“The Circle Of Money”: Romney Fund Bankrolled Sheldon Adelson
A fund partially owned by Mitt Romney lent GOP mega donor Sheldon Adelson’s company $3 million, according to hundreds of pages of previously confidential documents obtained by Gawker and published today.
Romney and his wife have millions of dollars invested in a blind trust, which owns dozens of opaque funds and investment vehicles, including one called Sankaty High Yield Partners II LP. The content of the fund and others like it were a mystery before the documents came to light. While there will undoubtedly be more discoveries to come from the cache, one immediate revelation is that Sankaty fund, based in Delaware for tax purposes, lent over $3 million to Las Vegas Sands, the casino company owned by Adelson. The fund made two loans of $2.4 million and $600,000 in 2009 to the Sands. Romney’s IRA held between $250,000 and $500,000 in the partnership, and made $50,000 and $100,000 from it in 2011.
Adelson has become the largest donor to the Republican Party and conservative outside groups, dropping at least $70 million. Adelson initially supported Newt Gingrich in the GOP primary, but switched his allegiance to Romney and has since given $10 million to the main super PAC backing the presumed GOP nominee.
By: Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, August 23, 2012
“I Can’t, I’m Mormon!”: A Special Cause, Mitt Romney’s Pious Baloney On Tax Returns
After months stonewalling on releasing more tax returns, Mitt Romney invoked a brand-new explanation for demurring in an interview with Parade magazine set to hit newsstands this weekend: religion. “Our church doesn’t publish how much people have given [to the LDS Church]. This is done entirely privately. One of the downsides of releasing one’s financial information is that this is now all public, but we had never intended our contributions to be known. It’s a very personal thing between ourselves and our commitment to our God and to our church,” Romney told the magazine when asked about his returns, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
While it’s certainly understandable that Romney would prefer to keep his church giving private, this isn’t really a convincing argument for hiding his returns. For one, he’s not actually hiding anything as the cat’s already out of the bag. We already know how much Romney gave to the Mormon church in 2010 and 2011, the years for which he has released tax returns. Mormons are encouraged to tithe 10 percent of their income and, indeed, Romney gave about that — $4.1 million of the $40 million he earned in those two years. His Tyler Charitable Foundation gave another $4.8 mil to the faith. So if we already know how much he gave in 2010 and 2011, why should any other year be kept secret?
Secondly, the whole reason presidential candidates release tax returns is because former Republican presidential candidate George Romney started the tradition in the late 1960s by releasing 12 years of returns. George Romney was also a Mormon and a leader in the church, but apparently had no problem with how much he had given to the church (he was also Mitt Romney’s father). Over the 12-year period covered by the returns, George and his wife, Lenore Romney, gave 19 percent of their income to the LDS church.
Moreover, most churches (or synagogues or mosques or temples) expect their congregants to donate, and since every presidential nominee since forever has been religious, at least publicly, Romney is asking to be excused from a standard that everyone else has been held to. There’s nothing in his answer that suggests Mormons should have special cause to be exempted, and it’s reasonable to assume that a protestant like Barack Obama or a Methodist like George W. Bush would also prefer to keep their religious giving private, if given their druthers. But they both released their tax returns. (For what it’s worth, Obama was pretty stingy in his religious donations, giving just 1.4 percent of his income.)
If Romney wants to keep the rest of his tax returns private — as he certainly does, and has promised to do — he’ll need to come up with a better reason than this pious baloney, to quote Newt Gingrich.
BY: Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, August 24, 2012
“The Romney-Ryan Emperors Have No Clothes”: The Republican Party Deserves The Todd Akin Mess
I am going to get in trouble for this.
For years many of my Republican friends have admitted to me that they couldn’t give a damn about social issues—abortion, gay marriage, or the Ten Commandments being posted on schools and public buildings. They are contemptuous of the religious right and find many of them “wackos.” In short, the religious right has driven them crazy for years.
But these are political people and they know they need the religious right to activate the Republican base. Ever since the late 1970s and the rise of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, Republicans have made sure they were inside the tent. They were not Ronald Reagan’s cup of tea but he brought them in, as did the Bushes.
But, more and more, the Michele Bachmanns, Paul Ryans, Todd Akins are the Republican Party and some political pros have begun to worry. In fact, a leading voice of the anti-tax conservative movement, Grover Norquist, is known to have contempt for the right wing social activists. He has admitted when his guard was down that he thinks the issues are “nuts.” But he has also said that it is so easy just to push these hot button social issues and boy, off they go, in full gallop!
The problem now—as illustrated by Rep. Todd Akin, a sincere and true believer in these issues, his church, and a strict religious moral code—is the “regular Republicans” who have used these religious activists now want to jettison them or at least keep them quiet. I debated Todd Akin at Harvard a number of years ago—we disagreed heartily but I found him to be a very committed and consistent social conservative. He was not a cynic; he was not going through the motions. He was a believer and he lived his values.
