Here are recent links for those of you interested in the money behind the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for President, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and the favors he’s done for his big donors. As with other candidates, his new Super PAC could dwarf what he raises himself for the nomination. The Washington Post weighs in on the dangers of these Super PACs, which aren’t independent of the candidate but obvious end runs around the law. Will the FEC or Congress or the courts step in? Not without huge public pressure.
Money in Politics Category
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LOD: Koch-Pope-AFP Money Trail
Tuesday, August 30th, 2011
The video by Brave New Films about the Wake schools controversy is creating it own tussle. The video says Americans for Prosperity, led nationally by the billionaire Koch brothers, spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to promote resegregation and elect a conservative school board in 2009. Dallas Woodhouse, head of the NC chapter of Americans for Prosperity, says these claims are “bald-faced lies.” He says AFP didn’t spend a dime on direct political contributions or for nasty, “electioneering” attack ads, like those it sponsored in 2010 legislative races. However, as Sue Sturgis of the Institute for Southern Studies points out, AFP has been working for years to undermine public education in Wake County and its leaders brag that it deserves partial credit for helping anti-busing parents organize and fan discontent.
The video would be much stronger if it (1) acknowledged the genuine frustrations of parents over student reassignments, year after year, as the school system struggled to keep up with Wake’s incredible growth – ironically caused in part by the school system’s superior reputation; (2) described the investment of Raleigh retailer Art Pope in the multi-year crusade against public education, rather than ignore him for a national smackdown of the Koch brothers; and (3) linked that investment to the manipulation of grassroots dissent into enough momentum to elect ultra-conservatives in Republican-leaning districts to the school board.
Pope’s $15,000 donation to the Wake County Republican Party for the school board election in 2009 is well known, and rather limited, but his investment of $2.2 million through the Pope Foundation to Americans for Prosperity in the past six years seems to have escaped the Brave New Films producers. That’s a lot of money; no wonder Pope is one of the five national board members of AFP. It’s hard to know how much of this money came back to the North Carolina chapter, but it’s significant to see the two periods when Pope’s donations spiked: His foundation gave $425,000 from May through September 2006 when AFP-NC led a fevered, but unsuccessful campaign to defeat a Wake County school bond, and it gave $500,000 in June 2009 as the school board election was getting underway. Following the money, a line repeated in the video, would suggest that the real power behind AFP in North Carolina is not Dallas Woodhouse or the Koch brothers; it’s Art Pope.
LOD: Super PACs Super Donors
Thursday, August 25th, 2011
The Center for Responsive Politics continues to monitor the development of Super PACs, the post-Citizens United creatures that can accept gigantic donations to “independently” support or oppose candidates. CRP says that liberal Super PACs (like those gearing up to support Obama’s re-election) have taken in nearly $8 million in the first half of 2011, with more than 80 percent coming from just 23 donors. Conservative Super PACs (like Karl Rove’s American Crossroads) have pulled in nearly $18 million with more than 80 percent from 35 donors. So that’s $20 million from just 58 donors! Many are listed in the latest report by CRP, with the largest numbers from California, New York and Texas.
LOD: Video of Koch vs. Wake Schools
Monday, August 15th, 2011
A powerful new video from Brave New Films documents the Koch brothers’ takeover of the Wake County school system through Americans for Prosperity and the 2009 school board election. It reveals the links to past segregation rhetoric and the upheaval created by the Koch agenda to destroy public education, equal opportunity, diversity in schools. With so much good video and a big target on the Kochs, it leaves out lots of the story, including the crucial link to Raleigh’s own Art Pope, local patron of Americans for Prosperity, member of its national board, leading financier of NC Republicans, and key strategist in the 2009 election. As Sue Sturgis of the Institute for Southern Studies says in the film, “Follow the money, you can see it, it’s real.” Dallas Woodhouse of NC Americans for Prosperity says his group didn’t directly spend money on the 2009 election, although he carefully doesn’t deny organizing support for the winners, their new plan or their allies running as candidates in this year’s important election.
