“The Increasingly Confusing World Of Campaign Finance”: Koch-Backed Small Business Front Group Added To ALEC Board
The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), a big business-funded group that claims to be the “nation’s leading small business association,” has joined the corporate board of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or “ALEC.” It marks perhaps the final step towards the NFIB abandoning any pretense of being a nonpartisan representative of small business owners.
ALEC has been described as a “corporate bill mill” that allows big business interests to peddle influence with ALEC’s legislative members — who are almost entirely Republican — and push “model” legislation that tends to benefit the corporate bottom line or advance an ideological agenda. The NFIB has long been an ALEC member, and this week joined the ALEC corporate governing board, which meets jointly with the ALEC legislative board and helps set the agenda and fundraise for the organization.
The announcement of the NFIB’s board membership came the same day the New York Times revealed that the the health insurance lobby, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), laundered $1.6 million through the NFIB’s dark money advocacy arm in 2012 to attack Democratic Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas. This is on top of the $850,000 that the insurance group gave to NFIB the year before.
The New York Times wrote:
“The largely hidden role of the for-profit health insurers highlights the increasingly confusing world of campaign finance, as nonprofit groups such as the National Federation of Independent Business and its Voice of Free Enterprise program can keep their donor lists secret and then present their carefully fashioned message, financed in large part by big business, as if it is coming from, perhaps, a more sympathetic voice.”
Even the small business owner featured in the NFIB’s ad, John Parke of Little Rock, Ark., said he didn’t know the message was being bankrolled by the insurance industry — but says he should have been told.
“It is relevant to understanding who is sponsoring the message,” he said.
AHIP represents dozens of insurance companies, some of which are ALEC members, such as Guarantee Trust (which chairs ALEC’s Health & Human Services Task Force) and State Farm (which is also part of the ALEC corporate board).
Yet the insurance lobby donation wasn’t the NFIB’s biggest grant in 2012, which is the most recent year that records are available. The biggest donor to NFIB and its affiliated groups was the Koch brothers-backed Freedom Partners, an outfit that Politico described as “the Koch brothers’ secret bank.” Freedom Partners gave NFIB and its affiliates $2.5 million in 2012. NFIB received an additional $135,000 that year from another Koch funding outfit, the Center to Protect Patient Rights.
A Koch representative also sits on the ALEC corporate board.
A small business owner who joins the NFIB pays $195. Which means the Koch network’s donations to NFIB in 2012 was the equivalent of over 13,500 individual memberships. AHIP’s money amounted to more than 8,200 memberships.
Which raises the question, who does the NFIB speak for?
Small business owners run the gamut politically. Around a third say they are Republican, one-third Democrats, and one-third independent. Yet the NFIB’s political spending has not been representative of the small business owners it claims to represent. Its political donations go almost entirely to Republicans. And the NFIB’s funding sources place it squarely within the right-wing infrastructure.
The NFIB’s partisan and big business ties became evident in 2010, when it launched the lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act that eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court. That year, Karl Rove’s dark money outfit Crossroads GPS gave the NFIB $3.7 million. The Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation (which also donates to ALEC) chipped-in an additional $100,000.
Prior to the healthcare lawsuit, the biggest contribution to the NFIB from an outside source was $21,000.
By: Brendan Fisher, PR Watch, The Center for Media and Democracy, August 1, 2014
“Just Something To Think About”: 15 Major Decisions This Year From A Partisan Supreme Court
Since Monday’s dramatic Supreme Court decisions, I’ve seen a few people recall that back in 2000, a lot of liberals justified voting for Ralph Nader (or not voting at all) on the basis that there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between George W. Bush and Al Gore. Bush appointed John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the high court, and it’s safe to say that Gore’s nominees would have been somewhat different, so it’s unlikely we’ll be hearing that argument again. Wherever you place your priorities in terms of the actions of the executive branch, at this point in history, the nominating of Supreme Court justices has become extremely partisan, in a way that isn’t necessarily bad.
What I mean is that whatever the preferences of a particular president, his or her nominee will have to fit within a predictable mold set by the president’s party. For Republicans, that probably means someone who served in a previous Republican president’s Justice Department (as both Roberts and Alito did in Reagan’s), is a member of the Federalist Society, may have done some corporate work on the side, and spent a few years issuing safely conservative rulings on an appellate court. For Democrats, it probably means someone who is an academic (like Elena Kagan), or if not, someone whose record on the bench gives a clear indication of their leanings (like Sonia Sotomayor)—and is more likely to be a woman or a member of a racial or ethnic minority.