Now, the Republican Party operatives find themselves so wedded to this faction after exploiting it for nearly 30 years that they don’t know what to do when the mechanisms of the party have been taken over by the far right. The Republican Party platform for the last three cycles, including this year, makes no exception for terminating a pregnancy caused by rape and incest. It does not even allow for the life of the mother. Women (and men) are not supposed to notice? The party embraces “personhood” amendments and refuses to support the morning-after pill, again even if a rape is involved. “De-fund Planned Parenthood” is their battle cry.
And no one at this Tampa convention has the guts to speak up. All they do is condemn Todd Akin—because, really, he presents a “political problem.” But they are as quiet as church mice when it comes to amending the Akin anti-abortion platform plank.
Some of these religious conservatives should be hopping mad. They are being played. They are being used by presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. No one in his Boston headquarters wants the public to know that his VP pick Rep. Paul Ryan has been locked at the hip with Todd Akin. Their views are exactly the same on these issues, one slip of the tongue on rape not withstanding. They want the religious right’s money, they want them to work on their campaign, they want them to turn out at the polls, but they want them quiet, behind the curtain. They have no intention of overturning Roe v. Wade, they know that the train has left the station on gay and lesbian rights, they know that tolerance and diversity will rule the day, but they won’t change their party platform because the far right that they used over the past three decades has taken over their party. They do not want the public to know where they stand on these issues, because they know their deficit with women could be 20 points. They could lose the suburban vote, they could further anger young voters, they could be unmasked as the right wing, extremist party that their 2012 platform says they are.
In short, they want Todd Akin and others to leave the limelight right now because that light shows what we all know—the Republican emperors of Romney-Ryan have no clothes. (And we’re not talking about skinny-dipping in the Sea of Galilee!)
By: Peter Fenn, Washington Whispers, U. S. News and World Report, August 23, 2012
“The Akin Plank”: Talking About The Party’s Platform Is The GOP’s New Fireable Offense
At the rate prominent Republicans are turning on Todd Akin this week, you’d think he actually said something to offend them.
When Akin told an interviewer that rape victims don’t need abortion rights because victims of “legitimate rape” don’t get pregnant, he wasn’t going rogue. Instead, he was simply repeating the GOP’s official position on reproductive rights in a really, really tasteless way. If Akin’s example is any guide, straying from right-wing orthodoxy in today’s Republican party is less of a crime than simply calling attention to it.
It’s true that Akin’s bizarre belief that rape victims have ways to “shut that whole thing down” is common only among the fringe of the fringe Right. But the anti-abortion orthodoxy that is now part of the official Republican platform is a direct result of that sort of magical thinking. It helps, when denying reproductive choice to all women, to imagine it only benefits a certain type of abortion-craving bogey-woman who brought this on herself. Sometimes that requires some helpful mythology and weird science to smooth over the reality of women’s lives.
It’s the reality of real people that Republican leaders are desperately trying to avoid. As soon as Akin’s comments hit the national news, prominent Republicans starting calling for him to step out of the Senate race in Missouri. Par for the course, once it became clear that that was the thing to do, Mitt Romney eventually joined the onslaught.
What’s puzzling is that Romney and the others aren’t criticizing the substance of Akin’s remarks. They’re just really angry that he’s making them look bad.
It’s strange, but you almost have to admire the right-wingers who are standing up for Akin. At least they’re being honest about what their real position is. Akin’s fellow unhinged congressman Steve King of Iowa backed up his friend’s comments, saying he had never “heard of” someone getting pregnant through statutory rape or incest. Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh said Akin was “wrong” but that he couldn’t understand why his fellow Republicans were in a “rush to pile on.”
Here is what Romney and his fellow Republicans need to do if they want to actually convince Americans that they respect women: stop catering to the wishes of anti-choice extremists and start listening to women.
But I wouldn’t hold my breath. Two days into this controversy the GOP platform committee approved the “Akin plank” codifying the no-exception policy that Republicans up for election were trying to sweep under the rug. Two weeks after the Akin plank is officially endorsed by the party, vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, an unflinching supporter of the policy, will speak at the Values Voter Summit, an annual confab supported by some of the most extreme anti-choice groups out there. Two of those groups, the American Family Association and the Family Research Council, were among the first to defend Akin. AFA spokesman Bryan Fischer even went as far as to compare Akin himself to a victim of rape.
Romney and his party are trying to run from Akin while holding on to everything he stands for. It’s a tough trick to pull off. So far, they aren’t getting away with it.
By: Michael B. Keegan, The Huffington Post Blog, August 23, 2012
“Who’s Paying For What?”: The Flood Of Secret Campaign Cash Is Not All Citizens United
The emergence of nonprofits [1] as the leading conduit for anonymous spending in this year’s presidential campaign is often attributed to the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United [2] ruling, which opened the money spigot, allowing corporations and unions to buy ads urging people to vote for or against specific candidates.
