There are a number things the public “knows” as we head into the election that are just false. If people elect leaders based on false information, the things those leaders do in office will not be what the public expects or needs.
Here are eight of the biggest myths that are out there:
1) President Obama tripled the deficit.
Reality: Bush’s last budget had a $1.416 trillion deficit. Obama’s first budget reduced that to $1.29 trillion.
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture I am also a Fellow with CAF.
Are the Main Street Tea Party members getting “played” by Wall Street and big-corporate billionaires? There is a big, big, big difference between what the regular members and the big-money funders expect. If Tea Party candidates get elected will they do what their supporters want, or what their Wall Street and big-corporation funders demand?
What Tea Party Members Want
I just finished a week driving around Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia attending and writing about the “Keep It Made In America” Town Hall meetings. At these meetings and on the road I had occasion to talk to self-identified members of “Tea Party” groups. My conversations tell me,and polling confirms, that the regular day-to-day Tea Party supporters want government to stop job outsourcing and help American manufacturers. And even more than that they really don’t like trade agreements like NAFTA. In fact some go so far as to say that NAFTA and the WTO violate our country’s sovereignty. And even more than that they hate Bush’s bailout of Wall Street (but have been told Obama did it).
What Tea Party Funders Want
At the same time I saw and heard ad after ad after ad after ad that backed Tea Party-type candidates, that were paid for by the Chamber of Commerce and other front groups for Wall Street and the big multinational monopolist corporations that live off of “free trade” and have been closing factories and outsourcing jobs. And the Tea Party was originally set up by and is largely funded and maintained by front groups for this same crowd.
Here is just one example of how much the Tea Party is funded by these front groups: In Oregon one Wall Street hedge fund manager is spending up to $1 million (pocket change) on a front group to elect a Tea Party candidate and unseat a Congressman who didn’t do his bidding and sponsored a couple of Wall Street reform bills. Do you think the Main Street Tea Party members in Oregon expect their Tea Party candidate to support or oppose measures that further enrich Wall Street hedge fund managers? I’ll give you three guesses and the answers are Main Street, Main Street and Not Wall Street. Do you think the Tea Party candidate will dare? I’ll give you one guess.
Will Tea Party Members Or Funders Win Out?
So the regular Tea Party people hate NAFTA and “free trade” agreement, Wall Street bailouts, want a stop to job outsourcing and want help for American manufacturing — but the people behind them and funding their ads do not. What will happen if these candidates get into office? Will they stick with their Tea Party supporters from Main Street, or will the be beholden to the big-money behind their campaigns? As Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”
This is a very, very serious problem. The “crowd” instincts of regular people are usually pretty good and even in the Tea Parties they understand the damage that “free trade,” Wall Street, big-corporate interests and the rest of the “free enterprise” crowd have done to the country. But the big money is steering them away from the solutions that their collective gut tells them are right.
Serious Consequences
The financial crisis that Obama inherited has not really gone away. The unsustainable trade deficit that has been growing since Reagan is draining our economy. The huge budget deficit that Bush left behind — caused by tax cuts and military spending increases — has not gone away. Global warming has certainly not gone away. All of these problems are still there. We may be headed into a trade war, we need to rebalance the global economy, the rest of the world is jumping on the Green Insustrial Revolution and we are not — but we can’t even begin to have a reasonable conversation about it because the entrenched wealthy interests are able to purchase the megaphone, microphone and amplification system that let’s people hear the arguments.
I say yes, the Main Street supporters of the Tea Party are getting played. What I want to know is, what will they do if the Tea Party candidates get elected, and then support “free trade’ and Wall Street and all of that? Will go even further to the right, or will they start to figure it out?
Political spending has been completely transformed by the Supreme Court’s decision to open the floodgates of corporate spending in elections. So far this year more than $200 million has flooded in, with much of the spending yet to come. The Sunlight Foundation, in Court rulings change elections, independent spending dwarfs party spending in midterm, writes,
According to data obtained from the Federal Election Commission, fifty-nine percent of all outside spending on independent expenditures has come from non-party aligned groups while only forty-one percent comes from the party committees. This is a dramatic change from the 2006 midterms (as of October 19, 2006) when party committees accounted for eighty-two percent of all outside spending on independent expenditures and non-party aligned committees accounted for eighteen percent.