LOD: Titan’s America: We Know Best
Tuesday, August 9th, 2011
Titan America is back in the news, winning a draft air pollution permit for its proposed cement factory near Wilmington. Citizens in southeastern NC have kept up a vigorous campaign to force the company to play fair, but Titan apparently believes the free market means its competitors should shut up and trust them to do the right thing. The Wilmington Star News says that government officials are largely going along, even though Titan has a record of making misleading statements, if not lying. The NC environmental agency says it “had to issue the draft permit, based on state law and scientific models of the potential impact,” because computer models “showed that plant emissions would not exceed health standards outside the plant’s property line.” But why trust Titan to supply correct information to go into those models? Says the newspaper: “Titan’s actions during this process speak for themselves. In an interview shortly after plans for the plant were announced, Titan officials told the Star-News Editorial Board that it would comply with the new federal standards, even though they had not yet been announced. After the stricter limits were finalized, the Portland Cement Association challenged the rules. Titan’s president is head of that association. More recently, the company filed a slander suit against two vocal critics of the proposed Castle Hayne plant in what has all the appearances of an attempt to bully opponents into silence.” [see video]
LOD: Mystery Donors At Work
Monday, August 8th, 2011
Almost out of nowhere, a Wilmington couple jumped to the top of the list – just below Art Pope and his family – as the largest campaign donors in North Carolina’s 2010 legislative elections. Democracy North Carolina compiled the list of their $242,500 in donations to state political parties and 17 Republican legislative candidates in districts from the coast to mountains. (Many donations are still not in the State Board of Elections’s database because of staff shortages there.) The Wilmington Star News profiled Neil Carmichael (Mike) Bender and his wife Bridgett, and their business partner Jeff Petro, who kicked in another $37,000. They run several businesses, own airplanes, enjoy political access, hate taxes, and they’re ready to contribute heavily in next year’s election. But Mike doesn’t want his picture taken by the Star News. Hmmm. Meanwhile, the secret donor behind a $1 million gift funneled through a shell corporation to a super PAC promoting Mitt Romney’s presidency has been exposed: he’s Edward A. Conard, a financial wheeler-dealer in the firm where Romney once worked. Conard? Bender? Maybe they’re clues to solve the canard of who’s bending our political culture to the breaking point.
LOD: NC Legislator On Dole He Hates
Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011
A two-month investigation by NC Policy Watch reveals that a powerful state legislator has been raking in six-figure paychecks from two government-funded organizations at the same time he’s railing against government waste and spending! Payments to NC House Rules Chair Rep. Stephen LaRoque (R-Kinston) reached $195,000 a year as the head of two economic development nonprofits – the East Carolina Development Company and Piedmont Development Company. The two organizations have received $8 million in federal funds since 1997, and LaRoque has used them to loan government money to his close associates and political allies. Read all the parts of this fascinating series.
LOD: Let the Sunshine In
Wednesday, July 27th, 2011
Democracy North Carolina today awarded 22 state legislators its Sunshine Award for the superior quality of their campaign disclosure reports filed during the 2010 election cycle. The first reports for the 2012 election are due on Friday – it’s the beginning of a super-sized, record breaking cycle. The 22 winners were the only legislators who met several criteria described in a press release that also highlights problems with the lack of resources for auditing reports. Because of staff cutbacks, thousands of reports filed with the State Board of Elections have not been reviewed for compliance with the basic requirements of NC’s disclosure law. The reports for House Speaker Thom Tillis lacked the occupational descriptions for dozens of his donors, going back to 2006, but it turns out his campaign treasurer didn’t realize that information was part of the public filing. Once notified by our questions, he filed amendments with the missing information. Other committees routinely leave out addresses for donors or the purpose of payments or make bigger mistakes that could be corrected by requiring electronic reporting for quicker public access and staff review.
LOD: Wall Street’s Protection Money
Thursday, July 21st, 2011
For the first half of 2011, the single largest political donor to the presidential campaigns of Barak Obama and Mitt Romney is the same: the executives of Goldman Sachs! While the two campaigns split $360,000 given by the execs, Goldman Sachs was investing seven time that much, $2.4 million, to lobby Congress for its agenda: Help the wealthy first, last and always. Other big banks and brokerage firms are investing huge amounts to buy politicians and policy and screw you. If you wonder why the power elite in Washington won’t challenge the hypocrisy of “tax cuts create jobs,” this hush money gives you the answer. Congress and the White House have been helping the top 1% get richer and richer for years, and the rich are not creating jobs. Why would anyone give them more tax favors and special treatment? Because there are rewards for those who do? The consumer finance industry has just showered US Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) with tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations. You’ll recall that McHenry badgered and belittled Elizabeth Warren when she came to testify at his committee about the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that she is setting up for the Obama Administration. Bankers hate the agency and successfully blocked Warren from becoming its new head. It turns out McHenry’s wife works for a firm that prepares reports for financial industry clients about how consumer lenders and bankers never do wrong, always help their customers – and they create Jobs! – so give them less regulation, more tax breaks . . . .
