while presidential candidate spending declines, is a wild card that makes predictions tricky. ...

The presidential race by itself will cost about $2.5 billion, the Center predicts, in funds laid out by the candidates, Democratic and Republican party committees and outside spending groups. The candidates have raised about $608 million, compared with more than $1.1 billion at this point in the 2008 cycle.

The big factor in 2012 is outside money. These elections -- presidential and congressional -- are the first in which new, post-Citizens United rules will have been operative for the entire two-year campaign cycle. While outside spending groups existed in previous presidential election cycles -- Americans Coming Together, for example, on the liberal side, and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth for conservatives -- that U.S. Supreme Court decision and other legal developments led to the proliferation of super PACs and the growth of other outside spending groups that don’t have to disclose their donors.

As a result, spending by outside groups will make up a far larger proportion of the total spent in the 2012 election than in previous cycles and will add up to, at a minimum, $750 million, the Center forecasts. [Emphasis added]

For a breakdown of the donations and expenditures as of the July 21, 2012 reporting deadline, go here, but keep in mind that these figures do not include the 501(c)4 groups who are not required to file reports listing donors or expenditures. I have a hunch that the Center For Responsive Politics forecast is going to be quite low and that we are actually looking at over $3 billion in the presidential contest alone, with hundreds of millions (if not a billion) in congressional races.

So, back to the Bolling cartoon.

Businesses are sitting on a lot of cash (fish, hut repair kits, coconuts) because they claim a certain "uncertainty" over the economic future of the country. Banks, who got bailed out by us, are not loaning money to smaller companies who might actually put people back to work because of "uncertainty" over the economic future of the country. Yet there seems to be several billions of dollars available to spend freely on buying politicians to ensure that there will still be plenty of cash in the coffers for our owners.

In the mean time, the politicos already in office and who want to keep their jobs are cutting funds to such "give-aways" as food stamps for the poor so they can cut taxes even further for the 1% elite.

It kind of makes me want to scream.

Oh, My!

It isn't often that I agree with the Washington Post editorial board, but this is one of those times. In an editorial entitled "Expose the Fat Cats," WaPo came down unequivocally in favor of requiring those groups paying for political ads to reveal the sources of their donations.

AMERICANS WHO are worried about the corrosive power of big money in politics ought to watch what is about to happen in the Senate. On Monday, a cloture vote is scheduled on legislation that would require the disclosure of donors anonymously pumping tens of millions of dollars into this year’s presidential and congressional campaigns. Not a single Republican in the chamber has expressed support for the bill, known as the Disclose Act, meaning it will probably die for this session. It should be interesting to hear how the Republican senators justify this monumental concealment of campaign cash. ...

Until recently, Republicans supported full disclosure. Now that the tide of money is running in their favor, they don’t. Their rationale is that exposure might squelch the constitutional rights of donors. In fact, the court has upheld the constitutionality of disclosure. The Disclosure Act is a reasonable bill that would, among other things, require identification of donors of $10,000 or more to certain organizations that spend money on political campaigns. [Emphasis added]

Those "certain organizations" are primarily those groups known as 501(c)4 groups, non profit organizations which are supposed to be about "education" and the like, but which in the election cycles since Citizens United, are purely political in nature. Groups like Karl Rove's Global GPS have been have been flooding the airwaves with attack ads designed to bring down Democrats in the House, Senate, and White House. Unlike Super PACs, the 501(c)4 organizations are not required to file reports with the FEC listing their donors, which means tens of thousands of dollars are funneled secretly into the process.

The excuse usually offered is that revealing the donors' names is an unconstitutional infringement on donors' rights to privacy and free speech, an excuse which simply doesn't hold any more water than the claims that these are "educational groups." One of the arguments used by the Supreme Court in Citizens United was that the reporting requirements of the Super PACs provides all the transparency that is required during an election.

The Disclose Act would end that bit of chicanery, which the GOP simply is not interested in, mainly because Republicans are the primary beneficiaries. Like the editorialist states, it will be interesting to see what kind of excuse is proffered to avoid the vote today.

Hopefully, the Democrats use whatever justification is offered as a bludgeon for the next four months.

Well, How About That

The New York Times finally got around to noticing that groups organized as "non-profits" have been donating to political causes, a real no-no if they want to keep their tax-free status.

Two years after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision opened the door for corporate spending on elections, relatively little money has flowed from company treasuries into “super PACs,” which can accept unlimited contributions but must also disclose donors. Instead, there is growing evidence that large corporations are trying to influence campaigns by donating money to tax-exempt organizations that can spend millions of dollars without being subject to the disclosure requirements that apply to candidates, parties and PACs.

The secrecy shrouding these groups makes a full accounting of corporate influence on the electoral process impossible. But glimpses of their donors emerged in a New York Times review of corporate governance reports, tax returns of nonprofit organizations and regulatory filings by insurers and labor unions. ...