Koch Industries, a Wichita-based energy and manufacturing conglomerate run by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, operates a foundation that finances political advocacy groups, but tax law protects those groups from having to disclose much about what they do and who contributes.[. . .] The participants included some of the nation’s wealthiest families and biggest names in finance: private equity and hedge fund executives like John Childs, Cliff Asness, Steve Schwarzman and Ken Griffin; Phil Anschutz, the entertainment and media mogul ranked by Forbes as the 34th-richest person in the country; Rich DeVos, the co-founder of Amway; Steve Bechtel of the giant construction firm; and Kenneth Langone of Home Depot.
“Five years ago my brother Charles and I provided the funds to start the Americans for Prosperity,” Koch says, “and its beyond my wildest dreams how AFP has grown into this enormous organization of hundreds of thousands of Americans from all walks of life standing up and fighting for the economic freedoms that have made our nation the most prosperous society in history.”
It’s a perfect storm. And I’m not talking about the impending dangers facing Democrats. I’m talking about the dangers facing our democracy.[. . .] We’re losing our democracy to a different system. It’s called plutocracy.
Another anonymous corporate-funded front group, this one called Latinos For Reform, is running ads in Spanish telling people not to vote! This is one more example of voter suppression.
Published reports indicate that the ads are the work of Robert Desposada, a Republican political consultant, former Republican National Committee director of Hispanic affairs and pundit on the Spanish language TV network Univision.
From a Huffington Post report, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/19/latinos-for-reform-vote-nevada_n_767991.html
“That message has to be denounced, its got to be thrown out,” President of the Hispanics in Politics organization, Fernando Romero told KTNV.
“To ask a community, any community to silence their voice as a way to resolve or react during a time when their voice is most needed, is what makes all this reprehensible,” Luis Valera of UNLV’s Government Relations said, according to KTNV’s report.
The election is being flooded with corporate money, and much of it is anonymous, coming through groups such as Karl Rove’s American Crossroads that is set up as a “charity” in order to prevent disclosure of donors. The Chamber of Commerce is also refusing to disclose who is donating, not even whether foreign companies are helping fund the ad blitz.
According to Media Matters, Right-Wing Groups Have Now Aired 60,000+ TV Ads Since Aug. 1,
The Chamber of Commerce spent at least $9.8 million to run fully 4,706 ads in just one week, meaning it eclipsed Americans for Prosperity (another apparent dropout from the big-money class). The Chamber reported even more spending ($10.7 million) to the FEC, but $949,886 of that spending appeared to be double-reported. Either way, the business lobby dropped a CEO’s salary to influence our elections in just a few days. Makes you wonder what they’re expecting in return.
The other big-bucks story is more complicated. The innocent-sounding Commission for Hope, Growth and Prosperity — a 501(c)4* founded by GOP operative Scott Reed — has posted a startling
2,153 ads since late September. We don’t know how much money they spent doing it, because Reed’s group has yet to report a cent of spending to the FEC…
Do voters care? According to the Greg Sargent, blogging at Washington Post, Yes, voters do care about secret cash funding elections!
The poll finds that two thirds of registered voters, or 66 percent, are aware that outside groups are behind some of the ads they’re seeing. This makes sense, since the issue has dominated the media amid the battle over the huge ad onslaught against Dems funded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Karl Rove’s groups.
What’s more, an overwhelming 84 percent say they have a “right to know” who’s bankrolling the ads. And crucially, the poll also found that the issue is resonant when linked to the economy. A majority, 53 percent, are less likely to think a candidate who is backed by “anonymous groups” can be trusted to “improve economic conditions” for them or their families. People don’t believe these groups are looking out for their interests.
You may be hearing story after story about the flood of corporate money showing up in elections this year. I recently posted a preliminary look at where the corporate money is going supporting or opposing to our upcoming ballot initiatives. That was preliminary, before the real flood of last-minute corporate cash showed up. I’ll be updating those numbers.
Committees for and against the ballot measures have raised more than $84.25 million in contributions of $100,000 or more since the beginning of the year, according to an analysis released today by the Fair Political Practices Commission.