But a closer look [3] shows that there are several reasons that tens of millions of dollars of secret money are flooding this year’s campaign. Actions — and inaction — by both the Federal Election Commission and the Internal Revenue Service have contributed just as much to the flood of tens of millions of dollars of secret money into the 2012 campaign. Congress did not act on a bill that would have required disclosure after Citizens United and other court rulings opened the door to secret political spending.
To understand how all this happened, it’s worth returning to Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion [4] in Citizens United, and the political system the court envisioned. In the decision’s key finding, Kennedy and four other justices said the First Amendment entitled corporations and unions to the same unlimited rights of political speech and spending as any citizen.
But in a less-noticed portion of the ruling, Kennedy and seven of his colleagues upheld disclosure rules and emphasized the role of transparency. Undue corporate or union influence on elections, he wrote, could be addressed by informed voters and shareholders who would instantly access campaign finance facts from their laptops or smart phones.
“With the advent of the Internet,” Kennedy wrote, “prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions and supporters.”
If a company wasted money on politics, the justices agreed, its shareholders could use the publicly available information to “determine whether their corporation’s political speech advances the corporation’s interest in making profits.” Separately, the sunshine of public disclosure will let “citizens see whether elected officials are ‘in the pocket’ of so-called moneyed interests.”
“The First Amendment protects political speech; and disclosure permits citizens and shareholders to react to the speech of corporate entities in a proper way,” Kennedy concluded. “This transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages.”
A very different system has taken shape. As our reporting this week showed, money for political ads is pouring into non-profits ostensibly dedicated to promoting social welfare. These groups are paying for many of the negative ads clogging the airwaves, but are not disclosing their donors.
As a result, it’s entirely unclear whether these ads are being paid for by unions and corporations empowered by Citizens United or by wealthy individuals.
Separately, corporations have resisted calls [5] to list their donations to political social welfare nonprofits or other political spending. So far, the Securities and Exchange Commission has not responded to a rulemaking petition [6] asking for it to develop rules to require public companies to disclose that spending.
The Supreme Court’s opening of the door to hefty flows of secret money began years before Citizens United. In a 2007 case (PDF) [7] involving a nonprofit called Wisconsin Right to Life [8], the justices ruled that unions and corporations could buy ads that mentioned a candidate in the weeks before an election as long as the commercials stopped short of directly advocating the candidate’s election or defeat. Even if these ads, known as “electioneering communications,” clearly attacked the positions of one candidate, they were permissible unless they were “susceptible of no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate.”
The flood began and the identities of hardly any of the donors were disclosed. The reason? A decision by the FEC, the oversight panel with three Republicans and three Democrats who frequently deadlock.
After Wisconsin Right to Life, the FEC told social welfare nonprofits that they had to disclose only if the donors specifically earmarked the money for political ads. “It proved to be the exception that swallowed the rule,” said Paul S. Ryan, general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit, non-partisan group that tracks campaign finance. The day the FEC adopted this rule, Ryan wrote on his blog that it would allow massive amounts of secret money into politics. He proved correct.
In 2006, ads bought by groups that didn’t disclose their donors amounted to less than 2 percent of outside spending, excluding party committees, research by the Center for Responsive Politics [9] shows. By 2008, that number hit 25 percent; by 2010, more than 40 percent.
All of this raises an intriguing question: Was Kennedy aware when he drafted the January 2010 Citizens United opinion that nonprofits were being widely used to avoid public disclosure of political spending?
At the least, critics say, Kennedy was poorly informed.
“Justice Kennedy was living in a fantasy land,” said Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a professor at Stetson University College of Law who tracks campaign finance issues. “I wish the world he envisaged exists. It doesn’t.”
Instead, this is the disclosure world that exists: Someone who gives up to $2,500 to the campaign of President Barack Obama or challenger Mitt Romney will have his or her name, address and profession listed on the FEC website for all to see. But that same person can give $1 million or more to a social welfare group that buys ads supporting or attacking those same candidates and stay anonymous.
This year, a federal judge struck down the FEC rule stemming from Wisconsin Right to Life. The FEC announced in July that major donors to electioneering communications — ads that focus on issues without directly advocating for candidates — would have to be named.
Already, groups are looking for work-arounds. They’re running different kinds of ads. Some will name other social welfare nonprofits as their donors.
The loose oversight by the FEC helped bring so much anonymous money into campaign finance. But no one expects the commission to take a more assertive role anytime soon. Dan Backer, a lawyer who represents several conservative nonprofits, likened the deadlocked agency to a “cute bunny” while referring to the IRS as a “500-pound gorilla.”
The IRS or Congress are more plausible avenues for change, experts say. Ryan said he was hopeful that Congress and the IRS might some day limit ads from groups that don’t disclose their donors. The 2012 campaign, though, appears to be a lost cause. “I think this election will be mired and perhaps overwhelmed by secret money,” Ryan said.
By: Stephen Engelberg and Kim Barker, ProPublica, August 23, 2012
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