Well, I've had a combination of a busy week, and a general malaise over current events. You probably can tell, if you scroll through my recent posts that there aren't very many. Sorry about that, I'll try to get inspired. In the meantime, here's a great piece on a subject I've written a lot about: Rich donors, and the difference between right and left wing versions of them.
[Excerpt]
What’s The Difference Between Wealthy (Koch) Republicans And (Soros) Democrats? The billionaire Koch brothers have been corrupting democracy for decades. Their labyrinthine web of front groups toil 24/7 to distort the facts on issues like climate change, voter suppression, gun control, and taxes. And if that collection of topics sounds familiar, it’s because the Kochs almost single-handedly created the Tea Party (with PR help from Fox News) to push their views on those subjects unto a gullible sector of the American populace. . .
There were many moments of schadenfreude on the night of Election 2012, and there have been many since. But this goes beyond my slightly guilty pleasure at the misfortune and sadness of conservatives. The Citizens United decision was a very scary unknown before the election started. There was real fear that all of that money--much of it from unknown sources--was effectively going to buy a president, and all of the rest of our government. It was an amazing surprise when most of that tidal wave of money crashed harmlessly down shore.
Ain't he something? Image from source.
Of course, in my state of Nevada, we did get a little bit wet. Even though President Obama carried the state, Shelley Berkley lost her Senate run, and both Joe Heck and Dean Heller won their respective races. But overall, the megamillions spent on the election didn't pay off particularly well for those who fronted the money. I'm shocked that Karl Rove isn't persona non grata in Right Wing World. You'd almost expect him to be eeping-slay with the ishes-fay, if you catch my drift.
But let's get back to schadenfreude, shall we? One of the biggest spenders behind the Rove-style groups was Las Vegas' own trollgremlingolem squillionaire, Sheldon Adelson. The Venetian owner plunked down wads of cash to keep Newt Gingrich afloat (well past his prime), and then backed Romney, even though he'd previously payed to tear Mitt down. All of that money is flushed away now, but it turns out there was a lot more going down the drain than we previously knew.
[Excerpt] Sheldon Adelson Spent Far More On Campaign Than Previously Known
Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson vowed to spend as much as $100 million to defeat President Barack Obama and help the GOP take control of Congress. According to two GOP fundraisers with close ties to the Las Vegas billionaire, he made good on that promise -- and then some. Adelson ultimately upped the ante, spending closer to a previously unreported $150 million, the fundraisers said. . .
Let's get something out of the way right now: I don't think that foreigners ought to be able to donate money to campaigns in United States elections. I don't know if that is going on here. . .it certainly isn't proven by the source material. But for conservatives trying to drop the hammer on President Obama for this, when the Supreme Court Citizens United ruling has opened the door for SuperPACs with secret donors, and no accountability? And when one of the biggest of those groups is run by the oh-so-ethical Karl Rove? Excuse me if I respond with a yawn. Wake me when Citizens United is repealed or overturned or blocked, and then I'll be interested.
[Excerpt] BREAKING: Obama’s Campaign Site Rejects Fraudulent Donation
Today’s right-wing Obama-is-a-foreigner thing is the startling revelation that, theoretically, Barack Obama could be accepting campaign donations from foreign nationals. . .
Okay, a couple of things here. First, the man's name is pronounced ADDLE-son, and as a denizen of Las Vegas, it bugs me every time I hear it pronounced AID-elson. Secondly, Sheldon Adelson has done good things in this town, not always using his virtually infinite fundage for evil. Thirdly, the comparison to George Soros (benefactor of many previous Democratic campaigns) fails for more than one reason, chiefly that Soros wasn't helping people get elected for his own personal financial interest.
