2010 elections

Campaign Cash: Tea Party Vows To Block Campaign Finance Reform

Zach Carter — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 11:21:46 -0400

Welcome to the final edition of Campaign Cash, which tracked political spending during this year's midterm elections. Stay tuned for more reporting on money in politics from members of The Media Consortium. To see more stories on campaign funding, follow the Twitter hashtag #campaigncash.

Anonymous millionaires just helped elect dozens of ultraconservative congressional candidates, by pumping millions of dollars into national Tea Party organizations. And guess what's at the top of the legislative to-do list for those same Tea Party groups? Blocking campaign finance reform legislation.

As Stephanie Mencimer explains for Mother Jones, one of the nation's largest Tea Party organizations, the Tea Party Patriots, is already coming out guns-a-blazing against any lame duck effort to crack down on secret corporate spending in elections.

And with good cause. The Tea Party's appeal, after all, is based on its populist, grassroots image. If anybody knew that secret right-wing millionaires were bankrolling the entire operation, the "movement" would lose its luster.

But whether reformers are able to force front-groups to disclose their donors or not, the broader effort to eliminate undue corporate influence from the political process will take years.

Welcome to the plutocracy

The Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission allowed corporations and deep-pocketed elites to spend unlimited amounts electing politicians of their choosing. So long as those expenditures are funneled through a front-group, nobody has to know who is buying an ugly attack ad or why. Instead ads are sponsored by groups with a innocuous-sounding names like "Americans for Prosperity" or "Americans for Job Security." Nobody knows who ultimately foots the bill.

In organized crime, this process is called "money laundering." And everyone is getting in on the game, from the Tea Party to Karl Rove to U.S. Chamber of Commerce. As Bill Moyers explains in this Boston University lecture carried by Truthout, it's ravaging American democracy.

Rove, other conservative groups and the Chamber of Commerce have in fact created a "shadow party" ... We have reached what ... former Labor Secretary Robert Reich calls "the perfect storm that threatens American democracy: An unprecedented concentration of income and wealth at the top; a record amount of secret money flooding our democracy; and a public becoming increasingly angry and cynical about a government that’s raising its taxes, reducing its services, and unable to get it back to work. We're losing our democracy to a different system. It's called plutocracy."

That, ultimately, is what is at stake with campaign finance reform. Can democracy continue to serve as a check on elite power? Or will America simply dance to the tune played by the super-rich. Citizens United made an undemocratic mess of this year's election—but the influence of corporate cash is not going to simply melt away. Without serious reforms, the very concept of American elections will become a quaint, naive relic of the past.

Wall Street wins big

And while the plutocracy plainly organized itself against Democrats in this election, democrats have not exactly been strangers to corporate largesse. As Laura Flanders emphasizes for GRITtv, while President Barack Obama occasionally offered rhetorical rebukes against the Wall Street establishment, so far as public policy was concerned, he rarely did anything to ruffle their feathers. Obama continued the Bush bailouts, praised the executives of firms would eventually be investigated for fraud as "savvy," and aimed pretty low on financial reform. But as Flanders notes, all those favors didn't end up helping either Obama or his party on Nov. 2:

Having soaked up the government's largesse, those banksters repaid Obama by pouring millions of anonymous dollars into defeating Democrats.

It worked. The most vocal Wall Street critics in the House and Senate—Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) were bombarded with attack ads courtesy of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Now they're gone, along with the Democratic majority in the House.

Last-ditch effort on campaign finance reform

As Jesse Zwick emphasizes for The Washington Independent, Congress can still limit the damage in the coming months before the officials elected last night take office. A modest law that would require corporations to disclose their political expenditures and force front-groups to publicly identify their donors would help limit the damage.

After that, as Moyers emphasizes, it's a long, hard fight.

But wait! There's more.

Andy Kroll at Mother Jones notes that Rick Scott didn't really need money from outside groups to buy the Governor's race in Florida. He did it himself.
Jason Hancock reports for The Iowa Independent that outside groups spent more than $1 million to oust judges that ruled to legalize same-sex marriage in Iowa.
John Nichols and Richard Kim of The Nation talk to GRITtv's Laura Flanders and Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman on the midterm results, and what to expect from corporate expenditures in 2012.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the mid-term elections and campaign financing by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit The Media Consortium for more articles on these issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

A President's Choice: Resist Wall Street's "Shock Doctrine" Or Keep Listening to The Usual Suspects

Richard Eskow — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 16:59:14 -0400

Last night's real winner wasn't a party or an ideology. The real winner was Wall Street. Once again the wealthy and powerful have applied the Shock Doctrine to US politics, using a financial crisis to increase their power. The Democratic Party tried to accommodate the Wall Street crowd for two years and failed. Now Democrats must decide whether to adopt a new, bold and coherent strategy, or keep listening to the same advice that got them here.

They may need to decide quickly. The Party's Usual Suspects are already out in force, making excuses for themselves and peddling the same shopworn "centrist" wares. The President used the words "responsible," "responsibly," or "responsibility" thirteen times in today's press conference. It's admirable when someone takes responsibility for their actions. That's an act that will hopefully include taking stock of what went wrong and trying something different.

The Failure of Pseudo-Centrism

We're still suffering from the massive failure of a radical, free-market-run-wild ideology that devastated the economy. The public understood that, so they gave the Democrats an enormous mandate to change economic direction. Yet just twenty months later conservatives scored a huge triumph, leaving Democrats with a choice: Continue to blur the distinction between themselves and their opponents, or lay out a clear agenda for job creation and economic growth.

Of course, that's been the choice all along. But the President and many other senior Democrats chose to take the advice of the "centrist" experts within their party by adopting unpopular Republican positions and getting nothing in return. After last night's rout, what are these experts advising?You guessed it: More of the same so-called "Centrism." That's an odd word to use for policies that most Americans oppose, like cutting Social Security or allowing bankers to enrich themselves by endangering the economy, but theirs is an Alice-in-Wonderland world.

