Devaluing democracy, in foreign currency

How will foreign interests wield power after "Citizens United"? Ask a politician who knows -- like Haley Barbour

By Joe Conason

Devaluing democracy, in foreign currency

Among the most troubling consequences of the Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case is the opening of American elections at every level to uninhibited influence by foreign interests. With a single stroke, the Republican majority on the court razed the law’s safeguards against such interference from abroad as well as its flimsy shelter from corporate corruption. Not much has been heard on this alarming topic so far from the “tea party patriots” or any of the other usual right-wing suspects, however. Their flag-flapping ire tends to be directed against Democrats and liberals only.

Actually, the Republican attorneys and the justices themselves reviewed this issue, at least glancingly, during the course of argument in the landmark case. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and John Paul Stevens, who happen to have been appointed by Democrats, asked whether foreign corporate interests would be able to funnel money into American elections through their U.S. subsidiaries if the court struck down law and precedent to allow unlimited corporate political spending. The reply came from Theodore Olson, who first gained notoriety as the lawyer for the secretive anti-Clinton Arkansas Project and has lately distinguished himself as a libertarian advocate for gay marriage. “I would not rule that out,” he admitted.

Unsurprisingly, the majority opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy simply failed to address the problem. Why draw attention to the bad news when you’re overturning a century of precedent?Besides, it isn’t bad new for Republicans, who have every reason to believe they will enjoy generous support from foreign corporations, just as they expect to bank millions of fresh crisp dollars from American corporate interests. Although they will sometimes scream about alleged or imagined foreign donations to Democrats, as some of them did in 2008, their own party’s record in soliciting support from dubious sources abroad is real, and worse.

Proof lies in the files of the campaign finance scandals of the Clinton era, when Asian and Asian-American businessmen were caught laundering money into both parties. Plausible suspicions that some of those funds had come from the Chinese government led, in turn, to wild accusations of treason against the Democrats in power. But when a Senate committee led by Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., investigated, little evidence emerged proving that either Democrats or Republicans had knowingly accepted money from a foreign source – except in one glaring case. Haley Barbour, then chairman of the Republican National Committee, hatched a complicated loan scheme that laundered $2 million from a Hong Kong businessman through a GOP “think tank” and into his party’s congressional campaigns. (That business executive, Ambrous Tung Young, visited Beijing with Barbour, who introduced him to both House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole in 1995.)

Barbour clearly knew that the money came from foreign sources and appeared to have lied to the committee about the matter. When the Senate hearings began, John Glenn, then a Democratic senator from Ohio, offered a pithy summary of Barbour’s behavior: “As far as I know, [this] is the only [case] where the head of a national political party knowingly and successfully solicited foreign money, infused it into the election process, and intentionally tried to cover it up.” The Young scheme used a Florida subsidiary of his company — which boasted Gerald Ford as a director! — to conceal its foreign origin. That is certain to happen on a much larger scale in years to come.

A little money laundering among friends is not an obstacle to success among Republicans, however, and Barbour went on to bigger and better things. Today he is governor of Mississippi, where his penchant for influence peddling has served him well – and he is now a widely touted prospect for the Republican ticket in 2012.

: Joe Conason blogs in Salon several times a week and writes a weekly column for the New York Observer. His latest book is "It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush." More Joe Conason

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Whichever candidate wins the 2012 presidential election will have been bought and paid for by the 1 percent

By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

(Credit: AP)

Topics:2012 Elections, Campaign Finance, Citizens United

Watching what’s happening to our democracy is like watching the cruise ship Costa Concordia founder and sink slowly into the sea off the coast of Italy, as the passengers, shorn of life vests, scramble for safety as best they can, while the captain trips and falls conveniently into a waiting life boat.

We are drowning here, with gaping holes torn into the hull of the ship of state from charges detonated by the owners and manipulators of capital. Their wealth has become a demonic force in politics. Nothing can stop them. Not the law, which has been written to accommodate them. Not scrutiny — they have no shame. Not a decent respect for the welfare of others — the people without means, their safety net shredded, left helpless before events beyond their control.