Adelson is in the game because he can afford to be, because after the Citizens United ruling, he can be, and because he's kind of a bastard. This goes beyond a guy with deep pockets, funding his favorites, and looking for a little quid pro quo. This has--fairly quickly, if you think about it--turned into a many tentacled beast, with Adelson as the head, and Karl Rove as the brain. It's a frighteningly coordinated, full-throttle, take-no-prisoners attempt to purchase political offices from little to the biggest in the land.
The biggest failure of the Supreme Court's decision is in saying that money equals speech. Because by doing that, they've assured that more money equals more speech. Who on earth, short of Bill Gates, could compete with the kind of speech Adelson and the Koch Brothers (who coordinate with Adelson and Rove) can purchase? How could this possibly be what the founders intended?
By all reason, our democracy should be helpless against this assault. You'd think, with no real competing entity like it on the left, that this kind of money would just win now, forever. So far though, it's not working out that way. Things could change in the weeks until the election of course, but even with evil genius Rove pulling the levers, this machine is having trouble driving the polls. And I wonder, can all the money in the world sell a faulty product?
Sheldon Adelson really looks like that. Image from Politico.
[Excerpt] Sheldon Adelson: Inside the mind of the mega-donor
. . .Worth just over $21 billion, and now in the crosshairs of the Justice
Department and Securities and Exchange Commission, Adelson has made
history: He is the first person to spend $70 million to sway a
presidential election, and he plans to spend more – perhaps as much as
$100 million – by Election Day. An estimated $20 million to $30 million
of the giving was to groups that do not disclose their donors, and had
not been reported before. . .
Have you watched very much television lately? Do you live in a swing state? If you're like me (my swing state is Nevada), you've been deluged, buried, shat upon by political advertisements, the majority of which are negative. But there's a difference this year, and I don't just mean the increased amount of ads made possible by Citizens United.
The difference is the level of unapologetic lying. And no--as far as I can tell--both sides don't do it. I know this because President Obama has on a couple of occasions changed the content of his ads when critics pointed out issues with their veracity. That's what usually happens in politics. Whether Team Obama deliberately lied, and was caught, or if they were simply wrong, I'll not argue. But they have corrected themselves. On the Mitt Romney side, I've seen quite the opposite. [Story continues below]
For example, Romney's first ad, a clip of Obama quoting John McCain was taken out of context to sound as though Obama was expressing his own thoughts. It's plain, it's clear, it's a lie. But it's still up, and the campaign said the result was "exactly what we want." Since then, Romney's ads have followed that template: say something untrue or out of context (I'll give the benefit of the doubt, and say unintentionally), then when called on it, soldier on anyway, undeterred, with no correction.
When I was at the dentist on Friday (see the results in my Facebook photo in the left column!), the Olympics were on the set. On every commercial break, there were at least four political ads, usually one by Romney, one by Obama, and two from the allegedly unaffiliated Romney SuperPACs. If it isn't three-to-one, it's close, with the occasional interest group-funded anti-Shelley Berkley ad. Sometimes, there's room for little else, and the same anti-Obama ad plays twice in a row.
The SuperPAC ads play like Lyndon Johnson's "Daisy" ad, with an ominous, oh-so-concerned voiceover, dramatic scary music, black-and-white quick cuts of grainy pictures, headlines, whatever. It's the same thing we all know, just A WHOLE LOT MORE!!!
But, leave it to ol' Willard to again take an out-of-context quote (one that doesn't even make sense as a point Obama would try to make), and run with it. It's the "you didn't build that" line, in an otherwise uncontroversial speech, about how we're all in this together. It was cribbed from Elizabeth Warren (who tells it better, though the President may have just had a inelegant patch in his speech that day), and about nothing more than realizing that no matter how successful you are, you had help. When you make a bundle in America, you needed America to do it. Populist stuff.
Romney's team cobbled together the President's "gaffe" (in quotes, because it really wasn't one), and has one ad in particular that is running every commercial break in Nevada. In it, they take the line and present it dishonestly. Then a grey-haired man in a green t-shirt gets all indignant and butt-hurt that the Prez is attacking him, attacking small business. Doesn't Obama realize that he and his dad built this company with his bare hands, blood and ball-sweat? Yeah, and a whole bunch of government help, it turns out!
