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.

 

Scary Stuff

(Click on image to enlarge so you can see the fine details.  Then please come back.)

So, Happy Halloween, or All Hallows Eve, another pagan holiday the Christians swiped and revamped, making it a paler than pale version than it was.  Now it's supposed to be a scary, monster-filled evening, with the upside being that little kids get free sugar-rushes if they're brave enough to ring a doorbell.

With that in mind, I was absolutely delighted with David Horsey's column from yesterday.  This man freakin' gets it!  This really is a scary time, one that will legitimize the worst of the human psyche should Romney win.

It is impossible to know if Mitt Romney would turn out to be a good, bad or a mediocre president, but one certain downside of a Romney victory is that it would reward the most venal forces in American politics. ...

From Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Donald Trump to all the anonymous creators of the wild fabrications that churn out of websites and go viral in emails, the relentless vilification of Obama has been unprecedented. Sure, every president suffers unfair criticism. Many of our most effective presidents, from Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln to Franklin Roosevelt and Bill Clinton, have been slandered and hounded by critics. But Obama’s detractors have plumbed new and revolting depths of mendacity.

Obama’s birthplace, his paternity, his religion, his academic attainments, his citizenship and his loyalty to the country have all been called into question by people who feel no moral qualms about spreading fabrications and untruths. Any unfair tactic, any lie is justified in order to “take back America” from someone they refuse to accept as a legitimate president, despite the indisputable reality that he was elected by a majority of American voters in a near-landslide of electoral votes.   [Emphasis added]

And what hurts this ex-lawyer most is that it was helped along by the Supreme Court in its Citizens United decision.  Our owners are only too happy to fund the wing-nuts in their drive to demolish a man, who, while certainly not perfect, didn't fit their mold.  And that's what the last four years have been about, as Horsey reminds us.

The ever-waffling Romney is not their perfect candidate, but, for now, that does not matter. He offers their one and only chance to drive the usurper, Obama, from the White House. That has been the right wing’s objective every minute of every day for four years, and vindication of their dishonest, un-American crusade would be the worst result of Mitt Romney’s election.

And that just scares the hell out of me.

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.

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.

That Vision Thing

(Political cartoon by Matt Wuerker and published at Daily Kos. Click on image to enlarge and then please return.)

Well, here we are in the dog days of summer, a state that apparently extends to the presidential election coming up in November. According to several polls, the election is a dead heat. It shouldn't be, but it is. And I finally found an explanation as to why that probably is the case. An op-ed column, written by Professor Drew Westen of Emory University, suggests that both candidates have failed to persuade the electorate of their qualifications because neither has a vision of what it will take to cure what ails us.

In 1933, four years after a calamitous market crash, Americans were losing hope. But then, on a cold day in March,Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his first inaugural address.

The new president pulled no punches, laying blame for the country's financial woes squarely on Wall Street speculators — and, by implication, on their benefactors in Washington. "They have no vision," he said, citing a passage from the Bible, "and when there is no vision, the people perish."

Roosevelt, by contrast, clearly articulated a vision that reawakened the hope of a beleaguered nation. He spoke that day of the country's greatest need — putting people back to work — and he laid out a plan for achieving that goal. ...

Americans today aren't interested in slogans and sound bites. They want the candidates to offer them a vision, but so far neither Mitt Romney nor President Obama has done so.

Republicans are recycling tired promises from the Reagan era, preaching a gospel of small government and fiscal responsibility. But their words ring hollow. Republicans have been sounding that theme for decades, but they've never put it into practice. Reagan tripled the national debt. George W. Bush nearly doubled it, and left a legacy of debt from two unfunded wars and unfunded tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy. ...

Voters aren't hearing a clear message from Obama either. On the one hand, he's pushing for more stimulus, but he is also the architect of a "grand bargain" that will cut more than $2 trillion from the 2013 federal budget, imposing the same kind of "austerity" that has proved so counterproductive in Europe. [Emphasis added]

So why is that? I mean, both candidates are consummate politicians. Both have had their share of election victories, in each case, against all odds. Yet neither has moved the American public in any kind of meaningful way. Neither has articulated a clear message beyond the drab sound bites designed to get the press's attention, one way or the other.

Westen comes up with several reasons for that disconnect, and I think he is onto something important.

So why hasn't either candidate offered a clear vision that resonates with the American people?

