From the Washington Post: How 10 mega-donors already helped pour a record $1.1 billion into super PACs

More support for the argument that we are more of a plutocracy than a democracy.

- Click here for the article.

Super PACs seeking to influence the 2016 elections have collected more than $1 billion, a record haul driven by jumbo-sized contributions from rich donors on both sides of the aisle.

Just 10 mega-donor individuals and couples contributed nearly 20 percent of the $1.1 billion raised by super PACs by the end of August, according to a Washington Post analysis of federal campaign finance reports. The total exceeds the $853 million that super PACs collected in the entire 2012 cycle.

In a reflection of how once-reluctant Democrats have fully embraced the big-money system, the top givers were split roughly equally along party lines, with five Republicans, four Democrats and one independent, former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg.
On the left, large check writers have pumped millions into Priorities USA Action, the top super PAC allied with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who has struggled to demonstrate her independence from her wealthy supporters.

On the Republican side, the big money has largely flowed into super PACs working to keep GOP control of the Senate rather than to the muddled collection of competing groups supporting presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Together, super PACs seeking to sway the White House and congressional races have pumped more than $674 million into TV ads and other outreach through September, filings show. By the end of the 2012 elections, such groups had spent $608 million.
The figures illustrate how American campaigns have been reordered by the ability to give unlimited sums to political committees. In the six years since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision created new paths for massive contributions to flow into elections, a tiny sliver of donors with immense financial capacity have rushed to participate.

From the Atlantic: Seattle's Experiment With Campaign Funding City residents approved a public-financing program in which voters will get $100 worth of election vouchers—the first of its kind in the nation

An innovative approach to dealing with the imbalances in campaign finance.

- Click here for the story.

When people talk up the idea of the public financing of elections, they are usually referring to a system that goes something like this: Candidates must first raise money from individuals, and then the government will chip in matching funds or a pre-set amount that campaigns can spend on their race.

In Seattle, however, voters just approved a system that flips that approach on its head. Starting in 2017, city residents will be able to contribute to local candidates without spending a dime of their own money. Instead, the government will send each registered voter four $25 vouchers that they can give to candidates of their choice. No cutting a check. No minimum contribution. Candidates can opt out, but those who participate will have to abide by strict limits on spending and on receiving private donations.

“The promise of vouchers is turning every single voter in the city into a donor,” said Alan Durning, the executive director of the Sightline Institute, a Seattle-based think tank and advocacy group that pushed for the new program.

The Seattle ballot initiative, which won with more than 60 percent of the vote, was one of three victories for major election-reform groups last Tuesday. In Maine, voters approved fixes on disclosure requirements and penalties in the state’s public-financing system after court decisions like Citizens United had weakened the program. And in Ohio, an anti-gerrymandering proposal that sets up a bipartisan redistricting commission for state legislative races passed in a landslide.

Is the United States ruled by 31,976 people?

One of the themes in the early material in this class was that keep a republic - a government based, indirectly, on the people was tough to do. There are forces at work that attempt to constrict power to a smaller handful of elites.

We referred to this as oligarchy, which is a general term describing any system that allows a small elite to rule. More recently the term plutocracy has been used. It refers to ruled by the wealthy. Some argue that the US is becoming more a plutocracy than a democracy. Here's an example.

- Click here for 5 signs America is devolving into a plutocracy.

2305 students will note that the Supreme Court has made recent rulings allowing wealthy people to spend more and more funds on elections. The Center for Responsive Politics conducted a study recently that argued that the increase in spending on elections is driven by the 1% of the 1%.

It might be worth a quick read:

- The Political One Percent of the One Percent in 2014: Mega Donors Fuel Rising Cost of Elections.

From the Washington Post: Where the political 1 percent of the 1 percent live, in 5 maps

This supports the argument that increased inequality in the nation, coupled with the increased ability of people to spend as much money as they wish on campaigns, has made the United States more plutocratic and less democratic.

We may be ruled - more or less - by a group of 32,000 people.

- Click here for the article.

