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

“The scarcity of honest information about the misleading political ads invading our airwaves has knocked viewers and voters for a loss.”
—A new report from the media reform group Free Press, criticizing local TV stations in swing states for failing to report on the influence of outside-spending groups. According to Free Press’s research, more than 85 percent of ads from outside spending groups relay misleading information, yet swing-state stations “devoted little to no air time to fact-checking claims made in the ads, and the stations spent no time investigating the organizations that paid for the ads.”

 

ATTACK AD OF THE WEEK

Karl Rove’s dark-money nonprofit Crossroads GPS has entered the Massachusetts Senate fight between Democrat Elizabeth Warren and incumbent Republican Scott Brown with robocalls attacking Warren. The state’s Democratic Party obtained audio (below) of one of the calls, which hits Warren for supporting Obamacare, misleadingly claiming that the program “will cut over $700 billion from Medicare spending.” Another call criticizes the work Warren did as head of the watchdog panel overseeing the federal government’s bank bailouts.

 

STAT OF THE WEEK

$1.5 million: Billionaire philanthropist George Soros has committed $1.5 million to liberal super-PACs—$1 million to the pro-Obama Priorities USA Action and $500,000 total to two groups focused on congressional races. Previously, the right’s favorite big-money bogeyman gave $1 million to the American Bridge super-PAC, $175,000 to House Majority PAC, and $75,000 to Majority PAC. After his previous donations, Soros had hinted that he might not give to Priorities.

 

CHART OF THE WEEK

In August, for the first time this year, liberal super-PACs outraised their conservative counterparts. Liberal super-PACs took in $19.7 million compared to conservative super-PACs’ $18.3 million. All told, super-PACs have raised $390.6 million during the 2012 election cycle.

 

 

MORE MUST-READS

David Corn’s Reddit AMA: The Full Questions and Answers: MoJo‘s DC bureau chief, who broke the Mitt Romney donor-video story, met the ‘net Friday afternoon.
• The Koch-affiliated dark-money group Americans for Prosperity struggles to turn out voters despite all its cash. Slate
• Super-PACs get into the lobbying business. Politico
• Billionaire George Soros drops another $2 million into Democratic super-PACs. New York Times
• Former presidential candidates’ “ghost PACS” sputter on. Center for Responsive Politics
• Take part in a collaborative effort to reveal political TV ad spending. ProPublica

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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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