As George W. Bush found out when he tried to nominate his good buddy Harriet Miers, the president’s party won’t tolerate someone without a clear record—they want to be sure that they’ll get exactly what they expect from a justice. That means that there will be no surprises for anybody (not that people can’t be fooled a little bit; with a friendly smile, a soothing voice, and some patently disingenuous baseball metaphors, John Roberts convinced a lot of Democrats he might be something other than the intensely ideological justice he has been).
As I said, this isn’t necessarily bad; a justice like David Souter who surprises everyone is only pleasing if the surprise works to your side’s benefit. But now that the Supreme Court’s term has ended in dramatic fashion, it’s worth taking a moment to look back on what they did over the past year, in case anyone is harboring any lingering doubts about the importance of the Court. Here are some of the major decisions, and a quick glance at them shows just how much impact the Supreme Court has on all of our lives:
- McCutcheon v. FEC: The law limiting the total amount a donor can give to multiple political candidates was struck down.
- Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action: Michigan’s law banning affirmative action at state universities is constitutional.
- EPA v. EME Homer City Generation: The EPA’s rules curtailing air pollution that travels from one state to another are constitutional.
- Greece, NY v. Galloway: Local officials can open public meetings with sectarian prayers.
- Hall v. Florida: Florida’s rule that anyone with an IQ over 70 can be executed is unconstitutional.
- Wood v. Moss: The Secret Service was justified in moving protesters opposed to the president farther from where he was having lunch than protesters supporting the president.
- Abramski v. U.S.: “Straw purchases” of guns are illegal.
- Lane v. Franks: A whistleblower can’t be fired for testifying in court.
- Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA: The Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions is upheld.
- Riley v. California: Police need a warrant to search your cell phone.
- ABC v. Aereo: Aereo’s model of streaming over-the-air broadcasts to subscribers was declared illegal.
- McCullen v. Coakley: A 35-foot buffer zone to prevent harassment outside abortion clinics was struck down.
- NLRB v. Canning: The president can’t make recess appointments during pro forma Senate sessions.
- Harris v. Quinn: Home health care workers paid by the state don’t have to contribute to unions that negotiate on their behalf.
- Burwell v. Hobby Lobby: “Closely held” companies can deny their employees health coverage for contraception.
These are just some of the 74 opinions the Court delivered during this term. They range over a broad swath of commercial, political, and personal activity. And while there were a few cases where the Court was unanimous, as a general rule the more important a case is, the more likely there is to be a partisan division whose outcome is determined by who appointed the current nine justices.
Three of the current justices (Scalia, Kennedy, and Breyer) are in their 70s, and one (Ginsberg) is in her 80s. The next president, particularly if he or she serves two terms, is probably going to have the opportunity to reshape the Court for decades to come. Just something to think about.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, July 1, 2014
“In The Name Of Free Speech”: The Supreme Court Has Given Us A Government Of, By, And For The 1 Percent
In case after case, the five conservative justices on the Supreme Court have held unconstitutional all efforts—state as well as federal—to restrain the corrosive influence of limitless individual and corporate expenditures and contributions in our electoral process. They do this in the name of free speech.
In their view, the First Amendment absolutely guarantees the wealthiest Americans the right to spend as much as they like to manipulate the American political system to their advantage. According to these justices, as long as the wealthiest Americans do not directly bribe politicians to vote in their favor, the Constitution demands the flow of money is beyond regulation and that the rest of us must simply let the chips fall where they may.
This conception of the First Amendment and of the American constitutional system is truly perverse. By defining “corruption” so narrowly, these justices have missed the central point of self-governance—our elected representatives are supposed to be responsive to the will of the majority.
I don’t mean to suggest, of course, that our elected officials are supposed to slavishly obey the will of the majority. Sometimes, the majority is wrong, and it is the responsibility of our elected officials—and our judges—to reject certain policies even if they are supported by the majority.
What our elected representatives are absolutely not supposed to do, however, is to reject the values and preferences of the majority of our citizens in order to curry favor with a small cohort of extremely wealthy individuals who are eager to leverage their wealth to gain control of our government. And this is so even if their money corrupts the system in ways that are more subtle than overt bribes. The vast majority of Americans understand this point clearly. Our five conservative justices do not.
Of course, this would not matter very much if the wealthiest Americans shared the values and preferences of the majority of American citizens. If their values and preferences were aligned with those of most other citizens, then this would not be much of a problem. In fact, though, there is no such alignment. On a broad range of issues, there is in fact a sharp divergence between the views of the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans and the other 99 percent.