In 2014, one out of every five dollars that was contributed to political candidates came from a group of about 32,000 donors -- one-one-hundredth of one-one-hundredth of the population of the country. Spending by the "1 percent of the 1 percent" has been tracked by the Center for Responsive Politics and the Sunlight Foundation, which on Thursday published an analysis of the last three cycles of activity among this group.

The very short version: A smaller group of bigger donors is composing an increasing amount of political giving.

The donors, CRP and Sunlight found, share a number of things in common. They're usually men, and they come largely from the finance industry, which will perhaps not shock you. But we were interested in a subset of that data, the geography. Most donors live in or near big cities, the groups report -- but the cities near which they live vary pretty dramatically by party.

It's very much worth your time reading the full report.

How Billionaire Oligarchs Are Becoming Their Own Political Parties

Who needs parties when you have money to burn? And the Supreme Court has allowed it to influence the political process. While attention has focused on the rise of the Republican Party due to last week's election, the bigger story might be the increased influence of the donors that determine what the party does.

In 2010, the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court effectively blew apart the McCain-Feingold restrictions on outside groups and their use of corporate and labor money in elections. That same year, a related ruling from a lower court made it easier for wealthy individuals to finance those groups to the bottom of their bank accounts if they so chose. What followed has been the most unbridled spending in elections since before Watergate. In 2000, outside groups spent $52 million on campaigns, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. By 2012, that number had increased to $1 billion.

The result was a massive power shift, from the party bosses to the rich individuals who ran the super PACs (as most of these new organizations came to be called). Almost overnight, traditional party functions — running TV commercials, setting up field operations, maintaining voter databases, even recruiting candidates — were being supplanted by outside groups. And the shift was partly because of one element of McCain-Feingold that remains: the ban on giving unlimited soft money to parties. In the party universe, rich players like the Wylys, Tom Steyer or the Kochs were but single planets among many. The party bosses had to balance their interests against those who brought just as much to the table in the form of money or votes. A party platform has to account for both the interests of the oil industry and those of the ethanol industry; those of the casino industry and those of the anti-gambling religious right; those of Wall Street and those of labor.

From the Huffington Post: This Chart Shows How Little We Really Know About Where Political Money Comes From

The amount of money flowing into politics from undisclosed sources is increased. Most of these are from "social welfare organizations."

- Click here for the article.



As seems typical, the culprit is the changing legal landscape following the Citizens United decision of a few years back:

The initial spike in dark money spending took place in 2008, after the Supreme Court’s 2007 Wisconsin Right to Life ruling. That ruling freed nonprofit 501(c) organizations to make “issue ads” mentioning candidates -- as long as they didn’t directly call for the election or defeat of a candidate.

Another dark money spike took place after the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling freed corporations, labor unions and nonprofit 501(c) organizations to spend political money directly calling for the election or defeat of a candidate. Both the Citizens United and the Wisconsin Right to Life allowed for unlimited spending.

“After Citizens United, voters are left more and more in the dark about who's funding campaigns,” said Robert Maguire, investigator for CRP. “It’s not a matter of free speech – it’s a matter of knowing who’s speaking.”

Dark money continued to flow freely in 2013, gearing up for the 2014 midterm elections. Conservative groups have already spent at least $15.8 million on issue ads to promote Republican candidates, according to an earlier HuffPost analysis. Americans for Prosperity, the nonprofit founded and funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, led all groups that year with at least $12.4 million spent on candidate-specific ads attacking Obamacare. Liberal dark money groups, meanwhile, spent at least $3.3 million on issue advocacy, mostly coming from the League of Conservation Voters.

From Pro-Publica: The Dark Money Man: How Sean Noble Moved the Kochs’ Cash into Politics and Made Millions

Still more on money in politics - this time who gets to profit from it. Take this as career advise:

- Click here for the story.

For a brief, giddy moment, Sean Noble—a little-known former aide to an Arizona congressman—became one of the most important people in American politics.

Plucked from obscurity by libertarian billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, Noble was tasked with distributing a torrent of political money raised by the Koch network, a complex web of nonprofits nicknamed the Kochtopus, into conservative causes in the 2010 and 2012 elections.

Noble handed out almost $137 million in 2012 alone -- all of it so-called dark money from unnamed donors -- from his perch atop the Center to Protect Patient Rights, a group run out of an Arizona post office box.