Real centrists would defend Social Security and do more to rein in Wall Street, since those positions are popular across the political spectrum. It's a good thing the President said today that he wants to spend more time with the American people. Bankers and the Deficit Commission aren't "centrists" where most Americans live.

If Democrats want to keep passing bills that include unpopular right-wing ideas, Republicans and their Wall Street patrons will be happy to let them do it and suffer the consequences. They've done it before, most notably when they let Dems take the fall for their unconditional bailout of the big banks. We saw the results yesterday. And yet, incredibly, the Usual Suspects are still pushing the same failed approach.

The Usual Suspects Respond

If the President wants new ideas, he won't get them from the ever-predictable Mark Penn. He's the mastermind who ended Hillary Clinton's nearly invincible run for the Presidency with the same "centrist" pablum he peddled to Obama today. After noting correctly that "Republicans and the Tea Party won the turnout war" while Democrats' core constituencies of young voters and minorities stayed home, Penn nonetheless (and inevitably) concludes that the party must "move to the center." How will that increase turnout? Penn also says that "President Obama got out of step with the voters" - apparently by enacting a few of the policies that voters elected him to carry out. The idea that Obama didn't enact enough of them never comes up - but then, that wouldn't be very "centrist," would it?

Paul Begala's election response - "A Centrist Democratic Agenda: More Jobs, Less Corruption" - isn't as wrongheaded as Penn's, but it's convoluted and somewhat confusing. That's probably because Begala's Prime Directive, which seems to demand a "centrist" approach, conflicts with some vestigial common sense that he can't shake long enough to deliver the conventional wisdom.

Even as he advises moving to the "center," Begala correctly notes that the President's first responsibility is to create jobs. That's absolutely right: This election was about jobs, not ideology, and the Dems will continue to get hammered until people see some movement toward creating them. Begala's also right to suggest that Democrats stop using the word "stimulus" and keep repeating "jobs" instead.

Here's the real problem for Begala, and for all the other "centrists" who have rightly said that this election was about jobs and the economy: Doing more to create jobs and help the economy is a progressive agenda. It requires more government action (unless you believe in invisible tax fairies, which reputable economist does.) But moving to the "center" means embracing less government action.

Call it whatever you want. To win elections Democrats need to get the economy moving, and you can't do that in a "centrist" way. With Congress now able to block every sensible economic move, the Democrats must lay out a clear path toward more jobs. They should compromise when they must, of course, but this time they need to make it clear that they are compromising.

Making Excuses Instead of Making History

The centrists knew they'd have to defend themselves once the votes were counted. Maybe that's why political strategist Brendan Nyhan has been preemptively trying to stifle criticism with an approach that blends cogent arguments with a barrage of derision and dismissal. His "preview of post-election storytelling" even included a bingo card that mockingly laid out every possible explanation for the anticipated Democratic failure, including those of progressives like Robert Kuttner, in a way that makes all of them look equally absurd -- except Nyhan's, of course.

Unfortunately, Nyhan's explanation is just a slightly better-articulated version of the typical bag of excuses: A bad economy, the passage of time, and the fact that the party in power almost always loses a midterm election (more about that "almost" later). Nyhan even described President Obama as "a victim of circumstance." (This group of Democrats seem regrettably comfortable with the language of victimology and the use of the passive voice). (1)

The excuse makers also keep reminding us that the party in power always loses in mid-term elections. That's using history to set the bar as low as possible. In this argument, history isn't just prologue: It's destiny, a fate as certain as Heaven or Hell in a Cotton Mather sermon. Two years ago we overthrew history's precedents when an African American named Barack Hussein Obama ran for President and won. According to the standards set by this excuse, he shouldn't even have bothered.

Crisis Management

There have been at least two major exceptions to this "midterm setback" rule. One was the Congressional election of 1934, when Roosevelt's party gained seats in both the House and Senate halfway through his first term. (That was before he listened to the "centrists" who suggested he dial down on government activism, leading to an upturn in unemployment and a loss of seats in 1938.) The other was 2002, when the nation was still reeling from 9/11 and was preparding for wider war. That's different, say the centrists. We were in a crisis, and the nation rallied around its leadership. The only rational response to that argument is: Don't you think we're in a crisis now?

The Excuse Makers dismiss 2002 as an exception by insisting, as Nyhan and Jonathan Chait do, that economic forces inevitably determine the outcome of midterm elections. But a President with solid majorities in both houses should have been able to do more to change those economic forces, or at least lay out a clear agenda for changing them. They can't take that position, though, because it undermines their version of "centrism." So we're left once again with the Excuse Makers' two best friends: a victim mentality and the passive voice.

A Time to Choose

It was heartening to see the President stand up and take responsibility for last night's events, avoid any hint of victimology or passivity. The next step is to see the common thread that links Franklin Roosevelt's 1934 Democrats with George W. Bush's 2002 Republicans. Both parties were governing in a time of crisis, and both of them acted like it. Their leaders understood the power of the Shock Doctrine, whether or not they'd ever heard the term. In Bush's case, he used it cynically and destructively. But Roosevelt saw how important it was to act decisively, with a clearly articulated agenda and bold government action.

The President and his fellow Democrats have a choice. They can listen to the architects of yesterday's defeat by enacting policies on Social Security and Wall Street that most voters - Democratic and Republican, liberal and conservative - don't want. The Usual Suspects call that "centrism." (In an even more Orwellian phrasing, Nyhan even labels Markos Moulitsas' advocacy for widely popular policies "extremism.")

Or Democrats can learn from experience and choose a different approach. They can articulate a clear vision for the nation and its economy. A battle has been lost, but the war continues. Wall Street's shock doctrine tactics worked this time, but they've been defeated before and can be again. Let's hope the President continues to take responsibility in the best way possible: by learning from experience and then leading his party in a new and more effective direction.

