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Senate Republicans Kill Disclose Act in Blow to Campaign Transparency

Tuesday, July 17, 2012 by Common Dreams

Citizens United Remains Unscathed as GOP Senators 'keep public in the dark'

Senate Republicans blocked the Disclose Act Monday night, effectively killing a bid for campaign donor transparency in the post-Citizens United world. The Disclose Act, which was defeated 51-44, would have required independent groups to release the names of campaign donors who give more than $10,000 for political ads and other campaign tactics.

The Act was drafted in response to the 2010 Citizens United ruling, which allows limitless corporate donations to be given to outside political campaigners, known as super PACs, in secret.

"The DISCLOSE Act would help the American people understand who is behind the political messages we’re bombarded with every day,” said Michael Keegan, President of People For the American Way. “Apparently, GOP senators would rather keep the public in the dark about who is bankrolling their campaigns. What do they have to hide?"

"Today, the Senate had a chance to protect the American people’s right to know who is trying to sway their vote. Unfortunately, Senate Republicans chose to protect the anonymity of the wealthy few at the expense of the American public."

The Republican filibuster of the bill was led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) one of several republican senators who once supported campaign finance disclosure but have recently favored increased secrecy in Washington, including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), and Scott Brown (R-Mass.).

"These same politicians were for the disclosure measure for years, until there was a chance it might actually pass. Now they are filibustering it," said Michael Waldman, at the Brennan Center at NYU.

As a result, corporations will continue to spend large sums of money to influence elections and subsequent policy while remaining anonymous.

* * *

Question: On Cloture on the Motion to Proceed (Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Motion to Proceed to S.3369 )
Vote Number:	179	Vote Date:	July 16, 2012, 06:08 PM
Required For Majority:	3/5	Vote Result:	Cloture on the Motion to Proceed Rejected
Measure Number:	S. 3369
Measure Title:	A bill to amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to provide for additional disclosure requirements for corporations, labor organizations, Super PACs and other entities, and for other purposes.

Vote Counts:	YEAs	51
	NAYs	44
	Not Voting	5

# # #

Sen. Leahy: Supreme Court thinks corporations can be president

By Eric W. Dolan RAW Story
Thursday, March 29, 2012

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said Thursday that corporations could be elected president according to the rationale of the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

“I remain troubled today that the Supreme Court extended to corporations the same First Amendment rights in the political process that are guaranteed by the Constitution to individual Americans,” he said at a hearing on the DISCLOSE Act of 2012. “Corporations are not the same as individual Americans. Corporations do not have the same rights, the same morals or the same interests. Corporations cannot vote in our democracy.”

According to the Supreme Court’s logic, we should elect corporations to public office, Leahy said.

“This country has elected General Eisenhower as president, shouldn’t we elected General Electric as president? We know we like to elect a lot of yahoos as vice president, why not elect Yahoo as a corporation as vice president. ”

“Vermonters and Americans across the country have long understood that corporations are not people in this political process,” he continued. “Unfortunately, a very narrow majority on the Supreme Court apparently did not.”

The controversial Citizens United ruling struck down key provisions of the federal McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law and gave rise to superPACS, which have caused campaign spending by outside groups to skyrocket. SuperPACs have also exploited a loophole that allows them to postpone the disclosure of their donors until after the elections they participate in.

The DISCLOSE Act of 2012 would require any organization that spends 10,000 or more during an election cycle to file a report with the Federal Election Commission within 24 hours. It would also require the head of any organization that puts out a political ad on TV or radio to state that he or she approves the message, similar to what candidates must do now.

The DISCLOSE Act of 2010 was blocked by a Republican filibuster in the Senate.

Watch video, uploaded to YouTube on March 29, below:

The .0000063% Election: The Politics of the Super Rich

Thursday, February 16, 2012 by TomDispatch.com
by Ari Berman

At a time when it’s become a cliché to say that Occupy Wall Street has changed the nation’s political conversation -- drawing long overdue attention to the struggles of the 99% -- electoral politics and the 2012 presidential election have become almost exclusively defined by the 1%. Or, to be more precise, the .0000063%. Those are the 196 individual donors who have provided nearly 80% of the money raised by super PACs in 2011 by giving $100,000 or more each.

These political action committees, spawned by the Supreme Court’s 5-4 Citizens United decision in January 2010, can raise unlimited amounts of money from individuals, corporations, or unions for the purpose of supporting or opposing a political candidate. In theory, super PACs are legally prohibited from coordinating directly with a candidate, though in practice they’re just a murkier extension of political campaigns, performing all the functions of a traditional campaign without any of the corresponding accountability.

If 2008 was the year of the small donor, when many political pundits (myself included) predicted that the fusion of grassroots organizing and cyber-activism would transform how campaigns were run, then 2012 is "the year of the big donor," when a candidate is only as good as the amount of money in his super PAC. “In this campaign, every candidate needs his own billionaires,” wrote Jane Mayer of The New Yorker.

“This really is the selling of America,” claims former presidential candidate and Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean. “We’ve been sold out by five justices thanks to the Citizens United decision.” In truth, our democracy was sold to the highest bidder long ago, but in the 2012 election the explosion of super PACs has shifted the public’s focus to the staggering inequality in our political system, just as the Occupy movement shined a light on the gross inequity of the economy. The two, of course, go hand in hand.

“We’re going to beat money power with people power,” Newt Gingrich said after losing to Mitt Romney in Florida as January ended. The walking embodiment of the lobbying-industrial complex, Gingrich made that statement even though his candidacy is being propped up by a super PAC funded by two $5 million donations from Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. It might have been more amusing if the GOP presidential primary weren’t a case study of a contest long on money and short on participation.

The Wesleyan Media Project recently reported a 1600% increase in interest-group-sponsored TV ads in this cycle as compared to the 2008 primaries. Florida has proven the battle royal of the super PACs thus far. There, the pro-Romney super PAC, Restore Our Future, outspent the pro-Gingrich super PAC, Winning Our Future, five to one. In the last week of the campaign alone, Romney and his allies ran 13,000 TV ads in Florida, compared to only 200 for Gingrich. Ninety-two percent of the ads were negative in nature, with two-thirds attacking Gingrich, who, ironically enough, had been a fervent advocate of the Citizens United decision.

With the exception of Ron Paul’s underdog candidacy and Rick Santorum’s upset victory in Iowa -- where he spent almost no money but visited all of the state’s 99 counties -- the Republican candidates and their allied super PACs have all but abandoned retail campaigning and grassroots politicking. They have chosen instead to spend their war chests on TV.