Much of it was channeled to obvious destinations: Groups supporting Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, for example.

But with Noble as ringmaster, Koch money also poured into efforts that didn’t surface until long after Election Day: To a political committee backing Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker against a recall attempt; to a group blaming President Obama for high gas prices; even to a legal challenge to Arizona’s redistricting plan.
. . . his story shows how the Supreme Court’s landmark 2010 Citizens United ruling has given rise to a new breed of power brokers who control a growing pool of money raised in secret and spent to influence politics in ways that voters can’t always trace.

Much of Noble’s work in 2012 remained invisible to the public until the Center and dozens of other Koch-backed nonprofits released their tax returns late last year.

An examination of those tax returns, along with court records and filings with the Federal Election Commission, shows that the Center to Protect Patient Rights bent state election laws and federal tax rules governing how such groups are supposed to operate.

Millions of dollars the Center told the Internal Revenue Service it gave to other groups only for “tax exempt education and social welfare purposes” were actually spent on election ads and other political activities. Experts on nonprofit law said it’s the donor’s responsibility to follow up on grants if they were not spent as required.

One of the biggest beneficiaries of the Koch network’s money was Sean Noble himself, tax documents show. The Center paid three firms owned by Noble almost $24 million for consulting and other services in 2012—or more than $1 of every $6 it spent.

From Politico: Exclusive: Mega-donors plan GOP war council

This builds on a theme in previous posts - and it relates to discussions we have had about the efforts of the business sector to increase its influence within the Republican Party and push back against the party's Tea Party wing. It also touches on our ongoing look at the increased influence of money in politics, especially in the wake of recent Supreme Court decisions that have opened the floodgates.

The word of the semester - so far - seems to be "mega-donor."

- Click here for the article.

A group of major GOP donors, led by New York billionaire Paul Singer, is quietly expanding its political footprint ahead of the midterm elections in an increasingly assertive effort to shape the direction of the Republican Party.

The operation was launched discreetly last year, with the previously unreported formation of a club called the American Opportunity Alliance to bring together some of the richest pro-business GOP donors in the country, several of whom share Singer’s support for gay rights, immigration reform and the state of Israel. Around the same time, Singer and his allies also formed a federal fundraising committee called Friends for an American Majority that raised big checks for a select list of the GOP’s most highly touted 2014 Senate hopefuls.

Those candidates are among the big names expected at a two-day retreat organized by the American Opportunity Alliance set for the last week of February at a swanky Colorado resort. The closed-door event — which is also expected to draw House Speaker John Boehner and New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte, according to Republicans familiar with the plans — is seen in GOP finance circles as a grand debut of sorts for Singer’s still-amorphous club.

. . . the list of big-name pols expected at the American Opportunity Alliance’s upcoming Colorado gathering highlights the influence that only a few big donors can command in the post-Citizens United era, when a small group of wealthy individuals can reorder elections with just a few huge checks. That new reality has shifted some of the power and control once maintained by the parties and their candidates to factions of major donors, like the libertarian-infused Koch network on the right or the Democracy Alliance club of major liberal donors on the left.

From The Houston Chronicle: Court ruling may see super PAC money rise in Texas

Building off a story below, limits on campaign funding have been overturned by a federal court - so we can expect more money to be pumped into political campaigns. We discussed the fact that this spending seems to be compromise the traditional role that political parties play in the electoral process. We may have more to say about this soon it seems.

Click here for the story:

In a state already known for sky-high political spending, so-called super PACS can now begin flexing their campaign muscle in Texas too, according to a published report Monday.

A recent federal court ruling essentially overturned Texas' ban on super PACs, political action committees that can spend lavishly as long as they aren't coordinating directly with political campaigns.

The Austin American Statesman reports (http://bit.ly/1gNfnUv ) that the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision in October makes Texas law consistent with the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United ruling, which gave rise to super PACs.

The Texas decision makes corporate political spending easier. But more money isn't the only issue because corporations statewide could already spend unlimited amounts on their own political advocacy.

Now, lavish donations to outside groups may mean harder-edge political advertising since the groups won't be held to the same standards as candidates.