Recent surveys reveal, for example, that 78 percent of Americans believe that government should guarantee a minimum wage high enough to keep a worker’s family above the poverty level, but only 40 percent of the wealthiest Americans agree; 87 percent of Americans believe that government should spend whatever is necessary to ensure that our children can attend good public schools, but only 35 percent of the wealthiest Americans agree; 81 percent of Americans believe that a top priority of government should be to protect the jobs of American workers, but only 29 percent of the wealthiest Americans agree; 68 percent of Americans believe that government should take steps to ensure that every American who wants to work has the opportunity to do so, but only 19 percent of very wealthiest Americans agree; 78 percent of Americans believe that our government should ensure that students who cannot afford to go to college can nonetheless manage to do so, but only 28 percent of the wealthiest Americans agree.
Still, none of this would matter if the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans had only 1 percent of the influence in the political process. It is natural, after all, that people disagree about these sorts of issues, it is natural that rich people might hold different views on certain issues than people who are not rich, and it is quite proper for these issues to be worked out through the political process.
What is distressing, however, is that our political system does not work that way. Because of the extraordinary power of money in the electoral process, and thanks to the decisions of our five conservative justices, the very wealthiest Americans have a wildly disproportionate influence on our political process.
According to a recent Russell Sage Foundation study, almost 70 percent of wealthy Americans contribute regularly to political candidates, roughly half are in regular contact with members of Congress, and more than a fifth affirmatively “bundle” their contributions with other wealthy individuals. In the 2012 election cycle, a total of 99 Americans (mostly billionaires) provided 60 percent of all the individual Super PAC money spent by candidates.
Of course, none of this would matter if money did not affect outcomes. But it does. In 2012, 84 percent of the House candidates and 67 percent of the Senate candidates who spent more money than their opponents won their elections. Although money cannot dictate the outcome of elections, it matters, and it matters a lot—which is why candidates spend inordinate amounts of time scrambling to raise it and why the wealthiest Americans spend it so “generously” to elect their favored candidates.
But even this might not matter if our elected representatives disregarded the source of their campaign funds and, once elected, sought to represent the interests of their constituents—rather than the interests of their largest donors. Unfortunately, recent research (PDF) by the political scientists Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin I. Page of Northwestern University shows that it doesn’t work that way.
To the contrary, what they found is that, although average Americans tend to get the policies they want when those policies correspond with the interests of the wealthiest Americans, when their views diverge from those of the wealthiest Americans, they usually lose and the preferences of the wealthiest Americans carry the day. Most of the time, in other words, the 1 percent gets its way. Indeed, as Gilens and Page observe, when the preferences of the average American conflict with the preferences of the top 1 percent, “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near—zero,… impact upon public policy.”
In rather sobering terms, Gilens and Page conclude that, although Americans “enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular election, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread [opportunity to vote], we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.”
And this, say our five conservative justices, is demanded by “freedom of speech.” This is so, they insist, despite the fact that the First Amendment was designed, first and foremost, to preserve, protect, and support an effective system of democratic governance.
As James Madison wrote in Federalist 52, the whole point of our system of governance is to make our elected officials dependent on the will of “the people”—not on the will of the “top one percent.” What we are witnessing is a severe and unprincipled corruption of the American political system, and it is mortifying that this corruption is being carried out not by self-interested politicians, but by the justices of the Supreme Court—in the name of the First Amendment. Can the irony really be lost on them?
By: Geoffrey R. Stone, The Daily Beast, June 3, 2014
“An Invitation To Oligarchy”: McCutcheon, And The Vicious Cycle Of Concentrated Wealth And Political Power
If wealth and income weren’t already so concentrated in the hands of a few, the shameful “McCutcheon” decision by the five Republican appointees to the Supreme Court wouldn’t be as dangerous. But by taking “Citizen’s United” one step further and effectively eviscerating campaign finance laws, the Court has issued an invitation to oligarchy.
Almost limitless political donations coupled with America’s dramatically widening inequality create a vicious cycle in which the wealthy buy votes that lower their taxes, give them bailouts and subsidies, and deregulate their businesses – thereby making them even wealthier and capable of buying even more votes. Corruption breeds more corruption.
That the richest four hundred Americans now have more wealth than the poorest 150 million Americans put together, the wealthiest 1 percent own over 35 percent of the nation’s private assets, and 95 percent of all the economic gains since the start of the recovery in 2009 have gone to the top 1 percent — all of this is cause for worry, and not just because it means the middle class lacks the purchasing power necessary to get the economy out of first gear.
It is also worrisome because such great concentrations of wealth so readily compound themselves through politics, rigging the game in their favor and against everyone else. “McCutcheon” merely accelerates this vicious cycle.
