The job of the part of the media that supports Democrats and Obama – let’s be honest, it’s most of them – is starting to coalesce around and about the big killer requirement for anyone who wants to see Obama re-elected: divert people from the essential question “are you better off now than you were four years ago?” by all means necessary.
Which brings us to Katrina Vanden Heuvel’s WaPo op-ed, which appeared in the Strib earlier this week.
Second, the rise of super PAC spending: Among the most devastating consequences of the 2010 Citizens United ruling is the rise of organizations that are not required to disclose their donors but that can recruit and spend unlimited sums in direct support of candidates.
As opposed to the unions, which also recruit and spend fundamentally unlimited money in support of candidates, and had enough clout to get themselves mostly exempted from campaign finance reforms during the Bush years.
That money is apparently juuuust fine.
Thus far, these super PACs have reported spending nearly $7 million. Fred Wertheimer of the watchdog group Democracy 21 told USA Today that the organizations represent “the most dangerous vehicles for corruption in American politics today.”
But not unions – perish the thought – which have their own SuperPAC and have been flooding Washington and every state house with money forever, with no end in sight, and which apparently is not a “dangerous vehicle for corruption”
While super PACs may not coordinate directly with campaigns, there is little means of effectively enforcing that rule.
The treasurer of Mitt Romney’s super PAC, which spent $3.1 million in Iowa running mostly negative ads against his opponents, served as chief financial officer of Romney’s first presidential campaign.
Jon Huntsman’s super PAC, which has spent $1.9 million, is bankrolled, at least in part, by his father. President Barack Obama’s super PAC is run by Bill Burton, his 2008 press secretary and a close adviser who left his White House post to gear up for the election.
The question about super PACs is not whether they will have an impact but how big it will be and whether a people-powered movement can stop them.
…and what SuperPAC will bankroll that “People-Powered” movement.
“Campaign Finance Reform” is, inevitably, an effort to silence conservative speech.
And the only spending Vanden Heuvel cares about is the spending dedicated to sending Barack Obama back to community organizing.
By asking the question: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
Tomorrow – Vanden Heuvel gets really dumb…
Since I no longer read the Red Star, I did not see this piece, but, it is hard to believe that she would be any dumber…oh wait! she’s a liberat! Never mind!
So, can we get Right To Work working in Minnesota? That would be nice.
Shit, I wish it were four years ago.
You should have a thread on the Duluth City Council. They passed a resolution last week calling for the “repeal” of the Citizens United ruling. But they specifically said they only want to repeal the part that applies to private business. They are fine with unlimited contributions by Big Labor.
I like what one counciler said. Before the vote, he left saying “it looks like we are done with city business so I am going home”.
Funny, she neglects to mention the $30 million sunk into Wisconsin to try and flip STATE senate seats. Oh and did I mention they failed.
and she gets dumber Mitch? I find that hard to believe, I look forward to tomorrow’s piece.
Troy, not as long as Crazy Eyes AA is guv.
So because the wicked unions, who speak only for their corrupt bosses, spend wildly to influence my vote, the only reply that a principled conservative movement can make is to spend wildly on ads to influence my vote? So we enter happily into a world of mudgobbing and deadcatting?
And your post seems to imply that big corporate money is always on the side of the moral majority, Austrian economics, the simple life and freedom.
They are more likely the legitimate heirs of the late, great Jay Gould.
“It was the custom when men received nominations to come to me for contributions, and I made them and considered them good paying investments for the company. In a Republican district I was a strong Republican; in a Democratic district I was Democratic, and in doubtful districts I was doubtful. In politics I was an Erie Railroad man all the time.”
As succinctly expressed as it could be.
The entire op-ed consists of strawmen and appeals to authority (in this case the left wing, Soros-financed Brennan Center).
The Strib editors saw it as being a worthy contribution to public discourse.
Vandenheuvel is supposed to one of the smart, intellectual lefties, yet she falls back to the position of demonizing her political opponents.
venden Heuvel’s bio from the wikipedia:
The only reason I looked up Vanden Heuvel on Wikipedia is that she wrote with a signature element of the privileged Left. She pulled up an anecdote about a sympathetic figure, the “96-year-old African-American woman was denied a free voter ID because she didn’t have a copy of her marriage license.”, to act as a prop. Vanden Heuvel doesn’t even bother to mention her name.
More info: http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/10/96-year-old_tennessee_african-american_woman_denied_voter_id_because_she_didnt_have_her_marriage_lic.html
The woman was denied a voter ID because she wanted to vote under a name other than the one she had been voting with for half a century.
Troy clearly you haven’t heard of the axiom, don’t let the fact get in the way of a good story.