Much is being made of Toobin's revelations about the dramatic internal political divisions and infighting within the court triggered by the CU decision (more on that later). But what I think is most politically significant in Toobin's piece is that it shows the dramatic rightward – and backward -- march of Republicanism over the last 30 years. In January 1982, Ronald Reagan famously wrote in his diary, "The press is trying to paint me as trying to undo the New Deal … I'm trying to undo the Great Society." Reagan was anxious to unravel the anti-poverty programs Lyndon Johnson pushed into place (though not Medicare), but he collaborated with House Speaker Tip O'Neill to pass payroll tax increases to stabilize Social Security for the next 50 to 60 years.

Continue Reading...

ALEC is best known for giving moneyed special interests a hand in crafting “model legislation,” including the NRA-backed "stand your ground" laws that have touched off a furor in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting. But a trove of internal documents obtained by the advocacy group Common Cause shows that the group’s activities are far more varied than was previously known; it does everything from issuing boilerplate press releases to flagging how lawmakers should vote on given pieces of legislation.

It also lobbies actively to scuttle shareholders’ rights -- specifically to limit their ability to weigh in on political giving. Last year, for instance, New York state lawmakers introduced a pair of bills requiring corporations to get shareholder approval before making donations to politicians or outside groups, such as super PACs. Backers argue the measure would provide crucial safeguards for investors. “Giving shareholders a voice ensures that their money isn’t used for political purposes they don’t agree with or that are detrimental to the corporation,” explains Adam Skaggs, a senior counsel with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University law school.

Continue Reading...

Seeing as how its main function is to cut checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising — and how the whole ethos of the super PAC, down to its very name, is of and for the mega-donor — that Restore Our Future would get so small a gift in the first place seems a little insane. After all, the super PAC receives 97 percent of its donations in amounts of $25,000 or more, according to an analysis by the New York Times. Yet in the remaining months of 2011, eight additional donors would make small donations while scads more wrote out five-, six- and seven-figure checks. Already this year, there are a few dozen more.

Continue Reading...

Still, there were reasons to be wary. Maps from the Texas Water Development Board showed the site sitting directly above the Ogallala Aquifer, a massive but shallow underground reservoir, which sprawls beneath eight Great Plains states and supplies roughly a third of the nation’s irrigation water. If large quantities of radiation were to seep into this water table, the effects could be devastating. After WCS’s application came up for review, however, something curious happened: The board shifted the official boundaries of the Ogallala, a move WCS claims in its official correspondence was based partly on data the company provided, though Water Board spokeswoman Samantha Pollard argues this isn’t true. “The reevaluation stemmed from work done for the development of groundwater availability models and related projects,” she says. As it turns out, five of the board’s six members had been appointed by Gov. Rick Perry, who’s taken more than $1.2 million in campaign contributions from WCS’s owner, Harold Simmons.

Continue Reading...

"I don't know if we have any realistic expectation of beating Newt Gingrich in his own state," he told reporters traveling with the campaign. "I don't know if we can win Georgia or Tennessee. But I know we can take delegates out of there."

How, exactly, Romney’s campaign planned to capture those delegates was something of a mystery. Besides a modest Atlanta rally in early February, and a brunch held in Snellville the previous Sunday, Romney had spent scarcely any time in Georgia, and equally little time in Tennessee. His campaign didn’t pay for any TV presence in Tennessee before Super Tuesday, and the only ads of his that had run in Georgia were a result of earlier buys in South Carolina and Florida media markets that overlapped with parts of the state.

Continue Reading...

It all starts with the so-called "social welfare" groups that have become bigger players in the political world in the wake of Citizens United, which knocked down restrictions on campaign activity by such groups.

Tax experts say it's possible that businesses are using an aggressive interpretation of the law to wring a tax advantage out of their donations to these groups.

Continue Reading...

A decade ago, it was Republicans who were pushing for disclosure of donors to nonprofit social welfare groups who are now pouring millions into political attack ads and House Democrats who opposed them.

Now the parties have exchanged positions.

The groups in question are nonprofits known as 501(c)(4)s, after the section of the tax code that describes them.

The best-known of the newer c4's are the Karl Rove-affiliated Crossroads GPS, which last year raised a $33 million war chest to support Republicans, and the Obama-affiliated Priorities USA, which is expected to play a similar role for the president. Like super PACs, c4's can accept unlimited donations. But Super PACs have to reveal their donors; c4's do not.

Continue Reading...

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.

Continue Reading...

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.

Continue Reading...

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.

