REALl GOP Reform

[Nbadan]

Well, at least the GOP doesn't try and hide who drives their boats...not quite what people expected when they handed the House to the GOP I think...

House quietly passes tax exemption for megadonors
Source: Politico

The House on Wednesday with little fanfare passed legislation that would protect major donors like the Koch brothers and Tom Steyer from having to pay gift taxes on huge donations to secret money political groups.

The legislation, which now heads to the Senate, is seen by fundraising operatives as removing one of the few remaining potential obstacles to unfettered big-money spending by nonprofit groups registered under a section of the Tax Code — 501(c) — that allows them to shield their donors’ iden ies.

Critics decry such groups as corrupting, but they have played an increasingly prominent role in recent elections, and they’re expected to spend huge sums in 2016 and, while fundraising operatives say most donors do not pay taxes on their donations to so-called 501(c) groups, the law is somewhat ambiguous on whether gift taxes could be assessed. That’s left donors fearing that such gifts could bring scrutiny from the Internal Revenue Service — which, in fact, has launched probes of major groups’ donors in recent years to determine whether they improperly avoided paying gift taxes.

Continued at Link:

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/0...#ixzz3XXfTzlep

[spursncowboys]

Democrats who supported the bill said it merely clarified an area of the law that has not really been enforced.
“The bill codifies existing IRS practice,” said a spokesman for Sander Levin (D-Mich.), ranking member on the House Way and Means Committee, which approved this bill last month. “Right now, for contributions to 501(c)(3)s and 527s, the gift tax does not apply, and there is a moratorium applied to the gift tax on 501(c)(4) donations.”

A coalition of conservative and liberal nonprofit groups and their lawyers on Wednesday sent a letter to members of the House supporting the bill. It asserted that the “application of the gift tax to 501(c)(4) donors raises serious cons utional questions, and threatens to hamstring smaller or start-up citizens’ groups.”
Elizabeth Kingsley, an attorney at Harmon, Curran, Spielberg & Eisenberg, who signed the letter, said the bill merely evens the playing field for donors. She said the ambiguity around the gift tax question put cautious donors at a disadvantage, and benefited those more comfortable taking aggressive positions.

Not as partisan as it seems.

[boutons_deux]

Your and your spin suck, as usual

If the Repugs are proposing it, and passing it, it's 100% partisan in Repug favor

Rapid Rise in Super PACs Dominated by Single Donors

The wealthiest Americans can fly on their own jets, live in gated compounds and watch movies in their own theaters.

More of them also are walling off their political contributions from other big and small players.

A growing number of political committees known as super PACs have become instruments of single donors, according to a ProPublica analysis of federal records. During the 2014 election cycle, $113 million – 16 percent of money raised by all super PACs – went to committees dominated by one donor. That was quadruple their 2012 share.

The rise of single-donor groups is a new example of how changes in campaign finance law are giving outsized influence to a handful of funders.

The trend may continue into 2016. Last week, National Review reported that Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination would be boosted not by one anointed super PAC but four, each controlled by a single donor or donor family.

The Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling helped usher in the era of super PACs. Unlike traditional political action committees, the independent groups can accept donations of any dollar size as long as they don’t coordinate with the campaign of any candidate. Previously, much of the focus in big-money fundraising was on “bundlers” -- volunteers who tap friends and associates for maximum individual contributions of $5,400 to a candidate, then deliver big lump sums directly to the campaigns. Former president George W. Bush awarded his most prolific bundlers special les such as “Ranger” and “Pioneer.”

While bundling intensified the impact of wealthy donors on campaigns, the dollar limits and the need to join with others diluted the influence of any one person. With a super PAC, a donor can single-handedly push a narrower agenda. Last year, National Journal profiled one such donor – a California vineyard owner who helped start the trend by launching his own super PAC and becoming a power player in a Senate race across the country.

Beyond the single-donor groups, big donations are dominant across all kinds of super PACs, according to the analysis. Six-figure contributions from individuals or organizations accounted for almost 50 percent of all super PAC money raised during the last two cycles.

“We are anointing an aristocracy that’s getting a stronger and stronger grip on democracy,” said Miles Rapoport, president of Common Cause, an advocacy group that seeks to reduce the influence of money on politics.

ProPublica’s analysis identified 59 super PACs that received at least 80 percent of their funding from one individual during the 2014 cycle. They raised a total of $113 million, compared with the $33 million raised by the 34 such groups that existed in 2012.

Donors who launch their own PACs are seeking more control over how their money is spent.

And many have complained about the commissions that fundraising consultants take off the top of their donations to outside groups. But the move carries risks if the patron is new to the arena.

http://www.propublica.org/article/ra...ent=&utm_name=

USA democracy Is DEAD!

Human-Americans are totally disenfranchised.

Congress, federal but also red-state level, ignore the values, priorities, concerns. problems of the citizenry, to pander to $$$ providers.

USA is and will continue to be a plutocracy (people run for Congress to get (more) wealthy), an oligarchy ruled by BigFinance, BigCorp, BigDonor.

[CosmicCowboy]

;lmao Boutons

By law a 501(c) is a federally approved no-profit organization and anyone can make a donation and deduct the donation from their income tax.

[boutons_deux]

;lmao Boutons

By law a 501(c) is a federally approved no-profit organization and anyone can make a donation and deduct the donation from their income tax.

If the Repugs are proposing it, and passing it, it's 100% partisan in Repug favor. You legalities are silly. Repugs don't do anything unless it's in their favor AND screwing the Dems. All Repug Politics, All The Time.

