Posts tagged elections
Holding Politicians Accountable
The Nation: Why Are Conservatives Trying to Destroy the Voting Rights Act?
It’s going be the case that the more super-PACs invest in elections, the more negative those elections will be. They’re the ones doing the dirty work.
Los Angeles Times: 2012 campaign set to cost a record $6 billion
“Accelerating spending by outside groups in the final weeks of the 2012 campaign will drive total spending on federal elections this cycle to a record $6 billion, according to a new analysis by the nonpartisan research group Center for Responsive Politics.
“That tops the record set in 2008 by $700 million, making this campaign the most expensive in U.S history.”
The period of time that remains is going to be totally supercharged in terms of fundraising. It’s an absolute blizzard. A tsunami. It’s completely and utterly intense.
Mother Jones: Follow the Dark Money
The down and dirty history of secret spending, PACs gone wild, and the epic four-decade fight over the only kind of political capital that matters.
Conservative interest groups have dumped well over $20 million into congressional races so far this year, outspending their liberal opponents 4 to 1 and setting off a growing panic among Democrats struggling to regain the House and hold on to their slim majority in the Senate.
A game-changer
The New York Times had this front-page story this morning on a big, bold campaign to pass Fair Elections-style reform in New York State:
An unusual and well-heeled coalition, trying to tap public anger over the flood of money into politics, is pushing to enact a public financing system for elections in New York State.
The backers include media moguls — Barry Diller and Chris Hughes, a founder of Facebook — as well as investment bankers, unions, MoveOn.org, the restaurateur Danny Meyer and the philanthropist David Rockefeller Sr.
They say New York, which they call a symbol of institutionalized corruption, could become a national model for the effort to free elections from the grip of big money. The campaign will start next week with mailings to the constituents of four state senators.
Public Campaign Action Fund will play a role in the fight, as the article states, sending direct mail pieces to a handful of districts, urging constituents to contact their Senator to support reform. Stay tuned for more!
It’s absurd. It’s almost absurd to the point of being offensive.
“Let there be no doubt where Wall Street’s political loyalties lie: Of all the money the securities and investment industry has poured into the 2012 presidential contest so far — to the candidates and the super PACs behind them — an unambiguous 92 percent has gone to the GOP, according to a new Center for Responsive Politics analysis.” - CRP.
What Goldman Teaches Us About Washington
Yesterday, the New York Times published an op-ed by a (former) Goldman Sachs employee about how the company had lost its way. PCAF’s David Donnelly says that it can teach us a lot about Washington:
“More than anything else, Smith’s unflinching take-down of the unethical turn at Goldman to serve themselves rather than their clients was what struck me.
“Our political system functions in exactly the same way.”