One reason is that, in a time that requires boldness, the two presidential candidates are both cautious by nature. But there are other reasons as well.

One is the role of money in politics. Roosevelt attacked Wall Street in his first speech as president, and backed up his rhetoric with one piece of legislation after another to limit its power. He used government money to put Americans directly to work — something no one had dreamed of doing before — and created Social Security, a minimum wage and unemployment insurance. In today's political culture, presidential candidates and legislators are beholden to Wall Street to support their campaigns, which has made the passage of such measures inconceivable. [Emphasis added]

Bingo.

Obama articulated a kind of vision in 2008, one which moved the country to elect him and the world to award him the Nobel Peace Prize even before he got his administration underway. And then he did nothing to implement that vision.

Since then, we've seen the world explode with fears and with hope: Tahrir Square, Wisconsin, Occupy. The very framing of the vision was handed out to those who would lead even in the face of Citizens United. Yet neither candidate, including "our guy", seems willing to step up to the challenge and to meet it by actually leading the nation in programs designed to benefit the 99% of us.

And so we are left with no real choice, just Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb.

This is not healthy for democracy.

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.

Bargain Basement

(Click on image to enlarge, then return.)

No, I'm not actually re-visiting the Wisconsin re-call election, merely using it as an example, much the way David Horsey is in a recent column. It's clear that because of Citizen's United our elections are essentially being bought by those that have.

I was reminded of that again yesterday when reports came out that Romney and the GOP raised over $76 million in May and Obama and the Dems raised $60 million. Forget the disparity. What's important is that nearly $150 million dollars was raised in just one month for the November elections. This at a time when Congress is fussing over deficits but can't bring itself to raise taxes on the wealthy which might ease, perhaps even wipe out the deficit. This at a time when most of us are having trouble paying our bills and putting food on the table because so many of us are unemployed while employers sit on tons of cash because of "uncertainty." But the game goes on.

The Citizens United decision does not apply to big corporations alone; it also frees unions to give as much as they want. But the fact is unions do not have ready access to money on the scale of the billionaire boys club. When just one man, casino king Sheldon Adelson, can write a couple of checks and fund Newt Gingrich’s entire presidential campaign, you know the craps table of electioneering has been tilted in favor of candidates who look after the concerns of the mega-rich.

And guess what? Most of those candidates, just like most billionaires, are Republicans.

Occupy Wall Street enthusiasts can camp out on the sidewalk and conduct their exquisitely egalitarian group discussions. Anarchists can gleefully smash windows at Bank of America and Starbucks. Union members can set up phone banks and carry picket signs. But as long as elections are there to be bought, a handful of billionaires will have a far louder voice in who runs the country than all the activists on the left combined.

As evidence, I offer exhibits one and two: David and Charles Koch, the billionaires Democrats love to hate. These oil magnates are generous sugar daddies for the "tea party" and conservative candidates all over America. According to the Obama campaign, the Koch brothers have pledged $200 million to defeat the president in November. Others say the Kochs are only putting up $60 million. Either way, that is a big chunk of change from just two voters.

The vanity of rich men used to be stoked by buying yachts and racehorses and baseball teams. Now, the indulgence of choice seems to be the purchase of governors and congressmen and -- who knows? -- maybe even a president. [Emphasis added]

While I admit to being discouraged, I haven't quite reached the depths that David Horsey implies in the post appended to his cartoon. I think there's still room for hope, but it will not blossom unless we start working now. Even then it may be decades before the first buds form, if only because it will take that long for a constitutional amendment to get through Congress and the states. And that assumes we'll manage to elect some actual liberals to Congress.

Still, I think we have a chance. I'm re-reading Charles Williams' novel War In Heaven and I am struck by the very banality of evil. Yes, that evil is a destructive force, drastically affecting the lives of other, but it is always, at root, exercised for really childish personal gain. That is what is happening to us (and the rest of the world) right now. And we don't have to let it prevail.

It's not only about what 'they' are, it's also about who we are. We can throw up our hands and admit defeat and accept our yokes, or we can stand up to it, fight it. I'm old and weak, but I still prefer the latter.

Forward

(Editorial cartoon by Tom Toles and published 6/4/12 in the Washington Post. Click on image to enlarge and then return.)

