August 17, 2012

This Week in Dark Money

A quick look at the week that was in the world of political dark money…

the money shot

 

 

quote of the week

“Paul Ryan: Hustling for the 1 percent.”
—Protest signs carried by AFL-CIO members outside a Las Vegas hotel where Romney’s running mate attended a private “finance meeting” with Republican donors, including billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. Adelson has poured $36 million into conservative super-PACs and has said he’ll spend as much as $100 million to defeat President Obama. An attendee told the New York Times that he “saw no dialogue between” Ryan and Adelson.

 

attack ad of the week

A new dark-money group called the Special Operations Opsec Education Fund has released a 22-minute Swiftboat-esque video, “Dishonorable Disclosures” that features former special forces officers who accuse Barack Obama of leaking state secrets for political gain. The group is run in part by members of tea party groups and focuses primarily on Obama’s handling of the Osama bin Laden raid. It repeats the claim that Obama has been too boastful about the raid. “Mr. President, you did not kill Osama bin Laden,” a sneering former Navy SEAL says in the video. “America did.”

 

stat of the week

Two: The number of 501(c)(4) nonprofits that, combined, have spent more than all super-PACs combined. ProPublica reports that Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS and the Koch-affiliated Americans for Prosperity have spent nearly $60 million on television ads, compared with $55.7 million spent by super-PACs, and $22.5 million spent by political parties.

 

race of the week

On Tuesday, former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson won a hard-fought GOP Senate primary. The antitax super-PAC Club for Growth Action spent $1.7 million on ads in support of former Rep. Mark Neumann, who finished third. Including money targeting Democratic candidate Tammy Baldwin (like $850,000 from the US Chamber of Commerce), $4.5 million in outside money has been spent on the Wisconsin Senate race. Here’s one of the ads Club for Growth ran against Thompson and challenger Eric Hovde:

 

more mojo dark-money coverage

• Can Harold Ickes Make It Rain for Obama?: The Democratic operative has cussed, clawed, and outsmarted his way through three dozen elections. His new fight: Stop Karl Rove and Co. from steamrolling the president.
• The Reformers Strike Back!: The conservatives behind Citizens United have lost some key fights lately. But another battle over corporate money in politics looms.
• Karl Rove’s Dark Money Group Busted for Bogus Ad: Crossroads GPS says it proactively pulled the inaccurate ad. Well, not quite.

 

more must-reads

• Just four states and Washington, DC, are responsible for two-thirds of all super-PAC cash. MapLight
• Charles Koch explains why he “fights for economic freedom.” Newsmax
• Gardener and pro-Obama super-PAC megadonor Amy Goldman talks politics. NPR
• A campaign finance reform group’s infographic puts a superhero spin on super-PACs. Rootstrikers

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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