“Plutocrat To Plutocrat”: Did The Koch Brothers Buy Paul Ryan’s Nomination With $100 Million Promise?
Veteran Republican political consultant, unrepentant dirty trickster, and recently reborn libertarian Roger Stone yesterday published a startling accusation against Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney on his personal website, The Stone Zone. According to Stone, the billionaire Koch brothers purchased the Republican vice presidential nomination for Ryan from Romney in late July by promising to fork over an additional $100 million toward “independent expenditure” campaigning for the GOP ticket.
Any such transaction would represent a serious violation of federal election laws and perhaps other statutes, aside from the ethical and character implications for all concerned. Although Stone is not the most reputable figure, to put it mildly, he has been a Republican insider, with access to the party’s top figures, over four decades. His credentials date back to Nixon’s Committee to Reelect The President and continue through the Reagan White House, the hard-fought Bush campaigns, and the Florida fiasco in 2000, when he masterminded the “Brooks Brothers riot” that shut down the Bush-Gore recount in Miami-Dade. Peruse his site and you’ll see his greatest hits and the attention he has drawn from major publications.
I’ve known Roger personally for years and always considered him intelligent and amusing; also extremely dangerous and even erratic. Sometimes I’ve been surprised by how much he knows about the inner-most workings of his party – even when he is clearly persona non grata among the current power elite.
Here is how Stone led his latest post, headlined “The Paul Ryan Selection, “which also delivers an amusing swipe at a certain Fox News analyst:
I’ve waited a few days to lay out my analysis of the selection of Paul Ryan for the VP slot on the Romney ticket. Unlike politicos like Dick Morris who badmouths the selection privately and shills for it publicly, I’ll tell you what I really think. My sources tell me David Koch played a key role in Ryan’s selection and that Koch’s wife Julia had been quietly lobbying for Ryan. The selection was cemented at the July 22nd fundraiser Koch held for Romney at the former’s sumptuous Hamptons estate. Koch pledged $100 million more to C-4 and Super PAC efforts for Romney [in exchange] for Ryan’s selection.
When he mentions “C-4,” of course, Stone is referring to the tax-exempt non-profit groups recognized by the IRS under section 501-C-4 of federal tax law – such as Americans For Prosperity, a group largely backed by the Koch brothers that has so far spent nearly $20 million on this year’s campaign. The C-4 groups, including another known as Crossroads GPS run by Karl Rove, need not disclose their rich donors, while Super PACs do. This year, the right-wing C-4s are outspending all the SuperPACS combined, as Pro Publica reported recently.
As a declared supporter of Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico, Stone is grinding a sizeable ax, as always. He goes on to denigrate the idea that Ryan is a libertarian, despite his declared idolatry of the late Ayn Rand. Not much more can be said about Stone’s stark allegations, unless more evidence emerges to confirm them. But there is nevertheless a ring of candor in Stone’s story, tying the plutocratic Kochs to the plutocratic ticket of Romney-Ryan.
What he has written amounts to a gleeful felony indictment of everyone involved. Will any of them demand a retraction or even issue a denial?
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, August 18, 2012
“Purpose Driven Lies”: Crocodile Tears From The Koch Brothers
They may say otherwise, but the evidence is clear: Republicans had no interest in Obama’s success.
The latest campaign from Americans for Prosperity—the Koch-funded conservative group—is a $7 million ad buy meant to highlight the disappointment of various Obama supporters. The commercial, which runs for one minute, will air on broadcast and cable in 11 battleground states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin. CNN has a few excerpts:
“I had hoped that the new president would bring new jobs–not major layoffs, not people going through major foreclosures on their homes,” one woman says in the ad.
Another voter adds: “He said he was going to cut the deficit in his first term. I’ve seen zero interest in reducing spending. He inherited a bad situation, but he made it worse.”
Piling on, a third voter says: “I still believe in hope and change. I just don’t think Obama is the way to go for that.”
At the Washington Post, Greg Sargent calls this an “emerging GOP tactic for dealing with Obama’s personal popularity.” He paraphrases, “We didn’t want Obama to fail; we shared his high hopes for his presidency; but …”
If Republicans go this route, I hope reporters take a page from Michael Grunwald, who details GOP obstruction of the stimulus in his just-released book The New New Deal, and reveals the extent to which the GOP never intended to work with Obama, regardless of what he did. This anecdote is typical of how Republicans approached Obama from the beginning of his administration:
In early January, the House Republican leadership team held a retreat at an Annapolis inn. Pete Sessions, the new campaign chair, opened his presentation with the political equivalent of an existential question:
“If the purpose of the Majority is to Govern…What is Our Purpose?” […]
“The Purpose of the Minority is to become the Majority.”