So, the premise of the ad (that Obama meant business people didn't build their own businesses) is wrong, hinging on one barely suspect pronoun, "that." The dude in the ad is--I want to say "fraud," but let's be charitable--not completely honest. And yet, the ad runs endlessly with no correction, no clarification. This tactic is new at the presidential level, as far as I know.
[Excerpt]
Guy Who Thinks Small Business Loans Aren’t ‘Government Help’ Also Can’t Tell Cusses From Threats
So it turns out that the business owner in that dumb Romney ad about the fake “You didn’t build that” line, and who it turns out actually did rely on government loans and contracts for some of his business, now haz a sad because some people have been calling and emailing his business to say mean things about him. Jack Gilchrist, owner of a metal fabrication company in Hudson, New Hampshire, appeared in the ad, above, whining about being “demonized” by the President for being successful, which of course rather badly misses the point. . .
I really don't get it. I thought that with the proliferation of gazillions of dollars in the wake of the Citizens United case, that the Supreme Court would begin to see the error of their ways. Instead, they've just reaffirmed it. Maybe not enough time has yet passed. Maybe it's a pride thing. Oddly, the original case wasn't even asking the question that SCOTUS ultimately answered: can corporations give unlimited money to political campaigns? Yes! Because every American believes that there just haven't been enough political ads!
My only hope is, that we as Americans get so burned out on the blizzard of ads, that we all get itchy for a constitutional amendment. Without a change in the court, it's the only way.
The Supreme Court on Monday struck down Montana’s attempt to limit campaign contributions, citing the Citizens United ruling that opened the floodgates for unlimited corporate campaign spending. The 5-4 ruling was made on partisan lines, with the conservative majority voting to summarily dismiss the Montana case without oral arguments. . .
Oh, what hell Citizens United hath wrought. We used to think that election season political ads were obnoxious and oppressive. But boy howdy, get ready for a flood. I'm sure that the five or six owners of the major media companies in the United States (how did that happen?) are thrilled at the infinite mounds of dough. They won't have to run Head-On commercials or Sham-Wow! infomercials for a while! And an only slightly larger group of billionaires essentially get to buy whatever politicians they want.
Image from Wikipedia.
Well, almost. Sheldon Adelson--the squillionaire who owns The Venetian and Palazzo--originally wanted Newt Gingrich. Some things, apparently, money can not buy. But look how long Shelly kept Newtie afloat! He just opened up his bottomless purse, and single-handedly kept Newt going for months after he was essentially toast. And now, he's funding Mitt Romney, surely not his favorite candidate, but apparently preferable to that (black) guy currently in the White House.
I am already sick of the ads we're getting*, and I hope that ultimately people just tune them out. Because let's be honest. How many people are there who are just torn between these two candidates. Nothing short of finding out Barack Obama was a secret Holocaust denier or that Mitt Romney invented bacon would be likely to change my decision. You?
I, for one, welcome our new corporate fat cat overlords.
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Sheldon Adelson is giving $10 million to Mitt Romney super PAC
Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who helped prop up House speaker Newt Gingrich’s presidential primary campaign for months, is now using his massive wealth to help former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. According to two sources familiar with the donation, Adelson is giving $10 million to the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future*. Under Federal Election Commission law, Restore Our Future is free to accept donations of unlimited amounts from single donors but must reveal the identity of those givers. . .
*Another thing I'm sick of? These ridiculously named, falsely grass-roots-sounding SuperPAC names. "Restore Our Future" is one of the lamer ones, not harkening to jingoism with words like liberty, freedom or patriot. And it isn't larded with "People for the. . .", "Americans for. . ." or "The Smith & Wesson/Ronald Reagan Libertygasm Foundation." But it's still goofy (and irritating) as hell.
