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.<\/p>\n
Which brings us to Katrina Vanden Heuvel’s WaPo <\/em>op-ed, which appeared in the Strib <\/em>earlier this week.<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0Second, 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 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.<\/p>\n That money is apparently juuuust fine.<\/p>\n 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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But not unions – perish the thought – which have their own SuperPAC<\/a> and have been flooding Washington<\/a> and every state<\/a> house with money forever, with no end in sight, and which apparently is not a “dangerous vehicle for corruption<\/a>”<\/p>\n While super PACs may not coordinate directly with campaigns, there is little means of effectively enforcing that rule.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n …and what SuperPAC will bankroll that “People-Powered” movement.<\/p>\n “Campaign Finance Reform” is, inevitably, an effort to silence conservative <\/em>speech.<\/p>\n And the only spending Vanden Heuvel cares about is the spending dedicated to sending Barack Obama back to community organizing.<\/p>\n By asking the question: \u00a0“Are you better off than you were four years ago?”<\/p>\n Tomorrow – Vanden Heuvel gets really <\/em>dumb…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-12","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25216"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25262,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25216\/revisions\/25262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}