Justin's Political Corner
(via Is Your Team’s Owner a Major League Asshole? | Mother Jones)
In early February, a US Patent and Trademark Office court in Washington, DC, confirmed what baseball fans had suspected for more than a century: The New York Yankees are evil. After an internet startup, Evil Empire Inc., had attempted to trademark the phrase “Baseball’s Evil Empire,” the Yankees filed an injunction, and the panel of judges agreed. As the court put it, “The record shows that there is only one Evil Empire in baseball and it is the New York Yankees.” If only it were true. The ranks of Major League Baseball owners include some of the richest men—and they are almost exclusively white males—in the country, as likely to open their wallets for a super-PAC as they are a top-shelf free agent. Viewed in the context of the competition, with its anti-discrimination settlements and SEC investigations, the Yankees are, like their Opening Day roster, fairly pedestrian.
So where does your team’s ownership rank? We took a stab at it, analyzing each franchise by its level of political activity (based on campaign donations and office-seeking) and relative degree of evil—copyrighted or not. Read below the matrix for the full breakdown.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court won’t hear an appeal of a decision upholding a century-old ban on corporate campaign contributions in federal elections.
The high court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from William P. Danielczyk Jr. and Eugene R. Biagi, who wanted the courts to say the ban violates corporations’ free-speech rights.
A federal judge agreed with them, but the 4th U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., overturned that decision. The Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision struck down a prohibition against corporate spending on campaign activities by independent groups but left untouched the ban on direct contributions to candidates.
This comes one week after the justices decided to hear a challenge to limits on how much an individual can give to political campaigns. In that case, an Alabama man argues that it’s unconstitutional to stop a donor from giving more than $46,200 to political candidates and $70,800 to political committees and PACs.
Shaun McCutcheon says he accepts that he can only give $2,500 to a single candidate but says he should be able to give that amount to as many GOP candidates as he wants.
The justices will hear that case later this year.
h/t: TPM
Supreme Court Takes Campaign Finance Case, Will Rule On Contribution Limits
Citizens United on Steroids?
WASHINGTON — A former congressional candidate is taking the Internal Revenue Service to court for its failure to enforce its laws governing political activity by nonprofits organized under the social welfare section of the tax code.
Dr. David Gill, the 2012 Democratic candidate in Illinois’ 13th district, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) are suing the IRS for allowing the “dark money” nonprofit American Action Network to spend $2.6 million against Gill while enjoying tax exemption and donor anonymity.
Gill and CREW have alleged that the IRS improperly interpreted tax law when it promulgated regulations for social welfare nonprofits, stating that they must be “primarily” focused on social welfare. In contrast, the federal statute states that these nonprofits must be “exclusively” focused on social welfare.
This interpretation has been highly controversial ever since the 2010 Citizen United decision allowed corporations — including nonprofit corporations — and unions to spend freely on elections. Since then, social welfare nonprofits have become a huge force in federal elections, with spending exceeding $300 million in the 2012 campaign.
“It is offensive that the IRS turns a blind eye to reality and allows partisan political groups to seek refuge in a provision of the IRS code that is meant to govern organizations such as volunteer firefighter companies and homeowner organizations,” Dr. Gill said.
The IRS told HuffPost that they do not have a comment and typically don’t comment on pending litigation.
Dr. Gill said he believes that his razor-thin defeat on Nov. 6, 2012, was due to misinformation about his support for Medicare spread by American Action Network’s ads. One ad stated that Gill’s support for single-payer health care meant that he wanted to eliminate Medicare.
“As I went around the district, I was told that people who were going to vote for me changed their minds to save Medicare,” Gill said.
Gill lost by just 1,002 votes to Republican Rodney Davis. The Davis and Gill campaigns combined to spend $2.7 million on the entire election, just $100,000 more than the spending by American Action Network. The only group spending more than American Action Network on the race was the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which spent nearly $2.9 million on the race.
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to delve once again into the controversial issue of limits on money in politics.
This time, it’s the limits placed by federal law on how much an individual can contribute to candidates and political organizations.
The court today agreed to take up a challenge brought by an Alabama man who claims it’s unconstitutional to prevent him from giving more than $46,200 to candidates and $70,800 to PACs and political committees. He does not challenge the limit on contributions to an individual candidate, but he does claim it’s unconstitutional to prevent him from contributing to as many candidates as he wishes.
h/t: NBCNews.com
The non-partisan Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed complaints Thursday with both the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) alleging that Karl Rove and his secretive Crossroads GPS violated election law and may have engaged in a criminal conspiracy to do so.