It's late and not yet official, but it appears Gov. Walker survived the recall vote. Needless to say, I am very disappointed. It doesn't help that he managed to survive by having a huge war chest filled by the 1%. It also didn't help that the DNC did little to assist Wisconsin Democrats. Whether that will have ramifications in November remains to be seen.

One thing is certain, however. The political landscape has been altered by the liberals in Wisconsin, altered in very significant ways. Perhaps the best analysis of that alteration comes from Katrina vander Heuvel in a column written for the Washington Post before the election results were known.

On Tuesday, all eyes will be watching to see whether Wisconsin voters will keep labor-bashing right-winger Scott Walker (R) in the governor’s mansion. But win or lose, the real story is the 15 months of people power leading up to this day. The real lesson lies in more than a year of progressive organizing, petitioning, canvassing and campaigning for the cause. The real result is a progressive movement that is deeper and broader than before. ...

By attacking labor unions, flooding Wisconsin with outside cash and trying to cleanse the electorate of people who don’t look, earn or think like him, Walker has taken aim at more than a single campaign cycle or a series of policies; his real targets are the pillars of American progressivism itself. With the Romney campaign gearing up, and super PACs taking to the national airwaves, we face an unprecedented, well-funded assault on our basic values.

But progressives aren’t backing down. They’re just getting started.

So when the results come in, reflect on the vast organizing effort that brought Wisconsin to this moment — and imagine where it still has the potential to go. Elections are over in a matter of hours, but movements are made of weeks, months and years. ...

And in the last 15 months, Wisconsin’s progressives have shown us that the battle against bankrolled austerity can be bravely waged by an army of dedicated people committed to protecting working families. They’ve reminded us that good organizing is our only chance to withstand the blitzkrieg of corporate funded advertising — and better yet, leave a lasting mark. Their movement, with thousands of new Wisconsin activists mobilized, energized and educated, can be permanent — and it can keep growing. [Emphasis added]

Yes. This.

Hecate, another wise woman, pointed out just how important the work of Wisconsin liberals has been to the nation in that it provided the necessary conditions for the birth of the Occupy movement. I would supplement that comment even further and suggest that thousands of Egyptians massed in Tahriri Square provided the necessary conditions for the birth of the Wisconsin movement. The lineage is a noble one, and it is one to be celebrated as we recognize that the 99% exist all over the world.

So, all things considered, yesterday was indeed a victory, but it is a re-birth that will need to be nurtured for the years to come. We can do no less if we are all to survive.

The Big Tuesday

(Political cartoon by Matt Wuerker and published June 3, 2012 at Daily Kos. Click on image to enlarge and then return.)

Well, today's the day for the big recall attempt in Wisconsin. As Mitt Wuerker's brilliant cartoon points out, big money turned out for Governor Scott Walker. All the recall forces could count on were grassroots small contributions and volunteers to get out the vote. As of Sunday, Walker was ahead in the polls, but turnout will be crucial. It would have been nice if the DNC had forked over some cash to offset the 20 to 1 ratio, but apparently the president and national party leaders didn't want to get involved. And that's a shame. No, wait: it's downright shameful.

I understand the argument that Mr. Walker was elected and can be de-elected when his first term is up, and that recalls should be limited to felonious behavior. I understand the argument, I just don't agree with it. The people usually making that argument were the same sorts to lead and fund the successful recall efforts of California Governor Gray Davis a decade ago. I guess it depends on the party of the sitting official. And I don't think my old home state can stand another three years of this bozo.

What has intrigued me about this election, however, are the numerous questions raised by it. Has Wisconsin turned red over the past four years? Has the country? Can elections be bought by big-money and non-stop political commercials? Should out-of-state donors and volunteers have that big a part on local elections? What role should national parties have on local elections?

And then there's the whole issue of what a victory for either side portends for November. It's clear that President Obama thinks that it really will have no bearing on the national election. He thinks he can still carry Wisconsin even if Walker escapes with a victory. The GOP thinks a Walker victory gives Romney and all Republican candidates a wedge for November. I'm not so sure on either assessment.

What I am reasonably certain of, however, is that some speculation is downright weird, and the best example of that is Marc Thiessen's recent column in the Washington Post.

...there are a significant number of independents in Wisconsin who support both Scott Walker and Barack Obama. The president does not want to alienate those voters by getting into a fight with Walker. The last thing Obama wants is to force those Walker-Obama independents to choose.

