Salon.com > Campaign Finance Reform

How IRS scandal could help Karl Rove and dark money

Mon, 13 May 2013 19:39:00 +0000

After an election in which hundreds of millions of dollars were funneled through "dark money" nonprofit groups by people like Karl Rove, campaign finance advocates fear the nascent IRS scandal involving these very organizations will make the already difficult task of regulating them nearly impossible.

Organized under section 501(c)4 of the tax code, organizations like Rove's Crossroads GPS are social welfare organizations that are legally barred from making politics their "primary purpose" -- at least in theory. In practice, many of these groups are plainly political, but the IRS has never defined what differentiates an improper political group from a bona fide social welfare group, so they've been able to flout the intent of the law with impunity. With growing public awareness after the 2012 election, campaign finance reform advocates thought they may be able to finally get the IRS or Congress to impose some new rules. But scandal may blow all of that up.

"The IRS is not really in a position right now to rewrite the rules that apply to social welfare organizations. And it's not going to be the right time for that for at least a little while," Lisa Rosenberg, a government affairs lobbyist at the Sunlight Foundation, told Salon. "Everything they do now, at least in the near future, is going to be glossed with this taint of impropriety."

Nancy Pelosi: We need more women in politics

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 15:57:00 +0000

Nancy Pelosi is the first woman in history to serve as Speaker of the House, aka the next person in the Presidential line of succession after the Vice President. She was Speaker from 2007 until 2011, and is now the Minority Leader.

Before she was Speaker, a role in which she was crucial to the passage of the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”), she was also the first woman in history to serve as Minority Whip. She also served on the House intelligence and appropriations committees. She’s been in electoral politics longer than I’ve been on the planet, and she has five kids. She’s pro-choice, has a 0% rating from the NRA, and doesn’t take any shit from anyone. She’s a 72-year-old badass. Oh, and she loves chocolate milkshakes.

We spoke earlier this week, a few hours before President Obama signed the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act into law.

This woman barely needs an introduction, which is why this one is so short, so now, without further ado, the Feministing Five, with Nancy Pelosi.

Campaign finance reform in the age of Citizens United

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 19:06:00 +0000

Last Monday, the Supreme Court declined to hear a case challenging the century-old ban on direct corporate contributions to federal election campaigns. That counts as good news in a month that included the court’s earlier decision to hear a case that challenges the aggregate contribution limits in campaign finance and Obama strategist David Axelrod declaring that he would prefer a system of unlimited contributions with full disclosure. Almost all Republicans, the Supreme Court, and a powerful faction of the Democratic Party now fall somewhere on the spectrum between skepticism and vehement opposition to limits on contributions. The flimsy remains of the post-Watergate system of campaign finance regulation are on the verge of collapse.

NRA trounced in Illinois

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 06:03:00 +0000

In the special election to replace Jesse Jackson, Jr. in Illinois' 2nd congressional district, former state Rep. Robin Kelly, a supporter of a federal assault weapons ban, cruised to victory in the Democratic primary tonight over a field of candidates including former U.S. Representative Debbie Halvorson. While Kelly's victory was not altogether unexpected, her total vote share (52 percent in a multi-candidate field) was surprisingly strong, and followed an expenditure of more than $2 million in the race by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, according to the New York Times.

Citing her opposition to gun safety reforms and past support from the National Rifle Association, Bloomberg spent heavily to damage Halvorson's candidacy, funding TV ads singling her out for attack. In the final two weeks of the campaign, the New York mayor explicitly backed Kelly as his candidate, and his financial support likely helped boost the size of her victory.

Facebook’s K Street friends deliver windfall

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 15:22:00 +0000

The news that Facebook made more than $1 billion in profit and yet will nonetheless get a $429 million tax refund comes at about as teachable a political moment as possible. With the president using his State of the Union address to demand what he called "comprehensive tax reform," headlines about Mark Zuckerberg's behemoth force us to ponder what that phrase really refers to - and whether it refers to something far more sinister than meets the eye.

That's a possibility worth pondering, after all, since only a year ago the president defined "comprehensive tax reform" as specifically ending the alleged situation whereby "companies that choose to stay in America get hit with one of the highest tax rates in the world." When juxtaposed next to the deeper meaning of the Facebook situation, such platitudes look less like earnest objectives than misleading lobbyist-sculpted talking points designed to further reduce corporate taxes in what is already one of the lowest-tax (and, thus, most deficit-plagued) countries in the industrialized world.