Ed Shack, a Texas election-law attorney, predicts there will be a proliferation of groups spreading their message independently.

"Every political consultant in the state will have a super PAC before long," Shack told the newspaper. "You're going to see a lot more spending that isn't coordinated with a particular candidate's campaign."

Until the appeals court decision, Texas political action committees — which spend money on behalf of a candidate or issue — weren't allowed to accept donations from corporations.

The ruling overturned the prohibition, tantamount to making all PACs "super." The groups still have to report where their money comes from, however, unlike 501(c)(4) nonprofits that critics say collect "dark money" from anonymous donors.

Craig McDonald, director of the nonprofit government watchdog group Texans for Public Justice, said the October appeals court ruling attracted little attention since it was expected following the Citizens United decision. He said similar court actions have affected political donations in Wisconsin, California and the District of Columbia.

McDonald also noted that super PACs can receive money from nonprofits that aren't required to disclose donors.

"If you're worried about money from dark corners going into politics, as we are, the future looks more bleak than rosy," he said.

After the Citizens United decision, the Texas Legislature removed the state's prohibition on corporate contributions to political candidates, but the ban on giving to PACs survived, according to the Gober Hilgers law firm.

Two years ago, the firm handled a lawsuit filed by Texans for Free Enterprise. It sued the Texas Ethics Commission, contending the state ban on corporate contributions to PACs was unconstitutional.

The appeals court agreed, noting Texans for Free Enterprise's "ability to speak is undoubtedly limited when it cannot raise money to pay for free speech."

From Politico: Last call for state parties?

We discussed state political parties in 2306 last week, and I mentioned that in our federal system states get to draft the rules that determine what parties look alike, which means that each state legislature has the greatest control over the parties. States provide the legal basis for parties. We mentioned that national parties - at best - try to reconcile differences between the states parties, but the later tend to be more powerful politically.

But Politico reports that not only are state parties are having trouble competing with SuperPACs for funds, the PACs are taking over some of the traditional functions performed by state and local parties - like organizing voters.

The article suggests that the reason is that limits on campaign spending by individuals and groups have been found to be unconstitutional restrictions on free speech. In 2305 we will be discussing the campaign financing and the Citizens United decision. One of the consequences appears to be that SuperPACs may now be able to challenge political parties as the dominant political entity in the nation.

Click here for the article:

State party officials across the country say the explosion of money into super PACs, nonprofit groups and presidential campaigns has made fundraising more difficult. And some of those outside groups are starting to take over the traditional local roles state parties play, spending big on voter contact and outreach operations.

The effect is candidates who can be more beholden to national organizations or single-issue groups rather than state party leaders. That’s leading to a change in candidates and their beliefs and the issues that come up in elections and statehouses.

The GOP takeover of North Carolina in 2010 and 2012, for example, was bankrolled largely by the network founded by GOP megadonors Charles and David Koch and primarily directed through the nonprofit Americans For Prosperity. AFP’s former chairman, Art Pope, now serves as North Carolina budget director.

In Texas, two Democratic outside groups have essentially built a party organization outside the official Texas Democratic Party. Several Obama campaign veterans are running the group Battleground Texas as a field and turnout operation, while the Lone Star Project is doing opposition research and tracking against Republicans.

There is a greater incentive now for individual donors with deep pockets to fund these groups, not the state party. Will this indirectly suppress voter participation by limiting the ability of parties to fulfill this traditional function?

Aside from the Citizens United case - which unleashed the amount of money that independent groups can change - campaign finance reform laws passed in 2002 removed a major source of funds that parties had access to - soft money:

Ironically, until Congress closed a key campaign finance loophole in the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance overhaul, most state parties were flush with cash.

The loophole allowed essentially unlimited funds known as soft money to be raised by the national political parties to be spent on party building activities and issue ads. Between 1992 and 2002, soft money fundraising for both parties skyrocketed — going from from $86 million to nearly $500 million. Much of that cash was spent through state and local party organizations.

In closing the soft-money loophole, the law created a complicated system of rules that state parties had to abide by when working on federal elections.