____________________________________________

(1) Nyhan also offers a more interesting, more technical excuse: " ... demand for government tends to move in the opposite direction of the party in power -- increasing during the Eisenhower years, declining after the Great Society ..." Note the phrase "declining after the Great Society." That's a sleight of hand meant to distract the reader from an important fact: Demand for greater government did not decline during the Kennedy/Johnson years, until late in Johnson's presidency when his popularity plummeted because of the war and urban unrest. (The war in Vietnam was Johnson's most "centrist" policy, while other "centrists" blocked him from sending more aid to the inner cities.)

This post was produced as part of the Curbing Wall Street project and the Strengthen Social Security campaign.

Obama's Top Priority Must Be Jobs, Not Republican Appeasement

Zach Carter — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 12:08:31 -0400

Economic policy has faced grave challenges over the past two years, hamstrung by obstructionist Republicans in the U.S. Senate and Wall Street-friendly advisers in the Obama administration. With the Republican Party now in control of the House, it seems certain that any major action to create jobs will face tremendous obstacles. This is a global calamity. But the political lesson of the past two years should be clear: all the good PR in the world can't whitewash a terrible economy. For the next two years, President Obama and his Congressional allies must do everything they can to actually improve the job market. Without a better economy for ordinary Americans, Democrats are doomed in 2012.

Ezra Klein presents what he thinks is a rosy view of how policy could proceed after last night. To me, it looks like exactly the sort of empty political gesture that Democrats should be fighting. Ezra envisions Obama and new House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, reaching a grand bargain on economic policy: the payroll tax is lifted for a year, $50 billion in infrastructure spending is approved, the unspent 2009 stimulus money is abandoned, and $400 billion in spending cuts over 10 years are approved.

Ezra calls this the next chapter in an imaginary "universe where the government works." It's more like the next chapter in an imaginary world where the government works, and every policymaker is completely insane. Sure, the deal would convince voters that Democrats and Republicans can pass legislation (if it passed). But the result would be a neutral to negative impact on the job market. Continuing today's avoidable economic suffering is bad enough in its own right, but it's also a political disaster for Democrats.

If Obama heads into 2012 with double-digit unemployment, he will lose. End of story. Voters have a terrible view of Republicans, and they just sent over 60 new Republicans to Washington because Obama didn't bring down the unemployment rate. Those results prove that Democrats' backs are already up against the wall on 2012. Fixing the economy takes time, and we need strong, serious action as soon as possible, or we are headed for political calamity.

Why won't Ezra's policy package work? It has two useful elements—a tax cut to hire more workers, and $50 billion in infrastructure spending. Both of these would help some—if the tax cut was really wildly effective, they might combine to take the unemployment rate down by half a percentage point. But these useful policies would be offset by other spending cuts. And unless we're only cutting $600 hammers in the Pentagon budget, those spending cuts are going to kill jobs. To get $400 billion in cuts, we'd have to find 667 million of those hammers.

Lifting the payroll tax really might help create jobs. We don't know how many, but it surely wouldn't be as effective as simply hiring people outright, and that's what government spending—"stimulus" or otherwise—does. In other words, Ezra has outlined a proposal to kill jobs in order to maybe create some.

Showing that they can work with Republicans won't save Democrats in 2012. Only real economic results will. Aggressive PR about how you really actually did fix things won't convince people who are out of a job or in foreclosure. They know the economy still sucks, and even worse, they know you're not telling the truth.

So Obama also has to get his messaging in order. It may very well prove to be the case that Republicans block all but the most modest of steps to create jobs. Obama can't pretend that these steps are enough, and he cannot hesitate to attack Republicans, holding out hope that maybe, someday they will magically come to their senses and start approving policies that promote growth. He can't keep repeating the Republican talking points Rahm Emmanuel fed him over the past two years—the government can create jobs. Right now, it's the only entity that can.

Getting past "partisanship" doesn't mean cutting whatever crappy deal you can with your political adversaries. It means eschewing political grandstanding for good policy. Without good policy, bipartisanship is a pyrrhic victory.

So Obama has to fight hard for policies that actually bring the unemployment rate down, and he must be willing to defend his policy proposals from Republican attacks, making a clear moral case for why spending to support jobs is a good idea. Republicans know that they can win the White House in 2012 by simply blocking Obama and letting the economy fall apart. They'll do it. They already have. Obama has to hold Republicans rhetorically accountable so they fear the electoral consequences of obstruction enough to vote in favor of policies that actually work.

If Republicans refuse to cooperate, Democrats must at least demonstrate to voters that they are working for voters, not for bigwig bankers. The stimulus package approved in 2009 was too small for a variety of reasons, but one of them was due to the fact that Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner expected the financial system to help revive the economy. It didn't, because the system is dominated by too-big-to-fail behemoths with massive losses embedded in their balance sheets.

It's been very fashionable in D.C. to say that the bank bailouts "worked," even though they were unpopular. But they didn't work—banks aren't lending. And they didn't work because banks are still saddled with hundreds of billions of dollars worth of lousy assets. Regulators are allowing banks to account for those assets at inflated values, which protects the banks from losses. So banks trade securities instead of lending, and slowly recognize losses as they rake in gambling profits. This is why the foreclosure fraud scandal has sent bank stock prices on a downward trend—investors know that enough documentation will spark a new wave of losses, causing big trouble for Wall Street.

So we still need to fix the financial system. Banks must be forced to recognize their losses. Where those losses render a bank insolvent, the bank has to be restructured—shareholders wiped out, creditors taking a hit, and taxpayers putting up money only where doing so prevents a cascade of defaults. This will be painful, but no more painful than watching a recovery without credit.

And if Obama can't get these policies, he needs to at least fight for them. Prosecute the deep fraud in the financial system that is being uncovered every day. Explain to voters that Republicans are blocking job-creation.