The obstacles facing the millennial generation didn’t just happen. Take an economy skewed to the top, low wages and missing jobs, predatory interest rates on college loans: these are politically engineered consequences of government of, by and for the 1 percent. So, too, is our tax code the product of money and politics, influence and favoritism, lobbyists and the laws they draft for rented politicians to enact.

Here’s what we’re up against. Read it and weep: “America’s Plutocrats Play the Political Ponies.” That’s a headline in “Too Much,” an Internet publication from the Institute for Policy Studies that describes itself as “an online weekly on excess and inequality.”

Yes, the results are in and our elections have replaced horse racing as the sport of kings. Only these kings aren’t your everyday poobahs and potentates. These kings are multi-billionaire, corporate moguls who by the divine right, not of God, but the United States Supreme Court and its Citizens United decision, are now buying politicians like so much pricey horseflesh. All that money pouring into Super PACs, much of it from secret sources: merely an investment, should their horse pay off in November, in the best government money can buy.

They’re shelling out fortunes’ worth of contributions. Look at just a few of them: Mitt Romney’s hedge fund pals Robert Mercer, John Paulson, Julian Robertson and Paul Singer – each of whom has ponied up a million or more for the Super PAC called “Restore Our Future” — as in, “Give us back the go-go days, when predators ruled Wall Street like it was Jurassic Park.”

Then there’s casino boss Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam, fiercely pro-Israel and anti-President Obama’s Mideast policy. Initially, they placed their bets on Newt Gingrich, who says on his first day in office he’d move the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a decision that would thrill the Adelsons, but infuriate Palestinians and the rest of the Muslim world. Together, the Adelsons have contributed ten million to Newt’s “Winning Our Future” Super PAC.

Cowboy billionaire Foster Friess, a born-again Christian who made his fortune herding mutual funds instead of cattle, has been bankrolling the “Red White and Blue Fund” Super PAC of Rick Santorum, with whom he shares a social right-wing agenda. Dark horse Ron Paul has relied on the kindness of PayPal founder Peter Thiel , a like-minded libertarian in favor of the smallest government possible, who gave $900,000 to Paul’s “Endorse Liberty” Super PAC. Hollywood’s Jeffrey Katzenberg has so far emptied his wallet to the tune of a cool two million for the pro-Obama Super PAC, “Priorities USA Action.”

President Obama — who kept his distance from Priorities USA Action and used to call the money unleashed by Citizens United a “threat to democracy” — has declared if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. He urges his wealthy supporters to please go ahead and back the Super PAC. “Our campaign has to face the reality of the law as it stands,” his campaign manager Jim Messina said. To do otherwise, he added, would be to “unilaterally disarm” in the face of all those Republican Super PAC millions. So much for Obama’s stand on campaign finance reform — everybody else is doing it, he seems to say, so why don’t you show me the money, too?

When all is said and done, this race for the White House may cost more than two billion dollars. What’s getting trampled into dust are the voices of people who aren’t rich, not to mention what’s left of our democracy. As Democratic pollster Peter Hart told The New Yorker magazine’s Jane Mayer, “It’s become a situation where the contest is how much you can destroy the system, rather than how much you can make it work. It makes no difference if you have a ‘D’ or an ‘R’ after your name. There’s no sense that this is about democracy, and after the election you have to work together, and knit the country together.”

These gargantuan Super PAC contributions are not an end in themselves. They are the means to gain control of government – and the nation state — for a reason. The French writer and economist Frederic Bastiat said it plainly: “When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” That’s what the Super PACs are bidding on. For the rest of us, the ship may already have sailed.

: Bill Moyers is managing editor of the new weekly public affairs program, "Moyers & Company," airing on public television. Check local airtimes or comment at www.BillMoyers.com. More Bill Moyers
: Michael Winship is senior writing fellow at Demos and a senior writer of the new series, Moyers & Company, airing on public television. More Michael Winship

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More than 85 percent of the donors to Romney and Obama super PACs were men in 2011

By Justin Elliott

Mitt Romney (Credit: Reuters/Brian Snyder)

Topics:2012 Elections, War Room, Campaign Finance, Gender

Going through the donor listings in the super PAC disclosures filed Tuesday, female names are very difficult to find.

