June 15, 2012 |
If you’re visiting a candidate this summer and looking for a thoughtful
house gift, might we suggest a nice super PAC? Thanks to the Supreme
Court and
Citizens United, they’re all the rage among the
mega-wealthy. All it takes is a little paperwork and a wad of cash and
presto, you can have, as
The Washington Post describes it, a “
highly customized, highly personalized” political action committee.”
It’s easy — super PACs come in all amounts and party affiliations. You
don’t have to spend millions, although a gift that size certainly won’t
be turned aside. Cable TV tycoon Marc Nathanson got a super PAC for his
friend, longtime Democratic Congressman Howard Berman from California,
and all it cost was $100,000. Down in North Carolina, Republican
congressional candidate George Holding received a handsome super PAC
that includes $100,000 each from an aunt and uncle and a quarter of a
million from a bunch of his cousins. Yes, nothing says family like a
great big, homemade batch of campaign contributions.
You can start a super PAC on your own or contribute to one that already
exists. Super PACs are available for every kind of race – presidential,
congressional or statewide. But there are other ways you can help buy
an election. Look at the Wisconsin recall campaign of Republican
Governor Scott Walker. At least fourteen billionaires rushed to the
support of the corporate right’s favorite union basher. He outraised his
Democratic opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, by nearly eight to
one. Most of his money came from out of state. More than $60 million was
spent, $45 million of it for Walker alone.
Here are just a few of the satisfied buyers:
Wisconsin billionaire
Diane Hendricks contributed more
than half a million dollars on Scott Walker’s behalf. Her late husband
built ABC Supply, America’s largest wholesale distributor of roofing,
windows and siding. Fearful the United States might become “a
socialistic ideological nation,” she’s an ardent foe of unions and, in
her words, “taxing job creators.” True to her aversion to taxes, she
paid none in 2010, despite being worth, according to
Forbes magazine, about $2.8 billion.
Before he launched his crusade against the collective bargaining rights
of working people, Governor Walker had a conversation with Diane
Hendricks, in which she asked, “Any chance we’ll ever get to be a
completely red state and work on these unions… and become a right to
work [state]? What can we do to help you?”
Walker replied, “We’re going to start in a couple weeks with our budget
adjustment bill. The first step is, we’re going to deal with collective
bargaining for all public employee unions, because you use divide and
conquer.”
And so he did.
Walker also hauled in checks for nearly half a million from the Texas oligarch
Bob Perry.
He made his fortune in the home building business and is best known
nationally for contributing four and a half million to the Swift Boat
campaign that smeared the Vietnam War record of Democratic presidential
candidate John Kerry back in 2004.
In Texas, Bob Perry is known for his cozy relationship with the state’s
Supreme Court. He once gave money to every one of its nine elected
judges. And guess what? Those same nine judges later overturned an
$800,000 judgment against his building company for faulty construction.
Bob the Builder, who’s naturally eager for help in the cause of tort
reform — that is, making it hard for everyday people to sue corporations
like his for malfeasance — has so far given four million to the
pro-Romney super PAC, Restore Our Future, and millions to Karl Rove’s
American Crossroads super PAC.
Then there’s casino king
Sheldon Adelson, who gave
Scott Walker’s cause $250,000. That’s a drop in the old champagne bucket
compared to the $21 million Adelson’s family gave to the super PAC that
kept Newt Gingrich in the race long after the formaldehyde had been
ordered. According to
The Wall Street Journal, Adelson did not
long mourn Gingrich’s passing, and has now given at least $10 million
to the Restore Our Future super PAC supporting Romney. By all accounts,
what he expects in return is that his candidate hold unions at bay and
swear that Israel can do no wrong.
Next up on Scott Walker’s list of beneficent plutocrats:
Rich DeVos,
owner of the Orlando Magic basketball team and co-founder of the home
products giant Amway, which, thanks to Republican leaders in Congress,
once shared in a $19 million tax break after a million-dollar DeVos
contribution to the Republican Party. He’s a long-time member of the
secretive Council for National Policy, a who’s who of right-wing
luminaries.
Let’s not forget cowboy billionaire and born again Christian,
Foster Friess,
Rick Santorum’s moneyman, who told us about the good ol’ days when
women would “use Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it
between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.” And
Louis Moore Bacon,
the billionaire founder of the hedge fund Moore Capital – which in 2010
was fined $25 million for attempted commodities manipulation. A big
backer of Romney, he, too came to Walker’s aid in Wisconsin.
So did Dallas oil and gas wildcatter
Trevor Rees-Jones,
who’s given millions to Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, in
anticipation of another administration as friendly to taxpayer subsidies
for big oil as the Rove-Bush White House. Last year, Rees-Jones’
company, Chief Oil, and a partner sold to Chevron nearly a quarter
million acres in northeast America’s Marcellus Shale – the epicenter of
the raging controversy over fracking. Estimated price: one billion
dollars.
We could go on and name more, but you get the picture. These are the
people who are helping to fund what the journalist Joe Hagan describes
as a “tsunami of slime.” Even as they and their chosen candidates are
afforded respectability in the value-free world of plutocracy, they can
hide the fingerprints they leave on the bleeding corpse of democracy in
part because each super PAC comes with that extra special something
every politician craves: plausible deniability. When one of their ads
says something nasty and deceitful about an opponent — when it slanders
and lies — the pol can shrug and say: “Not my doing. It’s the super PAC
that’s slinging the mud, not me.”
And that’s how the wealthy one percent does its dirty business. They
are, by the way, as we were reminded by CNN’s Charles Riley in his
report, “
Can 46 Rich Dudes Buy an Election?”
almost all men, mostly white, “and so far, the vast majority of their
contributions have been made to conservative groups.” They want to own
this election. So if there are any of you left out there with millions
to burn, better buy your candidate now, while supplies last.
Veteran journalist Bill Moyers is the
host of “Moyers & Company,” airing weekly on public television.
Check your local listings. More at www.billmoyers.com
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