The good folks at NC Policy Watch have put together a baker’s dozen of targets the new Republican majority aims to destroy when they take their seats in the 2011 NC General Assembly. At the top of the hit list is Fair Elections. The goal of the new majority is apparently to gut public campaign financing [...]
The first thing the mega-millionaires who financed the winners this November will go after is more money for themselves. They’ll call it tax relief for small business, but it’s really a further shift of US resources into the hands of a tiny elite. Nothing exposes the corruption of American politics more plainly than how politicians [...]
“Follow the money. It tells a story – and it’s not a pretty one.” WRAL-TV in Raleigh looks at the spike in special-interest donations pouring into the campaign accounts of Republican leaders in the NC General Assembly in the final two months of the election. The head of the NC Dental Society explains his PAC [...]
The Institute for Southern Studies has another report on Art Pope’s use of corporate and personal donations to spread lies and depress voter turnout by pumping up the “negatives” of state Democratic candidates. This is how you purchase election outcomes through deceit, but of course it didn’t begin with this election cycle and is not [...]
A quick report by Public Citizen points out the significant role of the unprecedented spending by outside groups in US House and Senate contests on November 2. In 58 of the 74 elections where party control changed, the winning candidate got more support from non-party, outside group(s) than the loser. A press release with the [...]
A segment on NPR today exposes a nasty example of public policy for sale to private interests. It turns out that private prison officials, along with a shadowy group nicknamed ALEC, basically wrote Arizona's controversial new anti-immigration law as a revenue generator; they envisioned special prisons for women and children, among other things. Thirty of [...]
Two front-page stories by the Raleigh News & Observer highlight the perspective of the forces dominating this year's election cycle: make voting for poor people harder and the influence of big-money political donors easier. The first story describes Tea Party supporters in Raleigh harassing Chavis Park voters by writing down their names, asking them questions, [...]
The money keeps pouring in, setting all kinds of records – in state legislative races and nationally. Conservative investors who previously shied away from sinking large amounts into elections are writing big fat checks: the buyout of American democracy is on! On the national level, many of the investors have been involved, in one way [...]
The New York Times blows a hole in the myth that the US Chamber of Commerce represents hundreds of thousands of Main Street businesses across America; in fact, only a handful of big corporations are bankrolling the lobby group and its gigantic electioneering operation. NYT researchers pierced the secrecy around the Chamber’s donors, at least [...]
Talk about a conspiracy. The New York Times and Think Progress provide the details of an ongoing series of twice-yearly, four-day strategy sessions held by a Who’s Who of hard-line “free enterprise” champions, billionaire businessmen, front-group consultants, and Glenn Beck provocateurs – all hosted by the super-secretive Koch brothers. The end of the posting on [...]