The results can already be seen in the first primaries and caucuses: an onslaught of money and a demobilized electorate. It’s undoubtedly no coincidence that, when compared with 2008, turnout was down 25% in Florida, and that, this time around, fewer Republicans have shown up in every state that’s voted so far, except for South Carolina. According to political scientists Stephen Ansolabehere and Shanto Iyengar, negative TV ads contribute to “a political implosion of apathy and withdrawal.” New York Times columnist Tim Egan has labeled the post-Citizens United era “your democracy on meth.”

The .01 Percent Primary
More than 300 super PACs are now registered with the Federal Election Commission. The one financed by the greatest number of small donors belongs to Stephen Colbert, who’s turned his TV show into a brilliant commentary on the deformed super PAC landscape. Colbert’s satirical super PAC, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, has raised $1 million from 31,595 people, including 1,600 people who gave $1 each. Consider this a rare show of people power in 2012.

Otherwise the super PACs on both sides of the aisle are financed by the 1% of the 1%. Romney’s Restore Our Future Super PAC, founded by the general counsel of his 2008 campaign, has led the herd, raising $30 million, 98% from donors who gave $25,000 or more. Ten million dollars came from just 10 donors who gave $1 million each. These included three hedge-fund managers and Houston Republican Bob Perry, the main funder behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004, whose scurrilous ads did such an effective job of destroying John Kerry’s electoral prospects. Sixty-five percent of the funds that poured into Romney’s super PAC in the second half of 2011 came from the finance, insurance and real estate sector, otherwise known as the people who brought you the economic meltdown of 2007-2008.

Romney’s campaign has raised twice as much as his super PAC, which is more than you can say for Rick Santorum, whose super PAC -- Red, White & Blue -- has raised and spent more than the candidate himself. Forty percent of the $2 million that has so far gone into Red, White & Blue came from just one man, Foster Friess, a conservative hedge-fund billionaire and Christian evangelical from Wyoming.
In the wake of Santorum’s upset victories in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri on February 7th, Friess told the New York Times that he’d recruited $1 million for Santorum’s super PAC from another (unnamed) donor and upped his own giving, though he wouldn’t say by how much. We won’t find out until the next campaign disclosure filing in three months, by which time the GOP primary will almost certainly be decided.

For now, Gingrich’s sugar daddy Adelson has pledged to stay with his flagging campaign, but he’s also signaled that if the former Speaker of the House goes down, he’ll be ready to donate even more super PAC money to a Romney presidential bid. And keep in mind that there’s nothing in the post-Citizens United law to stop a donor like Adelson, hell-bent on preventing the Obama administration from standing in the way of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, from giving $100 million, or for that matter, however much he likes.

Before Citizens United, the maximum amount one person could give to a candidate was $2,500; for a political action committee, $5,000; for a political party committee, $30,800. Now, the sky’s the limit for a super PAC, and even more disturbingly, any donor can give an unlimited contribution to a 501c4 -- outfits defined by the IRS as “civic leagues or organizations not organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare,” and to make matters worse, that contribution will remain eternally secret. In this way, American politics is descending further into the darkness, with 501c4s quickly gaining influence as “shadow super PACs.”

A recent analysis by the Washington Post found that, at a cost of $24 million, 40% of the TV ads in the presidential race so far came from these tax-exempt “social welfare” groups. The Karl Rove-founded American Crossroads, a leading conservative super PAC attacking Democratic candidates and the Obama administration, also runs a 501c4 called Crossroads GPS. It’s raised twice as much money as its sister group, all from donations whose sources will remain hidden from American voters. Serving as a secret slush fund for billionaires evidently now qualifies as social welfare.

The Income Defense Industry
In his book Oligarchy, political scientist Jeffrey Winters refers to the disproportionately wealthy and influential actors in the political system as the “Income Defense Industry.” If you want to know how the moneyed class, who prospered during the Bush and Clinton years, found a way to kill or water down nearly everything it objected to in the Obama years, look no further than the grip of the 1% of the 1% on our political system.

This simple fact explains why hedge-fund managers pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries, or why the U.S. is the only industrialized nation without a single-payer universal healthcare system, or why the planet continues to warm at an unprecedented pace while we do nothing to combat global warming. Money usually buys elections and, whoever is elected, it almost always buys influence.

In the 2010 election, the 1% of the 1% accounted for 25% of all campaign-related donations, totaling $774 million dollars, and 80% of all donations to the Democratic and Republican parties, the highest percentage since 1990. In congressional races in 2010, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, the candidate who spent the most money won 85% of House races and 83% of Senate races.

The media loves an underdog story, but nowadays the underdog is ever less likely to win. Given the cost of running campaigns and the overwhelming premium on outspending your opponent, it’s no surprise that nearly half the members of Congress are millionaires, and the median net worth of a U.S. Senator is $2.56 million.

The influence of super PACs was already evident by November 2010, just nine months after the Supreme Court’s ruling. John Nichols and Robert McChesney of The Nation note that, of the 53 competitive House districts where Rove’s Crossroads organization outspent Democratic candidates in 2010, Republicans won fifty-one. As it turned out, however, the last election was a mere test run for the monetary extravaganza that is 2012.

Republicans are banking on that super PAC advantage again this year, when the costs of the presidential contest and all other races for federal posts will soar from $5 billion in 2008 to as high as $7 billion by November. (The 2000 election cost a “mere” $3 billion.) In other words, the amount spent this election season will be roughly the equivalent of the gross domestic product of Haiti.

The Myth of Small Donors
In June 2003, presidential candidate Howard Dean shocked the political establishment by raising $828,000 in one day over the Internet, with an average donation of $112. Dean, in fact, got 38% of his campaign’s total funds from donations of $200 or less, planting the seeds for what many forecast would be a small-donor revolution in American politics.

Four years later, Barack Obama raised a third of his record-breaking $745 million campaign haul from small donors, while Ron Paul raised 39% from small dollars on the Republican side. Much of Paul’s campaign was financed by online “money bombs,” when enthusiastic supporters generated millions of dollars in brief, coordinated bursts. The amount of money raised in small donations by Obama, in particular, raised hopes that his campaign had found a way to break the death grip of big donors on American politics.

In retrospect, the small-donor utopianism surrounding Obama seems naïve. Despite all the adulatory media attention about his small donors, the candidate still raised the bulk of his money from big givers. (Typically, these days, incumbent members of Congress raise less than 10% of their campaign funds from small donors, with those numbers actually dropping when you reach the gubernatorial and state legislative levels.) Obama’s top contributors included employees of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and Citigroup, hardly standard bearers for the little guy. For obvious reasons, the campaign chose to emphasize the small donors over the big ones in its narrative, as it continues to do in 2012.

Interestingly enough, both Obama and Paul actually raised more money from small donors in 2011 than they did in 2008, 48% and 52% of their totals, respectively. But in the super PAC era that money no longer has the same impact. Even Dean doubts that his anti-establishment, Internet-fueled campaign from 2004 would be as successful today. “Super PACs have made a grassroots campaign less effective,” he says. “You can still run a grassroots campaign but the problem is you can be overwhelmed now on television and by dirty mailers being sent out... It’s a very big change from 2008.”

