tagged w/ MN Forward
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by Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger
Remember that horrible 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ad that helped derail John Kerry’s 2004 presidential bid? Well, Bob Perry, the billionaire tycoon who financed that smear campaign is back, and he’s underwriting a barrage of dirty ads that target politicians he doesn’t like.
And this time around, the Supreme Court gave Perry cover in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling, which allows big donors to fund attacks anonymously.
Swift-boating Harry Reid
Eric Mack of the Public News Service profiles Perry in an interview with The Washington Independent’s Jesse Zwick. Perry is diverting the flow of his real estate fortune to right-wing front groups organized by Karl Rove. One of his biggest targets is Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), who is currently deadlocked in a close race with Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle.
Federal regulators cracked down on Perry’s Swift Boat group in 2004 for violating rules about registering and collecting “soft money” donations to fund direct attack ads, but the Citizens United decision renders those rules obsolete. We only know about Perry’s move to finance $7 million in attack ads because he pushed the money through an explicitly political organization. If he’d selected a different type of front-group, we would have never known—and Perry may be simultaneously funneling funds through other front-groups.
The storefronts of the front groups
An astonishing amount of money is flowing into the 2010 elections without any accountability whatsoever. As Andy Kroll and Siddhartha Mahanta reveal in a video for Mother Jones, much of the money is laundered through shadowy front-groups that don’t have to disclose their donors. Organizations with innocuous names like the 60-Plus Society and Alliance for America’s Future are funding multi-million-dollar ad campaigns attacking Democrats. But these operations deploy their big budgets in secrecy—operating out of P.O. Box addresses to keep reporters like Kroll and Mahanta from asking questions. When Kroll and Mahanta did track down these groups, at a row house in Arlington, VA, no one seemed to be able to answer questions. Watch:
Conservative groups benefit most
As Paul Waldman emphasizes for The American Prospect, there’s a lot of money in play here. Outside groups have already dumped $170 million into the elections, with conservative organizations making the lion’s share of the ad buys (as much as 9-to-1, depending on the analysis). The editors of The Nation note that corporate cash has helped drive the total price tag for the 2010 midterms to nearly $5 billion. “We are witnessing an assault on democracy by multinational corporations that, freed by the Citizens United ruling, are out to get the best government money can buy,” they write. As the editors say—whichever political party comes out on top on November 2, there’s one obvious loser: democracy.
But wait, there’s more!
* Be sure to check out Jesse Zwick at The Washington Independent on a lawsuit that wants to push back on the one thing that Citizens United doesn’t overturn: Foreign spending on domestic elections.
* The group that inspired boycotts against retail giant Target, MN Forward, has raked in $1.9 million so far this year, including $50,000 from the Republican Governors Association, reports Patrick Caldwell at The Minnesota Independent.
* And over at Campus Progress, Byard Duncan notes that James Cameron is using the powers of political spending to help progressives for once: the director has donated $1 million to the “No on Prop 23″ campaign, in an effort to keep the state’s climate protection law in place.
* I was on GRITtv with Laura Flanders last night discussing media coverage of campaign finance. The segment starts at 12:30:
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the mid-term elections and campaign financing by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit The Media Consortium for more articles on these issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger
Remember that horrible 2004 Swift Boat... more
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A protest this afternoon at Target’s corporate headquarters, 1000 Nicollet Mall, culminated in an attempt to deliver to CEO Gregg Steinhafel 260,000 petitions, each urging the retailer to stop donating to political candidates.
The demonstration, organized by the progressive political action committee MoveOn, came on the heels of a $150,000 donation Target had made to MN Forward, a pro-business group that is backing Republican Tom Emmer’s bid for governor. The donation has triggered calls for boycotts from GLBT groups, who cite Emmer’s socially conservative stance on gay-rights issues.
Seinhafel issued an official apology to customers and employees yesterday, saying “I realize our decision affected many of you in a way I did not anticipate, and for that I am genuinely sorry.”
On July 29, MoveOn began gathering signatures online for a protest petition. In the following week, the group generated phone calls to Target headquarters and flooded the retailer’s Facebook page with complaints.
Around noon today, MoveOn’s Bob Brereton arrived at Target headquarters with hard copies of the 260,000 petition signatures. The print-outs filled three cardboard boxes, which Brereton had stacked on a dolly.
Randi Reitan, the now-famous Target boycotter whose checkout line tirade went viral on YouTube, addressed the crowd. Standing alongside her husband Philip and their son Jacob, a gay rights activist, Reitan decried the donation as an insensitive assault on its gay customers and employees.
“As a shopper at Target, their contribution was in part my money, and it was being used to attack the civil rights of my son,” she said. “Corporations are not people, and they should not attempt to buy an election which rightly belongs to the people.”