But there is someone who would love to force them to choose: Mitt Romney. And that is precisely why Romney may put Scott Walker on the GOP ticket this November.

A victory tomorrow would make Walker the instant front-runner for the GOP vice presidential nod. [Emphasis added.]

Apparently Mr. Thiessen hasn't paid attention to news reports: Walker just might be indicted in the reasonably near future. Several of his "employees" while he was Milwaukee County Executive have already been indicted and are cooperating with investigators. Walker has transferred over $100,000 from his campaign funds to his legal defense fund. He is tainted with a capital T. But, hey! That's irrelevant to Republicans, I guess.

So: today I will be holding my breath and lighting candles and doing some old fashioned God-bothering. It may not do any good, but it will get me through the day and early evening. And, once the results are in, I guess I'll just have to take a deep breath and start looking toward November, regardless of the results.

Do I Dare To Eat A Peach?

(Editorial cartoon by Lee Judge / The Kansas City Star (June 1, 2012) and featured at McClatchy DC. Click on image to enlarge and then return.)

One of the continuing hot topics at Eschaton (pick a thread, any thread) is what does a liberal with conscience do come November. Vote for the Democratic candidate who has broken every liberal promise he made in 2008, who has continued the worst programs of the Bush administration, and who defers to the banksters every chance he gets as the lesser of two horrendous evils, or not vote for president (or write in a non-candidate) as a protest, thereby allowing a victory to Romney in the hopes that the Democratic party will finally get it? It's a dilemma, a real one. Lee Judge's cartoon captures the dilemma a lot of us are facing.

Although the differences between the two candidates are, in most respects, trivial, there are differences. Unfortunately, many of those differences are the result of the Democratic regulars being a bit slow on the up-take when it comes to creative ways to thwart the will of the 99%, yet there are differences. OpenSecrets details once current move by the GOP sponsors which illustrates this.

By now, we should have a complete picture of what the presidential candidates and political party committees raised and spent through the end of April. Regular monthly campaign finance reports for these committees were due last Sunday [May 20, 2012].

But wait. One committee isn't following the monthly pattern, causing confusion in the way the April numbers have been reported. Romney Victory Inc. -- a committee raising funds for Mitt Romney's campaign, three national Republican party committees and several state GOPs -- registered with the FEC on April 5 but has announced that it will be filing quarterly reports.

That means we won't see its first report until July 15.

Joint fundraising committees are standard practice these days once a party's nominee is known. They allow donors to give the maximum amount possible to the candidate ($5,000 per election cycle) and the national party (a hefty $30,800 per year) and state parties (up to $10,000 per year per state) in one fell swoop.

President Barack Obama's reelection campaign has been using one of these (Obama Victory Fund 2012) for more than a year and regularly claims credit for the substantial sums raised for the Democratic National Committee and documented in monthly reports to the FEC.

But since Romney Victory didn't file a monthly report, there's nothing on the public record to indicate how much it has raised or spent. Presumably it has raised about $18 million, taking a global number announced by Romney's campaign and subtracting what could be documented in the most recent reports.

But there isn't anything official yet and nothing on who the money came from. This explains the difference between the "Romney catching up on fundraising" vs. the "Obama maintains fundraising lead" stories that have appeared this week.

OK, both candidates are taking full advantage of Citizens United, raising millions of dollars for the race. Conventional wisdom predicts that $1 billion will be spent on the race, this at a time when unemployment is at 8.2%, the numbers of those slipping into poverty is increasing astronomically, and elders are rightfully fearful of the assaults on Social Security and Medicare in which both parties are engaged. That said, at least the Democrats' owners haven't balked at disclosure (at least that we know).

So what am I going to do? It's a tough call. I tend to agree with mp.

I guess I want Obama to win in November, but, at least right now, I'm not looking to Obama to help me me guide my way through my life.

I do want President Obama to win, and I will vote for him, but, other than that, I have stuff to do.

Money Walks

Doyle McManus had a pretty good column up this weekend on the money being spent for campaign advertising by groups not officially part of a particular candidate's campaign. He concentrated not so much on the super PACs unleashed by Citizen's United, but on a specific variant of those groups:

The television commercial is designed to spark outrage. "Billions of taxpayer dollars spent on green energy went to jobs in foreign countries," it intones. "The Obama administration admitted the truth — that $2.3 billion of tax credits went overseas, while millions of Americans can't find a job…. American taxpayers are paying to send their own jobs to foreign countries."