Obama is a candidate with a split personality, which makes his campaign equally schizophrenic. The Obama campaign claims it’s raising 98% of its money from small donors and is “building the biggest grassroots campaign in American history,” according to campaign manager Jim Messina. But the starry-eyed statistics and the rhetoric that accompanies it are deeply misleading. Of the $89 million raised in 2011 by the Obama Joint Victory Fund, a collaboration of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Obama campaign, 74% came from donations of $20,000 or more and 99% from donations of $1,000 or more.

The campaign has 445 “bundlers” (dubbed “volunteer fundraisers” by the campaign), who gather money from their wealthy friends and package it for Obama. They have raised at least $74.4 million for Obama and the DNC in 2011. Sixty-one of those bundlers raised $500,000 or more. Obama held 73 fundraisers in 2011 and 13 last month alone, where the price of admission was almost always $35,800 a head.

An increase in small donor contributions and a surge of big money fundraisers still wasn’t enough, however, to give Obama an advantage over Republicans in the money chase. That’s why the Obama campaign, until recently adamantly against super PACs, suddenly relented and signaled its support for a pro-Obama super PAC called Priorities USA.

A day after the announcement that the campaign, like its Republican rivals, would super PAC it up, Messina spoke at the members-only Core Club in Manhattan and “assured a group of Democratic donors from the financial services industry that Obama won’t demonize Wall Street as he stresses populist appeals in his re-election campaign,” reported BloombergBusinessweek. “Messina told the group of Wall Street donors that the president plans to run against Romney, not the industry that made the former governor of Massachusetts millions.”

In other words, don’t expect a convincing return to the theme of the people versus the powerful in campaign 2012, even though Romney, if the nominee, would be particularly vulnerable to that line of attack. After all, so far his campaign has raised only 9% of its campaign contributions from small donors, well behind both Senator John McCain, 21% in 2008, and George W. Bush, 26% in 2004.

In the fourth quarter of 2011, Romney outraised Obama among the top firms on Wall Street by a margin of 11 to 1. His top three campaign contributions are from employees of Goldman Sachs ($496,430), JPMorgan ($317,400) and Morgan Stanley ($277,850). The banks have fallen out of favor with the public, but their campaign cash is indispensable among the political class and so they remain as powerful as ever in American politics.

In a recent segment of his show, Stephen Colbert noted that half of the money ($67 million) raised by super PACs in 2011 had come from just 22 people. “That’s 7 one-millionths of 1 percent," or roughly .000000071%, Colbert said while spraying a fire extinguisher on his fuming calculator. “So Occupy Wall Street, you’re going to want to change those signs.”

US Elections: No Matter Who You Vote For, Money Always Wins

Monday, January 30, 2012 by The Guardian/UK
Dollars play a decisive role in US politics. And more so since the supreme court allowed unlimited campaign contributionsby Gary Younge

Republican presidential debates are not for the faint-hearted. Last week in Jacksonville, Florida, Rick Santorum warned of the "threat of radical Islam growing" in Central and South America. Newt Gingrich advocated sending up to seven flights a day to the moon, where private industry might set up a colony, and reaffirmed his claim that Palestinians were invented in the late 70s. Mitt Romney argued that if you make things tough enough for undocumented people, they will "self-deport".


Given the general state of the Republican party, such comments now attract precious little attention. Truth and facts are but two options among many. The party's base, overrun by birthers, climate change deniers and creationists, floats its warped theories and every now and then one makes it to the top and bobs out into the airwaves.

So the oft-touted notion that these debates have been responsible for shifting the trajectory of this primary race would be worrying if it were true. It is difficult to think of anywhere else in the western world where these debates would have any credibility outside of a fringe party (even if the fringes in Europe are now spreading). Far from indicating America's exceptionalism, it looks more like an awful parody of the stereotypes most outsiders already believed about American politics at its most bizarre. "Those who follow this race daily may have long since lost perspective on how absurd it is," said the German magazine Der Spiegel last week. "Each candidate loves Israel. They all love Ronald Reagan. Each loves his wife, a born first lady, for a number of reasons."

The good news is, with the exception of Perry's demise, the debates have not been pivotal. The bad news is that the truly decisive element has been something even more insidious: money. Lots of it.

This is not new. But since a 2010 supreme court ruling allowing unlimited campaign contributions by corporations and unions, it has become particularly acute. Moreover, the contributors can remain anonymous. The organisations that are taking advantage of this new law are known as Super Pacs. Even at this early stage of the presidential cycle, their potential for framing the race is clear. In the whole of 2008 individuals, parties and other groups spent $168.8m independently on the presidential election. This year on Republican candidates alone, where voting started less than a month ago, the Super Pacs have reportedindependent expenditures of almost $40m. In 2008 election spending doubled compared with 2004. This year industry analysts believe the money spent just on television ads is set to leap by almost 80% compared with four years ago.

Money in American politics was already an elephant in the room. Now the supreme court has given it a laxative, taken away the shovel, and asked us to ignore both the sight and the stench.

The only real restriction is that there should be no co-ordination between the candidate and the Super Pac. In practice, this is little more than a fig leaf. A few weeks ago one of the ads, funded by the Super Pac supporting Gingrich, was slated for its many brazen inaccuracies. At a campaign stop in Orlando, Gingrich told supporters: "I am calling on this Super Pac – I cannot co-ordinate with them and I cannot communicate directly, but I can speak out as a citizen as I'm talking to you – I call on them to either edit out every single mistake or to pull the entire film."

Romney is no less compromised. His former chief campaign fundraiser and political director work for the main Super Pac supporting him, which was set up with the help of a $1m cheque from an ex-business partner. "This legalism of 'no co-ordination' is a filament-thin G-string,"wrote Timothy Egan in the New York Times recently. "Everyone co-ordinates."

Money alone can't guarantee success. Santorum spent around 74 cents a voter in Iowa and narrowly won; Perry spent around $358 per vote and came a distant fourth. Debate performances, policy positions, personal histories and retail politics play a role. But the fact that money is not the sole determinant doesn't mean it's not the key one. Two months ago Gingrich's surge in Iowa was halted after Romney's Super Pac ploughed millions of dollars into campaign ads attacking him. Romney's commanding lead in South Carolina was similarly thwarted when Gingrich's Super Pac injected several million dollars.

This is not a partisan point. Almost two-thirds of Americans believe the government should limit individual contributions – with a majority among Republicans, Democrats and independents. The influence of money at this level corrupts an entire political culture and in no small part explains the depth of cynicism, alienation and mistrust Americans now have for their politicians.