The most active big-money fundraisers were the campaigns surrounding Proposition 24, which would repeal corporate tax benefits approved by the Legislature, and Proposition 23, which would suspend the state’s greenhouse gas reduction law until the unemployment rate drops.
This is a survey looking at where the corporate money is
going in California’s 2010 November ballot initiatives. All figures are from Sept. 17, 2010 and will be updated. Due to reporting rules many contributions are not yet on the
record.
Proposition 19,
Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010
There is not a lot of corporate money involved in the
marijuana initiative. The beer and wine
distributors have put up $10K to oppose the initiative.
On the supporting side: Credo, formerly Working Assets,
campaign filings do not show any amounts as of Sept 17. (Credo engages in political activity that
supports the expressed wishes of their customers.)
Opposition to the measure:
CALIF BEER & BEVERAGE
DISTRIBUTORS STATE ISSUES $10,000
Proposition 20,
Congressional Redistricting
This initiative is largely financed by one individual,
Charles T. Munger, Vice-Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffet’s
company). The financing is individual,
not from the company.
Proposition 21,
Vehicle License Fee for Parks
On the opposing side: CALIFORNIANS AGAINST CAR TAXES, NO ON
PROPOSITION 21 – none of the contributions are reported yet.
Proposition 22, Ban
on State Borrowing from Local Governments
Campaign filings do not show any corporate amounts as of
Sept 17.
Proposition 23, Suspend
AB 32, the Global Warming Act of 2006
**There is heavy
corporate involvement in favor of this initiative.**
The corporate money, specifically oil company money, is heavily
involved in support of this initiative.
In fact, it is fair to say that this initiative is almost entirely
financed by oil company money, some of it in ways attempting to mask that
involvement.
Support
ADAM SMITH
FOUNDATION $498,000 (This is a front-group for oil-company donations.)
Valero $1,050,000
HOLLY
CORPORATION $25,000
PLACID
REFINING COMPANY LLC $9,995
STAN BOYETT
& SON INC. DBA BOYETT PETROLEUM $25,000
AMERICAN
COALITION FOR CLEAN COAL ELECTRICITY $5000
TESORO
COMPANIES, $525,000
OCCIDENTAL
PETROLEUM CORP. $300,000
THE TERMO
COMPANY $5,000
ROBINSON OIL
CORPORATION $25,000
BREITBURN
OPERATING LP $20,000
E & B
NATURAL RESOURCES MGMT.CORP $5,000
AMERICAN
ENERGY OPERATIONS INC $5,000
NATIONAL
PETROCHEMICAL & REFINERS ASSOCIATION $100,000
CALIFORNIA
TRUCKING ASSOCIATION $50,000
BERRY
PETROLEUM COMPANY 25000
NAFTEX
OPERATING CO. 5000
CAMINOL
MANAGEMENT CO. $25,000
MURRAY ENERGY
CORPORATION $30,000
VENOCO, INC.
$10,000
WORLD OIL
CORP. $100,000
TOWER ENERGY
GROUP $100,000
SOUTHERN
COUNTIES OIL CO. DBA TOTAL ENERGY PRODUCTS $50,000
LUMBER
ASSOCIATION OF CALIFORNIA & NEVADA PAC $5,000
NO NEW TAXES,
A PROJECT OF THE HOWARD JARVIS TAXPAYERS ASSOCIATION $100,001
JACO OIL CO.
$10,000
I will do
deeper research to try to trace where the money came from for NO NEW TAXES, A
PROJECT OF THE HOWARD JARVIS TAXPAYERS ASSOCIATION $100,001
CALIFORNIANS
FOR PAYCHECK PROTECTION $25,000
PROTECT PROP.