Under the rules, for example, state-party run phone banks for federal candidates had to be staffed only by volunteers. They could make calls only for presidential elections — not congressional races. Mail, campaign literature and get-out-the-vote operations around federal races were regulated by similarly strict rules, conditions and requirements regulating volunteer time, coordination with the national party and what kind of funds could be spent.

Those rules seem almost quaint now.

Proposals are being floated in Congress to rescind those rules - stay posted.

Dark Money in Texas

The Houston Chronicle profiles an Austin lobbyist and attorney who is trying to persuade the Texas Ethics Commission to require that all campaign contributions are disclosed. He's issued a petition for rulemaking asking the agency to implement something the Texas governor has already vetoed.

The term "dark money" refers to campaign contributions that are not disclosed prior to voting. It exists simply because some individuals and organizations do not want other to know who they support. While some argue that this is an acceptable way for contributors to maintain their privacy, others argue that it invites corruption.

From the article:

“The purpose of my proposal is to eliminate ‘dark money’ from Texas elections by dragging it into the sunlight,” Bresnen wrote to acting Executive Director Natalia Luna Ashley. “Secret money influencing elections — the life blood of self governance — is intolerable as a matter of law and is against the public interest. The Commission should exercise its authority to do something about it.”

The issue of dark money has been a political lightning rod since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission. That decision paved a path for outside groups like super PACs and 501(c)(4)s to raise and spend unlimited sums from corporations, labor groups and deep- pocketed individual donors.

And while both 501(c)(4)s and super PACs can accept unlimited sums of cash, only super PACs are required to identify donors.

As a result, super PACs regularly set up sister outfits in the form of a 501(c)(4)s to funnel money anonymously to candidates or to fund attack ads. That’s how they got the ominous title “dark money” groups.

In Texas, the issue hit home during the legislative session when Gov. Rick Perry vetoed a dark money disclosure bill that would have required politically active 501(c)4s to reveal contributors who give more than $1,000 to any dark money group that spends $25,000 or more on politicking.

That measure, sponsored by Sen. Kel Seliger and Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, was intended to require non-profit groups like Empower Texans to report some of its secret donors.

Bresnen’s petition from Tuesday takes aim again at Empower Texans and its president, Michael Quinn Sullivan, saying the “$372,000 in secret political money that Mike Sullivan used in the 2012 elections” was part of the reason he’s asking the commission to step in.

For additional detail:

- Wikipedia: Dark Money.
- opensecrets.org: New Dark Money Data Measures Groups' Politicization.
- opensecrets.org: The Shadow Money Trail.

More on the weakness of parties in Congress

At least that of the current Republican Party. The Democratic Party organization is quite string in comparison. It's getting to be quite the meme. Outside pressure groups have more influence on individual members than either the party, or their members. This author suggests that more partisanship would actually be beneficial. This suggests that Boehner's perceived weakness as Speaker is really the result of the influence of outside groups that are more influential to members of Congress - and have a greater ability to benefit their careers - than the traditional party leadership structure.

From the New Republic:

The current Democratic Party, which trims and disciplines the aspirations of its core progressive activists, is a good example of a fairly strong party, which is why it’s consistently frustrating to the left.

But the modern Republican Party is not strong. It’s something more like a loose association of independent forces, including Tea Party–backed members, those with their own sources of campaign money from ideological backers, many with seats so safe that they can happily ignore all their non-conservative constituents, and outside agents like Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint, who Businessweek recently described as the de facto Speaker of the House. Many of its politicians have deliberately cut themselves off from all the incentives that traditionally moderate and stabilize politics—earmarks, constituent service (many offices say they won’t help constituents maneuver the ACA), and infrastructure spending. With safe seats, and hearing little dissent at home, they are able to do so. Cutting themselves off from the incentive to build and maintain a strong and viable party is part of the same story.

Consider the difference between House Speaker John Boehner and his shutdown forerunner, Newt Gingrich. Gingrich was a partisan in the original sense, and the first truly partisan Speaker. Although a conservative, he always had strong support from moderate Republicans because he cared about their party’s strength above all else. Many House Republicans felt they owed him their political careers, thanks to early support from his GOPAC. Following his own shutdown debacle, he was able to lead his party into a period of effective bargaining with the Clinton White House that included the budget deal of 1997. Boehner has no such capacity to manage or discipline his caucus, and that’s not mainly a reflection of his personal failings. No one owes him or the party anything. Paul Ryan or Eric Cantor could do no better.

