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Corporations making political donations through interest groups
Money changing hands in Washington, D.C.
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TEXT OF STORY
Kai Ryssdal: Outside interest groups -- that is, organizations that operate independently of political campaigns -- are spending record amounts of money in this year's midterm congressional elections. Almost $100 million so far. That is a relative drop in the bucket when, all told, $3 billion -- $3 billion! -- might be spent on elections this year.
But a lot of the money that's going to those outside groups is coming from businesses. The Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that's OK: companies and unions are allowed to spend as much as they want on campaign ads right up 'til election day.
Nancy Marshall Genzer reports from Washington they're taking full advantage of the ruling.
Nancy Marshall Genzer: The biggest spending outside interest groups are aligned with conservatives this year. One of the largest, American Crossroads, launched a $4 million ad campaign this week. It's targeting Senate races in eight key states, including Nevada, where Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is running for re-election.
American Crossroads adHarry Reid says no one can do more than he can. Really Harry?
The American Crossroads ads talk about reining in President Obama. That message appeals to corporate donors concerned about the laws overhauling health care and financial services.
But these donors find something else appealing about American Crossroads and its sister group, Crossroads GPS. American Crossroads has to reveal its donors, but not until after the elections. Crossroads GPS never has to list them.
Dave Levinthal is with the Center for Responsive Politics. He says companies are shoveling donations into outside groups like these, because they like the anonymity, and for good reason.
Dave Levinthal: Because some of your customers may be liberals, some may be conservatives. And if you're on the wrong side of the message, then it's very possible that they're going to go elsewhere with their business.
Outside groups aren't new. Earlier this year, though, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations and unions can spend unlimited amounts on campaign ads. Hence, the avalanche of money into outside groups.
Columbia Law School professor Richard Briffault says these groups also allow corporations to pool their money.
Richard Briffault: And then, in effect, having it put to work by political operatives that you think are supporting the interests of your corporation.
President Bush's political advisor, Karl Rove, helped found the Crossroads groups. But American Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio says there are liberal interest groups, too.
Jonathan Collegio: Liberal and center-left organizations kind of designed this framework of outside groups that you see operating on the right.
Collegio says liberal groups would like to match conservatives' political spending. They just don't have the money.
In Washington, I'm Nancy Marshall Genzer for Marketplace.
Mr. Bertelli , the union dues is not the equivalent of revenue, it's the equivalent of profit. Most corporate revenue is needed to pay its workers or buy its raw materials, and is not at all available for political action.
More importantly, when corporations make a profit, stockholders expect them to reinvest or distribute essentially all of it. Most of it is not available for political action. Unions, on the other hand, especially the more liberal ones such as SEIU, consider political activism to be a core mission worthy of a substantial percentage of their take, a percentage that wouldn't be at all acceptable for a corporation.
-dk
It’s nice that Marketplace, alone among the news media, noticed that the [supposedly huge] $100 million that the unindicted third parties are spending to elect Republicans is small change compared to the $billions that we will spend for the total of all elections this year. The Democrats are in trouble because they are passing laws to consolidate their political power, in defiance of the attitude of many Americans who know how to vote. This campaign by Democrats and their allies in the media has two purposes, to discredit Republicans before the election and to provide an excuse if the Republicans still win.
Back in 1996, LPR (Liberal Public Radio) held a panel discussion at Williams College, and there was a lot of discussion about the great importance of passing campaign finance restriction laws. When they asked for questions, I said that those laws are like a Band-Aid on a chancre; you can hide the symptom, but the disease runs on and may kill the patient. There are plenty of important issues, and we will find ways to fight about them, even if we have to spend money. The disease is big government; we owe a lot of our success throughout the history of the USA to the fact that the government left us alone and let us worry about our own affairs instead of constantly worrying about what the government might do to us. Money spent on politics is a symptom, based on the fact that government is no longer OK, no longer safe, no longer something we can ignore. Government is like fire, useful but dangerous. It has taken a while for conservatives to notice the danger, but we are awake now and taking action; we have our committees of correspondence, our patriotic orators, and our political leaders, all working to cut down the money tree that has been feeding big, intrusive government.