The trend towards oligarchy in the polity is already clear. There are 250 millionaires in Congress. Their median net worth is $891,506, nine times the typical US household. Around 11% are in the nation's top 1%, including 34 Republicans and 23 Democrats. And that's before you get to Romney, whose personal wealth is double that of the last eight presidents combined. All of this would be problematic at the best of times, but in a period of rising inequality it is obscene.

The issue here is not class envy, hating rich people because they are rich, but class interests – cementing the advantages of the privileged over the rest. The problem is not personal, it's systemic. In the current climate, it means a group of wealthy people in business will decide which wealthy people in Congress they would like to tell poor people what they can't have because times are hard. And unless the ruling is overturned there is precious little that can be done about it.

Last week in a Massachusetts Senate race, both the Republican incumbent and his likely Democratic challenger signed a pact agreeing not to use third-party money. The trouble is that the agreement is completely unenforceable. Already at least one pro-Republican group has refused to commit to it.

Downplaying money's central role at this point merely buys into the illusion of participatory democracy, where ideas, character and strategy are paramount, while others are actually buying the candidates and access to power. The result is a charade. Fig leaf, G-string – name the scanty underwear of your choice. The emperor is butt naked. Whoever you vote for, the money gets in.

The Movement to Overturn Citizens United Swamps the Internet

Montana High Court Says 'Citizens United' Does Not Apply In Big Sky State

State Supreme Court Issues Remarkable Ruling Against Corporate Speech 

By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet
Posted on January 1, 2012

Montana’s Supreme Court has issued a stunning rebuke to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 that infamously decreed corporations had constitutional rights to directly spend money on ‘independent expenditures’ in campaigns.

The Montana Court vigorously upheld the state’s right to regulate how corporations can raise and spend money after a secretive Colorado corporation, Western Tradition Partnership, and a Montana sportsman’s group and local businessman sued to overturn a 1912 state law banning direct corporate spending on electoral campaigns.

“Organizations like WTP that act as a conduit for anonymously spending by others represent a threat to the political marketplace,” wrote Mike McGrath, Chief Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, for the majority. “Clearly the impact of unlimited corporate donations creates a dominating impact on the political process and inevitably minimizes the impact of individual citizens.”

The 80-page ruling is remarkable in many respects. Throughout, including in a lengthy dissent by a state Supreme Court justice who felt Montana was dutibound to abide by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the Montana Court attacked the thinking behind the Citizens United decision and the impact of big money in political culture, including the notion that corporations are deserving of the same political speech rights as citizens.

“While, as a member of this Court, I am bound to follow Citizens United, I do not have to agree with the [U.S.] Supreme Court’s decision,” wrote Justice James C. Nelson, in his dissent. “And, to be absolutely clear, I do not agree with it. For starters, the notion that corporations are disadvantaged in the political realm is unbelievable. Indeed, it has astounded most Americans. The truth is that corporations wield enormous power in Congress and in state legislatures. It is hard to tell where government ends and corporate America begins: the transition is seamless and overlapping.”

“It should be noted that the Montana Corrupt Practices Act was adopted in 1912 at a time when the country’s focus was on preventing political corruption, not on protecting corporate influence,” wrote Nelson, later in his dissent.

Western Tradition Partnership
The lead group that sued to overturn the Montana ban on direct corporate spending in campaigns followed a very deliberate course of clashing with virtually every aspect of Montana campaign finance law. The lawyers behind the litigation believe that they should face no limits or accountabililty for any political fund-raising or spending.

The Montana Supreme Court’s majority opinion described why Western Tradition Partnership was as slippery an organization as one finds in modern politics. They noted how the groups lawyers claimed that they should be allowed to spend freely because the group would have to disclose that activity under Montana law, when as the state’s Chief Justice noted in his opinion, the same group, using another name, actually had sued the state to overturn those very disclosure laws.

Moreover, the ruling quoted a fund-raising brochure that said, “If you decide to support this program, no politician, no bureaucrat, and no radical environmentalist will ever know you made this program possible.” The group also is involved in a third suit challenging the state’s campaign spending disclosure law.

“We take note that Western Tradition appears to be engaged in a multi-front attack on both contribution restrictions and the transparency that accompanies campaign disclosure requirements,” the Court said, adding in a footnote that the Montana Commissioner of Political Practices called the group a “sham” because it failed to register with the state, and refused to disclose the sources of its funds or its spending—as required by law.

Rebutting Citizens United
Lawyers attacking the Montana ban on direct corporate spending said the U.S. Supreme Court in its 2010 Citizens United ruling removed any barrier to corporate spending. But the Montana Supreme Court disagreed and took a more nuanced view.

The U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United found there was no compelling reason why a non-profit corporation that produced an anti-Hillary Clinton video should be prevented from showing that video in the weeks before Election Day—as a new federal campaign law had banned. But the Citizens United ruling did not remove all bans on corporate speech, the Montana Court said. “The Supreme Court held that laws that burden political speech are subject to strict scrutiny, which requires the government to prove that the law furthers a compelling state interest and is narrowly tailored to that interest.”

The Montana Court then launched into detailed explanations of sufficiently compelling state interests to merit sustaining the century-old law. The majority opinion read like a history lesson that recounting how the state, especially in the decades following its founding in 1889, struggled to restrict the power and influence of mining corporations. In 1906, the citizenry amended the state Constitution to allow for ballot initiatives. Six years later it passed the ban on corporate spending, specifically to curb mining companies based in Butte. The Court noted that the state—then and now—was beset with corporate players whose money, power and influence easily overshadow individuals.

“What was true a century ago is as true today: distant corporate interests mean that corporate dominated campaigns will only work ‘in the essential interest of outsiders with local interests a very secondary consideration,’” the opinion said, quoting a historian’s testimony from a lower state court that reviewed the case. “While specific corporate interests come and go in Montana, they are always present.”

The Court said Montana had a political tradition that has emerged in intervening decades and they wanted Montana to remain a state where candidates run low-budget, personal campaigns and do not rely on anonymous, well-financed messaging from outsiders.

The Court pointed out that judicial elections were particularly vulnerable to anonymous spending by large corporations. Montana’s 2008 Chief Justice race had advertising from all candidates costing about $60,000, it noted. “It is clear that an entity like Massey Coal, willing to spend even hundreds of thousands of dollars, much less millions, on a Montana judicial election could effectively drown out all other voices.”

These various factors—a history of citizenry fighting corporate corruption, political traditions of low-budget campaigning, and the vulnerability of judicial elections to corporate spending—were sufficiently compelling, the Court said, to preserve the century-old ban on corporate spending in the face of the Citizens United ruling.

“The question then, is when in the last 99 years did Montana lose the power or interest sufficient to support the statute, if it ever did,” the majority said. “We think not. Issues of corporate influence, sparse population, dependence upon agriculture and extractive resource development, location as a transportation corridor, and low campaign costs make Montana especially vulnerable to continued efforts of corporate control to the detriment of democracy and the republican form of government.”