Some of the biggest recipients of corporate money are organized under Section 501(c)(4) of the tax code, the federal designation for “social welfare” groups dedicated to advancing broad community interests. Because they are not technically political organizations, they do not have to register with or disclose their donors to the Federal Election Commission, potentially shielding corporate contributors from shareholders or others unhappy with their political positions. ...

Because social welfare groups are prohibited from devoting themselves primarily to political activity, many spend the bulk of their money on issue advertisements that purport to be educational, not political, in nature. In May, for example, Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, a group co-founded by the Republican strategist Karl Rove, began a $25 million advertising campaign, carefully shaped with focus groups of undecided voters, that attacks Mr. Obama for increasing the federal deficit and urges him to cut spending.

The Internal Revenue Service has no clear test for determining what constitutes excessive political activity by a social welfare group. And tax-exempt groups are permitted to begin raising and spending money even before the I.R.S. formally recognizes them. Two years after helping Republicans win control of the House with millions of dollars in issue advertising, Crossroads GPS’s application for tax-exempt status is still pending. [Emphasis added]

The Center for Responsive Politics has been following this trend since the end of February, and has done a remarkable job in compiling a list of such groups. It even has a chart which indicates how much money is involved, the political persuasion of the group, and its disclosure policy.

While the NYT is a little late to the dance, it has at least done a pretty good job in digging out even more information about these groups. For that it deserves some praise. The trick will be for the paper to keep at it, if only to light a fire under the IRS to do some investigating of its own.

The Power Of One

(Editorial cartoon by Tom Toles and published 6/21/2012 in the Washington Post. Click on image to enlarge and then please return.)

The big news this election year is the huge amount of money being generated for campaigns thanks to Citizens United. It is conceivable that $1 billion will be spent by the two presidential candidates and their supporters. Amazing.

There is this, however: at least with the SuperPACs and with the campaigns, we can learn who is paying all of this money. The FEC has pretty stringent reporting requirements. Unfortunately, that reporting is not required of the other players in this game, those who have "charitable organizations" known as 501(c)4 groups. Those donors get to hide, and certain members of Congress want it to stay that way.

Open Secrets reminded us of that after they looked at some of the reports just filed.

Ever since the Citizens United and Speechnow.org court rulings, super PACs have been at the center of debate surrounding campaign finance. But nonprofit social welfare groups actually outspent super PACs in 2010, and could do so again this year. Those groups, called 501(c)(4) organizations under a section of the tax code, can accept unlimited individual contributions without disclosing their donors and air political ads as long as their primary purpose is to advance the public welfare.

What "social welfare" means in the eyes of the IRS has not always been clear, though, and enforcement actions have been scant. However, as Roll Call reports, the IRS may be taking a more aggressive stance on 501(c)4 groups which act as de facto political committees -- a move that is facing pushback from GOP congressional leaders.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and ten other Republican senators sent a letter to the IRS attacking the agency's request for detailed donor information from a list of conservative nonprofits. The letter echoed a common argument for keeping contributions anonymous: That disclosure of donors could lead to their intimidation and the chilling of speech. The letter follows a speech by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

Some argument, that. Why should donors to the 501(c)4 worry about the disclosure? Contributors to SuperPACs and bundlers don't seem to have a problem.

Even with the lack of reporting available, however, Open Secrets still managed to do an amazing job in untangling one man's interlocking network of 501(c)4 groups:

[Howard] Rich, 72, made his fortune in Manhattan real estate, but since at least the early 1970s, his passion has been libertarian politics. He decamped from the Libertarian Party in the 1980s to establish his own network of like-minded think-tanks and publishing companies.

Rich is also prominently attached to leading national libertarian groups -- he sits on the boards of directors of the Club for Growth and the Cato Institute. Yet he remains a mysterious figure, rarely interviewed and almost always several steps removed from any direct action.

Still, an examination of the publicity-shy mogul’s efforts makes several things clear. He is deeply committed to his ideological values -- willing to spend massive amounts of money to push projects even in places where he has little apparent personal or business connection. He is single-minded in his approach, willing to lash out at conservatives as quickly and as viciously as he will go after liberals. And all indications are that he believes the ends justify the means, sometimes using money as a blunt force object to get his way. ...

According to Internal Revenue Service records analyzed by the Center for Responsive Politics, from the early 2000s at least through 2010 Rich was the linchpin holding together a confusing, swirling array of political organizations -- all of them nondisclosing nonprofit groups -- that spent heavily to influence state and federal politics around the country. The constellation of organizations that operate out of a handful of Rich-related addresses is constantly changing, but some of them are well-known: Rich, in his role as chairman of U.S. Term Limits, a 501(c)(4) group under tax rules, has for years been the driving force of the movement to curtail how long elected officials can stay in office. He's also the chairman of a 501(c)(4) group called Americans for Limited Government, which spent $1.02 million in 2010 targeting Democrats running for Congress and distributed millions more to other groups.

That's just one man, a man with plenty of connections and access to plenty of cash, his own and that of others.

Go read the entire article to get the extent of Rich's influence. And then go take a walk to get your blood pressure down.