As Thomas Piketty shows in his monumental “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” this was the pattern in advanced economies through much of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. And it is coming to be the pattern once again.
Picketty is pessimistic that much can be done to reverse it (his sweeping economic data suggest that slow growth will almost automatically concentrate great wealth in a relatively few hands). But he disregards the political upheavals and reforms that such wealth concentrations often inspire — such as America’s populist revolts of the 1890s followed by the progressive era, or the German socialist movement in the 1870s followed by Otto von Bismarck’s creation of the first welfare state.
In America of the late nineteenth century, the lackeys of robber barons literally deposited sacks of money on the desks of pliant legislators, prompting the great jurist Louis Brandeis to note that the nation had a choice: “We can have a democracy or we can have great wealth in the hands of a few,” he said. “But we cannot have both.”
Soon thereafter America made the choice. Public outrage gave birth to the nation’s first campaign finance laws, along with the first progressive income tax. The trusts were broken up and regulations imposed to bar impure food and drugs. Several states enacted America’s first labor protections, including the 40-hour workweek.
The question is when do we reach another tipping point, and what happens then?
By: Robert Reich, The Robert Reich Blog, April 3, 2014
“Ted Cruz’s Exploitative New Sham”: What “Drafting” Him To Run For President Really Means
“It is time to Draft Ted Cruz for president,” says RedState diarist “razshafer,” and to that end, Raz has established RunTedRun.com, and an affiliated Draft Ted Cruz for President PAC. Raz is, Dave Weigel explains, Ted Cruz’s (now former) regional director Raz Shafer, and not just some person using Cruz’s name to convince conservatives to send along their lucrative email addresses.
Here is part of Shafer’s pitch:
I know there are other candidates who may run as conservatives, but I believe Ted Cruz has demonstrated that he’s the only consistent conservative who will do what it takes to roll back Barack Obama’s agenda. He’s the only one who has the passion, principles, and courage needed to deliver real results for Americans.
I’ve never spoken to Ted about him running for president and I honestly don’t know if he will do it, but I do know he won’t succeed unless freedom-loving Americans like you and me begin organizing this effort now.
Ted Cruz is the people’s candidate and we need to be the ones driving the effort to elect him.
So if you’re ready to be proud of your vote again and you agree that Ted Cruz should run for president, please do three things:
Go to RunTedRun.com and sign the official Draft Ted Cruz for President petition.
Urge your friends and family to join you.
Donate whatever you can to help us spread the word and build support.
My advice, even if you do support Ted Cruz and think he should run for president, is don’t do any of this. It is a waste of your time and you will be exploited. Your name and contact information will be sold. You will have no effect whatsoever on Cruz’s decision to run for president or not. Your monetary donation will have no effect whatsoever on Ted Cruz’s potential 2016 electoral chances.
Unless you have a lot of money, and giving that money to politicians is how you gain access to those politicians in order to convince them to advance your agenda, most of the time you shouldn’t give money to politicians. Especially credible presidential candidates and sitting members of Congress. Mainly because most presidential candidates and sitting members of Congress are awful, but also because generally they already have a lot of money, have access to more money, and don’t need yours. (Again, this all assumes you’re not very rich. The very rich waste plenty of money on losers and dumb causes, but they can afford it. Plus, many of their political investments show some pretty impressive returns.)
You really shouldn’t donate money — or give away your contact information — to shady (or even reputable!) organizations devoted to “drafting” someone or other to run for president. Especially if the person they are drafting is probably already going to run and doesn’t need some sort of pseudo-grass-roots demonstration of mass appeal and fundraising ability. Ted Cruz knows he is popular and can raise money and he probably will at least pretend to run for president, unless he decides it would be more lucrative to just be a right-wing media star, in which case you have still wasted your money.
This isn’t just about Ted Cruz! Hillary Clinton is almost definitely running for president too, and she really doesn’t need your support. She has a vast fundraising network and national campaign experience; you don’t need to sign a petition (or, god forbid, write a check) to nudge her toward deciding to run again. She has already done extensive polling on the subject of whether Americans are “ready for Hillary,” and (I can’t stress this enough) she has very rich friends who will write her much bigger checks than you will.
Sometimes, these PACs or other groups dedicated to drafting someone to run for office are truly aimed at convincing reluctant candidates that they have enough already existing support to make a presidential campaign feasible. In that case, your name and donation could make a real difference! And then you end up with Wesley Clark 2004. But for the most part, national politicians don’t need or deserve your money, and people running officially unaffiliated outside groups shouldn’t be gifted your valuable data. Don’t draft anyone.
By: Alex Parene, Salon, March 20, 2014
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