Where was the media horror and outrage a few years ago when George Soros and his ilk were contributing $millions to liberal organizations? I still can’t see why I have to obey the law and not contribute more than a few thousand dollars, but a rich man can contribute huge amounts, without breaking the law. Our enemies outside the USA, such as the old USSR, typically take the attitude that whatever they do is OK, but if we do the same thing, it’s terrible. It’s too bad we can’t trust our own news media to take a more tolerant attitude toward their fellow Americans. I was surprised when even the revered left-wing ACLU, even in an alliance with one of the most powerful grass-roots organizations, could not prevail in court against the campaign finance restriction laws; it’s none too soon for the SCOTUS to wake up and realize that the First Amendment, which protects the Nazis and the other Communists and the Klan, should also protect my political speech, for which it obviously was designed.
BTW, speaking of the truth, why do we never hear about the role of Barney Frank and Dodd and others in our alleged government in the sub-prime mortgage trouble? Alan Greenspan said that he was surprised that the bankers would make loans that any fool could see would not be repaid. How can we say that greed caused that? Did Countrywide, and Indy Mac, and many others, make a good profit on those loans? Where are those companies now? The loan officers, and processors, and underwriters had plenty of information to show when they were making liar loans, and the investors who bought those loans had access to the files with the information - or absence thereof - to show what kind of loans they were buying. That is based on inside information, not anything I needed the news media to tell me. The one logical explanation is that the lenders were afraid that the government would put them out of business with their anti-redlining laws and general abusive power. And the sale of bundled mortgages was nothing new, but the enhanced securitization of those loans might be a recent development. The lenders needed to find a way to get the toxic loans off their books and onto someone else’s. Further: why has nobody noticed that the whole mortgage collapse has been a massive transfer of wealth from Wall Street to Main Street? Follow the money: the money went from investors to mortgage companies to borrowers, and came to rest in the pockets of the people who (in good faith) sold houses to the borrowers; that is why we can’t just find the money and get it back - the people who ended up with the money did nothing wrong.
Hope that helps
Dick Hatzenbuhler
Deering, NH
According to Fortune, the Fortune 100 alone took in more than $6 trillion in revenue last year, generating profits of $216 billion. All unions took in perhaps $10 billion in dues (which you might call the equivalent of revenue).
Why did Mr. Ryssdal try to suggest that there was some kind of parity in the potential resource impact the Citizen's United decision is likely to have?
A previous commentator says that this story is entirely far-right propaganda, "balanced" only by statements from one law school professor and a non-partisan organization. Even if that were the case, for every minute on public radio of conservative propaganda or even coverage that acknowledges that the far Left doesn't have a monopoly on common sense, you have *days* of propaganda for the far Left. And this story is, in fact, far closer to "progressive" propaganda than what she asserts it is. The only examples of non-disclosing political action committees the story mentions are conservative, and the fact that the Left invented the technique is mentioned only as an afterthought. The fact that the Left's funds get far more donations from Big Business than the Right, while true grass-roots efforts are unique to the Right and are the only explanation for why there are so many committees on that side and they're so well funded isn't mentioned at all. The only source quoted in this story that's anything close to a conservative gives an unbiased, undisputed fact of history, while the "attack ad" that's played to raise listeners' hackles is one that targets a Democrat. She's absolutely right that this story was egregiously unbalanced, but utterly wrong about which way it swung.
This article was egregiously unbalanced, or, rather, it conformed to the new definition of "balanced news" in which a statement from the right is either totally unchallenged by a statement from the left, or is at most counterweighted by a non-partisan statement. In this story you have, on the right, part of an attack ad on Senator Harry Reid, and a big, wet kiss on the cheek to Karl Rove's outfit American Crossroads, "balanced" by one law professor and a spokesman for a non-partisan organization. This story perfectly encapsulates why I no longer give money to public radio: because it isn't about journalism anymore.
