April 2012
29 posts
Daily Beast reports:
Mitt Romney held a high-dollar fundraiser Thursday night at the home of John Paulson, the controversial hedge-fund billionaire who made a fortune shorting the housing market and subprime mortgages in 2007.
The article goes on to mention that Paulson, one of the country’s wealthiest people, is also a donor to Romney’s super PAC. He’s not just any donor, though—he’s one of the biggest. In fact, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, Paulson has donated $1 million so far to the Romney-aligned Restore Our Future:
It’s hard to say super PAC fundraising won’t influence a candidate when the same donors are hosting high-dollar fundraisers for the candidate that super PAC supports.
Citizen Action of New York Executive Director Karen Scharff and Public Campaign Action Fund President Nick Nyhart appeared on The Capitol Pressroom today to talk about the Fair Elections campaign in New York. Give it a listen!
Former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-NY), one of the country’s leading voices for reforming our broken political system, has a great op-ed in the New York Daily News today:
In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court issued the Citizens United ruling, which is doing more damage to our democracy than any decision in modern American history. In 2012, led by Gov. Cuomo, New York has a chance to fight back by enacting state-based, publicly funded campaign reforms.
Passing such reforms would do more than just benefit New Yorkers — it could ignite a wave of changes in other states, advancing the kind of national movement that, to date, has been smothered by corrupting corporate interests.
He’s right. And that’s why so many national organizations are getting involved in this effort. Feingold concludes:
So until Citizens United is overturned and the influence of these obstructionists is forcefully repudiated, it is up to states to provide an effective counter to the exploding corporate influence over our elections. Cuomo and New York are well positioned to lead that charge. The challenges New York faces are certainly significant, but the stakes are too high not to try.
From Sunlight Foundation:
Attention Obama donors: Here’s a chance to completely max out your gifts to the president’s campaign all at once:
Even we jaded chroniclers of campaign cash grabs are dazzled by the ask for becoming a Conference Chair at the Annual National Women’s Issues Conference in DC . It’s the most eye popping of a series of fundraisers that signal a definitive ramp-up of the president’s fundraising campaign.
The $75,800 requested contribution the highest we’ve ever recorded at Party Time. And it’s artfully divided among political committees so as not to violate FEC limits. The fine print explains the dizzying array of slicing and dicing.
Get out your Amex!
We need clean, fair elections — where no one’s right to vote can be taken away, and where money doesn’t buy you your own member of Congress. We must ban anonymous political influence, slam shut the lobbyists’ revolving door in D.C., and publicly finance elections. Immigrants who want to…