But the widely broadcast anti-Obama ad, paid for by a conservative group called Americans for Prosperity, is highly misleading — a slick pastiche of untruths, half-truths and exaggerations. And it's a prime example of what's gone wrong with political advertising.

Who put up the $6.1 million to air the Americans for Prosperity commercial? None of your business. ...

That's the problem with the independent committees gearing up to flood the airwaves with "issue ads." Because their backers get to remain largely anonymous, they don't seem to feel much duty to stick to the truth.

... It doesn't have to answer to voters or run for reelection; its constituents are the unnamed donors that paid for the ad.

Americans for Prosperity has declared itself a tax-exempt "social welfare organization" under the Internal Revenue code, which means its official purpose is to educate the public about civic issues. The group carefully skirts the line by not advocating explicitly for a candidate as it chastises Obama. Because of that, it can call itself a social welfare organization and get away with not divulging its donors. ...

This isn't about partisanship, though. Obama's campaign advertising has stepped over the line too. His campaign recently ran a commercial accusing Romney of sending U.S. jobs overseas when he was an executive at Bain Capital, but two of the ad's three examples occurred after Romney left the firm.

The difference is that when a candidate's campaign makes a spurious charge, voters can call him on it. When an independent committee makes a spurious charge, who you gonna call?

It wouldn't be tough to solve the problem. Congress could pass a law requiring groups that wage political campaigns to identify their donors (although so far, Republicans have blocked Democrats' efforts to do that). Or the Internal Revenue Service could crack down and yank the tax-exempt status of groups that are political action committees in flimsy disguise. But the IRS moves slowly, at least on an issue as sensitive as this. [Emphasis added.]

Keep in mind that this just one part of the campaign spending going on right now, six months before the election. The more regulated super PACs are out in force as well right now. Open Secrets has a tally up, along with a very nifty 'interactive' chart showing just who is spending on both sides of the aisle and for what. The sums are staggering:

Expenditures by super PACS were expected to hit the $100 million mark today [May 10], further proof that outside spending will far outstrip anything seen in previous election cycles.

Here's one way to look at how much more is being spent in the 2012 cycle: A single super PAC, the pro-Mitt Romney Restore Our Future, has already spent more -- $44.5 million -- than all outside groups combined had spent by this point in 2008. That 2008 number, about $30.9 million, is roughly one-quarter of this cycle's overall outside spending total of $122.7 million.

And the $100 million spent just by super PACs this cycle is already $30 million more than the entire sum of all outside spending in the 2004 election, the year that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth 527 organization made a splash with its attacks on Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. ...

In past election cycles, there might be signs that a big spending push was coming, or that a campaign might be gearing up its fundraising operation, or the power of a traditional PAC could be seen by the cash it had on hand, [Bob]Biersack [of the Center for Responsive Politics] said. But the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision and other cases removed limits on how much can be contributed to an outside spending group, and by what source. Now, a group can have a sudden impact on a race because of a single large check from a company or union treasury, or an individual. The coming months won't be defined so much by the cash super PACs currently have on hand -- but rather, what money may materialize without warning, Biersack said. [Emphasis added]

In other words, we can expect as much as half a billion dollars being expended on the campaign this time around. That's a lot of money, and most folks have no idea where it's coming from.

Our elections have become bidding wars.

That's not a good sign.

Forecast: Nasty Out

(Click on image to enlarge, and then return.)

Yes, I know there's a primary today, but really, the GOP nomination looks to belong to Mitt Romney. He's already campaigning against Obama and being coy about who his running mate is going to be. Obama, who owns the Democratic nomination at this point, is campaigning against Romney. Unless something really untoward happens between now and August, we have our candidates.

So, now what?

Well, David Horsey has a prediction, one that (sadly) I suspect is going to come true.

The neck-and-neck race between President Obama and the presumptive Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, will be the most expensive campaign in American history. It will be a battle between two robust political organizations. And it is a good bet things are going to get really nasty.

Why, yes, yes it probably will. And there are several reasons for that.

