Campaign Finance

President Obama seems pretty pissed about the decision by the Supreme Court to open the flood gates on corporate money into the political arena:

With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics. It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans. This ruling gives the special interests and their lobbyists even more power in Washington — while undermining the influence of average Americans who make small contributions to support their preferred candidates.

That’s why I am instructing my Administration to get to work immediately with Congress on this issue. We are going to talk with bipartisan Congressional leaders to develop a forceful response to this decision. The public interest requires nothing less.

The bipartisan talk really gets me here. The only Republican I have heard bash the decision so far is Olympia Snowe. The rest  seem rather giddy about it. Here’s a list of some reactions from GOP leaders:

– Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX): “It is about a nonprofit group’s ability to speak about the public issue. I can’t think of a more fundamental First Amendment issue. … [The ruling could] open up resources that have not previously been available [for Republicans].” [NYT]

– Rep. Steve King (R-IA): “The Constitution protects the rights of citizens and employers to express their viewpoints on political issues. Today’s Supreme Court decision affirms the Bill of Rights and is a victory for liberty and free speech.” [Statement]

– Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN): “If the freedom of speech means anything, it means protecting the right of private citizens to voice opposition or support for their elected representatives. The fact that the Court overturned a 20-year precedent speaks volumes about the importance of this issue.” [Statement]

– Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY): The court took a step toward “restoring the First Amendment rights [of corporations and unions]. … By previously denying this right, the government was picking winners and losers.” [AP]

– RNC Chairman Michael Steele: “Today’s decision by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. FEC, serves as an affirmation of the constitutional rights provided to Americans under the first amendment. Free speech strengthens our democracy.” [Statement]

So we are back where we were when we talked bipartisan support about health care – Olympia Snowe. You can also be certain the reach of Wall Street will stop some Democrats for voting for such a reform and given the lack of leadership Democrats have right now, it doesn’t appear likely we will get any new law to limit the money. We will hear another round of crying about “we don’t have 60 votes” while Harry Reid capitulates on everything and doesn’t even force a filibuster. This is what a losing party looks like when they are in control.

The Supreme Court has just removed campaign donation restrictions on corporations:

The Supreme Court has ruled that corporations may spend freely to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress, easing decades-old limits on their participation in federal campaigns.

By a 5-4 vote, the court on Thursday overturned a 20-year-old ruling that said corporations can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to pay for their own campaign ads. The decision, which almost certainly will also allow labor unions to participate more freely in campaigns, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.

[SNIP]

However, Justice John Paul Stevens, dissenting from the main holding, said, "The court's ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation."

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor joined Stevens' dissent, parts of which he read aloud in the courtroom.

The conservatives on the court seem hell bent on transferring the power from the people to corporate America. The Democrats have said they will put through new restrictions, but I highly doubt it. They are caving to everything right now and why should this be any different. I’m sure if a bill hits the Senate then Harry Reid will just buckle as usual.

It looks like John Boehner has a problem with accurately filing paperwork required under the FEC:

Since 1996, Boehner's congressional campaign committee has received 63 letters from the Federal Election Commission requesting "additional information" to correct seeming errors in reports the committee submitted.

That total surpasses similar FEC requests to Ohio's 17 other representatives. Rep. Steven LaTourette, R-Bainbridge Township, is second with 40.

Instead of addressing the issue, Boehner’s people decided to take the approach of a juvenile:

"There is zero comparison between an administration using fictitious data to sell a failing 'stimulus' and a campaign that files amendments to keep its FEC reports as accurate, updated, and transparent as possible," said Don Seymour, a spokesman for Boehner's campaign committee.

They couldn’t even own up to their mistakes? This really would have been a non-story if they didn’t jump on the “Timmy did it to mom” defense. Instead Boehner has now proved that he doesn’t have what it takes to lead by not being able to accept his own responsibility.

Again from NY-23:

We crunched the FEC contribution numbers this afternoon to discover that 95 percent of Hoffman’s donations came from individuals and PACs based outside of the district. (Hoffman himself doesn’t even live in NY-23.) Only $12,360 of the $265,341 he’s raised came from potential constituents. Hoffman collected money from donors in 35 states. Of the total 146 donors, only 22 were actually from within the district he hopes to represent. The campaign’s biggest backer is the Washington-based Club for Growth, accounting for more than one-third of all fundraising ($83,260).

