Reply #3: Ratigan's show today is linked to this Huffpo piece - video included [View All]

[Bozita]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/26/super-pacs-secret-money-campaign-finance_n_977699.html



Super PACs And Secret Money: The Unregulated Shadow Campaign
Paul Blumenthal
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First Posted: 9/26/11 10:40 AM ET Updated: 9/26/11 01:32 PM ET

This article is part of a collaboration with MSNBC's The Dylan Ratigan Show for the series "Mad As Hell: Get Money Out," airing Monday and Tuesday at 4 p.m. EST.


WASHINGTON -- In the span of a week in September, two independent political committees announced unheard-of fundraising plans for the coming campaign season. The Karl Rove-linked American Crossroads, along with its sister nonprofit, Crossroads GPS, announced a plan to raise and spend $240 million in 2012. Make Us Great Again, a group solely dedicated to electing Texas Gov. Rick Perry the 45th President of the United States, revealed a plan to spend $55 million in the Republican primary alone. Both of these multimillion dollar plans would break all reported records for spending by an independent political committee, and offer a sign of how campaign finance rules have been upended.

The federal system of campaign finance is in the midst of a sea change following the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC), which undid a host of regulations covering the use of corporate and union money by independent groups in elections. Those independent groups are forming a shadow campaign apparatus fueled by unlimited and often undisclosed contributions, without the same accountability required of political parties or candidates' own political action committees.

American Crossroads and Make Us Great Again represent one of the two new kinds of groups playing in the shadow campaign: super PACs, independent political committees filed with the FEC that can accept unlimited funds from corporations, unions and individuals.

In their debut election cycle in 2010, super PACs, like American Crossroads, spent a combined $65.3 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. This was part of a huge surge in spending by non-party groups, whose spending hit $304 million in 2010, a record for any election cycle -- presidential or midterm.

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