First, as Horsey points out, neither candidate thrills the base of his party. Romney is seen as a flip-flopper who will say anything to get a vote. Obama broke just about every promise he made the last time around, and yet he keeps promising things we liberals know he has no intention of delivering. That means each candidate will be going after that mythical beast known as the "middle."

With excitement about both candidates dampened, the election will be more of a tactical endeavor. Victory will be won in a dozen swing states among the 10% to 15% of the electorate who are not already solidly on one side or the other. Those few voters will be targeted, researched, analyzed and manipulated by two highly sophisticated campaign operations.

Yes.

But more importantly, there's a new element in the calculus: unlimited campaign funding because of Citizens United:

With stakes this high, money so available, organizations so nimble and polling so evenly split, it is impossible to imagine either side holding back from using every weapon in their arsenals. The heaviest guns are attack ads. Expect them to become more vicious and more distorted with each passing day.

By the end of October, if you are not sickened by the tone of the election, it will mean either that you do not own a television or you are a political consultant for one side or the other who is making a ton of money trying to mix cheap shots and big fibs into a winning formula, however poisonous it may be to American political life.

Yes, again.

Unfortunately, attack ads work. In the past, they weren't hauled out until absolutely necessary because advertising on television is so expensive. Well, that doesn't matter any more. There's no limit to what a candidate can raise (once they formally eschew public financing, which both candidates have done), and there's plenty of money available to both sides as recent required reporting has confirmed. Millions and millions of dollars worth. For those without jobs or without jobs that pay a living wage, that's unbelievable. Sadly, that is the case.

So, we can expect an ugly campaign to get uglier.

Me, I'm seriously considering selling my popcorn futures for antacids. By the truckload.

How Unsurprising

So, it looks like Mitt Romney is going to be the Republican nominee for president this November. He's gotten endorsements from the Old Guard (George H.W. Bush) and the New Guard (Marco Rubio). He's also raking in the money from a totally expected source: Wall Street.

Let there be no doubt where Wall Street's political loyalties lie: Of all the money the securities and investment industry has poured into the 2012 presidential contest so far -- to the candidates and the super PACs behind them -- an unambiguous 92 percent has gone to the GOP, according to a new Center for Responsive Politics analysis.

And in so doing, the securities and investment industry is betting hard on the candidacy of one of its own: Mitt Romney.

Between his campaign committee and a monster super PAC supporting his candidacy, Romney has benefited from about 72% percent of the near $33 million Wall Street has contributed through February. [Emphasis added]

Bundlers and individual donors alike have been throwing every penny they can in Romney's direction, and when they get maxed out, they can rely on Citizens United to allow them to throw a whole bunch more.

Wall Street seems to have found an even more welcoming receptacle for its largesse in Restore Our Future, a super PAC founded by a manager of Romney's 2008 presidential campaign, which is spending millions in an auxiliary effort to propel Romney to the Republican presidential nomination and eventually into the White House.

Wealthy executives and corporations in securities and investment have contributed about $16.5 million to Restore Our Future -- more than twice the amount they have sent to his campaign. Such donors are taking advantage of a new political landscape that was reshaped by recent federal court decisions, such as the 2010 Supreme Court-decided Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, which allows more money from more sources to fund hard-hitting political advertisements. [Emphasis added]

President Obama: are you paying attention?

All that love you showered on the banksters doesn't seem to be reciprocated. I hope you aren't too surprised. I know I'm not, and I'm just a dirty hippy.

A Different America

(Click on the image to enlarge and then come back.)

David Horsey's latest column is titled "Donald Trump and Mitt Romney live in a different America," and he makes his point both in the cartoon and the post accompanying it.

Mitt Romney is not heartless, he's merely clueless when it comes to understanding the precarious position of the poor or even the beleaguered middle class. He’s never been there and, unlike the wealthy Bobby Kennedy, he has never shown much interest in finding out what it’s like.

The poor need more than a thin safety net and they need more than the false dream of a job somewhere down the line when the tax breaks of the rich trickle down to their level. They need a president intensely engaged in breaking the cycle of poverty, poor education, fractured families and criminal activity that has created a permanent American underclass.

While Horsey makes the point that the current president doesn't exactly fit the bill either, at least Obama doesn't go around freely making amazingly tone-deaf statements on the issue. Still, we do have two Americas: one for the 1% and the other for the rest of us. Citizens United certainly is adding to that divide, although the events of the last year do give me at least a little hope.