Philip Reitan described Emmer as “the most anti-gay person you can imagine running for governor.”A protest this afternoon at Target’s corporate headquarters, 1000 Nicollet Mall,... more
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Crawling back into the sunlight after a the publicity nightmare it created for itself, Target and CEO Gregg Steinhafel now say the company is "genuinely sorry" for donating $150,000 in cash and services to the political action committee MN Forward. Steinhafel also told employees (and, by proxy, consumers) today, "We remain fully committed to fostering an environment that supports and respects the rights and beliefs of all individuals. " But how can Target remain fully committed to something it never had in the first place?
"The truth is not that Target and its leadership have suddenly turned on their commitment to gay rights. It's more that it never really existed to begin with." So says The Awl's Abe Sauer, who's been on top of Target's anti-gay political donations. "Further research shows that Target has funneled significant funding to the most socially conservative of Republicans and that it boasts a frightening culture of anti-gay candidate support from Target's own stable of top executives."
We already knew CEO Steinhafel personally donated money to the campaign of Rep. Michele Bachmann, easily one of America's worst people to hold elected office. But the anti-gay money from Target's toppers doesn't end there.
Target's current group of top corporate officers have supported a murderers row of anti-gay politicians. Even more confusing, some of those anti-gay candidates supported by Target's PAC and its executives don't even represent Minnesota.
Of the small handful of donations he's made, Target CFO Douglas Scovanner has given to both Rep. John Kline and Rep. Erik Paulson. John Kline joined Bachmann with a group of Republican members of Congress who put their names on a lawsuit to force the District of Columbia to put gay marriage to a Prop 8-like referendum. Meanwhile, Paulson supports amending the constitution to ban gay equality.
Of the five candidates to whom Target CMO Michael Francis has donated, three are George W. Bush and the aforementioned John Kline and Erik Paulson. Target's Chief Information Officer Beth Jacob gave her largest personal donation ever to Erik Paulson. John Kline also received money from Terrence Scully, Target's president of financial services. So did anti-gay amendment-supporter Mitch McConnell, who isn't even a representative of Minnesota.
And equally tellingly:
All of these executives also gave money to former Minnesota senator Norm Coleman during his much contested 2008 race against Al Franken. Even largely politically inactive Target executives, such as Executive VP of Stores Troy Risch, gave to Coleman in 2008.
Al Franken, who is a very staunch supporter of complete gay equality, received zero dollars from Target executives or the Target PAC. Coleman, meanwhile, supported a constitutional amendment against gay equality.
And while those are all individual donations, which the heinous Supreme Court decision in Citizens United wouldn't affect, Target's own PAC, the newly formed Citizens Political Forum, has been funneling money to groups like Freedom First PAC, the fiefdom of outgoing Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, whose record on LGBT equality is terrible. It's one more way some of the billions Target generates every year finds the pockets of bigoted politicos.
Target and its executive suite have a clear connection to a slew of anti-gay candidates. Listening, then, to the company trumpet its commitment to diversity and equal rights and blah blah flies in the direct face of what these individuals are doing in private. And while every American has the right, deservedly so, to donate money to politicians they support, consumers also have a right to understand that as they spend dollar after dollar with Target, the company's earnings increase, and these executives' salaries, bonuses, and equity stakes in the company become more lucrative. Which gives them more money to donate to political candidates who want nothing more than to zap rights away from queer Americans.
I'd write something about Target's executives now having "a target on their backs," but it turns out they always have. We just never put on our special goggles to see it.Crawling back into the sunlight after a the publicity nightmare it created for itself,... more
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Matt Morris, the married gay singer-songwriter and one-time Mickey Mouse Club member, was thrilled when Best Buy started airing promo videos for his new record When Everything Breaks Open. Then he found out Best Buy was funding the effort to elect anti-gay Tom Emmer governor of Minnesota.
So Morris — who you might remember from dueting with regular collaborator Justin Timberlake during the Haiti relief telethon — took down the video he originally recorded (with much excitement) of him visiting his local Best Buy, and replaced it with the one above. So while he doesn't want you to ban Best Buy outright — after all, he wants you to go into the store and buy his CD — he would love for you to take his record off the rack and replace it with some informational material about what the money you spend in Best Buy goes toward.Matt Morris, the married gay singer-songwriter and one-time Mickey Mouse Club member,... more
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The contrast between Emmer's outspoken conservatism and Target's moderate image is striking. Emmer lauds Arizona's strict approach to illegal immigration and once advocated chemical castration for sex offenders.The contrast between Emmer's outspoken conservatism and Target's moderate... more
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