Concluding, the Court said that the sportsman’s group and businessman who sued to overturn the law were not prohibited from participating in politics by the ban on direct corporate spending. And it said Western Tradition Partnership could follow the same rules as anyone else. “WTP can still speak through its own political committee/PAC as hundreds of organizations in Montana do on an ongoing basis,” the Court said. “The difference then is that under Montana law the PAC has to comply with Montana’s disclosure and reporting laws.”

There is little doubt that the anonymous money behind Western Tradition Partnership will appeal the Montana Supreme Court ruling in federal court—and even seek to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. However, even it it does that, the ruling issued Friday by Montana’s Supreme Court will endure as a monumental defense of a state’s right to curb political corruption and the excesses of big-money politics.

Corruption and Corporate Personhood
Justice Nelson, who dissented because he believed that the state had to follow the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling, concluded by fervently disagreeing with the assumptions behind the Citizens United ruling, starting with the Roberts Court’s assumption that spending large sums in campaigns was not inherently corrupting.

Nelson said independent expenditures by corporations in political campaigns—where political players are not supposed to coordinate their actions with candidate campaigns—absolutely were noticed and influenced the lawmaking process. “In the real world of politics,” he wrote, “the “quid pro quo” of both direct contributions to candidates and independent expenditures on their behalf is loyalty. And, in practical effect, experience teaches us that money corrupts, and enough of it corrupts absolutely.”

Nelson closed by slamming the legal theory of corporate personhood—that corporations, because they are run and owned by people, should have the same constitutional freedoms as individuals under the Bill of Rights. Corporatist judges, such as the Roberts Court, believe that corporations and people are indistinguishable under the law. In contrast, constitutional conservatives know very well that the framers of the U.S. Constitution distrusted large economic enterprises and drafted a document to protect individual businessmen, farmers and tradespeople from economic exploitation.

“While I recognize that this doctrine is firmly entrenched in law,” Nelson began, “I find the concept entirely offensive. Corporations are artificial creatures of law. As such, they should enjoy only those powers—not constitutional rights, but legislatively-conferred powers—that are concomitant with their legitimate function, that being limited liability investment vehicles for business. Corporations are not persons. Human beings are persons, and it is an affront to the inviolable dignity of our species that courts have created a legal fiction which forces people—human beings—to share fundamental natural rights with soulless creations of government. Worse still, while corporations and human beings share many of the same rights under the law, they clearly are not bound equally to the same codes of good conduct, decency, and morality, and they are not held equally accountable for their sins. Indeed, it is truly ironic that the death penalty and hell are reserved only to natural persons.”

As Nelson said, ending his dissent, “the [U.S.] Supreme Court has spoken. It has interpreted the protections of the First Amendment vis-a-vis corporate political speech. Agree with its decision or not, Montana’s judiciary and elected officers are bound to accept and enforce the [U.S.] Supreme Court’s ruling…”

But the Montana Supreme Court has also spoken—and with a clarity that is rare to behold.

*****

(Bravo, Montana Supreme Court. And thank you! I hope other state courts will follow suit.--jef)

Super PACs, thanks to the Citizens' United decision, face no contribution limits

Saturday, December 31, 2011 by the New York Times
Group’s Ads Rip at Gingrich as Romney Stands Clear
by Nicholas Confessore and Jim Rutenberg

DES MOINES — The attacks began three weeks ago and have not let up since: Television ad after television ad slamming Newt Gingrich for having “more baggage than the airlines,” for being fined by Congress for ethics violations, for his position on illegal immigration, even for admitting that he has made mistakes on the campaign trail.

Super PAC 'Restore Our Future' has spent close to $3 million in Iowa alone. Democrats and Republicans alike have singled out the $2.8 million-and-counting air deluge as the biggest factor in Mr. Gingrich’s precipitous drop in polls of Iowa voters and Mitt Romney’s corresponding rise, reshaping the critical first contest of the Republican primary season to Mr. Romney’s benefit.

The ads, which continue to blanket Iowa days before the caucuses here, were created and paid for by people with deep knowledge of the Romney campaign’s strategic thinking, close relationships with Mr. Romney’s most generous donors, and even research on what television viewers like and dislike most about Mr. Romney himself.

Yet neither Mr. Romney nor his staff has had to lift a finger or spend a dollar to make it happen. In a stark illustration of how last year’s landmark Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance has created powerful new channels for outside money to influence elections, the negative onslaught is the work of a group called Restore Our Future.

The most prominent of the “super PACs,” which can accept unlimited donations for purposes of supporting or attacking candidates, it operates independently of the Romney campaign but under the direction of former Romney aides who do not need to be told what the candidate needs.

They include Carl Forti, the political director of Mr. Romney’s 2008 campaign; Charles R. Spies, Mr. Romney’s former chief counsel; and Larry McCarthy, an alumnus of Mr. Romney’s media team who was known for producing some of the more compelling positive spots for Mr. Romney four years ago, but has nonetheless earned a reputation as one of the most fearsome political ad makers in the country — he produced the Willie Horton commercial that devastated Michael S. Dukakis’s presidential campaign in 1988.

Restore Our Future’s fund-raiser, Steve Roche, led the Romney campaign’s own finance team until this summer. He now spends his days meeting with the New York hedge fund managers, Utah businessmen and Boston financiers who have contributed almost $30 million to the group this year, according to people with knowledge of the group’s fund-raising. Among the donors are some conservatives who have a long history of backing attack-oriented outside groups like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which in 2004 went aggressively after Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee that year.

The result: Mr. Romney has effectively outsourced his negative advertising to a group that has raised millions of dollars from his donors to inundate his opponents with attacks — all without breaking the rules that forbid super PACs to explicitly coordinate with candidates. Polls showed Mr. Gingrich’s support in Iowa tumbling immediately after the Restore Our Future ads began running in early December. An NBC News/Marist poll released Friday showed a 19 percentage point increase over the last month, to 35 percent, in the number of likely Republican caucusgoers who said they judged Mr. Gingrich to be unacceptable as the party’s nominee.

“Restore Our Future has been very important,” said Mel Sembler, a top Republican donor and a member of Mr. Romney’s Florida finance team. “They’ve had an impact, there’s no question about it.”

The battle in Iowa has underscored what advocates for tighter campaign finance restraints have warned for months: that the new groups will be deployed to devastating effect, in the primary season and then in the general election.

“Iowa is ground zero of what we can expect in every competitive state for the rest of the presidential election,” said Ellen S. Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, which tracks outside money in politics.

“Iowa is ground zero of what we can expect in every competitive state for the rest of the presidential election,” said Ellen S. Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, which tracks outside money in politics.