13, A PROJECT OF THE HOWARD JARVIS TAXPAYERS ASSOCIATION $49,000
CALIFORNIANS
FOR PROPERTY RIGHTS PROTECTION $5,213.91
Oppose: Credo
CANNON POWER
GROUP AND ITS AFFILIATE BAJA WIND, LLC $25K
I will
conduct additional research to try to learn if companies are funding GREEN TECH
ACTION FUND $500K and DMB ASSOCIATES, INC. AND AFFILIATES $80K
I will also try to trace if corporate donations
are involved with CLEAN ECONOMY NETWORK NO ON 23 ACTION FUND, SUPPORTED BY
CLEAN TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES, RENEWABLE ENERGY ENTREPRENEURS, AND CONCERNED
CITIZENS $75K
Proposition 24,
Repeal of Corporate Tax Breaks
**There is heavy
corporate involvement in opposition to this initiative.**
Corporate money
opposed:
Johnson & Johnson $750K
CBS Outdoor
and Affiliates $1M
PFIZER INC.
$100K
GE $1.2M
ALLERGAN, INC
$20K
AMGEN $350K
VIACOM $950K
TIME WARNER $1.1M
FOX $725K
Walt Disney $1M
CISCO $1.1M
Qualcomm $100K
Medtronic $25K
Genetech $1.1M
Abbott Labs $100K
HP $100K
Intel $75K
Proposition 25
Majority Vote for Legislature to Pass the Budget
**There is heavy
corporate involvement in opposition to this initiative.**
Big corporate donations opposing. Multiple donations as indicated.
NEW MAJORITY
CALIFORNIA PAC $100K
Chevron $250K $250:
Miller Coors $175K $100K $26K $24K $25K
SMALL BUSINESS
ACTION COMMITTEE PAC $500K $800K
PROTECT PROP 13, A PROJECT OF THE HOWARD JARVIS
TAXPAYERS ASSOCIATION $79,674
WINE INSTITUTE $100K $25K $25K $25K
INSURANCE BROKERS AND AGENTS ISSUES PAC
(IBAIPAC), SPONSORED BY IBA WEST, INC. $50K
CALIFORNIA BEER & BEVERAGE DISTRIBUTORS
ISSUES PAC $K
CALIFORNIA RESTAURANT ASSOCIATION ISSUES
PAC $50K
CALIFORNIA BEER & BEVERAGE DISTRIBUTORS
ISSUES PAC $50K $25K
CALIFORNIA RESTAURANT ASSOCIATION ISSUES
PAC $25K
CROWN IMPORTS LLC $58K $20K
CALIFORNIA AMERICAN COUNCIL OF ENGINEERING
COMPANIES ISSUES FUND (CA ACEC ISSUES FUND) $15K
WATSON LAND COMPANY $10K
CALIFORNIA BUSINESS POLITICAL ACTION
COMMITTEE, SPONSORED BY THE CALIFORNIA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE (AKA CALBUSPAC) $235K
$120K $100K $325K $215K $75K $75K $125K $50K $100K
SAFEWAY INC. $20K 10K
DIAGEO NORTH AMERICA, INC. (Guinness,
Smirnoff, Johnie Walker, Jose Cuervo …) $25K
FARMERS INSURANCE GROUP $25K
ANHEUSER-BUSCH COMPANIES, INC. $100K $25K
BROWN-FORMAN
CORPORATION (Jack Daniels, Fetzer, Korbel, Southern Comfort …) $35K
DISTILLED
SPIRITS COUNCIL $20K
AERA ENERGY
LLC $150K
CONOCOPHILLIPS
$25K
Note – I will
be digging into which companies are funding NEW MAJORITY CALIFORNIA PAC, SMALL
BUSINESS ACTION COMMITTEE PAC, CALIFORNIA BUSINESS POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE,
SPONSORED BY THE CALIFORNIA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE (AKA CALBUSPAC) and front-group
others.
Proposition 26 Supermajority Vote to Pass New Taxes
and Fees (2010)
This
initiative is the flip side of proposition 25, and the money in opposition to
25 is in favor of 26. Additionally:
CALIFORNIA
BUSINESS PAC, SPONSORED BY THE CALIFORNIA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE (CALBUSPAC) $135K $140K $240K
Proposition 27 Eliminate Redistricting Commission
The opposition
to this is financed by Charles Munger and his wife.
Charles Munger
millions & Munger’s wife, millions
— See Prop 20
Also:
SMALL BUSINESS
ACTION COMMITTEE PAC $20K
CA BUSINESS
PAC,SPONSORED BY CA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE (AKA CALBUSPAC) $10K