The role of Senator Ted Cruz, who prodded the embers of the House shutdown gang even while he couldn’t do anything meaningful in his own chamber, exemplifies the undisciplined, loose association that the Republican Party has become. Backed by ideological donors including the Koch brothers, he has no need for the National Republican Senatorial Committee and his presidential aspirations are better off without the support of the party establishment. Like his almost-colleague DeMint, Cruz will likely endorse primary challengers to incumbents of his own party, something that was once almost unheard of in either party. That’s the opposite of putting party first.

The way money works in politics certainly has something, though not everything, to do with this splintering. SuperPACs, political non-profits, and other outside spenders do more than just bring the corrupting influence of corporations and wealthy individuals into the process. They also destabilize and decenter the process, replacing the long-term interests of the party with those of individual donors. The Campaign Finance Institute reported yesterday that outside groups outspent political action committees for the first time in 2012. We’ve seen a massive shift in electoral politics away from parties, candidates and formal groups like PACs, and toward outside groups; it should be no surprise that we are now seeing a similar shift in the base of power in legislative politics.

Are 501(C)(4) "social welfare organizations" pulling a scam on taxpayers? Are the just political organizations that posed as social welfare organizations so they do not have to disclose their donors.

Here's an argument that they are.

Let's take the first part, the IRS employees. When a group files for tax-exempt status, the IRS investigates it, asks it some questions, and determines whether it qualifies under section 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4). The difference between them is that a 501(c)(3) is supposed to be a genuine charity, like your local food bank or Institute for the Study of Foot Fungus, while a 501(c)(4) is still primarily devoted to "social welfare" but is allowed more leeway to engage in some political activities like lobbying and participation in elections, so long as the political activities make up a minority of its time. The biggest practical difference is that donations to (c)(3) groups are tax-deductible, while donations to (c)(4) groups are not.

But:

The truth is that a great many of the groups that request 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) status, of all ideological stripes, are basically pulling a scam on the taxpayers. Maybe that's a bit harsh, but at the very least they're engaged in a charade in which they pretend to be "nonpartisan" when in fact they are very, very partisan. For instance, nobody actually believes that groups like the Center for American Progress on the left or the Heritage Foundation on the right aren't partisan. When there's an election coming, they mobilize substantial resources to influence it. They blog about how the other's side's candidate is a jerk, they issue reports on how his plans will destroy America, and they do all sorts of things whose unambiguous intent is to make the election come out the way they want it to. CAP and Heritage, along with many other organizations like them, are 501(c)(3) charities, meaning as long as they never issue a formal endorsement and are careful to avoid any express advocacy, they can maintain the fiction that they're nonpartisan (keep getting tax-deductible contributions, which are easier to obtain than those that aren't tax-deductible).

What is a 501(c)(4) organization?

Here's a good primer from the Washington Post. It answers basic questions about the case so far.

Summary info:

- A 501 (c)(4) is a subset of the groups that fit under the IRS's tax code for nonprofit groups. Wikipedia has a page detailing all of the 501(c) categories that exist. The 4th category is reserved for "Civic Leagues, Social Welfare Organizations, and Local Associations of Employees." These have proliferated since the Citizens United decision of 2010.


- Since they are supposed to be social welfare organizations, politics is not supposed to be their primary focus. They are to spend less than 50% of their money on politics. The trick is determining what that means. What is "politics" and what is "social welfare?" And who gets to make that determination?

- Many of the most groups most active in the recent election fell under this categorym including Crossroads GPS and Organizing for Action.

- The Center for Responsive Politics thes groups spent more than $300 million on the campaign. $263 million by conservative groups and $35 million by liberal groups. 501(c)(4)'s spend more on the campaign than super PACs by a 3-2 margin.

- A super PAC has to disclose its donors while a 501(C)(4) does not. This explains their appeal.

- Applications for these organizations doubled following the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision which allowed corporations and labor unions to spend as much money as they wish on elections.