The team’s goal would not be promoting Republican policies, or stopping Democratic policies, or even making Democratic bills less offensive to Republicans. Its goal would be taking the gavel back from Speaker Pelosi.
“That is the entire Conference’s Mission,” Sessions wrote.
Grunwald shows how Republicans developed a strategy of maximum obstruction before Obama even took office, and stuck to it throughout the first two years of his presidency. As this election unfolds, conservatives will try to mournfully attack Obama, as if they wanted him to succeed.
They’re lying.
By: Jamelle Bouie, The American Prospect, August 15, 2012
“A Circle Of Corruption”: Guess Who’s Profiting Most From Super PACs?
Candidates may raise the unprecedented sums of political cash being funneled through Super PACs this year, and media strategists may decide how to spend them – but the people who actually wind up pocketing much of the money are America’s television broadcasters. Since the Supreme Court voided limits on political donations in Citizens United, more money than ever is being devoted to negative TV ads. Industry analysts predict that upwards of $3 billion will be spent on political advertising this year – a surge of more than $500 million over 2008.
“Election season has turned into Black Friday for broadcasters,” says Bill Allison of the Sunlight Foundation, which fights for transparency in elections. “It’s just a huge bonanza.”
While TV stations are required by law to offer discounted airtime to politicians, Super PACs have to pay market rates. With these outside groups expected to buy more than half the ads benefiting the Romney campaign, the increased competition to place ads in battleground states only serves to drive up the price. In a key market like Columbus, Ohio, where campaign spots are already airing at a record pace, the ad buys are expected to exceed the haul from 2008, when political ads made up half of all TV spots purchased during the final week of the election.
In essence, broadcasters are now profiteering from a vicious circle of corruption: Politicians are beholden to big donors because campaigns are so expensive, and campaigns are so expensive because they’re fought through television ads. The more cash that chases limited airtime, the more the ads will cost, and the more politicians must lean on deep-pocketed patrons. In short, the dirtier the system, the better for the bottom line at TV stations and cable systems. According to an analysis by Moody’s, political ads are expected to account for as much as seven cents of every dollar broadcasters earn over the full two-year election cycle for 2012.
The influx of political cash also means that TV news divisions have what Allison calls a “huge conflict of interest” when it comes to reporting on campaign finance. The profit motive stifles critical coverage of top donors and meaningful reforms, such as public financing of elections. “Broadcasters have an incentive not to see the system changed,” he says.
But while there’s no hope of curbing campaign spending in the near term, a new FCC rule could soon give the public real-time data about who is profiting from the Super PAC marathon. In April, the commission ruled that affiliates of ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox in the nation’s 50 biggest markets must post their revenue from political ads online, for all to see. (Such records have long been public – just inaccessible, kept in paper form in files at each station.) The reform would help expose some of the “dark money” spending by mega-donors like the Koch brothers, but it’s only a modest start: Many communities in battleground states – like Fort Myers, Florida, and Reno, Nevada – are located in smaller markets that are not covered by the new rule. A study by the Campaign Media Analysis Group suggests that at least 40 percent of spending on over-the-airwaves presidential ads may remain exempt from disclosure.
But the rule’s shortcomings haven’t kept broadcasters and their GOP allies from going all out to stop it. In June, Republicans on the House Financial Services Subcommittee voted to block disclosure and enable donors to operate in secrecy. And on July 10th, the National Association of Broadcasters filed an emergency motion to postpone the rule, arguing that it will allow cable and other competitors to undercut their business. “Shifting even a small percentage of this advertising away from television,” the NAB confessed, would cost TV stations “millions of dollars in revenue.”
The rule is scheduled to go into effect in August – but the NAB move could delay it until well after the election. One bright spot: Time Warner has voluntarily begun posting online records of its political ad buys, even though the new FCC rule doesn’t apply to cable companies. Its records are not sortable by dollar amounts – so the public can’t quickly tally how much money the Obama campaign is spending on, say, ESPN2. But voters can now examine individual ad buys. In Columbus, for example, Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, one of the largest and most notorious dark-money groups, has booked three daytime ads to run on Fox News during the last week of October. The spots may be designed to aid Romney and the GOP, but Time Warner will enjoy a tidy bit of political profiteering: The cable company is charging $24 per ad – a staggering 12 times what the same ads would have cost in May.
By: Tim Dickinson, RollingStone.com, August 6, 2012 (This story is from the August 16th, 2012 issue of Rolling Stone).
“No GOP Moderates Need Apply”: Republican “Robo-Teams” Mindlessly Towing The Line
Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) has had a fair amount of success in his first two years implementing a very conservative agenda. Most notably, Brownback’s tax “reform” plan, which sharply cut income taxes on Kansas’ wealthy while punishing the poor, was signed into law in May.
