Hidden Under Tax-Exempt Cloak, Political Dollars Flow

[Pirate Smile]

Source: The New York Times

Alaskans grew suspicious two years ago when a national organization called Americans for Job Security showed up and spent $1.6 million pushing a referendum to restrict development of a gold and copper mine at the headwaters of Bristol Bay.

It seemed an oddly parochial fight for a pro-business group based in the Washington suburbs that had spent tens of millions of dollars since the late 1990s roughing up Democrats with negative advertisements around election time.

But after the mine’s supporters filed a complaint with the state, it became clear that what was depicted as grass-roots opposition was something else entirely: Americans for Job Security, investigators found, had helped create the illusion of a popular upwelling to shield the identity of a local financier who paid for most of the referendum campaign. More broadly, they said, far from being a national movement advocating a “pro-paycheck message,” the group is actually a front for a coterie of political operatives, devised to sidestep campaign disclosure rules.

“Americans for Job Security has no purpose other than to cover various money trails all over the country,” the staff of the Alaska Public Offices Commission said in a report last year.
The report went mostly unnoticed outside Anchorage. But its conclusions suddenly loom large in the current debate over nonprofit advocacy groups like Americans for Job Security, which campaign watchdogs say allow moneyed interests to influence elections without revealing themselves. Congress is now wrangling over a bill that would require some disclosure.


Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/us/politics/24donate.html?hp

[flyarm]

1. K&R

[drm604]

8. Americans For Job Security

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_for_Job_Security

mericans for Job Security (AJS) spun off in the late 1990s from a group called The Coalition: Americans Working for Real Change, a group that had been formed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to counteract the extensive soft money spending by the AFL-CIO starting in the 1996 elections.

Later in a FEC Complaint, Public Citizen wrote that AJS is a "sham front group that would be better called Corporations Influencing Elections ... masquerading as a non-profit to conceal its funders and the scope of its electioneering activities," the Center for Responsive Politics wrote in April 2007. Incorporated October 1997 in Virginia, AJS was described by the Center as "pro-Republican", "pro-business", and "established to directly counter labor's influence".

The Center also reported that, in 1998, AJS "pledged to raise and spend $100 million on issue ads over the next five years."

It is alleged that AJS was founded by Marc F. Racicot "with a $1 million donation" from the American Insurance Association. Racicot headed George W. Bush's 2004 re-election campaign and is a former Republican National Committee chairman. In June 2005, Racicot coincidentally became the new head of the American Insurance Association, which "represents 435 major property and casualty insurance companies."

[Judi Lynn]

2. Article from N.Carolina published on Americans for Job Security Wednesday:

With political ads, consider who is behind the message
Posted: Wednesday, Sep. 22, 2010
Circosta

From Damon Circosta, executive director of the N.C. Center for Voter Education:

In these troubled economic times you would be hard-pressed to find someone opposed to job security. Like prosperity or apple pie, job security is a term just about everyone thinks is a good thing.

Here in North Carolina, a group called Americans for Job Security has been running television ads encouraging viewers to oppose some candidates in the upcoming elections. Emboldened by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that deregulated some key aspects of our campaign finance laws, AJS and similar groups are poised to break records for non-candidate election spending.

This is a new day in political campaigns. With no limits on the amount a union or a corporation can spend to sway an election, the candidates themselves will have a hard time controlling their message.

Gone are the days when two candidates engage in a relatively even contest. Here to stay are organizations with innocuous-sounding names, deep pockets and very little accountability.

It's tough to find out much about organizations such as Americans for Job Security. The AJS website spends a great deal of space talking about the resources they have to influence policy and their willingness to spend during election season. What we don't know is who funds the organization and why.

~snip~
If they aren't willing to tell us who they are, why should we listen to them?

More:
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/09/22/1709108/with-political-ads-consider-who.html

[fasttense]

3. It seems the Dancing Supremes have opened up our electoral system

to blatant fraud. Oh I know corruption has been in bed with politics since the 1st political party was created and since the 1st bank built a vault. But it was held in check by laws and regulations. No more.

Just like Deregulation turned mortgage banking and Wall Street into one big con game, the Dancing Supremes have deregulated corporations and the uber rich's political corruption. Now they can play their con games just like the bankers did. And like the economic crash, our political system will break under the weight of out of control corruption.

You can see the beginnings of it in how the Senate can't get any meaningful legislation out without the party of the rich, the minority party, giving their blessing. You can see the beginnings of it in how the people's voices were so quickly shrugged off by President Obama. You can see the beginnings of it in how afraid the Democrats are to stand up and be real liberals.

This new law (it was not a ruling because it did not follow legal precedent) created by the Dancing Supremes making corporations people too (Only when it comes to the benefits, they are not people when it comes to murder, limits on individual contributions, and taxes.) is equal to the mistake made by enacting prohibition. It will have serious social and political ramifications.
This will not end well.

[groundloop]

5. You hit the nail on the head. What is really worrisome....

is that fact that since these shady money lanuderers are more and more controlling elections we may never get our democracy back.

[xchrom]

4. recommend

[myrna minx]

6. K&R n/t

[Mnpaul]

7. They ran a ton of ads against Franken

TV, radio everywhere non stop

Public Citizens page on AJS
http://www.citizen.org/congress/article_redirect.cfm?ID=16408

[Jackpine Radical]

9. Thus goes "democracy" in America.

[L0oniX]

10. Democracy RIP

[pinto]

11. kick

:kick:

[earcandle]

12. My country has become a land of beggers and robbers... sounds like India!