Anti-public financing lawyer James Bopp has filed a lawsuit to make North Carolina abandon part of the “voter-owned elections” program for state judicial candidates. It’s the part that awards candidates in the public program extra money if their privately financed opponents spend beyond a certain limit. But the US Supreme Court has already ruled that [...]
The hostility of too many Tea Party fans toward people who don’t look and act like them is alarming - and dangerous. It flows from a sense of beleaguered superiority and it can produce explosive reactions when these true believers are prodded with wild claims that “our culture” (values, family, country, God, etc.) is under [...]
What happens on September 17? According to an insider, New York’s Wall Street will be “occupied” by an army of rebellious dissidents determined to attack corporate greed and the grip of big money over the nation’s political economy. Who knew? A crowd of 20,000 “leaderless” rebels will camp out and cripple Wall Street as others occupy [...]
Mother Jones magazine has released an audio tape of an exclusive retreat of hard-right millionaires, convened by the now infamous Koch brothers. During the event’s activities, Charles Koch spent a few minutes saluting about 30 donors who had contributed at least a million dollars each in the previous 12 months to the Kochs’ causes – [...]
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 [...]
Rotten news and better news from the NC General Assembly: The bad news is that a bunch of NC lobbyists are giving up to $2,500 each for a state legislator’s campaign fundraising event. That’s especially odd because North Carolina law specifically prohibits a lobbyist from giving state legislators campaign donations. It doesn’t matter if the [...]
The racial bias of too many elected white judges and state legislators continues to undermine America’s promise of fair courts and representative government. The opening of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial is the occasion of a series of essays by the American Constitution Society, including one by Sherrilyn Ifill about elected judges in [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
The John W. Pope Civitas Institute deserves its reputation for biased polling and twisted thinking, but it can sometimes be a useful place to see statistics from a government source presented in a nifty format – in this case, county-by-county voter registration details. (Ironic, right? Civitas roundly trashes the government, including the State Board of [...]