These policies will be extremely difficult to secure in the face of anything close to the Republican obstruction we've seen over the past two years. But Democrats simply have no other choice. Without major action on the economy very soon, the White House is already gone.

Campaign Cash: Citizens United Becomes Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card for Corporate Criminals

Zach Carter — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 11:06:04 -0400

The votes are in, and while some close races are still being tallied, there is a clear winner from the 2010 elections: Secret corporate cash.

Such unaccounted for political donations may end up allowing those accused of wrongdoing to go free. As Joshua Holland details for AlterNet, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission may have provided a lifetime supply of get-out-of-jail-free cards to corporate criminals.

The Kentucky senate race serves as a prime example. The Democratic candidate, Jack Conway, is currently Kentucky’s attorney general. Conway is also currently prosecuting a nursing home for allegedly covering up the sexual abuse of one of its residents.

But that nursing home is owned by Terry Forcht, a millionaire who gives prodigiously to right-wing causes. He poured money into Karl Rove’s organization, American Crossroads GPS, which ran ads backing Conway’s Republican opponent, Rand Paul. Guess who came away with the victory last night?

As Holland emphasizes, the mid-term elections are just how the first phase of the justice system’s corruption plays out. Eventually the mere threat of attack ads could be enough to prevent needed prosecutions. Corporate bigwigs could literally get away with murder, and pay for it only through attack ads.

Think this is bad? Just wait for 2012

As David Corn details for Mother Jones, the Supreme Court’s ruling has put American democracy in grave danger. This year’s big spending is just a warm-up for the 2012 presidential election. Karl Rove has already pledged to keep running attack ads after the mid-terms, and there’s no doubt that he’ll make good on that. As Corn emphasizes, this issue doesn’t just affect how campaigns are financed—it will permanently reshape the very nature of American elections.

The permanent, neverending campaign will become even more permanent and neverending. These big-and-secret-money groups will be working 24/7, opposing and discrediting President Barack Obama and the Democrats in the so-called off-year and then revving up for the 2012 presidential and congressional elections. The negative ads never have to stop.

That, ultimately, is the major take-away from last night's elections. Not the number of seats Republicans picked up in the House, or the Tea Party’s ability to infiltrate the Senate, but the formal incorporation of American politics. With literally no limits on the amount of money they can spend to influence elections, corporations and secret billionaires are going to be tipping the democratic scales wherever they smell profit.

That means it will be much, much harder for politicians of any ideological stripe to solve society’s problems. The richest corporations have the most political purchasing power, and the companies with the most money are those that have thrived under the status quo—however destructive that state of affairs may be to society at large. This money will go to keeping things the way they are—not toward creating jobs, improving education, expanding access to health care, stopping ecological catastrophe or anything else.

Citizens United 101

We spoke with Jesse Zwick of The Washington Independent about the nuts and bolts of Citizens United and secret campaign cash. In the below video, Zwick details the potential impact of secret money—and how citizens and legislature can curb the effects of this historic ruling.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vscG2X7fRVY[/youtube]

Bare-bones, anti-Citizens United legislation might still have a shot

So what can be done? Earlier this year, Republicans successfully filibustered legislation that would have forced corporations to disclose their political spending and require front-groups to divulge the identities of their donors. But as Jesse Zwick emphasizes for The Washington Independent, there’s still one more opportunity to push a bare-bones version of the bill through Congress. Democrats will retain their broad Congressional majorities until January 2011, when the candidates elected last night formally take up office. If Democrats see which way the corporate wind is blowing, they’ll flex their political muscles one last time to get a disclosure bill through Congress. There are many things that people are reluctant to do in public that they have the political right to do. If lawmakers can remove the anonymity from corporate and elite political spending, some of the Citizens United damage could be reversed.

If not, 2012 is going to be even uglier than last night.

But wait, there's more!

Amie Newman of RH Reality Check reports that a last-minute mailer funded by outside group The Citizens for Responsible Spending attacked Washington state Sen. Rodney Tom, citing his pro-women's rights and pro-LGBT positions. Tom ended up losing his seat last night.
California upheld its environmental protection law by defeating Proposition 23, despite the fact that oil companies funneled nearly $10 million to pass the measure, reports Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones.
As Dave Gilson details for Mother Jones, outside spending worked overwhelmingly in favor of Republican candidates in key races.

Campaign Cash: Why Conservative Attack Ads Won't Stop After Election Day

Zach Carter — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 12:08:16 -0400

Today is the first election in American history in which corporations have been allowed to spend their own money to buy political favors. This legalized corruption comes courtesy of the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which injected massive amounts of corporate cash and unprecedented levels of secrecy into American politics.

And all of this crazy corporate spending will not be restricted to elections. That's right. As Jesse Zwick reports for The Washington Independent, two front-groups founded by GOP strategists Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie plan to keep running ads attacking Democrats well after the elections are over.

As Zwick emphasizes, this is actually a way to help keep one of the organizations, known as American Crossroads GPS, from breaking the law. Many groups that spend money on elections register as 501(c)(4) organizations, which must devote no more than half of their activity to political operations. In return for limiting their political activity—advocacy or condemnation of specific candidates—they don't have to disclose who their donors are. So groups like American Crossroads GPS plan to run "issue ads" focusing on the budget deficit and immigration reform this fall to balance out the ads directed at specific candidates that they've already run.

Under the Citizens United ruling, so long as corporations or wealthy elites launder their political expenditures through a front-group, they can give as much as they want without ever being held publicly accountable. But the high court’s decision also allows these front-groups to keep their actual expenditures secret as well. It’s not just that we don’t know who is funding them—in many cases, we also don’t really know what they’re funding.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce's foreign dues

The secrecy surrounding anonymous donors may very well extend to foreign corporations. As Harry Hanbury emphasizes in this video for GRITtv, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—a lobbying front-group for the largest American corporations—is facing heavy scrutiny over is foreign contributions. Nearly $900,000 in annual dues to the Chamber come from foreign firms, and the Chamber aggressively courts foreign donors who might benefit from weak U.S. laws—particularly environmental laws. The Chamber insists that it’s playing by the rules, but Hanbury catches them lying twice about the nature of the group’s foreign funding.