Unlike fundraising by the candidates’ official campaigns, which tend to rely at least in part on small donations from grass-roots supporters, the super PACs raise massive sums from a very small number of wealthy people. Who those donors are is important because they presumably will have influence with (or on) their favored candidate and potentially the next president.

: Justin Elliott is a Salon reporter. Reach him by email at jelliott@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustin More Justin Elliott

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Texas billionaire Harold Simmons has given $7 million to a Rove-affiliated outside group

VIDEO

By Justin Elliott

Karl Rove (Credit: AP)

Topics:2012 Elections, Campaign Finance, Karl Rove

We’ve written a lot about Sheldon and Miriam Adelson and their $10 million in donations to a pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC. Part of the reason the Adelson donations got so much attention is that their existence was leaked to the media before the disclosure filing deadline. Since all super PACs were required to disclose their 2011 donors yesterday, we now have a much better picture of the other mega-donors who are in effect setting the agenda of the GOP primary.

One of the big headlines out of the filings Tuesday is that Harold Simmons, a Texas billionaire, gave the Karl Rove-affiliated American Crossroads an impressive $7 million over the course of just a couple months in the fourth quarter of 2011. That’s nearly 40 percent of the $18 million the group raised last year; an affiliated group, Crossroads GPS, whose donors are secret, raised more than $30 million.

Simmons gave $5 million of the money personally, and another $2 million via a corporation he owns called Contran. Even though the $7 million he gave to Crossroads (along with another $1 million to the Rick Perry super PAC) puts Simmons among the top donors of the cycle, his bank account can handle the hit. Simmons was the 33rd richest American in 2011, according to Forbes, which put his net worth at $9.3 billion. Amazingly, his net worth increased in 2011 $4.3 billion from the previous year, Forbes says.

Simmons owns companies that manufacture a range of products including metal goods and chemicals. And he has generously funded a range of right-wing causes going back to the 1980s; perhaps his most notorious effort in recent years was the money he gave to the Swift Boats group that went after John Kerry’s Vietnam service.

His campaign donations have been known to help his bottom line. Simmons has, for example, been a longtime patron of Rick Perry and he recently got a potentially lucrative favor from the governor, the Los Angeles Times reported last year:

Simmons, the second largest individual contributor to Perry, is poised to gain perhaps the most as his firm constructs the first new low-level radioactive waste disposal site in the country in three decades. The venture could not have happened without the backing of Perry, who early in his administration signed a controversial law allowing a private company to build such a facility in Texas.

Simmons’ company, Waste Control Specialists, or WCS, lobbied fiercely for the measure and eventually got its license approved by Perry-appointed state regulators despite objections from some state environmental agency staff.

Simmons’ donations to Crossroads have been funding ads like this:

: Justin Elliott is a Salon reporter. Reach him by email at jelliott@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustin More Justin Elliott

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Why are defense lobbyists funding the pet crusade of the wife of Buck McKeon, House Armed Services Committee chair?

By Lee Fang

Howard "Buck" McKeon: Help my wife. Please! (Credit: AP/Susan Walsh)

Topics:Campaign Finance, Pentagon

Patricia McKeon, wife of a powerful committee chairman in Congress, announced her bid for California Legislature last fall by telling local Republicans that she decided to run for office because she’s fed up with the plastic bag tax in Los Angeles County. “Just think how much food we could buy if we weren’t forced to pay 10 cents for grocery bags,” she said in announcing her campaign. Within days of her official announcement, one industry stepped up to finance her campaign — but it wasn’t the plastic bag industry. It was military defense contractors and their Beltway lobbyists.

Disclosures posted last evening at the California secretary of state’s website confirm that a flood of military contractor money has flowed to Patricia McKeon, who is running for an open Assembly seat in a district that overlaps that of her husband, Republican Rep. Buck McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

As Salon first reported this week, defense lobbyists are scrambling to mitigate looming defense budget cuts and appear to be donating to Patricia McKeon because of her husband’s powerful position overseeing the Pentagon budget.