- The IRS used key terms - like Tea Party - to flag certain groups it suspected of not qualifying as social welfare organizations.

- The Inspector General is set to release an audit of the process, and at least two House congressional committees are planning to investigate this.

From the NYT: Billionaires Going Rogue

Some thoughts on what havoc unleashed billionaires might have on elections in the wake of the Citizens United decision, It also provides some interesting insight into the difference between the two parties organizationally:

While, the rapid growth of well-financed and autonomous competitors threatens all existing power structures, the bulk of the costs are likely to fall on the Republican Party. The right wing of the Republican Party has more disruptive potential than the left wing of the Democratic Party because it is more willing to go to extremes: see the billboards showing Obama bowing down before an Arab Sheik, or the ads and DVD claiming that Obama is the bastard son of the African American communist, Frank Marshall Davis.

There are, furthermore, structural and historical differences between the parties: the Republican Party and the conservative establishment is institutionally stronger than the Democratic Party, with an infrastructure that served as a bulwark through the 1960s and 70s – the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Olin Foundation, etc. — when Republicans appeared to be a permanent congressional minority. Its financial prowess enabled the party to enforce more discipline on its consultants and elected officials. The Republican establishment also exercises more authority over policy and candidate selection than does its Democratic counterpart.

In recent years, the Democratic Party organization has gained some strength and it plays a much more active role in campaigns at all levels than in the past, but as an institutional force capable of command and control, it remains light years behind the Republican Party.

Republicans, in contrast to Democrats, prefer hierarchical, well-ordered organizations, and are much more willing to cede authority to those in power. Democrats, despite the discipline of individual campaign efforts, tend more toward anarchy than hierarchy. Historically, one result of this partisan difference is that the Republican establishment has tightly managed candidate selection at the presidential level. With extraordinary consistency, the party has crushed insurgent candidates and selected the next in line. Ronald Reagan and Bob Dole, for example, both had to wait until it was their turn.

Citizens United decision affirmed

The court threw out a Montana case which challenged the ruling.

Do political parties matter anymore?

The post Citizens United world has witnessed an unprecendented amount of money being spent on political campaigns, money injected directly to campaigns, not through the medium of the political party. Which leads one to wonder why even have the political party anymore?

Major donors - the Koch Brothers - seem ready to put this idea to the test. They are scheduled to have their own political convention in San Diego soon. Its not a public affair apparently. Its worth wondering what direction politics is heading.

Foster Friess

A few posts back I mentioned that casino owner Sheldon Anderson has pumped considerable cash into Newt Gingrich's campaign and may have been single-handedly responsible for his success in South Carolina. Now comes word that a wealthy investor - Foster Friess - did the same trick for Rick Santorum.

More indications that the world of campaigning has changed utterly in the wake of Citizens United.

A "tsunami of slime"

That's what reporter Joe Hagan calls the current onslaught of Super PAC funded negative advertising - which he projects will only get worse as we dig further into the election.

Here is his cover story about this in the New York Magazine, and a radio interview he did about it later.

Among the points he raises is that millions of dollars are now being spent by Super PACs on opposition research, and they are uncovering far more than any investigative reporter can about any and all of the candidates. They actually develop relationships with reporters in order to get their stories out when they think they will be most effective. They also have sophisticated communications operations that turn this content into effective advertising.

Its a good inside look at today's - post Citizens United - world.

Montana Challenges Citizens United

The Montana Supreme Court has defied the US Supreme Court by upholding state law - the 1912 Corrupt Practices Act - which places limits on corporate contributions, the exact thing that the US Supreme Court found to violate free speech rights in the increasingly infamous Citizens United decision.

The Montana law was passed as a direct consequence of corruption instigated by corporations - copper companies primarily - doing business in the state. The state claims that this is still an issue justifying limits of corporate election financing. The case will be appealed to the Supreme Court, which has the opportunity to revisit it previous ruling.

For further info:
- Montana High Court Says 'Citizens United' Does Not Apply In Big Sky State.

- Montana State Supreme Court: Citizens United Not Welcome Here.

- The Beginning of the End of Citizens United?