Voter Reminder

Earth to Brad: The Democrats are using SuperPACS as well...

California has already been turned into "We the public empoyee unions".

It's official; conservatives hate public school teachers, nurses, firefighters, police, construction workers, plumbers, laborers, electricians, etc. So why would anyone vote for republican/conservative candidates when they will only downgrade your wages, benefits and living conditions. Time and time again the republican party will operate on behalf of the top 2 %.

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission was a conservative device to start this new round of political spending or SuperPACs in the hopes for establishing an permanent oligarchy where the 98 % have no voice.

The amount of money spent on elections is disgusting. Imagine what that money could do. Need to raise taxes on those making trash heap piles of money because we are getting sick from having to breathe in it's stench.

Conservatives love teachers, but conservatives love our kids even more. So when public employee unions come between our children and their education, action must be taken.

Do you think that the public employee unions in Chicago give a rat's @ss about our children's education? These unions are only concerned with preserving union power through rules that degrade the quality of education for our children.

Super PACs are used primarily by conservatives. Super PAC spending for 2012 to-date:

Conservative: $178M
Liberal: $53M
Other: $4M

http://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespe...

Super PACs are a problem because they can accept unlimited contributions from corporations & unions and can make unlimited expenditures. But the rules are Super PACs can't give directly to a candidate or coordinate with a candidate. The spending must be a so-called "independent" or "third-party" expenditure.

Those rules exist because the Supreme Court didn't want any "quid pro quo" bargaining.

But this is a sham because Super PAC managers can communicate with campaign managers under the table and via the media. Former campaign coordinators also go to work for Super PACs.

But Super PACs are only half of the problem!

The other problem is unlimited *ANONYMOUS* expenditures by non-profit 501(c)4 organizations ... so called "dark money" groups.

The two largest Dark Money groups are:

- Karl Rove's "Crossroads GPS"
- The Koch Brother's "Americans for Prosperity"

As of Aug 14, these two conservative groups outspent all Super PACs combined!!! TV ad buys by conservative Dark Money groups was $70M while liberals spent a paltry $1.6M.

http://www.propublica.org/article/two...

So all those TV ads are being paid for by ... who knows? But guess who likes to fund Dark Money groups? Publicly-held corporations who don't want shareholders and customers to know what they're doing:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/...

What kind of a democracy do we have when corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money to buy free *AND* anonymous speech?

Last post, I promise :)

Here's the total spending to-date by outside groups (Super PACs, Dark Money groups, 527's, etc.)

http://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespe...

Conservative: $282M
Liberal: $85M
Other: $7.1M

This might be why Obama's campaign is often said to be funded at the grass-roots level ... they seem to depend more on direct individual contributions and less on outside group expenditures.

Go EastBeach! Hoping Italiansurg will eat his taunt 'Earth to Brad' and see the Rightwing PACs give WAY more $ to politicians than do the Liberal PACs...
come on, the official figures show Romney has out fund-raised Obama most of the recent few months (I know, Obama "took" the last month, but barely, and he's the incumbent), and certainly there are more of His Dark Materials [Dark Money = Koch Bros.] coming under the table...

@italiansurg

"The Democrats are using SuperPACS as well..."

So, two wrongs make a right?

Actually, this brings up the principle of honor--should one cheat in a contest, when "everyone else is"? The principled person would say, "no, never", but it could be argued that, if everyone truly is cheating, then the *accepted* rules of a contest differ from the written rules of it, and therefore, cheating is allowed.

When it REALLY matters, then perhaps the win must be sought at any cost. For example, when Francis Marion fought the British in the War of Independence, he did so with smaller forces, and therefore had to use better tactics than "stand in a field like a target". The Viet Cong employed similar tactics against the U.S. during the Vietnam Conflict. The point is, if politics is a war, and "all's fair in war", then isn't all fair in politics?

[Google the SNL skit, "All Drug Olympics" for a laugh.]

At the national & state levels, one could argue conservatives especially treat politics like a "no holds barred" war. Consider their heavy use of Super PACs & Dark Money groups plus their recent voter disenfranchisement efforts across the nation:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09...

If this continues, the wheels will fall off our democracy much like the steroid-abusing weight-lifter's arms fell off in the SNL skit.

John McCain famously said "Campaign finance reform is dead" after the Supreme Court's Citizen's United and Speech Now decisions that gave rise to Super PACs and Dark Money groups.

These two decisions threw away decades of Congressional efforts to reign in the political power of corporations and unions (Tilman Act 1907, Taft-Hartley 1947, McCain-Feingold Act 2002).

Is there anything we can do now?

Surprisingly, its very clear that Dark Money groups are operating illegally and abusing their 501(c)4 IRS status:

http://www.propublica.org/article/how...

So we need to lean on the IRS to stop political organizations from masquerading as social welfare organizations (this is the "trick" that allows Dark Money groups to spend all that anonymous money).

It seems the IRS might be looking to issue a few fines:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07...

But that may not be enough:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2...

Not sure what the answer is, but I think the odds of getting rid of Dark Money are much better than amending the Constitution to get rid of Super PACs (with all due respect to the Amend Now & Move to Amend groups).