Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
SCROTUS is a BIG part of why we lost.
Supreme Court conservatives gave this and perhaps many elections into the future to the GOP because they made it OK for the Kochs and their ilk to spend ALL THEY WANT AND FOR WHOM THEY WANT IN COMPLETE SECRECY.
The Big Winner in 2014 Elections: Corporate Television
With record outside spending, stations bringing in windfall profits from political ads and "mud-slinging"
bySarah Lazare, staff writer
CommonDreams.org, Nov. 4, 2014
In an election marked by record outside spending, including "dark money" sources, a clear winner has already emerged: the corporate television stations making windfall profits from political advertising.
Cable news stations have nearly doubled their sales in political ads since the last midterm elections in 2010, according to figures from Kanta Media ad tracking firm, which were provided to Reuters. TV stations across the U.S. will bring in approximately $2.4 billion from local, state, and federal elections ads, they report. These numbers are just slightly behind the 2012 presidential election, which saw $2.9 billion spent on TV ads.
A recent Pew Research poll finds that, for local TV stations—which remain one of the sources people in the U.S. depend on most for their political news—the 2014 elections could turn out to be one of the most profitable ever.
According to Cecilia Kang and Matea Gold writing for the Washington Post: "This year’s deluge of political ads is being driven largely by super PACs and other independent groups seeking to shape the hard-fought battle over control of the U.S. Senate."
An estimated 908,000 TV ads regarding the U.S. Senate elections aired through late October, the Center for Public Integrity reports. In seven key Senate races, dark money groups are behind 20 percent of all TV ads. A new analysis by the Wesleyan Media Project finds that only 26 percent of these Senate ads are positive.
Michael Beckel, reporter at the Center for Public Integrity, told Common Dreams that the 2010 Citizens United ruling was a "game changer" for political campaign spending. "That ruling has enabled non-party groups to become ever more prominent and we have seen a proliferation of super PACs and politically active nonprofits that endorse candidates and sling mud in attack ads. This election is on pace to be most expensive midterm in history."
CONTINUED...
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/11/04/big-winner-2014-elections-corporate-television
Somewhere, like a beach instead of the prison cell he deserves, Karl Rove is laughing.
18 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
The pukes made theirs plain: "It's Obama's fault."
Which makes me wonder, "Why didn't we make clear who really is at fault?"
Looting. Oh, yeah. Piratizing Warfighting and Public Education are just the beginning.
...then, we do what Demo Donkeys always do: FIGHT! People Power can defeat Money Power -- with Honest Government -- which is the problem.
PS: Remember when Democrats talked about campaign finance reform? Today, it really seems to be one of those things we should have paid more heed to when we had the, eh, votes.
Study: Roberts and Alito Most Pro-Corporate Justices in 65 Years
Tue, 05/07/2013 - 11:11am — Miranda
People For the American Way
We write frequently about the extraordinarily pro-corporate leanings of the current Supreme Court, where the Justices bend the law and twist logic in order to rule in favor of large corporate interests and against the rights of individuals harmed by those interests. In the past week, two new studies have provided powerful numbers to back up the trend.
In a report released on Thursday, the Constitutional Accountability Center found that the corporate lobbying group U.S. Chamber of Commerce has won a stunning two-thirds of the cases that it has been involved with before the Roberts Court. And this weekend, The New York Times reported on a new study from the Minnesota Law Review that found that the current Supreme Court’s five conservative justices have sided with corporate interests at a greater rate than most justices since World War II. In fact, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, both George W. Bush nominees, are the two most pro-corporate Supreme Court justices to sit in the past 65 years:
But the business docket reflects something truly distinctive about the court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. While the current court’s decisions, over all, are only slightly more conservative than those from the courts led by Chief Justices Warren E. Burger and William H. Rehnquist, according to political scientists who study the court, its business rulings are another matter. They have been, a new study finds, far friendlier to business than those of any court since at least World War II.
In the eight years since Chief Justice Roberts joined the court, it has allowed corporations to spend freely in elections in the Citizens United case, has shielded them from class actions and human rights suits, and has made arbitration the favored way to resolve many disputes. Business groups say the Roberts court’s decisions have helped combat frivolous lawsuits, while plaintiffs’ lawyers say the rulings have destroyed legitimate claims for harm from faulty products, discriminatory practices and fraud.
…
Published last month in The Minnesota Law Review, the study ranked the 36 justices who served on the court over those 65 years by the proportion of their pro-business votes; all five of the current court’s more conservative members were in the top 10. But the study’s most striking finding was that the two justices most likely to vote in favor of business interests since 1946 are the most recent conservative additions to the court, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., both appointed by President George W. Bush.
SOURCE: http://blog.pfaw.org/content/study-roberts-and-alito-most-pro-corporate-justices-65-years
They've figured out how to trickle it down to the states, too. Here in Michigan, some of the television ads for State Supreme Court Justices were "Paid for the by the Michigan of Commerce."
Tue, 05/07/2013 - 11:11am — Miranda
People For the American Way
We write frequently about the extraordinarily pro-corporate leanings of the current Supreme Court, where the Justices bend the law and twist logic in order to rule in favor of large corporate interests and against the rights of individuals harmed by those interests. In the past week, two new studies have provided powerful numbers to back up the trend.
In a report released on Thursday, the Constitutional Accountability Center found that the corporate lobbying group U.S. Chamber of Commerce has won a stunning two-thirds of the cases that it has been involved with before the Roberts Court. And this weekend, The New York Times reported on a new study from the Minnesota Law Review that found that the current Supreme Court’s five conservative justices have sided with corporate interests at a greater rate than most justices since World War II. In fact, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, both George W. Bush nominees, are the two most pro-corporate Supreme Court justices to sit in the past 65 years:
But the business docket reflects something truly distinctive about the court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. While the current court’s decisions, over all, are only slightly more conservative than those from the courts led by Chief Justices Warren E. Burger and William H. Rehnquist, according to political scientists who study the court, its business rulings are another matter. They have been, a new study finds, far friendlier to business than those of any court since at least World War II.
In the eight years since Chief Justice Roberts joined the court, it has allowed corporations to spend freely in elections in the Citizens United case, has shielded them from class actions and human rights suits, and has made arbitration the favored way to resolve many disputes. Business groups say the Roberts court’s decisions have helped combat frivolous lawsuits, while plaintiffs’ lawyers say the rulings have destroyed legitimate claims for harm from faulty products, discriminatory practices and fraud.
…
Published last month in The Minnesota Law Review, the study ranked the 36 justices who served on the court over those 65 years by the proportion of their pro-business votes; all five of the current court’s more conservative members were in the top 10. But the study’s most striking finding was that the two justices most likely to vote in favor of business interests since 1946 are the most recent conservative additions to the court, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., both appointed by President George W. Bush.
SOURCE: http://blog.pfaw.org/content/study-roberts-and-alito-most-pro-corporate-justices-65-years
They've figured out how to trickle it down to the states, too. Here in Michigan, some of the television ads for State Supreme Court Justices were "Paid for the by the Michigan of Commerce."