So only 5% of the money he raised was actually from people he would represent. Like I always said – it’s not a democracy, it’s an auction. This just cements that notion in stone.

The Washington Post is reporting that it is:

Democratic political committees have seen a decline in their fundraising fortunes this year, a result of complacency among their rank-and-file donors and a de facto boycott by many of their wealthiest givers, who have been put off by the party's harsh rhetoric about big business.

The trend is a marked reversal from recent history, in which Democrats have erased the GOP's long-standing fundraising advantage. In the first six months of 2009, Democratic campaign committees' receipts have dropped compared with the same period two years earlier.

There very well could be some frustration by Democratic donors that they feel “left out” in Washington. We worked to bring our party back to power, only to see them bow to the very people we worked to defeat.

Speaking for a personal point, I used to be one to donate. I haven’t done that in awhile, and have no plans to. I feel like the Democrats are snubbing their noses at their base for one, but another big reason is the economic down turn. I don’t have that additional $25 or $50 laying around to give. That alone could be another reason for the downturn.

Overall I highly doubt that fundraising will be what it was a couple of years ago, but I also believe that the Democrats will have to work a lot harder to sell themselves to their donors and attempt to regain some trust that has been lost lately.

Health care should have been a huge rallying point for Democratic donors and the base, instead the Democratic leaders in Congress have alienated that base by giving in to the right and their lies/smears. This is the poorest performance indicator in politics, and if the Democrats become a minority in 2011 then so be it – they made their own grave. That is a sentiment not unique to me, but one I hear more and more every day.

Not a real shocker here, but it turns out that a lot of the TARP recipients are lining the pockets of our leaders through political donations:

In recent filings with the Federal Election Commission, the political action committee for Bank of America (which got $15 billion in bailout money) sent out $24,500 in the first two months of 2009, including $1,500 to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and another $15,000 to members of the House and Senate banking panels. Citigroup ($25 billion) dished out $29,620, including $2,500 to House GOP Whip Eric Cantor, who also got $10,000 from UBS which, while not a TARP recipient, got $5 billion in bailout funds as an AIG "counterparty."

With this kind of behavior, it’s no wonder that we are seeing plans that sound good and backed by leading economists fail in Congress. The problem is that we have no real fix for this. Are we going to see lawmakers cut off their own money train? If you think that will happen then I got some ocean front property in Ohio to sell you.

This also isn’t a partisan problem, it’s a systematic one. To right this major wrong we have to look seriously at redoing our campaign finance laws. Of course with the current people in Washington, loopholes are a given. Perhaps the only real way to get something done with the status quo is for some rogue member of Congress to introduce strict legislation limiting these donations, and then going out on a massive media blitz. That would help put enough pressure on law makers from their constituents that it might work.

The better plan is to start cleaning house. We need new blood in Congress who hasn’t felt the taint of the money train, but just to run against an incumbent takes a large sum of money, so there again you are entering this vicious cycle.

What we really need is publicly funded campaigns. Take the money factor out of the whole process. It would level the playing field, allowing more people to run for higher offices and give us an infusion of new thinking. If the public outrage over the AIG bonuses could be rechanneled to this, then we might be able to push fixes for far more problems.

Barack Obama shattered all records and use of the Internet:

Barack Obama raised half a billion dollars online in his 21-month campaign for the White House, dramatically ushering in a new digital era in presidential fundraising.

In an exclusive interview with The Post, members of the vaunted Triple O, Obama's online operation, broke down the numbers: 3 million donors made a total of 6.5 million donations online adding up to more than $500 million. Of those 6.5 million donations, 6 million were in increments of $100 or less. The average online donation was $80, and the average Obama donor gave more than once.

Totally amazing, and it shows what is possible when you have someone willing to seize the benefits of technology.