[boutons_deux]

The Next Era of Campaign-Finance Craziness Is Already Underway


All these moves point to the next stage in the great unraveling of the presidential campaign-finance system. And they make the few remaining prohibitions against coordination between these “independent” groups and campaigns look trifling, if not absurd.

Outside groups have played influential roles in presidential races for decades. Forerunners of the super PAC include groups like the National Security Political Action Committee, which produced the “Willie Horton” ads against Michael Dukakis in 1988, and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which in 2004 brought false charges that John Kerry lied about his Vietnam War record. That same year, the Democratic-aligned groups America Coming Together and the Media Fund tried to help Kerry with get-out-the-vote operations and campaign ads attacking President George W. Bush.

These groups at least maintained the appearance of distance from the campaigns they were seeking to help, and strategists for those campaigns often complained — with varying degrees of sincerity — that the PACs hurt as much as they helped with their distracting, off-message hit jobs. And in 2004, the Federal Election Commission did fine several outside groups for violating campaign-finance rules.


But after the Supreme Court’s decision in the 2010 case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and other higher-court rulings, super PACs, as they were now called, were free enough to raise and spend unlimited dollars in federal campaigns that Mitt Romney and President Obama officially sanctioned such groups to operate on their behalfs, and even helped them raise money. These super PACs included some former advisers, but the groups still operated in supporting roles, largely sticking to producing and running television ads.

But nobody of Benton’s or Murphy’s prominence within their respective candidates’ circles has been dispatched from the beginning to run an outside group before. This year’s exodus to super PACs suggests that the real action is moving further away from the traditional campaigns — and further outside the decades-old regulatory system devised to insulate politics from the potentially corrosive influence of moneyed interests. “We’re certainly looking to be more sophisticated,” Benton told me last week. “In the past, super PACs ran a lot of TV. We want to run a very, very data-driven, technologically forward, integrated ad campaign with digital ads, direct mail, television, radio and boots on the ground, should fundraising allow.”

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/04/21...-underway.html

America is the oligarchs' toy, the oligarchs' ATM.

[boutons_deux]

Kochs Defend Purchase of Scott Walker




NEW YORK — Koch Industries is defending its acquisition of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker against charges that it overpaid for the Midwestern politician.

After co-owner David Koch revealed that Walker had become a wholly owned subsidiary of Koch Industries, he set off a firestorm of criticism that the company had spent too much for a worthless asset.

“There was absolutely no bidding war for Walker,” an industry analyst familiar with the market value of politicians said. “Even Sheldon Adelson had no interest in acquiring him.”

While Koch Industries did not disclose the purchase price of the Walker subsidiary, it said that Koch Industries would spend nine hundred million dollars between now and November, 2016, for a variety of upgrades to the Wisconsin governor.

In a terse statement, Koch Industries argued, “Scott Walker is a perfect fit with our diversified portfolio of elected officials,” but indicated that, if Walker underperforms, the company would be open to selling him at a later date.

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borow...NjYyMDMzMDIzS0

[Nbadan]

[spurraider21]

as if booboo doesn't spam enough, he spams parody articles too smh

[spursncowboys]

Lol Warren wanting to stop Obama's trade deal, because the unions. I wonder what sign would be?

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Lol Warren wanting to stop Obama's trade deal, because the unions. I wonder what sign would be?

Because NAFTA sure helped us. . . .

[boutons_deux]

If TPP and TTIP become law, America will be ever more and even more ed and able, as BigCorp and capitalists castrate, overpower signatory governments, gutting citizen, worker, patient, environmental regulations down to the least common denominator among countries and suck in $Ts in taxpayer wealth.

[spursncowboys]

Because NAFTA sure helped us. . . .

When is the last time we had a trade agreement with China? Yet they still quadrupled their trade with us, while also manipulating their currency.

[boutons_deux]

When is the last time we had a trade agreement with China? Yet they still quadrupled their trade with us, while also manipulating their currency.

much of their "trade with us" was US mfrs killing US jobs, and building factories in China where labor is much cheaper and regulations essentially non-existent, and then "exporting" the US mfrs products back to USA without import duties.

iow, BigCorp's multi-decade "(trade) globalization" was ALWAYS as scam to screw US labor and regulations with cheaper foreign labor and non-regulation businesses.

TPP and TTIP drive BigCorp's fatal stake deeper into the heart of US labor and manufacturing, while allowing foreign corps to sue USA taxpayers for $100Bs because US regulations, laws prevent them from making (more) profit.

[Winehole23]

When is the last time we had a trade agreement with China? Yet they still quadrupled their trade with us, while also manipulating their currency.

TPP isn't a deal with China, but one with Japan. The US and Japan are 80% of the production of the bloc.

[boutons_deux]

TPP and TTIP aren't really about trade, but about elevating the power of investors, capital, BigCorp above the power of sovereign states.

Obama's insistence the TTP/TTIP are about "trade" is a huge lie. He hasn't engaged, nor addressed Warren's, etc claims about the 24 or so NON-trade chapters in TPP, where the real damage to sovereign countries' taxpayers is enabled.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

When is the last time we had a trade agreement with China? Yet they still quadrupled their trade with us, while also manipulating their currency.

GO WALMART!

[spursncowboys]

TPP isn't a deal with China, but one with Japan. The US and Japan are 80% of the production of the bloc.

Right. I was trying to say that not making a deal doesn't stop the problems that our heros, E. Warren and H. Reed were complaining about.

[Winehole23]

what problems?

[The Reckoning]

can i get some uranium from them if i donate enough?

[boutons_deux]

Right. I was trying to say that not making a deal doesn't stop the problems that our heros, E. Warren and H. Reed were complaining about.

yes, it does a stop the elevation of captialists, BigCorp above that of sovereign states.