America For Sale (Buyers unknown)

[boutons_deux]

Senate Republicans Filibuster DISCLOSE Act

Two years after filibustering the DISCLOSE Act of 2010 to death and blocking any disclosure for who is funding the the independent expenditures enabled by the Supreme Court’s 5-4 Citizens United ruling, Republicans have again blocked transparency. While the 2010 version included other campaign finance reforms, the DISCLOSE Act of 2012 was pared down to only require disclosure of the funders of $10,000-and-larger independent political expenditures. But Republicans, led by former disclosure advocate Sen. Mitch McConnell (KY) still blocked the measure, incredibly calling it “nothing less than an effort by the government itself to expose its critics to harassment and intimidation.” The Senate vote failed on a party-lines 51-44, falling 9 votes short of the needed 60, though Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) voted “no” for procedural reasons.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/07/16/527291/senate-republicans-filibuster-disclose-act/

[boutons_deux]

Key Files on Big-Ticket Political Donations Vanish at Federal Election Commission

The Federal Election Commission has long been the go-to source for tracking political money. So when it starts cleansing politically hot contributions from its files, it matters. Big time.

We have discovered that sometime after January of this year, the FEC deleted a whole set of contributions totaling millions of dollars made during the 2007-2008 election cycle. The most important of these files concern what is now called “dark money” – funds donated to ostensible charities or public interest groups rather parties, candidates or conventional political action committees (PACs). These non-profit groups – which Washington insiders often refer to generically as 501(c)s, after the section of the federal tax code regulating them – use the money to pay for allegedly educational “independent” ads that run outside conventional campaign channels. Such funding has now developed into a gigantic channel for evading disclosure of the donors’ identities and is acutely controversial.

In 2008, however, a substantial number of contributions to such 501(c)s made it into the FEC database. For the agency quietly to remove them almost four years later with no public comment is scandalous. It flouts the agency’s legal mandate to track political money and mocks the whole spirit of what the FEC was set up to do. No less seriously, as legal challenges and public criticism of similar contributions in the 2012 election cycle rise to fever pitch, the FEC’s action wipes out one of the few sources of real evidence about how dark money works. Obviously, the unheralded purge also raises unsettling questions about what else might be going on with the database that scholars and journalists of every persuasion have always relied upon.

http://www.alternet.org/news/156329/revealed:_key_files_on_big-ticket_political_donations_vanish_at_federal_elect ion_commission_

The 1% can give $10Ms to politicians (and their families) in with being IDdentified, but the 99% gotta show an ID to vote.

[boutons_deux]

The Power of Anonymity


Two years ago, Congress came within a single Republican vote in the Senate of following the Supreme Court's advice to require broad disclosure of campaign finance donors. The justices wanted voters to be able to decide for themselves "whether elected officials are 'in the pocket' of so-called moneyed interests."

The court advised such disclosure in its otherwise disastrous Citizens United decision in 2010, which loosed a new wave of unlimited spending on political campaigns. The decision's anticorruption prescription has grown even more compelling as hundreds of millions of dollars in disguise have flooded the 2012 campaigns - a great deal of it washed through organizations that are set up for the particular purpose of hiding the names of the writers of enormous checks.

The ability to follow the money has never been this important since the bagman days of the Watergate scandal. But when the Democratic Senate majority made a fresh attempt to enact a disclosure bill on Monday, the measure was immediately filibustered to death by Republicans, like other versions.

Still, the vote was a chance for the public to see who stands for and against such basic transparency in political spending. The answer: not one Republican showed the courage to break ranks and speak up for disclosure.

Republicans have been the main beneficiaries of corporate and independent spending sprees. The party's lock-step opposition to letting voters see who writes the big checks is an embarrassment to Congress.

Opponents are crying that disclosure violates donors' privacy and favors unions. This is election-year nonsense to give cover to the aggressively partisan groups that pose as "social welfare" organizations but tip the campaign scales heavily with stealth financing.

The Senate measure would require corporations, unions and any other organization paying for election-cycle messages to disclose expenditures of $10,000 or more within 24 hours and identify donors writing checks of $10,000 or more. It would further require reporting of third-party money transfers, a shadow device to hide contributors.

The measure's chief sponsor, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, has tried to win Republican support by eliminating a provision requiring that the top five donors be identified at the end of election commercials.

But Republicans turned their backs, including John McCain, once the great champion of campaign finance reform who has been predicting that "huge scandals" will inevitably flow from Citizens United.

Voters concerned about the big-money distortion of politics now know precisely who put the issue quietly to bed.


http://mobile.nytimes.com/article;jsessionid=0C95F8BE40D2CFB1AF6AD214FB6094C B?a=948755&f=28&sub=Editorial

Tell us again the Dems are EXACTLY EQUIVALENT to the Repugs.

[Clipper Nation]

:lol Acting like the Disclosure Bill isn't a gross violation of privacy
:lol Pretending it wouldn't be used by special interests to find out who's supported the LEAST by moneyed elites and smear them out of office

What happened to the Dems' righteous anger over privacy violations and attacks on civil liberties? Those dried up the second Obama was inaugurated, tbh...

[Winehole23]

Intriguing. I was unaware there was any settled right to influence elections anonymously or any corresponding obligation of the government to protect the cowardice of convictions of those who wish to do so.