Yes, it's true. Karl Rove thinks attacking President Obama using Reverend Right--again--is "stupid." But, I'm really more concerned about Rove himself, and his position at FOX "News." What in the world are they doing, using him as a commentator on the election? He--in his capacity running Crossroads GPS and American Crossroads--is a major player in the election, thanks to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision! Does this not scream "conflict of interest?" It is sure as hell not fair and balanced.
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Rove: Attacking Obama with Rev. Wright is ‘stupid’ . . .“So, you want to try and do things that are helpful, not hurtful. And look, I thought it was very smart for the Romney campaign to immediately go out an denounce the tactic. It certainly sent a message to everybody in America what they wanted the campaign to be about. And it certainly sent a message to people involved in the super PACs, don’t be doing stupid things like this. . .”
Everybody knows that Mitt Romney is a multi- (multi-, multi-) millionaire, and is supported by same. He's been the GOP establishment's choice for some time, and doesn't need a single billionaire benefactor. But, Newt Gingrich wouldn't still be in the race without my state's favorite billionaire, Sheldon Adelson. He has single-handedly kept Newtie-patootie afloat, and that is allowed in post-Citizens United America. So, who if anyone will be the billionaire to come to Rick (don't Google me) Santorum's aid, now that he's cleaned up in three contests? Not surprisingly, there is somebody! Watch the guy in the green tie. His name is Foster Friess, and he's Frothy Mix's new best friend.
Here is the fatal flaw in the Citizens United Supreme Court decisions to equate money with speech, and corporations with people. Foreign interests can influence a vote, essentially. I heard a defender of the Citizens United case on the radio today, saying that "Americans aren't so stupid" that they could be overly influenced by saturation advertising. Really? I wouldn't call them stupid (necessarily), but if this advertising weren't effective, what would be the point of buying it?
Corporations are not people. The individual people in a corporation already have a voice and a vote. They shouldn't be able to collectively have another voice.
Money isn't speech. If it is, the person with the most money gets the most speech. Does that sound like the American way to you? Biggest pocketbook wins?
Foreign interests and non-citizens shouldn't get a vote, and shouldn't be able to financially support advertising for candidates, or candidates themselves. Certainly, not without complete transparency.
Do any of those points above sound liberal to you? They sound like common sense, and I can't quite understand how a conservative could refute them.
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EXCLUSIVE: Major Romney Bundler Is Agent Of Foreign Government
Ignacio E. Sanchez is a lobbyist at DLA Piper, an influential global law firm and a major bundler for the Mitt Romney campaign. A ThinkProgress review of public records reveals Sanchez is also a registered foreign agent representing the interests of the United Arab Emirates and a former president of the Dominican Republic. . .
Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow (the public name of the Definitely Not Coordinating With Stephen Colbert Super PAC) has released its first attack ad against Mitt Romney, since Stephen Colbert launched his presidential bid. As expect, it is both funny, and completely on point. If corporations are people--as Mittens himself said--what is the logical conclusion, if Romney effectively killed several of them? I only wish Colbert was serious. This is a very meta campaign, by a candidate that has been skewering SuperPACs, and the ridiculousness of the Citizens United ruling. It just adds one more layer of truthiness.
If you don't know what the Citizens United case did to American Politics, please look it up. The main result of that case--though it doesn't seem that the Citizens United organization involved in the case intended it--was an opening of the money floodgates into elections. Some of that money could be from just about anybody, and differs from money laundering in no significant way.
Until it is understood in this country that corporations are not people, and money is not speech, we're going to have to tolerate bought-and-paid-for politicians, and relentless, irritating Karl Rove commercials.
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Sens. Udall, Bennet propose amendment to overturn Citizens United ruling
Democratic Sens. Tom Udall of New Mexico and Michael Bennet of Colorado introduced a constitutional amendment on Tuesday that would overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. . .