California's environmental laws for sale

Corporations aren’t just targeting federal elections to influence public policy. As Tara Lohan explains for AlterNet, big oil companies have financed a campaign to repeal California’s carbon emission reduction law. Two major polluters—Valero and Tesoro—have spent a combined $7 million boosting the repeal, while Koch Industries—a major Tea Party funder—has kicked in about $1 million as well. A full 70 percent of the $10.7 million that has been spent to bolster the anti-environment ballot initiative has come from out-of-state sources.

Even the Tea Party's worried

When the Tea Party Patriots received an anonymous $1 million donation for get-out-the-vote efforts, left-wing bloggers weren’t the only people upset about it. As Stephanie Mencimer reports for Mother Jones, some of the Tea Party Patriots’ own members were nervous: Who was funding this operation, and where was the money going?

We’ll probably never know, because the Tea Party Patriots aren't legally obligated report their donors or expenses. The group has only disclosed $15,000 worth of expenditures of the $1 million donation, $10,000 of which was re-granted to another organization run by the father of Tea Party Patriots leader Mark Meckler. The remainder is anybody’s guess.

But wait, there's more!

Writing for In These Times, Sam Ross-Brown highlights a potential legislative solution to some of these campaign finance shenanigans. The Fair Elections Now Act would limit individual campaign contributions to $100, and match them by a factor of four-to-one, increasing the spending power of ordinary citizens and helping to level the distorted playing field created by Citizens United.
Kate Sheppard of Mother Jones details who got hit the hardest this election season in the final push leading up to Election Day: Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) got some of the biggest expenditures. This year also smashed previous campaign expenditures, coming in at $443 million.
Suzy Khimm reports on voter intimidation tactics for Mother Jones from a McDonald's fast food franchise in Ohio's 16th district. Employees were told to vote for Republicans or their wages would go down. McDonald's may have been emboldened by Citizens United even though such tactics are still clearly illegal.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the mid-term elections and campaign financing by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit The Media Consortium for more articles on these issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

Win or Lose, Perriello Reveals Progressive Power

Zach Carter — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 12:41:49 -0400

Tom Perriello always knew it would be hard to hold his seat in Congress. The progressive Democrat from Albemarle County, Va. represents a district designed to nullify liberal votes with a wide swath of conservative countryside. He was elected in 2008, riding President Obama’s coattails to victory by just 727 votes. He does not represent a swing district--he is a committed progressive in a solidly Republican district. But unlike his Blue Dog contemporaries, Perriello has voted like a progressive for the past two years. And unlike many Blue Dogs, he might actually pull out a victory tomorrow night, even in the face of a Republican wave fueled by double-digit unemployment. The mere fact that he’s in the running is a stunning accomplishment.

I lived in Perriello’s district for eight years before moving to Washington, D.C. this summer. For mountains, majesty, and rock ‘n roll, it simply can’t be beat. But there were problems, namely persistent racial tensions, a lousy economy and politicians who perpetuated these two troubles. For all but the last two years we were represented by Virgil Goode, a conservative Republican and unabashed bigot. Years before Fox News made Islamophobia a mainstream political view, Goode was openly attacking Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., on the grounds that he was – gasp!—a Muslim. Goode cruised to re-election every cycle, easily surviving the 2006 Democratic wave, despite being a Bush-backing war-monger in a year when voters were rejecting both Bush and his war in Iraq.

I lived in Charlottesville, a tiny outcropping of progressive politics at the northern tip of the Fifth District. From Charlottesville, the district fans out directly to the rural south, extending all the way to the North Carolina border. It’s a two-and-a-half hour drive straight south from Charlottesville to Danville, three hours southwest to Collinsville or southeast to Brunswick. All four towns are in the same district. Just 40,000 people live in Charlottesville—120,000 if you include Albemarle County (which is not as progressive as “the city”). But the district as a whole includes nearly 650,000 people, most of it tiny towns and farmland, and most of its inhabitants Republicans. Jerry Falwell’s right-wing conservative Christian enclave Liberty University is smack in the middle of Perriello country.

Conventional wisdom dictates that Democratic politicians in such districts vote like Republicans. Otherwise, a Republican runs against you, points out that you’re not a Republican, and beats you.

But Perriello decided to take a different tack when he was elected. Instead of capitulating to policies and votes he didn’t believe in, he would do what he thought was right, and make an aggressive case to voters that he was, in fact, right.

On every major vote in the past two years, Perriello voted with progressives, at times even voting against President Obama on the grounds that his policies were not progressive enough. He voted for healthcare reform and the stimulus package, but he voted against Wall Street reform because it didn’t hit the big banks hard enough, and he voted against disbursing the second round of bailout money to the banks (he wasn’t in office when the bank bailout was approved).

He never apologized for these votes or caved to right-wing rhetorical frames, and he hit the road to campaign on his record, explaining his positions directly to voters. This was old-school campaigning, and it wasn’t glamorous—trekking from Danville to Martinsville to Charlottesville every week, making speeches, shaking hands and answering questions in town-hall meetings. But Perriello is not your standard politician waiting for a cushy lobbyist job. He has a deep background in social justice work—he’s in Congress because he wants to make a difference, not to score a sweet paycheck.

All of that campaigning has paid off. Voters are pissed off this year. They’ve watched Wall Street profits soar on the back of a taxpayer-financed bailout, even as ordinary Americans have been laid off by the millions. Whether Republicans take control of the House tomorrow night or not, they will certainly make big gains as voters reject policymakers who cater to big banks while failing to tackle the jobs problem—either out of political cowardice or ideological blindness.

