Federal Election Commission: the REAL Culprit Behind Huge Anonymous Campaign Contributions

Don’t get me wrong.  The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision sucks balls.  Citizens United overturned decades of restrictions on political campaign funding; basically saying America is for sale to the highest bidder.

But Citizens United had nothing to do with disclosure rules requiring wealthy campaign donors to reveal their identities.  The culprit behind these anonymous campaign contributions is the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

The Federal Election Commission has taken already-existing campaign disclosure rules and basically “re-interpreted” them into oblivion.  Under the FEC’s new “interpretation,” campaign donors still have to identify themselves — but only if the donor has specifically stated how the money is supposed to be spent.

Let’s say you’ve donated a million dollars to a militant anti-abortion group.  If you’ve specifically told this group “I want you to spend this money on TV ads attacking pro-choice candidates,” then your identity has to be revealed.  But if you’ve given a million dollars to this same group without specifying how you want them to spend the money — what the fuck else are they going to spend it on? — then you’re allowed to keep hiding under your rock.  You can purchase an election and the lowly public won’t even know who purchased it.

Last April, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D—Maryland) filed a lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission, trying to get them to “un-reinterpret” the already-existing disclosure rules.  A month ago the FEC voted on a motion to consider Van Hollen’s request.  The vote was 3 to 3; the tie vote killed the motion.  Needless to say, the three No votes came from the three Republican appointees to the FEC.

While the Supreme Court gets vilified for its Citizens United ruling — and rightly so — nobody even knows the names of the three FEC commissioners who are allowing wealthy campaign donors to keep cowering in the shadows while they purchase one election after another.

Those three names are:  Caroline Hunter, Donald McGahn II and Matthew Petersen.

Anonymous — get busy.

Governor McDonnell: “Slavery? Huh? What? Oh, That…”

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell has declared April 2010 to be Confederate History Month. He said it was important for Virginians to:

“Understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War, and to recognize how our history has led to our present.”

For some odd reason, he didn’t mention anything about, uhh, what’s that word again? You know, when millions of native Africans were captured, shackled and brought over here on ships, and a lot of them died on the journey over here and the lucky ones who survived were herded into American plantations to become slaves — Slaves, that’s it! Slavery!

Anyway, that long dark chapter of Confederate history wasn’t important enough to be worth mentioning in McDonnell’s “Whip up the good ol’ boys” speech.

McDonnell’s “explanation” was:

“There were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia.”

And them there nigras just ain’t significant. All righty then…

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Q. Why is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce like a cockroach?

A. They both scurry away frantically when somebody turns the lights on.

(Didn’t mean any disrespect to cockroaches.)

As you know, the Supreme Court has legalized bribery. But they haven’t legalized money laundering. Not yet anyway.

Money laundering, of course, is when a shell corporation is created by somebody who’s made a ton of money illegally. A drug kingpin, for example, could say “You’re accusing me of selling drugs??? I made this money through my tireless hard work at the ZYX Corporation, located in a post office box in the Cayman Islands. Any other questions?”

The corporate — and still legal — version is when a large company or wealthy individual decides to purchase an election by paying for a multimillion dollar advertising campaign. But they don’t want the lowly public to know that “ExxonMobil spent $300 million to defeat clean energy legislation.” (That’s just a made-up example.)

So they turn to their friendly neighborhood money launderer — the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. All Exxon Mobil (continuing the same example) has to do is donate their $300 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Then the only information voters have is that microscopic lettering at the bottom of the screen saying “this sleazy mudslinging intelligence-insulting commercial was paid for by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.”

And now Congress — led by Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) — is getting ready to crack down on this slippery tactic. Needless to say, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is acting like — well, like a cockroach when you turn on the kitchen light at 3 in the morning.

If this law passes, corporations who purchase the legislative process will have to slither out from under their rocks, into the sunlight, and identify themselves.