Since they began advertising in earnest several weeks ago, groups like Restore Our Future have spent millions of dollars in the early primary states, rivaling and in some cases surpassing the spending of the candidates they support. While the candidates can raise just $2,500 from each individual donor for the primary, super PACs, thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, face no such restrictions.

Speaking on Fox News last week, Mr. Romney played down the significance of Restore Our Future’s advertisements against Mr. Gingrich, arguing that Mr. Gingrich was falling in polls as voters focused on his record. Mr. Gingrich has also been under intense assault from other groups, including Ron Paul’s campaign; Mr. Romney’s campaign itself called attention to Mr. Gingrich’s tumultuous departure from Congress in a mailing it sent to Iowa voters.

But one thing is clear: Restore Our Future has spent more on advertisements in Iowa and elsewhere than any other super PAC, according to tracking by NBC and Smart Media Group Delta. The group has already begun buying television time in two other Republican primary states, Florida and South Carolina, running ads that hammer Mr. Gingrich and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas.

A super PAC supporting Mr. Gingrich, Winning Our Future, has spent just $263,000 on advertising in Iowa, according to figures from NBC and Smart Media Group Delta, without explicitly attacking Mr. Romney. (Another pro-Gingrich group, Strong America Now, has attacked Mr. Romney in mailings to voters.) Restore Our Future has spent twice as much money in the state as Mr. Romney has, most of it on advertisements savaging his opponents. Meanwhile, Mr. Romney’s campaign has run only positive television ads, featuring sunny portrayals of him and his family, with the occasional jab at President Obama.

That has helped Mr. Romney avoid the classic conundrum of political attack advertising in a nominating battle: Negative commercials tend to harm both the candidate making the claim and the one on the receiving end. One aide said Mr. Romney has apparently suffered “no collateral” damage from Restore Our Future’s negative advertisements against Mr. Gingrich, which are not identifiably connected to Mr. Romney.

In recent days, Mr. Romney has tried to distance himself from the group. “We really ought to let campaigns raise the money they need and just get rid of these super PACs,” Mr. Romney said on MSNBC.

But in July, Mr. Romney appeared before dozens of potential donors to Restore Our Future at an organizational meeting, effectively blessing its work.

Should Mr. Romney win his party’s nomination, the group is poised to play as pivotal a role in a general election matchup against Mr. Obama, whose aides are keeping a close watch on it. (Former Obama aides have also formed a super PAC, Priorities USA Action.)

Restore Our Future will not be required to disclose its most recent donors until the end of January. But in disclosures filed this summer, the group reported $12 million in contributions, much of it from friends and past business associates of Mr. Romney.

Edward Conard, who gave a million dollars to Restore Our Future, is a former top executive at Bain Capital, the private equity firm Mr. Romney helped start. Another donor is J. W. Marriott Jr., chairman of the hotel chain, on whose board Mr. Romney served on until January. The group has also raised money from Sam Fox and Bob Perry, conservative businessmen who helped finance Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

The group’s backers appeared to be briefly spooked when word circulated that Sheldon Adelson, a wealthy casino magnate who is close to Mr. Gingrich, had committed $20 million to a super PAC supporting him. One of Restore Our Future’s donors called Mr. Sembler in a panic, he said, and asked him to call Mr. Adelson — the two men are friends — to find out if it was true.

“I did call Sheldon,” Mr. Sembler said. “And he said, ‘I’m not only not giving $20 million, I haven’t given any money at all.’ ”