[mercos]

Honestly, I don't care about the Disclose Act. I want a constitutional amendment to get big corporate money out of politics. Disclosure doesn't change anything. Most of the big money players make no secret about where there money goes anyway. The mega rich influence peddlers don't care if you know what they do with their money. If the Dems want to do something, they better start campaigning their asses off and get back control of Congress. They need to stop wasting time with these weak bills that aren't going to change anything.

[boutons_deux]

:lol Acting like the Disclosure Bill isn't a gross violation of privacy
:lol Pretending it wouldn't be used by special interests to find out who's supported the LEAST by moneyed elites and smear them out of office

What happened to the Dems' righteous anger over privacy violations and attacks on civil liberties? Those dried up the second Obama was inaugurated, tbh...

SCOTUS said C-U unlimited corporate contributions was protected as FREE SPEECH.

Free Speech where you don't have to SPEAK IN PUBLIC?

Getting "smeared out of office", aka Swift-Boating, is already the norm for the right-wing/REpugs/tea baggers/Fox Repug Propaganda network.

[Spurminator]

Good, I would hate for those poor multi-billionaires to have to deal with the inconvenience of having blogs criticize their political donations.

[EVAY]

Honestly, I don't care about the Disclose Act. I want a constitutional amendment to get big corporate money out of politics. Disclosure doesn't change anything. Most of the big money players make no secret about where there money goes anyway. The mega rich influence peddlers don't care if you know what they do with their money. If the Dems want to do something, they better start campaigning their asses off and get back control of Congress. They need to stop wasting time with these weak bills that aren't going to change anything.

I end up caring about both because 1) I can't believe that the SCOTUS made corporations equal to 'persons', essentially, in my opinion, creating the possibility if not likelihood of an oligarchy running this country (I know, b-d, you've been saying this for a long time...but it hasn't been this true always); and 2) at least I want the oligarchists to have to disclose who they are so I can decide whether or not to try to organize an national boycott against them.

For the protected Super-Pacs, we can't even guarantee that they are Americans donating all the money. For all we know, it could the Saudi Royal family.

[Spurminator]

No matter where you stand on this, it should tell you something that this is one of those few issues where Republicans will show the kind of fervent, uncompromising solidarity to vote unanimously against and filibuster to death. This, an act that would simply reveal their $10K+donors... as opposed to the many other measures brought before the Senate that they don't vote unanimously on or filibuster when they disagree.

[Spurminator]

It would be interesting to review all Senate votes in the past two years to see how many times the Republicans did NOT vote unanimously or filibuster a vote... and ask even the most loyal everyday Republicans how many of those issues they have stronger feelings about than the DISCLOSE Act.

[EVAY]

One of the things that intrigues me about this sort of thing is this: If the people who have the money to spends literally millions on these Super-Pacs (both parties) would actually spend the money creating jobs which is what they say they can't do if their taxes are raised, we could put a lot more people to work in this country.

[boutons_deux]

"people who have the money to spends literally millions on these Super-Pacs"

about $2B spent in 2008 by both parties, pre-C-U.

estimates are that Repug SuperPacs will spend $1.5 - 2 B trying to buy the WH for Gecko.

Even at that price, the return-on-campaign-contribution is fantastic.

[Winehole23]

for now, FEC is directed to make a rule requiring disclosure:


Today’s decision is six years in the making. It stems from a complaint filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a campaign-finance-reform group, with the FEC against Crossroads GPS (https://www.publicintegrity.org/2012/06/21/9168/nonprofit-profile-crossroads-gps), a conservative nonprofit organization that has spent tens of millions of dollars to boost Republican political candidates. crew alleged that Crossroads GPS was violating federal law by keeping its donors secret.



The FEC in 2015 deadlocked 3–3 on whether to investigate Crossroads GPS. In 2016, crew then sued the FEC. Last month, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled for crew. She gave the FEC 45 days to issue a new regulation that would require donor disclosure in accordance with the law.


Crossroads GPS sought an emergency stay from the D.C. Circuit, which declined to grant it. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts stayed the lower court’s decision on Saturday, but the stay was brief: The full Supreme Court vacated Roberts’s stay, allowing Howell’s ruling to stand.

The high court’s action is tempered by two considerations. The decision appears to leave a loophole: Some super pacs (https://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/03/18/14427/merriam-webster-makes-super-pac-official), which must disclose their donors publicly, accept money from nonprofit groups (https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/02/20/21559/how-democrats-use-dark-money-and-win-elections). Conceivably, a super pac could take money from a nonprofit group that doesn’t itself advocate for or against political candidates—meaning the super pac could continue hiding the flesh-and-blood source of the cash funding its efforts, several election lawyers told the Center for Public Integrity (https://www.publicintegrity.org/politics). Also, the original case that prompted today’s action, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington v. Federal Election Commission and Crossroads GPS (https://s3.amazonaws.com/storage.citizensforethics.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/04161001/Crossroads-opinion.pdf), remains under appeal, meaning today’s decision could be temporary—or not.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/09/supreme-court-lets-stand-a-decision-requiring-dark-money-disclosure/570670/

[boutons_deux]

BigDonor will find ways to break the spirit of disclosure rules if not the letter

"lawless" BigDonor oligarchy don't pay no mind to no guvmint laws and rules, they have $Ms to hire whore lawyers to find a way buy whatever politics, rules, laws, they want to buy.