But Perriello is holding even with Republican challenger Robert Hurt. The fact that Perriello even has a chance in this election ought to be viewed as something of a miracle. Or maybe it’s just good governing, combined with good politics.

Tim Fernholz almost gets it right in his profile of Perriello for The American Prospect. But he misses the mark with this comment, which is going to be echoed by the Beltway establishment on Wednesday morning, however the race turns out:

“If Perriello can beat the odds tomorrow, it is not only his reputation, and the president's, that will be burnished . . . . Should he lose, the voices who call for a more timid Democratic Party will have a point in their favor.”

This is wrong. Perriello won in 2008 by just 727 votes. Any Democrat who entered office by so slim a margin is almost certain to lose this year. By any conventional political analysis, Perriello should be getting trounced He faces a massive voter registration disadvantage, representing a district that is designed to crush progressive voices during what is expected to be a wave election for Republicans, amid strong anti-incumbent attitudes sparked by high unemployment. But he’s holding even. That’s incredible. Even if things go well for Democrats tomorrow, and they hold the House, candidates in much safer districts than Perreillo’s are going to lose.

The Perriello lesson, in other words, is already clear. Whether he wins or loses on November 2, having the courage to govern by his convictions and do real work to sell those policies has paid off. It might not get him re-elected. But in an all-but-impossible district, losing close sends a clear signal to actual swing districts. Governing like a pretend-Republican only reinforces the Republican world-view and aligns voters against you. If you want to have a chance, you have to stand for something. Tom Perriello stood for something these past two years, and even if it can’t overcome a terrible economy to win him two more years, the political establishment should take heart.

Campaign Cash: Biggest Loser Corporate Edition—Spending $2 Million on a Losing Race in Iowa

Zach Carter — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 11:03:31 -0400

Corporate America is on the attack in every state. As Joshua Holland explains for AlterNet, outside groups have spent somewhere between $750,000 and more than $2 million in an attempt to unseat Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA) in a state where ad buys come cheap. But Braley is almost certain to win anyway, even if his lead isn't quite as comfortable as it was in 2008, when he took 64 percent of the vote. This is what corporations and wealthy elites are willing to pony up in races they're sure to lose.

Most of that money comes from two groups: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a front-group for some of the nation’s largest corporations, and America’s Future Fund, a right-wing front-group founded by GOP lobbyist and ethanol executive Nick Ryan. Public News Service's Eric Mack highlights the races in Hawkeye state that are unusually flush with cash.

Thanks to the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission earlier this year, corporations and wealthy elites now have license to spend unlimited sums to promote candidates they like (or attack ones they don't). Things are already getting out of hand. Outside groups are dumping millions of dollars into obscure races this year—even in places where they appear to have almost no chance of victory.

Republican candidates are raking it in

Thanks to Citizens United, much of the spending in midterm elections is secret. We'll never know who is spending millions of dollars on anonymous attack ads. But a tiny fraction of the electoral purchases by outside groups have been disclosed, and if those are any guide, the Republican Party is reaping the vast majority of the rewards. As Jesse Zwick details for The Washington Independent, of the roughly $12 million in public corporate expenditures, they're spending more than $9.7 million on behalf of Republican candidates.

The Chamber of Commerce's long history in elections

Though big spending on campaigns is new for many political action committees, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been playing fast and loose with election law for years. As Harry Hanbury explains for GRITtv, the only reason the Chamber’s top brass aren’t behind bars right now may be due to deliberate cover provided by the Federal Elections Commission—its six members consist of three Republicans and three Democrats. Without four votes, the FEC can't to do anything to curb the Camber's activities. With the panel's three Republicans ideologically opposed to the very idea of campaign finance regulation, serious action from the FEC is nearly impossible.

When the FEC’s own top lawyers found that a complaint against the Chamber reveals a gross violation of law, the partisans on the FEC board refused to take action. In 2004, when Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington took aim at $3 million in political spending that the Chamber deployed to re-elect President George W. Bush, the FEC did nothing because of the partisan deadlock.

Citizens United helps those at the top

As David Brodwin explains for American Forum, the Citizens United decision doesn’t benefit businesses or corporations in general—it benefits the biggest, wealthiest corporations. When the Supreme Court freed corporations to spend unlimited amounts on political efforts, that freedom doesn’t help companies with constrained resources. In other words, Citizens United is a structural force that will permanently and inevitably reinforce the status quo. As the Wall Street crash, the BP oil disaster, the mining malfunctions in West Virginia and countless other recent corporate shortcuts have shown, the status quo is not acceptable.

“The money that will flood the political system will not represent the views of companies in green America" Brodwin writes. "Instead, the money that will flood the system will come from organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is expected to spend more than $200 million this year on lobbying and direct campaign expenditures. This organization and others like it represent companies that don’t value responsible business. Is this the kind of business thinking that we want to dominate our political discourse?”

But wait, there’s more!

In a Q&A with Sam Petulla at The American Prospect, Sheila Krumholz, executive director at the Center for Responsive Politics, talks about how the current problems with Citizens United remind her of the 1990s.
Check out my interview on corporate spending on The Young Turks.
Alexandra Gutierrez explains at The American Prospect how Alaska's Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller became an unlikely opponent to the new rules created by Citizens United.

Campaign Cash: The Tea Party Jets to Grassroots Rallies, Wall Street-Style

Zach Carter — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 10:52:17 -0400

Two Tea Party leaders, Mark Meckler and Jenny Beth Martin, have been jet-setting all over the country ginning up support for conservative politicians. Literally.

They’ve been flying around in a private jet like Wall Street CEOs, except they’re heading to “grassroots” rallies instead of merger talks. Meckler and Martin don’t say how outraged, ordinary citizens can find the money to support such extravagance, and they don’t have to. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling in this year's Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, they can now accept unlimited funding without disclosing the identities of their donors.