Under campaign finance law and FEC regulations, 501(c)(4) groups, like Crossroads GPS, can raise unlimited funds from wealthy individuals and corporations without having to disclose their donors. The only time donors to these secretive groups must be disclosed is when donors give more than $200 explicitly “for the purpose of furthering an independent expenditure.”
CREW also notes that, in a 2011 letter to the FEC, Crossroads GPS said that it “understands the applicable reporting regulations” and that, should it receive “any contributions that are required to be reported,” it would do so as required. Given this, CREW argues, the violations “were deliberate” and “are subject to criminal as well as civil penalties.”Crossroads GPS may also be in hot water for its apparent failure to register as a charity in Virginia, as required by law.
When Karl Rove’s Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies (GPS) formed in 2010, it established its official address in Warrenton, VA, and registered with the Internal Revenue Service a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) “social welfare organization.” It apparently did not, however, register as a charitable organization with the Commonwealth of Virginia, as appears was legally required.
According to state code, non-profit groups that intend to solicit contributions must first register with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Office of Charitable and Regulatory Programs. Groups must pay an annual fee ($325 for groups raising over $1 million annually), provide basic information about their operations, and must sign statements affirming that no funds “have been or will knowingly be used, directly or indirectly, to benefit or provide support, in cash or in kind, to terrorists, terrorist organizations, terrorist activities, or the family members of any terrorist.”
The Virginia law explicitly exempts political campaign committees that are “required by state or federal law to file a report or statement of contributions and expenditures.” Crossroads GPS has consistently kept its contributors secret as it has raised and spent tens of millions of dollars against Democratic candidates.
Most outside spending this election was by conservative groups
Our latest analysis on spending in Election 2012 finds more than a few big numbers:
- That whole pie above represents spending by super PACs and nonprofits groups, from Jan. 1, 2011 to Oct. 28th, 2012: $840 million.
- The $577 million from conservative groups is roughly 69 percent of the pie.
- Liberal groups spent $237 million, or about 28 percent.
- Each and every dollar of that pie was made possible the ‘Citizens United’ ruling.
Reporters and analysts at Center for Public Integrity and the Center for Responsive Politics came together to bring you these (almost) final elections numbers, see the rest of our work here.
(via opensecretsdc)
ATLANTA — Former President Jimmy Carter issued a blistering indictment of the U.S. electoral process Tuesday, saying it is shot through with “financial corruption” that threatens American democracy.
Speaking at the international human rights center that bears his name, Carter said “we have one of the worst election processes in the world right in the United States of America, and it’s almost entirely because of the excessive influx of money.”
The 39th president lamented a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows unlimited contributions to third-party groups that don’t have to disclose their donors.
The dynamic is fed, Carter said, by an income tax code that exacerbates the gap between the wealthiest Americans and the rest of the electorate, allowing the rich even greater influence over public discourse and electioneering.
He added that he hopes the “Supreme Court will reverse that stupid ruling,” referring to the case known as Citizens United.
Carter praised Mexico and several countries where Carter Center staff have monitored publicly financed elections, and he said the United States should return to publicly financed elections for president. The system technically is still in place, but it is voluntary and both President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney have chosen to bypass the taxpayer money because they can amass far more on their own.
“You know how much I raised to run against Gerald Ford? Zero,” Carter said, referring to his 1976 general election opponent. “You know how much I raised to run against Ronald Reagan? Zero. You know how much will be raised this year by all presidential, Senate and House campaigns? $6 billion. That’s 6,000 millions.”
The United States, Carter said, has “less influence” over Middle East nations and diplomacy in that region than it has had at any time since Israel was established as a nation-state in 1948. “Our country’s government has basically abandoned the effort,” Carter said, adding that he still supports a two-state solution for Palestine and Israel.
He said he hopes Israel resists any urge to strike Iran “on its own,” and he discouraged Obama from drawing a “line in the sand” that Iran would almost certainly cross.
In Syria, Carter said civil war will worsen as other nations in the region flood the participants with weapons. “There is little hope of good things coming out of Syria any time soon,” he said.
h/t: HuffPo
When Citizens United was originally passed striking down federal limits on campaign spending by corporations and unions, it effectively ended elections of the people, by the people and for the people and ceded control to corporations. As per Justice Kennedy, “independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption and the appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy.”
Bullshit.
Today on reddit Obama suggested a constitutional amendment to Citizens United might be the answer to stop the unprincipled, unethical, and contaminating influence of super pacs and dirty money.