In her first few months of fundraising, Patricia McKeon collected at least $19,200 from defense contractors or their registered lobbyists. Her husband of 49 years is already the top recipient of military industry cash in Congress, so some of the contributions to his wife appear to be an attempt to get around federal campaign contribution limits.

Lockheed Martin, a company locked in a pitched battle to stave off cuts to the lucrative F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jet, cut Patricia McKeon’s campaign a $3,000 check.

Rep. Buck McKeon has rigorously defended the jets, despite growing concerns that the planes will run almost $90 million over budget each.

The lobbying firm Beau Butler LLC gave to Patricia McKeon as well. Beau Butler lobbies for Proxy Aviations, a drone company. Although it’s not clear why a drone maker would rally to Patricia McKeon’s call to end plastic bag taxes, the industry is an important cause for Buck McKeon. He’s co-chairman of a caucus dedicated to promoting drones for both military and civilian purposes.

Other Buck McKeon-related lobbies also donated to Patricia McKeon’s campaign coffer. Bruce Leftwich, a government affairs executive with a group associated with for-profit colleges, gave $500. In his previous committee chairmanship, at the helm of a subcommittee dealing with post-secondary education during the Bush years, McKeon helped for-profit colleges with a rule that extended billions in taxpayer money.

: Lee Fang is an investigative journalist in the Bay Area. More Lee Fang

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The spouse of the House Armed Services Committee chairman got Washington money for California Assembly bid

By Lee Fang

House Armed Services Commitee chairman, Howard "Buck" McKeon (Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite)

Topics:Campaign Finance, House Armed Services Committee, Buck McKeon

Could an effort to lift his wife’s political aspirations land the powerful chairman of the House Armed Services Committee in hot water?

Recent disclosures reveal that a federal lobbyist with ties to Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., the senior member of the committee overseeing the Pentagon, provided financial support to McKeon’s wife, who is seeking a seat in the California Assembly this year. As defense industry lobbyists scramble to head off looming cuts in the Pentagon budget, they are looking for new ways to ingratiate themselves with McKeon.

Patricia McKeon, Buck’s wife, surprised many when she announced her intention last September to run for an open seat that largely overlaps her husband’s district. One of the first reported contributions to her campaign came from a political committee called the Fund for American Opportunity, registered to a post office box in Washington, D.C., that donated $1,000. The fund, which is financed by a number of corporations including the drug industry trade association PhRMA, is owned and operated by Mark Valente, a Beltway lobbyist.

The contribution, reported here for the first time, appears to be an effort to circumvent federal campaign limits. Federal campaign disclosures show that Valente has already maxed out in donations to Rep. McKeon this cycle, having given $2,500 to his campaign for Congress. And the contribution came within a day of Valente’s donation to Patricia’s campaign for the California Assembly.

Valente’s lobbying firm, Valente and Associates, reported over $1.4 million in fees last year. The firm represented at least one company, 3Leaf Group, a government contractor specializing in human resources, that sought help from Valente on issues relating to the Defense Authorization bill. McKeon, as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, was the principal author of that legislation.

Valente did not respond to a request for comment. But his so-called 527 campaign entity, the Fund for American Opportunity, gave only one contribution to a California state politician in all of 2011: Patricia McKeon.

Craig Holman, a lobbying expert with Public Citizen, says that the donation to McKeon is part of a larger pattern of influence peddling in Washington: “The objective is to throw as much money as possible at the feet of the lawmaker; that includes at the feet of his family as well.”

It’s not the first time McKeon has raised eyebrows by using his elected office to boost his wife. For the last 10 years, Buck McKeon made Patricia McKeon his highest-paid campaign staffer, an arrangement that ethics experts have criticized as an invitation for corruption. In 2007, a report exposed the fact that Patricia McKeon was by far the highest-compensated family member of the few members of Congress employing relatives for their campaigns.

A review of campaign documents by Salon found that, counting reimbursements for food and travel, the McKeon campaign committee has paid Patricia over $547,584 since 2001.

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Correction: The original version of this article stated inaccurately Patricia McKeon was “the only state candidate” to receive contributions from the 527 committee run by lobbyist Mark Valente for the period covered by the disclosure. She was the only California state politician to receive a contribution in that period. We regret this error.