Rick Perry, Pay-for-Play Jailer

(How is this guy this crooked? And he wants to be president? He's exactly what other crooked powerful unethical people look for in a candidate...-jef)

~~~~~~~~~~

by: William Fisher, Truthout | News Analysis

Sunday 25 September 2011

Given what we know about Gov. Rick Perry's keen predilection toward "crony capitalism," we should not be surprised to learn that he's a big fan of private for-profit prisons.

Lobbyists and executives from that industry have contributed generously to Perry's re-election campaign, and he returned the favor by proposing policies that would benefit the prison industry.

"Coincidence?" asks Tim Murphy of Mother Jones magazine in a major article that examines the governor's relationships with the for-profit prison industry.

Murphy writes: "Under the banner of closing the state's $27 billion deficit last winter, Texas Gov. Rick Perry floated a proposal to privatize the state's prison health care network.

Whether the plan would actually save the state any money was a matter of debate, but one thing was clear: The move would have been a boon for private-prison executives and lobbyists, including Perry's former chief of staff, who had donated generously to his 2010 reelection campaign."

He added, "The plan met bipartisan resistance in the state Legislature, but it was just one of a handful of recent proposals by Perry's office that would have benefited the industry - all in the name of deficit reduction."

Murphy goes on to tell us that private prisons are a big business in Texas, where the combination of federal immigration policies and one of the nation's largest inmate populations has led to a boom in construction over the last two decades.

Murphy continues: "As governor, Perry, the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, has supported privatizing everything from public lands to highways, but according to Scott Henson, a criminal-justice watchdog who runs the blog Grits for Breakfast, the governor had remained largely quiet on the prisons issue - until this year.

That coincided with an influx of campaign contributions from private-prison executives and lobbyists, among them his former top aide, Michael Toomey, a political powerbroker who represents the nation's largest private corrections contractor, Corrections Corporation of America [CCA]."

CCA, per its web site "provides health care services to male and female inmates and youthful offenders who are housed in local jails, detention facilities, and correctional institutions around the country."

And there are more private prisons in Texas than in any other state in the country. In Texas, they are charged with supervising 75,000 inmates.

(Toomey told Mother Jones he had not lobbied Perry's office or the state Legislature on the prison health care plan; Perry's campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)

For-profit private prison companies primarily use three strategies to influence policy: lobbying; direct campaign contributions; and building relationships, networks and associations. The industry's so-called "think tank," known as ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), employs all three strategies and also undertakes to prepare "templates" for legislation that will benefit its members.

For example, there is significant evidence that ALEC worked with Arizona officials in the crafting of the infamous "papers please" legislation. It is also reported that, on the basis of that work, it was also able to help Alabama with the crafting of its immigration law.

Private prison companies make substantial contributions to help support ALEC, and senior executives from the for-profit prison industry often work there on temporary assignments.

Given Perry's record in similar situations - for example, the contributions from Merck & Co. and their relationship to Perry's executive order mandating HTD inoculations to help young Texas girls avoid cervical cancer - the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) was not a minute too late in issuing a new report, "Gaming the System: How the Political Strategies of Private Prison Companies Promote Ineffective Incarceration Policies."

The report examines how private prison companies are able to influence legislators and criminal justice policy, a collaboration that ultimately results in harsher criminal justice policies and the incarceration of more people, the JPI asserts.

The report says that, over the past 15 years, the number of people held in all prisons in the United States has increased by 49.6 percent. Private prison populations, during the same period, increased by 353.7 percent, according to recent federal statistic.

The providers of private prisons have been reaping the benefits. In 2010 alone, the CCA and the GEO Group, the two largest private prison companies, had combined revenues of $2.9 billion.

The JPI report says, "not only have private prison companies benefited from this increased incarceration, but they have helped fuel it."

The report notes a "triangle of influence" built on campaign contributions, lobbying and relationships with current and former elected and appointed officials. Through this strategy, private prison companies have gained access to local, state and federal policy makers and have back-channel influence to pass legislation that puts more people behind bars, adds to private prison populations and generates tremendous profits at US taxpayers' expense.

"For-profit companies exercise their political influence to protect their market share, which in the case of corporations like GEO Group and CCA primarily means the number of people locked up behind bars," said Tracy Velázquez, executive director of JPI. "We need to take a hard look at what the cost of this influence is, both to taxpayers and to the community as a whole, in terms of the policies being lobbied for and the outcomes for people put in private prisons.

"That their lobbying and political contributions is funded by taxpayers, through their profits on government contracts, makes it all the more important that people understand the role of private prisons in our political system," Velasquez says.

Paul Ashton, principal author of "Gaming the System," noted, "This report is built on concrete examples of the political strategies of private prison companies.

From noting campaign donations, $835,514 to federal candidates and $6,092,331 to state-level candidates since 2000, to the proposed plan from Ohio Gov. John Kasich to privatize five Ohio prisons followed by the appointment of a former CCA employee to run the Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, 'Gaming the System' shows that private prison companies' interests lie in promoting their business through maintaining political relationships rather than saving taxpayer dollars and effectively ensuring public safety," Ashton says.

Other organizations have also investigated the private prison industry and have their own serious concerns about their political influence. "In the South and Southwest, the private prison industry has consistently targeted poor communities," said Bob Libal, the Texas campaigns coordinator for Grassroots Leadership.

"We believe that it's important to fight, particularly in these communities, to end for-profit incarceration and reduce reliance on criminalization and detention, and ultimately build lasting movements for social justice. This important report helps shed light onto this particularly troubling industry," he said.

Shakyra Diaz, policy director of American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Ohio added, "Research has shown that private prisons do not save taxpayer dollars and can in fact cost taxpayers more than public prisons. Additionally, privatizing prisons may undermine cost effective sentencing reforms and increase recidivism rates.

"Despite these well­documented concerns, private prison companies continue to promote policies that put money in their pockets and people behind bars."

The JPI declared, "If states and the federal government are interested in providing cost-effective, proven public safety strategies, investments in private prison companies will not help achieve that goal. Gaming the System  includes a number of recommendations for criminal justice policies that are cost-effective and will improve public safety ..."

The report says that states and the federal government "should look for real solutions to the problem of growing jail and prison populations. A number of states are already utilizing innovative strategies for reducing the number of people behind bars in their state. Reducing the number of people entering the justice system, and the amount of time that they spend there, can lower prison populations, making private, for-profit prisons unnecessary, and improving public safety and the lives of individuals."

"Private prison companies have been very successful in their effort to promote harsher sentencing policies and the privatization of correctional systems, and when they win, we all lose," added Tracy Velázquez, executive director of JPI.

"Taxpayers lose when their money is used to generate profits for shareholders and to promote policies that increase incarceration; communities lose when policies proven to be ineffective for public safety are pushed through state legislatures, and people involved in the criminal justice system lose when they are locked up in underfunded and sometimes unsafe facilities," she says.

But they have not been anywhere near as successful in operating professional-grade lockups. The federal government and several states have shut down a number of facilities that were found to be overcrowded, unsafe and deficient in health and hygiene. There have been a number of deaths in detention. There has also been a lack of transparency in dealings between the public and several leading private prison companies.

According to Paul Ashton, principal author of the report, "While private prison companies may try to present themselves as just meeting existing demand for prison beds and responding to current market conditions, in fact they have worked hard over the past decade to create markets for their product. As revenues of private prison companies have grown over the past decade, the companies have had more resources with which to build political power, and they have used this power to promote policies that lead to higher rates of incarceration."

He added: "As policymakers and the public are increasingly coming to understand that incarceration is not only breaking the bank, but it's also not making us safer, will this shrink the influence of private prison companies? Or will they use their growing financial muscle to consolidate and expand into even more areas of the justice system?"

He continues: "Much will depend on the extent that people understand the role for-profit private prison companies have already played in raising incarceration rates and harming people and communities, and take steps to ensure that in the future, community safety and well-being, and not profits, drive our justice policies. One thing is certain: in this political game, the private prison industry will look out for their own interests," Ashton concludes.