Money has always been a factor in politics, but we are seeing something new in the no-holds barred flow of seven and eight figure checks, most undisclosed, into super-PACs; they fundamentally threaten to overwhelm the political process over the long run and drown out the voices of ordinary citizens. We need to start with passing the Disclose Act that is already written and been sponsored in Congress – to at least force disclosure of who is giving to who. We should also pass legislation prohibiting the bundling of campaign contributions from lobbyists. Over the longer term, I think we need to seriously consider mobilizing a constitutional amendment process to overturn Citizens United (assuming the Supreme Court doesn’t revisit it). Even if the amendment process falls short, it can shine a spotlight of the super-PAC phenomenon and help apply pressure for change.
h/t: AddictingInfo.org
The Republican National Convention Tuesday adopted a party platform that embraces the highly unpopular Citizens United ruling, opposes meaningful campaign finance disclosure, and actually calls for allowing donors to give more money to politicians.
In a section entitled “The First Amendment: Speech that is Protected” the platform states:
The rights of citizenship do not stop at the ballot box. They include the free speech right to devote one’s resources to whatever cause or candidate one supports. We oppose any restrictions or conditions that would discourage Americans from exercising their constitutional right to enter the political fray or limit their commitment to their ideals. As a result, we support repeal of the remaining sections of McCain- Feingold, support either raising or repealing contribution limits, and oppose passage of the DISCLOSE Act or any similar legislation designed to vitiate the Supreme Court’s recent decisions protecting political speech in Wisconsin Right to Life v. Federal Election Commission and Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
But by opposing the DISCLOSE Act and other efforts to disclose who pays for independent expenditures, the GOP is endorsing a system in which voters cannot determine and evaluate who pays for political speech.
With groups like Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spending millions on ads attacking Democrats without disclosing any of their donors, it is no wonder that the Republicans are embracing the status quo.
WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has what he says is an informed explanation for why Mitt Romney refuses to release additional tax returns. According a Bain investor, Reid charged, Romney didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Huffington Post from his office on Capitol Hill, Reid saved some of his toughest words for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Romney couldn’t make it through a Senate confirmation process as a mere Cabinet nominee, the majority leader insisted, owing to the opaqueness of his personal finances.
“His poor father must be so embarrassed about his son,” Reid said, in reference to George Romney’s standard-setting decision to turn over 12 years of tax returns when he ran for president in the late 1960s.Saying he had “no problem with somebody being really, really wealthy,” Reid sat up in his chair a bit before stirring the pot further. A month or so ago, he said, a person who had invested with Bain Capital called his office.
“Harry, he didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years,” Reid recounted the person as saying.
“He didn’t pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that’s true? Well, I’m not certain,” said Reid. “But obviously he can’t release those tax returns. How would it look?
“You guys have said his wealth is $250 million,” Reid went on. “Not a chance in the world. It’s a lot more than that. I mean, you do pretty well if you don’t pay taxes for 10 years when you’re making millions and millions of dollars.”But there is limited political downside to the type of open speculation that Reid is making, so long as Romney refuses to budge on the issue of his tax returns. Increasingly, other Democrats are growing more assertive in their goading. In an appearance at the Center for American Progress on Tuesday, former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland argued that he could openly speculate as to whether Romney “is a tax avoider” or “cheat” because “his behavior invites such speculation.”
Romney recently told ABC News that he couldn’t recall if there were years when he paid below the 13.9 percent tax rate that he paid in 2010. Although he said he was “happy to go back and look,” his campaign declined to do just that.
“We feel comfortable in the Senate,” he said. “Where the problem is, is this: Because of the Citizens United decision, Karl Rove and the Republicans are looking forward to a breakfast the day after the election. They are going to assemble 17 angry old white men for breakfast, some of them will slobber in their food, some will have scrambled eggs, some will have oatmeal, their teeth are gone. But these 17 angry old white men will say, ‘Hey, we just bought America. Wasn’t so bad. We still have a whole lot of money left.’”
“So that’s the only problem we have with our candidates,” Reid concluded, suggesting that virtually everything, his leadership position included, could be swept away by outside cash.
For all the headlines and hand-wringing about super-PACs, it is dark-money nonprofits like Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS and Americans for Prosperity that dominate the political money wars. These politically oriented groups, which keep their donors secret, outspent super-PACs 3-to-2 in the 2010 elections. Through the spring of 2012, 91 percent of advertising by independent groups came from nonprofits and big business trade groups. And a growing pile of evidence suggests that it’s these nonprofits, notsuper-PACs, hauling in the bulk of corporate political cash.