The OWS movement has given us the vocabulary to talk about the divide and has energized not only the young people who are doing much of the heavy lifting, but also older people from the entire economic range who are tired of having no representation. It may be winter, but Occupy! is still showing up, and shows no signs of disappearing.

Even before, OWS, however, there was Wisconsin. Thousands showed up in a literal blizzard to protest Governor Walker's blatant union busting and safety net shredding in that state. Recently, over a million voters signed petitions to recall Walker and that election is coming up. Taking the lead of Wisconsin, voters in Ohio voted to repeal similar legislation pushed by their governor.

But elected officials haven't been the only targets. Thousands of Bank of America customers, outraged by the addition of yet another bank charge, pulled their money out and put it into credit unions or community banks. People angered by the blatant attempt by entertainment industry to curtail file sharing and the right wing's attempt to set up a mechanism for closing down the internet when it became convenient bombarded their senators with petitions, emails, faxes, and telephone calls. The Senate backed off and canceled the vote on PIPA.

And this past week, the Komen Foundation faced the wrath of decent people who were outraged by its clumsy attempt to defund Planned Parenthood's program of breast exams and mammogram referrals as a way to finally close down the one place poor women could count on for reproductive health services. Once again, the powerful were humbled by the sheer numbers of people who weren't having any of that crap.

We're still a long way from a just America, but it does appear that large numbers of people are waking up to the fact that they do have power, a great deal of it and that when they mobilize that power with their neighbors they can make an astounding difference. We could actually have an American Spring.

I am still only cautiously optimistic, but that is something. And for that I am grateful.

Cleavage

David Horsey's column from Friday notes the nervousness GOP leaders are feeling with respect to the ongoing presidential nomination campaign. So far there have been three winners in the first three contests, but that's not what worries them. What worries them is that one of those winners is Newt Gingrich, a man who appears to be gaining momentum.

After Gingrich, former speaker of the House, hammered the former Massachusetts governor in the South Carolina primary, many Republican members of Congress began to fear for their jobs, or at least for their chance to hold the House and take the Senate in the November election. Gingrich’s negatives are so high and his reputation for erratic behavior so big that they are convinced he could not beat President Obama and would drag down many Republican candidates with him.

Gingrich is not well-liked by many of the people he worked with in Congress. In fact, loathing may better characterize their feelings. [Emphasis added]

It's long been clear that Republican leaders expected Mitt Romney to have an easy time of it. It's also long been clear that this was the preferred outcome. That's understandable. Almost everyone in the nation suspected Gingrich was simply in the race to promote himself and his books. He'd make a few speeches, a few appearances, and then he'd go away after getting trounced by the main candidate. Apparently we all forgot what happened in 2010: the grassroots on the right was tired of business as usual and turned out to elect people more in line with what the Tea Partiers wanted.

Gingrich might lose in Florida tomorrow, but he's not going away anytime soon, according to his comments on Saturday:

On the weekend before the pivotal Florida primary, Newt Gingrich vowed Saturday to stay in the race for the Republican presidential nomination until the national convention this summer even if he loses Tuesday's vote. ...

..."You just had two national polls that show me ahead," he said. "Why don't you ask Gov. Romney what he will do if he loses" in Florida.

Yes, this is typical Gingrich braggadocio, but he has a point. He's doing just fine right now, and he has access to some pretty deep pockets to help keep his campaign up and running. Citizens United has been a boon to him and will presumably continue to work in his favor. Why should he quit now?

Mitt Romney has had to change his approach to campaigning by turning to attack ads and speeches, which gives Newt an opening to do the same. As a result, the two men are making President Obama's job much easier. The Republican candidates are so busy ripping into each other, pointing out flaws and flip-flops, that they are doing the opposition research for the enemy. And that might very well cost Republicans not only the White House, but also the Senate and House of Representatives.

It's a long time to November, but it might very well be the most fun lefty wonks have had in a long time. I know that I've been enjoying myself, although I've had to cut the butter and salt I've been using on the popcorn for health reasons.

Gaming The System

We are seeing the impact of the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United play out in the GOP campaigns for the presidential nomination, as the voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, and now South Carolina have discovered. The airwaves are filled with commercials purchased not just by the candidates but by Super PACS not directly affiliated with the campaigns. Those spots not only extol one candidate, but attack the others, and while it is fairly obvious who the beneficiary of each ad is, that beneficiary gets to distance himself from the more egregious attacks by noting that it didn't come from his campaign.