No one would even know about the jets themselves, but Meckler and Martin never counted on Mother Jones, or a reporter named Stephanie Mencimer. Using public flight-tracking information, the Tea Party Patriots’ flight schedule, and some serious attention to details in the group’s own videos, Mencimer was able to figure out which jet the not-so-populist duo were using. She then traced the plane to Raymond F. Thomson, founder and CEO of a semiconductor company called Semitool, which he sold last year for a cool $364 million.

It’s both sad and hilarious to see the secret financial arrangements of the super-rich masquerading as grassroots activism. But it also shows the lengths to which reporters must go to actually report on political spending in the wake of Citizens United. There is no documentation to follow, just the contrails of private jets.

Social groups target state races

And while secret political spending has been dominated by big corporations this cycle, the legal maneuvering that liberated corporate coffers was actually performed by fringe right-wing groups targeting social issues. As Jesse Zwick emphasizes for The Washington Independent:

Groups advocating against abortion and gay marriage have waged a low-grade war on laws restricting their ability to spend money freely in elections since the early 1980s, and their victory in the recent Citizens United ruling has hardly caused them to rest on their laurels.

Our democracy is now more beholden to corporate greed than ever, but at least gays won’t be allowed to visit each other in the hospital.

This is just the beginning of corporate rights

But the implications of Citizens United extend far beyond the (critically important) realm of campaign finance itself, as Jeff Clements and John Bonifaz of the organization Free Speech for People emphasize in an interview with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales of Democracy Now! As Bonifaz notes:

Citizens United was not just a campaign finance case, it was a corporate rights case. In fact, it was an extreme extension of a corporate rights doctrine that has eroded the First Amendment for thirty years.

At its core, Citizens United grants First Amendment rights to corporations on the grounds that corporations are people, just like ordinary citizens. Sound crazy? It is.

The bill of rights for corporations?

As AlterNet’s Joshua Holland emphasizes in an interview with historian Thom Hartmann, the implications of the view that corporations are people are simply absurd. Now corporations have been granted First Amendment rights, but what happens when they start arguing for Second Amendment rights? And what would it even mean for a corporation to have Second Amendment rights?

A visual map of Campaign Cash

What are the most common themes and issues surrounding the untold amounts of cash flowing into this election cycle? To create that visual, the Media Consortium piped 10 articles by our members through Wordle. While all the articles were generally focused on this topic, they were picked at random and published between October 25-29.

For clarity's sake, we made "Tea Party" "TeaParty," "Supreme Court" became "SupremeCourt," and we also merged the first and last names of key players such as Karl Rove and Jim DeMint. Finally, we removed any extraneous words such as "the," "and," and "even." We did not combine the words corporate/corporation/corporations or Republican/Republicans (but examine the frequency as much as the size). To get the latest reporting on the funds feeding into the mid-term elections, go to www.themediaconsortium.org or follow the search term #campaigncash on Twitter. Wordle research by Amanda Anderson.

But wait, there's more!

Sarah van Gelder argues in Yes! Magazine why families can't afford to stay home on Election Day.
And no matter who wins on Tuesday, it seems one thing is clear: Democracy will pay the price, says Henry A. Giroux at Truthout.
Lobbyists are already buttering up the incoming committee chairs, reports Siddhartha Mahanta in Mother Jones. Time to get to know Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI), who could be the incoming chair of the House Ways & Means Committee.

Campaign Cash: Sen. Jim DeMint's Making a Mint with Corporate Cash

Zach Carter — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 10:50:13 -0400

Corporate cash does funny things to people. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) got into office by pledging to fight "special interests," but just a decade or so later, he's running one of the biggest special interest shows in Washington. It's easy to see the appeal. As the fancy funding backing the Tea Party demonstrates, big money buys big things—from elections to populist outrage.

In a piece for Mother Jones, Kate Sheppard details some of DeMint's serious campaign finance flip-floppery. During his first bid for Congress in 1998, DeMint denounced the Political Action Committee (PAC) mechanism as a tool deployed by "special interests" that "corrupts" the electoral process. But today, DeMint is the single most important figure and fundraiser for Senate Tea Party races. He has endorsed and pledged millions of dollars to support fringe right-wingers Senate candidates Christine O'Donnell (Delaware) and Rand Paul (Kentucky). DeMint has funneled this money through his own Political Action Committee (PAC) known as the Senate Conservatives Fund. DeMint even pledged to "fight for reforms that allow only individual contributions to campaigns."

But as I note in a blog for Campaign for America's Future, DeMint isn't the only power player pouring money into the Tea Party. DeMint's 12 Tea Party Senate candidates have reaped over $4.6 million from Wall Street for this election—excluding Wall Street cash that has been funneled through DeMint's PAC. So much for all that grassroots rage against bailed-out elites.

The Tea Party bubble

And Wall Street's new Tea Party investment might just be the next big economic bubble. Joshua Holland at AlterNet surveys the campaign contributions of America's bailout barons. The 23 firms that received at least $1 billion in bailout money from taxpayers spent $1.4 million on campaign contributions—in September alone.

And these are just campaign contributions, which are essentially unaffected by the high court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The real corporate money is running through front-groups that run their own ads—not the official campaigns operated by political candidates. And these front-groups don't have to disclose where their money comes from.

Writing for Campus Progress, Simeon Tally highlights a frightening trend toward secrecy in U.S. elections, fueled by the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. Back in 2004, 98 percent of outside groups disclosed who their donors were. Today, that number is just 32 percent. We're not just fighting corporate money bombs, we're fighting secret corporate money bombs.

Who really has the advantage?

While there's been much debate over who really comes out on top thanks to the post-Citizens United rules, Jesse Zwick notes for The Washington Independent, these stories are only talking about direct campaign contributions. Some might argue that Democrats have an advantage in disclosed funding, but Republicans have a six-to-one advantage money flowing through outside groups.

But wait, there's more!