Obama’s shameless finance reform flip-flopping

Sat, 02 Feb 2013 14:00:00 +0000

When President Obama told supporters that he would morph his campaign into a new nonprofit that would accept unlimited corporate donations, the announcement set off a familiar round of griping from campaign finance reformers.

The creation this month of Organizing for Action, which will promote the president’s second-term agenda, appears to be the fourth reversal by Obama on major money-in-politics issues since 2008.

“No big bank or corporation will donate million-dollar checks to OFA without the expectation that it will impact which issues they engage on, and that’s very troubling,” said Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

The Washington Post noted that in reorganizing his campaign as a tax-exempt social welfare group, the president is embracing a structure that has been criticized for allowing anonymous money into politics.

Conservatives who’ve been attacked by the Obama camp for their reliance on such “dark money” groups called out the president’s “brazen hypocrisy.” Neither the White House nor Organizing for America responded to requests for comment.

Stephen Colbert gives super PAC funds to charity

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 15:38:00 +0000

Stephen Colbert will give the remaining hundreds of thousands of dollars raised by his super PAC to charity.

During Thursday's "Colbert Report," the comedian, who will not be the next senator from South Carolina, said that Hurricane Sandy relief efforts, a charity for injured veterans and two organizations working on campaign finance reform would benefit from the nearly $775,000 remaining in the political action fund.

The money will go to:

* $125,000 split among Donors Choose, Habitat for Humanity and Team Rubicon, for Sandy aid

* $125,000 for the Yellow Ribbon Fund which helps veterans.

* The rest will be divided among the Center for Responsive Politics and the Campaign Legal Center.

There were, of course, strings attached. The Center for Responsive Politics, for example, was asked to name their conference room after the super PAC. Colbert requested that the room be called the Colbert Super PAC Memorial Conference Room.

Colbert announced last month that he would close the super PAC, which he created last year to illustrate the lack of control over outside spending in American politics.

5 ways government undermines democracy

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 16:15:00 +0000

  Is Barack Obama -- the former constitutional law professor and voting rights activist -- allergic to democracy reform? Perhaps congressional Republicans have thrown up such roadblocks that the White House has decided it’s not worthwhile to fight for the key federal agencies that defend democracy.

Whether the fault lies with the White House or with GOP obstructionists -- or both -- the results are the same: federal institutions created to make campaign finances more transparent and ensure that election technology is evolving are paralyzed by empty leadership positions, while the executive branch’s efforts to push ahead on its own have yielded little.

“I’ve felt like Diogenes looking for an intelligent Republican and never found one—I am hoping that will change,” said Craig Holman, Public Citizen’s Capitol Hill lobbyist, who puts the blame on the GOP for blocking Obama’s appointments. “But I’ve also been very critical of Obama for not taking on these fights. I’ve been asking Obama since 2009 to replace these commissioners and take on [GOP Senate leader] Mitch McConnell.”

Big Money lost the battle, but the war goes on

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 16:20:00 +0000

“Never before has so much political money been spent to achieve so little,” the Washington Post’s Dan Eggen and T.W. Farnam wrote in their big A1 story yesterday. “Spending by outside groups, it turns out, was the dog that barked but did not bite.” You can find a similar narrative in the New York Times, Politico, the Wall Street Journal and pretty much everywhere else.

And indeed, Tuesday was a terrible no good awful night for most of the biggest super PACs and other assorted "outside" groups, as most of them are Republican-aligned and Republicans lost big. Hundreds of millions of dollars down the drain and with nothing to show for it.

Best democracy money can buy

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 21:30:00 +0000

That ringing in your ears isn’t church bells or a touch of tinnitus. It’s the sound of campaign cash registers all over the country, chiming together like the world’s biggest carillon, as money pours in as never before. The total being spent for all the races in 2012 is projected at $6 billion this year; possibly rising to as much as $8 billion – which perhaps not coincidentally is the same amount the National Retail Federation estimates Americans will spend on Halloween.

Scary stuff, and almost as frightening is the realization that even though Election Day’s still more than a month away, the post-analysis already has begun, much of it focused on whether those vast amounts of campaign money spent on TV have had an effect or merely annoyed the hell out of the viewing population of America, especially if you live in one of the swing states where the din has been unbearable.

Maybe, as some have argued, minds were made up long ago and all the spending has been a waste, reminiscent of the famous comment by British Air Chief Marshal Arthur “Bomber” Harris writing about the dropping of millions of propaganda leaflets over the Maginot Line during the first weeks of World War II: “My personal view is that the only thing achieved was largely to supply the continent’s requirement of toilet paper for the five long years of war.”