One of hallmarks of this new part of electioneering is that most of the time, voters have no idea who actually is behind each ad. The donors supplying the cash for the commercial buys are not listed in the commercial as it takes up viewing space, and that makes the whole process opaque, something that Sheila Krumholz, the executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, notes in a column she produced for the New York Times.

...the money the candidates raise themselves is only part of the story, and it may not be the most significant part, even with the possibility that the nominees of both parties will forgo public financing for the general election, as President Obama did last time. Every major presidential candidate is being aided by a group now known as a “super PAC” and sometimes by more than one.

Triggered by the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and a couple of lower court decisions, these new groups are allowed to collect unlimited sums of money from individuals, corporations, unions and trade groups — and to use these funds for expenditures that expressly call for the election or defeat of a candidate for federal office.

Not content with just pouring unlimited amounts of money into campaigns, these Super PACs are finding ways around the reporting requirements to keep the names of donors hidden from voters right before the election, something which the Supreme Court clearly did not intend in its decision. Because the Federal Election Commission hasn't actually caught up with the fallout from the decision, Super PACs are playing games with the system as it currently exists:

...Because 2011 was not an election year, super PACs that opted to file quarterly were not required to submit third-quarter disclosures that would have enlightened the public about their funders. However, the 1970s-era Federal Election Campaign Act does require quarterly filers to make special reports just before primaries. So as 2011 came to a close, many super PACs – including all of the candidate-specific ones – told the F.E.C that from now on they’d be filing monthly, rather than quarterly.

Monthly filers aren’t required to make “pre-primary” reports. So the funders behind the groups’ activities in the electoral contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida won’t be known until after the voting is all over. Three super PACs — Our Destiny, which supports Jon Huntsman; the Red, White and Blue Fund, which is backing Rick Santorum; and Endorse Liberty, a booster of Ron Paul — even made this change after the books had closed on the pre-election reporting period. [Emphasis added]

How convenient.

In other words, unless the FEC changes the rules midstream and quickly, the result of Citizen's United is an increase in opacity. Voters, for whom knowing the identity of key backers might make a difference (i.e., knowing just whom the candidates now owe favors to), are going into the voting booths blind. And unless Congress moves to defang this terrible Supreme Court decision, the fallout will continue through November.

Helluva way to run a democracy.

A New Tool In The Kit

The Citizens United case has really made a huge difference in campaign finance, a difference that both major parties have cheerfully exploited. By allowing corporations to make huge donations, those far beyond what are allowed individual donors, the case makes it easier for candidates to quickly snap up huge amounts of cash without much effort.

The Supreme Court decision, which I consider absurd on its face and tortured in its logic, opened the door to the potential for abuse and we might have just been handed the first clear-cut example of that abuse.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Federal Elections Commission records show that $1 million was given to Restore Our Future, a so-called super PAC backing Romney, by W Spann LLC. Under the law, corporations can now give such donations.

However, NBC News reported Thursday that the firm was incorporated only in March, made the donation in April and was dissolved on July 11, just before the super PAC was required to disclose donations.

Given the time line, the only inference which can be drawn is that the "corporation" was a dummy shell, created solely to slip Romney a cool million to his already bloated war chest. Pretty tricksy, eh?

Perhaps just a tad too tricksy, at least I hope so.

While federal election law permits corporations to donate to super PACs, it prohibits the use of conduits to conceal the identity of actual donors. That could lead to an official inquiry by the FEC or the Justice Department.

"There is FEC precedent to conduct an investigation to determine if this corporation used it own funds to make a contribution --- which would be legal after Citizens United -- or whether the corporation was just a conduit for a person or persons who did not want to disclose their identity," said Brett Kappel, an election lawyer at Arent Fox law firm in Washington. [Emphasis added]

Of course, even if the FEC opens such an investigation, it is unlikely that the investigation will be completed and the predictable law suit resolved before the 2012 election, much less before the GOP convention. It is also unlikely that Mitt Romneywill return the money (where would he send it?) although he could score some major integrity points if he did.

This is what we can expect for as long as the Citizens United decision stands.

All that dry powder accumulated during the 110th Congress is emitting a deadly odor at this point.