Check out Matthew Reichbach and Trip Jennings' reporting for The New Mexico Independent on the fact that all of this spending from outside groups usually means money from outside the states where candidates are running. Outside expenditures have swelled to $5 million in two New Mexico House races—both in relatively cheap media markets.
AlterNet has been running loads of stories on crooked corporate cash, covering everything from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's dirty dealings with AIG to the political spending habits of bailed-out banks. Joshua Holland rounds up eight of the articles here for AlterNet.
Comic artist Matt Bors makes light of America's new "growth industries" at Campus Progress, pointing to makers of anonymous political attack ads.

Campaign Cash: Corporations Get More Power, Political Parties Get Less

Zach Carter — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 10:44:41 -0400

War chests from right-wing billionaires and corporate titans are funding tremendous portions of political activity, from the so-called grassroots activism of the Tea Party to the streamlined lobbying assaults of the nation's largest corporations.

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court's wildly unpopular ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, secret election financing by elites is exploding, even as the public visibility of such electoral purchasing power evaporates.

Corporations get more freedom as political parties get less

As Jamelle Bouie emphasizes for The American Prospect, election funding from political committees and non-profits is already up 40 percent from 2008 levels. But the oft-cited the liberation of the corporate purse was accompanied by less-well-known constraints on political parties themselves. While corporations like Wal-Mart and Bank of America are free to spend as much as they want attacking or promoting specific candidates, the political parties themselves cannot.

As Bouie notes, this scenario further rigs the electoral game in favor of the wealthy and corporations. Candidates who know that their party can't help them out become even more dependent on corporate cash during elections. And while few entities are less popular right now than the Republican and Democratic parties, they are ultimately accountable to their voters. They reach out to a broad array of individuals across the country, while corporations merely advance their own interests.

Political parties—however imperfect—can serve as a check on such destructive corporate influence. Citizens United has made that check much weaker. As Jesse Zwick emphasizes for The Washington Independent, political parties used to dominate independent election spending. This year, for the first time, thanks to Citizens United, front-groups and corporations have taken the lead.

The Tea Party "grassroots" movement is anything but

Billionaires are on the attack, exploiting campaign finance loopholes to prop-up phony "grassroots" political movements. The most egregious—and successful—effort has been waged by David Koch, a long-time GOP fundraiser who is now backing major Tea Party organizers. Koch is the executive vice president of Koch Industries, Inc., which refines and distributes petroleum and other raw materials.

As Adele Stan details in her latest in-depth expose for AlterNet and The Nation Investigative Fund, Koch has found ways to funnel money to the Tea Party in just about every way imaginable. But it's most sinister maneuver was the establishment of two right-wing front groups that keep their donors anonymous. After Citizens United, we'll never know how much money Koch is funneling to the Tea Party, and his front groups—FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity—provide the same cover for other elites.

How much cover? Americans for Prosperity brags that they'll spend at least $45 million on the 2010 elections, while FreedomWorks plans to throw in another $10 million.

As Stan emphasizes, these two groups are the major organizers of all things Tea Party. They provided logistical organizing for Glenn Beck's 9/12 rally, held over 300 rallies against health care reform and hosted "voter education" workshops pushing the glories of deregulation to anyone who would listen. They even have an unofficial partnership with Fox News, hosting conservative Fox personalities at their rallies, which are, in turn, promoted by Fox programming. Glenn Beck is even featured in advertisements and fundraising pitches for FreedomWorks.

The anonymity provided by Koch's front-groups is critical to the Tea Party's appeal. In popular media, the Tea Party is often described as a grassroots coalition of ordinary, mad-as-hell citizens. That image is hard to sustain in the face of a wildly expensive top-down campaign orchestrated by billionaires. As Stan explains:

The armies of angry white people with their "Don't Tread on Me" flags, the actual grassroots activists, are not the agents of the Tea Party revolt, but its end users, enriching the Tea Party's corporate owners just as you and I enrich Google through our clicks.

Of course, Koch isn't the only man operating anonymous front-groups. The Citizens United decision allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts of their own cash directly influencing elections. But so long as that money is laundered through a third-party, they can keep these expenditures out of the public eye.

Oil giants dominate U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Nobody has exploited this loophole more aggressively than the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a lobbying clearinghouse for the nation's largest corporations.

The Chamber doesn't just rely on domestic donors. It also accepts cash from dozens of foreign corporations. As Kate Sheppard explains for Mother Jones, no less than 14 foreign oil giants belong to The Chamber, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual dues alone. This is important, because as sweeping and destructive as Citizens United was, it did not grant foreign corporations the right to spend on U.S. elections. There's nothing xenophobic about that—it's a U.S. election, after all, and foreign firms don't have to live with many of the social and ecological consequences of U.S. deregulation. The Chamber insists it has accounting devices in place to separate its funding and keep its operations within the law, but so far, it hasn't explained how these work.

But ultimately, as Sheppard and her MoJo colleague Nick Baumann note, the influence of domestic corporations on the American political process is equally sinister as foreign corporate influence. If the narrow interests of a U.S. corporation hijack our democracy with campaign war chests, that can be just as bad as subjecting our democracy to the whims of a foreign corporation. Whether the Chamber's foreign funding follows the letter of the law or not, the organization is still running a destructive campaign to further entrench corporate power in our political system—and shield those same corporate titans from public accountability.

And the existing campaign finance regulators aren't even enforcing the meager laws that do exist to curb legalized bribery. As Jesse Zwick explains for The Washington Independent, three recent appointees to the Federal Election Commission have waged an all-out war to mire the agency in gridlock, preventing it from cracking down on straightforward abuses. President George W. Bush actually named former Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX)'s campaign finance lawyer to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC). His term has expired, but getting new FEC commissioners confirmed by the Senate in the face of Republican filibusters appears nearly impossible. So Delay's lawyer, Donald McGahn, is still working to keep campaign finance laws from being enforced, and succeeding.

Democracy is not a corporate bidding war. Corporate cash belongs in the board room, not the voting booth.