Yup - today is the day that churches decided they no longer have to follow the law in the United States and 30 ministers across the U.S. plan on endorsing a candidate from the pulpit. Hopefully tomorrow will be the day that these churches also must start paying taxes. They are not above the law and must be held liable for their actions.

Obama sets another record in fund raising. He also added 500,000 new donors.

Just another example of how McCain says one thing and does another:

Given Senator John McCain’s signature stance on campaign finance reform, it was not surprising that he backed legislation last year requiring presidential candidates to pay the actual cost of flying on corporate jets. The law, which requires campaigns to pay charter rates when using such jets rather than cheaper first-class fares, was intended to reduce the influence of lobbyists and create a level financial playing field.

But over a seven-month period beginning last summer, Mr. McCain’s cash-short campaign gave itself an advantage by using a corporate jet owned by a company headed by his wife, Cindy McCain, according to public records. For five of those months, the plane was used almost exclusively for campaign-related purposes, those records show.

Mr. McCain’s campaign paid a total of $241,149 for the use of that plane from last August through February, records show. That amount is approximately the cost of chartering a similar jet for a month or two, according to industry estimates.

Straight talk takes another hairpin curve. Of course the MSM will brush this under the rug. I guess it's just another "senior moment".

Her campaign is massive debt:

Barack Obama began the month of April with a 5-1 cash advantage over a debt-saddled Hillary Rodham Clinton, setting the stage for his lopsided spending in the crucial primary state of Pennsylvania.

Financial reports filed Sunday by the Democratic presidential candidates with the Federal Election Commission show Clinton had $10.3 million in debts at the start of the month and only about $9 million cash on hand for the primaries. Obama reported having $42 million for the primary.

(emphasis added)

So how viable will she be against John McCain in the general if she is already this far in the red? Obama has proven his ability to raise record amounts of money. Going against the right wing noise machine, it takes money to be louder. Obama can afford to be the loudest candidate in the general.

Another great month for Obama, and it looks like it might be more than double what Clinton did. Guess the whole momentum thing is moot now.

That is how much Barack Obama raised in February. With Hillary's $35 million, that makes a one month total of $90 million.

It hasn't even been a year since their last major breech of security involving personal information for our veterans and we get another one:

The Department of Veterans Affairs began notifying 1.8 million veterans and doctors Monday that their personal and business information could be on a portable hard drive that has been missing from an Alabama hospital for nearly three weeks.

The hard drive may have contained Social Security numbers and other personal information from about 535,000 individuals and billing information on 1.3 million doctors nationwide, the VA said. That's more than 37 times more people than authorities initially believed were affected.

An employee at the VA medical center in Birmingham reported the external hard drive missing on Jan. 22. The drive was used to back up information on the employee's office computer. It may have contained data from research projects, the department said.

U.S. Rep. Artur Davis questioned why it took the agency so long to begin sending out notification letters.

One of this biggest factors for the past decade of GOP wins has been their fundraising and GOTV (get out the vote) campaign, which I will have more on later. These two factors combined have dealt lethal blows to the Democrats and the Democrats have not been able to counter them, until now.

This year has been a fundraising landslide for Democrats. More big time businesses are donating to the Democrats and they have been catching up to the Republican fundraising machine. Today's Washington Post even talks about the sudden "surge" in Democrat fundraising:

Democratic fundraising for the midterm elections is ending with a surge.

In September, the Democratic campaign committees for the House and the Senate outraised their counterpart Republican committees, reversing historical trends.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee raised $14.4 million and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee collected $13.6 million last month, they said. In contrast, the National Republican Congressional Committee raised $12 million and the National Republican Senatorial Committee collected $5.2 million.

The Republican National Committee, however, continued to outpace the Democratic National Committee. In September, the RNC raised $13.1 million and reported total receipts of $14.3 million, while the DNC said it collected $5.6 million.

The GOP committees maintained an overall advantage of about $10 million in funds available to be spent. At the end of September, the Democratic committees had $67.3 million on hand; the Republican committees had $77.4 million.

While the Republicans still have the upper hand in fundraising, the gap is closing. What is amazing is that with the Republicans still outspending the Democrats, the Republicans are facing a certain defeat in November.