Tag: super pacs

You don’t HAVE to let the Super PACs use your image and name without permission, Democrats.

Just a note, here: note how Donald Trump is getting the Super PACs that were trying to help him shut down. Essentially, “he seems to be using his business and legal experience to forbid their using his name, likeness and image to raise money,” as Hot Air put it. And isn’t that an interesting technique?

Now, let me assure you: I don’t have a problem with Super PACs, because I don’t have a problem with freedom of speech.  So I can cheerfully ignore, with no problem, whatsoever any suggestion that we get rid of Super PACs.  But if you are a candidate who fulminated against the use of Super PACs, and who does not adopt this tactic for discouraging ones set up to benefit you, then you are a screaming hypocrite.  Not to mention a Democrat, but there are many people out there who would think that I’m being needlessly redundant in saying so.

Moe Lane

Democrats set the stage to ‘reluctantly’ embrace the Tao of Super-PAC.

I think that your enjoyment of this NYT article would be enhanced if you do as I did, and imagined that the author of it pausing periodically to hyperventilate into a brown paper bag.

Democrats are laying the groundwork for an ambitious reorganization of their struggling network of “super PACs“ that would exploit the loopholes and legal gray areas that Republicans have already used to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for the 2016 campaign through such groups.

The plans, laid out by the party’s top election lawyers in an emergency request filed with the Federal Election Commission on Friday, would pave the way for the creation of a host of new super PACs tailored to individual House and Senate candidates.

Continue reading Democrats set the stage to ‘reluctantly’ embrace the Tao of Super-PAC.

#rsrh The New Yorker and the The Obama That They Used To Know.

No, that video will not be reproduced in this post.

It’s impressive, in its way: The New Yorker manages to go an entire article where they portray President Obama as a gormless idiot with no feel for practical politics, an active disdain for business activities, and a fundamental incapacity for hiding his (completely unwarranted) attitude of smug superiority who take the first two things seriously – and yet they never actually sayany of those things.  It’s quite an exhibition of rhetorical skill.  Note that I am assuming that the New Yorker is being tongue in cheek when it repeats such errant nonsense as “He is so private, and so emotionally and intellectually honest;” I mean, surely that magazine is much more sophisticated than the parochial rubes that spout off that kind of delusional tripe?

Via Business Insider.

 

 

 

#rsrh Drinking the Old Grey Lady’s tears on Super PACs…

…personally, I don’t find the system nearly as ‘corrupt’ or ‘pollut[ed]’ as the New York Times seems to – unless, of course, we’re simply taking both terms to be semantically equivalent to ‘got rid of legislators that the NYT liked’ – but in its way that just makes all the better this bitter, despondent, let-me-swig-more-rotgut-and-pound-the-typewriter screed about how Obama’s going to use those eeeeeeeeeeeevil Super PACS in his campaign.  I mean it, too.  Watching the anonymous author come to terms with the fact that he or she was deliberately and callously lied to will warm your insides.

Mind you, the author will still vote for Obama in November. Which is why I’m so contemptuous: don’t expect respect from me if you can’t even respect yourself…

Via Hot Air Headlines.

#rsrh QotD, …Dear God. FIREDOGLAKE Edition.

Believe me, it’s alarming to me, too: but Jon Walker has a point here about Obama’s excitingly new position on Super PACs.

When the Supreme Court handed down its Citizens United ruling, Obama still had one of the largest Democratic majorities in Congress in decades.  But Democrats still didn’t do anything about it. If they viewed that holding as truly critical, the Democrats could have passed a law addressing the issue. Passing legislation about campaign finance reform was simply not a priority for the Obama administration.

Continue reading #rsrh QotD, …Dear God. FIREDOGLAKE Edition.

The Rise of the Democratic Super-Secret PACs.

Super PACs are, of course, the political groups that were set up after the Supreme Court’s landmark free speech decision in Citizens United: they are able to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money advocating both for and against political candidates, but may not donate to those candidates directly. The Left ostensibly hates them, which did not stop them from using them to raise over 28 million dollars in the 2010 election cycle (44% of total Super PAC fundraising) to the Right’s over 35 million (54%: the other 2% hedged their bets); their general argument is that allowing groups to openly spending money expressing their opinions on candidates is corrosive to American democracy. ‘Openly’ is the key here: Super PACs must generally disclose their donors.

The generally is… the interesting bit.

Continue reading The Rise of the Democratic Super-Secret PACs.