Buddy Roemer Was Not Invited

Decline of the Empire 09/08/2011

Those vying to become the leaders of the Republican "cult" (as renegade congressional staffer Mike Lofgren put it) held a "debate" last night. It apparently has not occurred to anyone on National Public Radio this morning that any  "debate" featuring Michele Bachmann, who is always painted as a front-runner, indicates the complete collapse of political legitimacy in the United States. I wonder how Angela Merkel views this. Not to mention Hu Jintao.

Former Louisiana governor Buddy Roemer was not invited to participate, although he is running for President on the Republican side. Unlike Michele, he does not have enough support yet to warrant a spot on the Big Debate Platform. Buddy has a pet peeve about politics in America. His problem with the whole process is that special interests run the show. Here is an excerpt from his speech to the National Press Club on August 17, 2011. He called his talk The Tyranny of The Big Check. I will quote it at length. I've presented Roemer's remarks on money in politics just as they appear on his campaign website.

But today, i want to talk about why these bold actions will not take place, will not happen.

Special interests own this town.

And the special interests have never been so well off. They are in control, and in a land run more and more by the government, they finance the choice of national candidates, and the presidential election itself.

We are broken and need to take bold action to grow again, but the special interests have never had it so good —- why change?

I agree with those who say that our political system, our nation’s capital, is institutionally corrupt.

For example, special interests write the tax code. You cannot read it. They can. General electric is the largest corporate giver in the last election cycle, made a profit last year of $5.2 billion and paid zero federal income taxes, while the average profitable small business person pays 36%. Fair?

Every year the costs of elections rise, and the same 1% or 2% of America give the money. 98% give nothing. That’s the system and it results in special favors and provisions and opportunities for those at the top who give the money.

We are owned from the top down by special interest money, political action committee (PAC) money, by wall street money, and by the big check.

Institutionally corrupt and it’s getting worse.

Look at the record.

Healthcare reform under president Obama was designed to lower the cost of healthcare yet it didn’t include tort reform. The tort lawyers are big givers to both parties.

It didn’t eliminate the protection that insurance companies have to prevent competition from out of state. Big givers, those insurance companies.

It didn’t require pharmaceutical companies to discount prices on government business. Oh no! Big bucks and the threat of big bucks from these multi-nationals.

A 2,300 page bill, unconstitutional at its core with the insurance mandate, and it didn’t even touch three of the most expensive healthcare costs.

Special interest money wrote healthcare.

Did you know that PACS and lobbyists with Washington dc area addresses gave more money in the last presidential campaign than 32 states combined?

Washington dc is a boom town and the rest of America is hurting.

Now, four years later, it’s worse.

The PACS are now uncountable. They can give twice as much as individuals. Why? There is no disclosure, no names, and no accountability as to purpose or source.

Then there is the “bundler”, who collects checks from others, delivers them to the candidate in a bundle with political credit going not to the sucker who give their $2,500 or $5,000, but to the collector who gives the PACkage to the candidate at $100,000 or $200,000 or $1,000,000 or $2,000,000 political value.

I recently read a paper written by a Harvard law school student about bundling and the selection of united states ambassadors under Obama and his predecessors. Checkbook diplomacy he called it.

Historically, all presidents have appointed about 30% political appointees versus 70% professional Foreign Service selections. President Obama is at 65% political (58 out of 90), and the major portion went to “bundlers”, such as

Roos to Japan with a $500,000 bundle
Susman to Great Britain with a $500,000 bundle
Rivkin to France with a $800,000 bundle
Gutman to Belgium for a $775,000 bundle
Beyer to Switzerland for a $745,000 PACkage.

On and on it goes.

And this is just 5 out of the first 24 bundler-nominees put forth by president Obama. These 24 nominees bundled more than $11 million minimum without counting their contributions to other fund raising opportunities such as the inaugural committee, the president’s leadership PAC, and the democrat national committee. There is no end to the cash these bundlers give and to the power and control it buys.

Both parties have done it, but Obama is the master.

We are selling important public jobs for special favored private money like a third world country.

The Tyranny of the Big Check. Position for sale!

It doesn’t end there.

Lobbyists have become fundraisers in an institutionally corrupt system. Lobbyists have been a critical source of information and focused industry knowledge since the beginning of our nation. It is a position considered honorable and necessary to the function of a representative democracy.

But it should not be combined with the role of a political fundraiser, where the danger is that the size of the check should determine the action of the representative.

Vote buying is a dangerous and slippery slope in a world where fair play and level playing field are as American as “apple pie”.

In short, a registered lobbyist should not be allowed to both lobby and fund raise. His/her choice, one or the other.

Jack Abramoff is a name that comes to mind.

The American bar association just endorsed this separation of registered lobbyist from the act of fund raising.

Special interest money, PAC money, bundled money. They never stop. They never cease. They never sleep.

Announce a new committee or a new appointment? A fundraiser by the special interest lobbyist immediately follows!

Two weeks ago congress agreed on a pitiful budget-debt ceiling resolution which called for a special committee of six dems and six republicans with awesome power of spending cuts and tax increases. It was a bad idea in my opinion, but it is now the law.

We immediately contacted the office of the speaker of the house and the president of the senate asking that all meetings of the special committee be held in a public forum and that members selected pledge not to accept PAC or lobbyists checks during the remainder of their term of office. Let the vote of the people be the ultimate decider of the choices inherent in this unusual situation, not the power of a special interest check.

No response from the congressional leadership.

Last week the leadership’s selections were made public and 24 hours later one of the members selected, congressman Becerra, had leaked the fact that he had accepted a major fundraiser by a group of lobbyists at $1,500 a ticket high lighting the fact that he was on the committee that would imPACt their special interests, their budget earmarks, and their tax loopholes.

It never stops. Incredible.

And Becerra’s answer? “I will continue to do what i have to do as a member of congress. So yes, we are going to move forward.”

So exactly what is his role as a member of congress? Collect fat special interest and lobbyists and PAC checks to get re-elected?

Or to represent his district and help rebuild America?

Watch the money!!!

We challenge the leadership of the house and the senate. Let the people decide these issues at the voting booth, not the special interest cash and check booth.

It is not too late to make a statement. Ask members of the special committee to eschew lobbyists, PACS, and special interest fundraising for the duration of this term. Ideas are welcome. Contributions from the vested interests are not.

The system is institutionally corrupt. Both parties are guilty and it is getting worse.

Which leads me to something new: “SUPERPACS”.

SUPERPACS do not have to disclose the contributions received and dollar amounts are unlimited. Their only requirement is that they have to be independent of any candidate although concepts can be shared.

What a joke!!

Independent? Romney’s SUPERPACS (or does he have two?) Got a $1 million contribution from a corporation formed special for that purpose and which dissolved after the check was delivered. When word leaked out about the million, Romney reluctantly revealed the source. Why was the million dollars hidden?

Independent? The PAC is run by former chief of staff, business partners, former employees, and is funded by individuals who already have contributed the maximum amount.

This is not disclosure or independence. This is phony, shadowy, hidden, corrupt in the truest sense of the word, corrupt in every sense of the word.

And I don’t want to pick on Romney alone. He is not unique. It is revealed that governor Rick Perry has seven SUPERPACS headed by former associates, staff, and maximum operatives. Bachmann has a SUPERPACS as does Paul and Huntsman.

Don’t do it. I challenge them. Don’t do it.

Join with me and let’s give ourselves a chance to take bold, clean action to restore America and to energize the plain people of our country who fight the wars, build the roads, start the small businesses, teach the kids, and raise the families of America.

Let’s restore honesty, and faith, and transparency to this corrupt political system.
These SUPERPACS are phony. They are not independent. They are just bald-faced efforts to hide the facts of the power of the big checks from the American people. They are just special interests buying yet more influence. You don’t believe the SUPERPACS are phony in their pretending to be independent?

Do you know that the candidate can attend the fundraising dinner, speak and be acknowledged, have it run by his henchman, and claim independence?

It is a joke, but a joke on our country. Don’t do it candidates. Join with me.

Still unsure about the below the surface corruption of our system? Look at the so-called banking reform of last year. Read Grethchen Morgenson in the New York Times every Sunday as she describes banking corruption, or ask a community banker in your town.

Our financial system is still not out of the woods, because “banking reform” did not eliminate too big to fail. Glass-Stegal is still dead. Goldman Sachs is still the largest political contributor in the financial sector and no one went to jail after they lied to the congress and abused their client privilege. And Obama is on wall street a month later having a huge fundraiser at $35,000 a ticket.

See how this corrupt system works? Jobs for sale. Wink and nod for change. Oh the president is a great fundraiser. Just what I’m looking for in a president — how about you?

I don't have much to add. See my post The Root Of All Political Evil. Today's post should not be taken as an endorsement of Buddy Roemer, but he's the only one running who is willing to talk about the only issue that matters. I'm never going to vote again, and I recommend you do the same.