But it apparently wasn’t quite enough to satisfy the right. We talked earlier this week about a group of congressional Republican moderates — an endangered and ineffectual contingent — feeling increasingly frustrated, but reader R.P. flagged an item out of Kansas, where the GOP is actively purging centrists from their midst.
Frustrated by their inability to achieve some policy goals, conservatives in Republican states are turning against moderate members of their own party, trying to drive them out of state legislatures to clear the way for reshaping government across a wide swath of mid-America controlled by the GOP. […]
The push is most intense in Kansas, where conservatives are attempting to replace a dozen moderate Republican senators who bucked new Gov. Sam Brownback’s move to slash state income taxes.
Greg Smith, a Kansas state representative who’s running for the state Senate, told the AP, “If you don’t believe in that playbook, then why are you on the team?”
What an illustrative quote. The far right is drawing up the plays, and those who disagree, even a little, ought to be replaced with loyal, almost robotic, teammates who will do what they’re told.
In Kansas, this translates into a series of contentious GOP primaries, which will be held early next week, in which right-wing activists try to replace the moderates (or at least those who seem moderate by 2012 standards) in their midst. This includes, the Republican Senate President, Senate Majority Leader, and several key committee chairs whose fealty to the far-right cause has disappointed the party’s base. The Koch brothers and the Kansas Chamber of Commerce are providing the financial resources to fuel the purge.
For his part, Brownback has already turned on many Republican incumbents, throwing his support to primary challengers because the moderates, in his words, help “promote a Democrat [sic] agenda.”
A traditional poli-sci model might suggest this is risky. Most voters consider themselves mainstream and “somewhere in the middle,” and traditionally punish parties that become too extreme.
But in states like Kansas, Republicans figure they have nothing to worry about — the GOP dominates, and winning the primary means winning the seat.
For the activist right, this means there’s very little risk in fighting to replace more reasonable Republicans with ones who’ll mindlessly toe the party line.
In the post-Bush, post-financial-crisis, post-war era, the Republican Party has slowly been confronted with questions about what kind of party it wants to be in the 21st century. It appears the decision has been made: the GOP wants a small, rigid, right-wing party that tolerates very little dissent and even fewer moderates.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 3, 2012
“A Runaway Train”: Corporations Gone Wild In The Year Of The Super PAC
What do Marriott, Waffle House, Orlando Magic, New Balance, Omni Hotels, Charles Schwab, Ritz Carlton, Georgia Pacific, Menards, Dixie, Brawny, and Venetian Hotel Las Vegas have in common? .
These companies and their owners have donated millions to Mitt Romney’s super PAC Restore Our Future, Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, the Koch brothers’ anti-Barack Obama operations, and other purveyors of attack ads.
According to Think Progress, Bill Marriott has given over $1,000,000; so has Omni’s co-founder Robert Rowling; so has Jim Davis of New Balance; so has John Menard. Charles Schwab has contributed at least $250,000. And, of course, the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson are into the super PACs and 501(c)4’s for tens of millions of dollars.
The list is growing larger—more and more companies putting millions into this year’s political race for president, almost all of it on the Republican side, much of it secret. When the dust settles, hundreds of millions of dollars will have been spent to defeat Barack Obama and the Democrats in the Senate and House. Many believe it will top a billion dollars in this election cycle.
The press and pundits believed that after Citizen’s United few corporations would play seriously in this political space. Boy, were they wrong. If anything, the proliferation of executives and businesses that are writing six-figure checks, even seven and eight-figure checks, is astounding.
What can be done about this run-away train? Not much this election cycle. But we need to move on this soon after November.
At the very least, we should make all donations public. No more secret contributions to political groups and organization that skirt the law. There should be legislation brought up in the Congress repeatedly that requires groups to file political contributions and expenditures when a candidate’s name is mentioned in advertising. Make the Republicans vote on this over and over until it is passed. With electronic filing there is no reason that transparency should not be the norm and our process should not be open and honest.
Second, many of these organizations have been given tax-exempt status by the government. If they are given such status they should be investigated if they are engaging in political campaigns. They should be forced to become political organizations or stop hiding their donors under their tax-exempt status.
Finally, we should stop the sham that these groups are independent from the campaigns. There are more often than not interlocking directorates with the same band of consultants, advisers, spokespeople, operatives, contributors, friends, colleagues, associates—for all practical purposes they are one and the same, joined at the hip.
All this adds to the public’s cynicism about politics and campaigns. The sooner we deal with it the better.
By: Peter Fenn, U. S. News and World Report, July 26, 2012
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