Priorities USA Action, the Obama super PAC, raised $1.2 million and had 38 individual donors in the second half of 2011. Out of those, 33, or 86 percent, were male. (I did not include corporate or union donations in these calculations.)

The disparity is even wider with the Romney super PAC, Restore our Future, which raised $17 million in the second half of 2011. Out of 146 individual donors, 134, or 92 percent, were male.

This is hardly a new phenomenon.

Continue Reading...

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.

Continue Reading...

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.

Continue Reading...

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.

Continue Reading...

Instead, 2012 seems poised to go down in the history books as the Year of the Super PAC.

Look at the figures: As of Monday, independent expenditure committees had spent over $38 million on the Republican primary candidates. That’s already over three times more than candidates themselves spent on broadcast advertising during the entire 2008 Republican primary season.

The avalanche of outside money is worrying political parties, making candidates anxious and just plain depressing the socks off the rest of us.

But at least one of the hundreds of registered independent expenditure committees out there is trying to use the system in a different way, and maybe – just maybe – building a model for the future.

Continue Reading...

The super PACs operating in the GOP primary have managed to delay disclosing their donors until next month, but the identities of who funded these groups will be public. Groups in a different category -- those that don't ever disclose donors -- haven't started operating in any prominent way, but you can be sure they will in the fall.

I've recently explored how we got to this point. But what about the prospects for reform of a system that so many are disillusioned with?

To learn about what's going on, I spoke to Fred Wertheimer, the founder and president of Democracy 21, who has been working on campaign finance issues for more than three decades.

Continue Reading...

The brainchild of Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren, the darling of the left—yet prompted by Senator Scott Brown, the Tea Party centerfold who took Ted Kennedy's seat—the key enforcement mechanism is remarkably simple in its conception: the candidate favored in a third-party ad on TV, radio or online must make a contribution worth half of the ad’s costs to the opposing candidate’s charity of choice within three days of broadcast.

The negative air war that was predicted two years ago as a consequence of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling could very well be thwarted in this one key race. It’s the little engine that could, nationally, but if the Massachusetts experiment in self-punishment proves enforceable here, it could catch on elsewhere, sort of like the Pledge of Allegiance against dirty politics, a yardstick that blunts the worst consequences of the high court’s decision.

Continue Reading...

Adelson has done it again. He and his wife Marian have cut another $5 million check for Gingrich to go negative on Romney in Florida. The money won’t go as far as it did in South Carolina – TV ads cost a lot more in Florida – but it’s enough to give the Grinch a solid footing.

And, who knows? The Adelsons are billionaires. They might decide to put in another $5 million or perhaps $20 million into Gingrich’s Super Pac. The point is, there’s no limit.

Continue Reading...

Now Chris Dodd, senator turned Motion Picture Association of America chief, is out with an informative interview warning lawmakers -- particularly Democrats -- not to count on Hollywood's historically generous campaign contributions. He told Fox late last week:

Candidly, those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don't pay any attention to me when my job is at stake. ...

I would caution people don't make the assumption that because the quote 'Hollywood community' has been historically supportive of Democrats, which they have, don't make the false assumptions this year that because we did it in years past, we will do it this year. These issues before us -- this is the only issue that goes right to the heart of this industry.

Continue Reading...

Obama enjoys the three advantages any incumbent president seeking reelection does: four full years to raise money for his own campaign or the national party committees; the political leverage of the office he holds to raise it; and, like incumbents in most cycles, the absence of a primary challenger who might draw down his coffers. Sure enough, and despite a crowded Republican field, by the midpoint of 2011 Obama had already raised more money ($48.7 million) than all of the GOP presidential hopefuls combined ($36.7 million). His campaign has since raised $42 million in both the third and fourth quarters of 2011, with the Democratic National Committee hauling in an additional $51 million during the final six months of last year.

Continue Reading...

Never has the ruling been as salient as it is now in the national political discussion. The Occupy movement has taken aim at the decision, blaming it for allowing the "1 percent" to exercise unprecedented control over the political process. Meanwhile, the decision has been widely cited as paving the road for the super PACs that are dominating the Republican primary, now even outspending candidates' official campaigns in South Carolina.

All of which contributed to my interest in a letter sent to the New York Times this week by Floyd Abrams, a longtime First Amendment lawyer who represented Sen. Mitch McConnell in the Citizens United case and argued that part of the McCain-Feingold law was unconstitutional. Abrams has been involved in many landmark cases, notably representing the Times in the Pentagon Papers case in the early 1970s.

Continue Reading...