But come Saturday, the dark-money nonprofits face a dilemma. A high-profile court case known asVan Hollen v. FEC threatens to shine an unwelcome beam of sunlight on donors bankrolling these organizations. Nothing’s stopping Crossroads GPS or AFP from running more “issue” ads hitting Obama and other Democrats (that is, ads that don’t explicitly say “vote for” or “vote against”). Except now nonprofits will have to reveal who funded those spots.
ark-money nonprofits don’t want to name names. Their pitch to donors includes the promise of anonymity and a shield from public scrutiny. This means that Crossroads GPS and other politically active nonprofits—which aren’t supposed to make politicking their primary purpose—have to rethink their ad strategy, election experts say. Do they shift money to super-PACs? Go dark in the months before the election? Find another loophole to run ads and keep their donors secret?
Tax and election law experts say that, short of shutting down, any new strategy carries significant risks. Run-ins with the Internal Revenue Service or the Federal Election Commission, the federal elections watchdog, could be on the horizon. “It’s a tough strategic choice for these groups,” says Joseph Birkenstock, an election law attorney and former chief counsel at the Democratic National Committee.
Here’s the quick-and-dirty version of how nonprofits including Crossroads GPS, Americans for Prosperity, and pro-Obama Priorities USA, among others, ended up in this bind. Until recently, nonprofits had exploited a federal loophole allowing them to run issue ads without disclosing the sources of their funding. These so-called social welfare organizations may also run ads directly backing or opposing candidates, but can’t run too many of them at the risk of running afoul of the IRS for being too political.
In 2011, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and pro-reform advocacy groups sued the Federal Election Commission to close that loophole. This March, a federal district court judge agreed with Van Hollen, and a second federal judge refused to stay that decision. The loophole was gone. (The case is currently on appeal.)
In other words, the rule book has changed mid-election for politically active nonprofits, and the first effects will be felt Saturday. Now, if AFP or Priorities USA runs a TV or radio ad mentioning Obama or Romney without endorsing or opposing a candidate, the group’s donors must be named. Starting in early September, if they mention any federal candidate, donors must be named.
One dark-money heavyweight, the US Chamber of Commerce, has already said it will change its game plan. As Chamber president Tom Donohue explained in May, the Chamber will no longer run the thinly veiled “issue” ads mentioning a candidate that it did in 2010 and 2011. Instead, the group—which says it’ll spend $50 million during the 2012 cycle—will run ads outright urging voters to oppose or support a candidate. The Chamber can get away with this because, after decades of conservatives and libertarians chipping away at the law, a loophole opened letting donors escape disclosure for “vote for” and “vote against” ads by nonprofit groups.
The conservative group Americans For Prosperity may have taken a step that eventually forces it to reveal its donor base, which has so far remained anonymous thanks to federal law, according to the Las Vegas Sun.
But after it became involved in a Nevada Senate race last month, a state law could mean the Koch-funded group loses its ability to avail of federal protections against disclosure. Democrats are said to be pressing the issue.
h/t: TPM LiveWire
Bill Enyart, the Democrat nominee for the 12th Congressional District, on Thursday released to the media copies of his individual tax returns from 2001 to 2011.
“In the interest of transparency and open government, I am releasing my tax returns today and calling on my opponent to do the same thing,” Enyart said in a statement.
n April, Enyart and his wife, Annette Eckert, a retired St. Clair County Circuit Court judge, filed a joint 2011 tax return that shows the couple earned a combined income of $380,587, including:
* $197,892 in wages
* $152,034 in pensions and annuities
* $12,000 in individualized retirement account distributions.
Enyart and his wife Annette Eckert paid $104,864 in joint federal income taxes on a gross income, according to a copy of their 2011 tax return provided to the News Democrat.
The couple reported overpaying $14,584 in federal income taxes and sought a refund of $9,584, according to their return.
In addition, Enyart and Eckert paid a total of $16,921 in state income, local property and other taxes, according to their return.
Enyart also pledged to turn over his tax returns all the way back to 1982 as soon as they arrive from the Internal Revenue Service.
Enyart called on Republican nominee Jason Plummer “to offer the same level of transparency so voters will have a better idea of who we are and what we stand for.”
Plummer has so far rejected all calls by opponents leading up to the March 20 GOP primary and Democrats to release his tax returns.
A statement from Plummer was not available by Thursday. But Plummer has responded to previous calls for the release of his returns by stating that “voters want to know where you get your money, where your money is invested, and what kind of financial relationships you have. They should want to know these things, it is tremendously important information.”
Read more here: http://www.bnd.com/2012/07/05/2235936/12th-us-house-district-nominee.html#storylink=cpyPlummer’s family owns the Edwardsville-based R.P. Lumber chain. He won the GOP nomination in 2010 be the running mate last year of state Sen. Bill Brady, who lost the race for governor to Democrat Pat Quinn. Plummer and his family contributed about $1.3 million in his effort to win the lieutenant governor’s nomination.
Plummer’s family has extensive real estate holdings, including office buildings and shopping centers.
h/t: BND.com
