What can those new Super PACs do with their money. Stephen Colbert's ad with presidential candidate Buddy Roemer gives you the clue. Meanwhile, Larry Lessig of Rootstrikers is joining with Dylan Ratigan's "Get Money Out" to create a new organization to work against special-interest control of government: United Republic. Lessig also has a new book out about the corrupting [...]
Following the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, the Federal Election Commission relaxed more of its rules to regulate political spending. Wealthy individuals and trade groups, as well as corporations and unions, now have a wide variety of ways to exert even more influence over an election’s outcome. The New York Times boils the campaign finance [...]
What does it mean to have elections about ideas and people instead of big money and mud? Read this great story of the nation’s pioneering Clean Elections program after a decade in action. Candidates for the state legislature in Maine have a real alternative to the private money chase that turns well-meaning lawmakers into professional [...]
Sign this petition: http://bit.ly/cut-the-strings-petition. And then pass this link along to 4 others.
The New Yorker’s profile of Art Pope last week helped pull back the curtain to reveal more about the 40 million dollar man prodding the right-wing’s recent successes in North Carolina. Rachel Maddow/MSNBC followed with a long segment that put his 2010 electoral victories in a national context for 2012 (jump ahead 7 minutes for [...]
Following up Friday’s LOD, here’s the link to the in-depth profile of Art Pope, his mind, money and rise to power. The New Yorker is known for its long and comprehensive pieces, and this one lives up to the reputation. It’s titled “State for Sale.” See also links to the analysis by the Institute for [...]
The Oct. 10 edition of The New Yorker magazine features an in-depth look at North Carolina’s most politically powerful unelected individual – J. Arthur “Art” Pope, chain-store retailer and Republican patron. One measure of Pope’s power comes from an accounting of his political spending in a set of two charts prepared by Democracy North Carolina [...]
Two national campaign reform groups are asking the IRS to take away the tax-exempt status of 501(c)(4) organizations that are electioneering shells, not genuine “social welfare” organizations as required by law. The letter challenges four Republican- and Democratic-leaning non-profits. Democracy NC has promoted this approach to cope with the expanded use of non-profits after the [...]
Two more developments in the evolving world after the Citizens United decision: One is a legislative response by the Congressional brain trust of Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD). They have introduced a bill that calls for an amendment to the US Constitution to give Congress and the states authority to regulate [...]
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 [...]