Open Secrets: Dark Money

The following is a re-blog from Open Secrets Dot Org.  

The piece is as relevant to US politics and US society as state and federal government.  Money is flowing into US politics at an alarming and dangerous rate.  Ultimately, lobbying dollars and political contributions work for business entities and special interest groups. There are few to no organizations, which pour money into Congress on behalf of “The People.” It just does not happen comparable to money funneled to support 360 degree wealthy accumulation by the nation’s Top 20% (ers). 

As is the case with all ‘high information”, the following is not a quick read.  Of course, we are aware, people really do not like long reads. Well, there are times when our tendencies contribute to “low information.” Do you want to live your life as do most Fox News viewers? How about Beck viewers and listeners?  Or, better yet, people who visit Breitbart News Dot Com and actually feel they are being informed vs. entertained.  In fact, entertainment and political posturing is the basic media model for each of the three entities. 

Open Secrets, nor  do we have an answer to the horrors of purchased legislation, purchased votes, and purchased politicians However, we feel an obligation to inform. When information flows, good things eventually happen. What we do know is Citizens United open a door that leads to nothing the horrors of plutocracy. As the IRS attempted to investigate the legitimacy of the Citizens United money flood, it became immersed in conservative, “hands-off” our SCOTUS decision rhetoric  that lingers even today. 

OpenSecrets.org’s New Dark Money Data Measures Groups’ Politicization

by Robert Maguire on September 9, 2013 11:00 AM 

Update, Sept. 11: For clarity, we have added two paragraphs to this story (see *) explaining that the IRS and FEC definitions of political spending are not identical, and have rephrased headlines to two charts.

Building on our previous work on “dark money” nonprofits, the Center for Responsive Politics is rolling out new information on the activities of these groups that are playing an increasing role in U.S. elections. 

Dark money groups — politically active 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations and 501(c)(6) trade associations that, under tax law, don’t have to disclose their donors — aren’t supposed to spend the majority of their resources on politics. But over the last six years, a combination of Supreme Court decisions that loosened restrictions on their electoral activity, coupled with regulatory confusion, has led to a surge in their political expenditures. Direct spending on federal elections by 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(6) groups has risen from $10 million in 2004 to well over $300 million in 2012 — and that’s just counting what they reported to the Federal Election Commission, which doesn’t include all of their political spending.

And the nature of their activity has changed in recent elections. Nearly half of the political spending by these groups in 2004 went for communications to their own members — what the FEC calls “communication costs.” Now, it shows up almost entirely in the form of negative, often misleading ads aimed at influencing the outcome of elections. In 2012, only 2 percent of the spending by these groups was directed at their own members. 

But trying to sort out exactly what these groups are doing ranges from very difficult to impossible, given how little information is available to the public. For example, the groups must disclose their total spending on their IRS Form 990s, due annually. But nowhere do they have to break down those expenditures in detail and say exactly how they spent the money, as unions must in reports with the Department of Labor. On top of that, the 990s are filed anywhere from five to 23 months after the spending in question actually takes place. Once they’re filed, the IRS offers no searchable database or machine readable data to the public. It provides only scant summary data. 

To help get around some of the hurdles posed by the dearth of IRS data, CRP has manually input more than 14,000 records, with the aim of bringing more clarity to the financial activities of nonprofits that have spent money to influence, directly and indirectly, federal elections over the last three cycles. 

CRP’s data includes all politically active 501(c)(4)s and 501(c)(6)s, whether or not they have been granted tax-exempt status by the IRS. Such groups as Crossroads GPS, American Commitment, and Citizens for Strength and Security either have not received or not applied for exempt status. The IRS does not include such groups in the data it makes available. Also, CRP’s new data includes other information that’s absent from the IRS data: total expenditures, total grants and total political spending reported to the IRS, over a period of multiple years. 

On the other side of the divide, at the FEC, these groups must file reports when they make certain political expenditures, but the agency doesn’t require them to provide identifying information — such as Employee Identification Numbers (EINs). So CRP has gone through three cycles of outside spending data and matched FEC filers with IRS identifiers, allowing us to link the two sets of data. 

The result is that we are providing multiple years of data reported to the IRS and the FEC, matched over the same time periods that the spending took place. We’ve included direct political spenders as well as what we call “dark money mailboxes” that reported no spending to the FEC themselves, but sent more than half their funds to politically active nonprofits. 

Not only have we matched spending reported to the FEC for the spenders themselves over the exact dates covered by each IRS report, but we have also incorporated recipient political spending into the donor profiles, so that users can get a better understanding of how much a donor’s grant recipients spent on politics. This information has never been provided anywhere until now.

Here are some of the larger findings that stand out in the new data.

From 2009 through 2011, overall spending reported to the IRS was often much greater during the election year.  

Looking at overall spending reported to the IRS for the three-year period from 2009 to 2011, at least 27 dark-money groups active in the 2010 midterms reported election-year expenditures that were more than the combined total of the two off-years, 2009 and 2011. On average, during this three-year period, more than 70 percent of the groups’ expenditures came during the election year. 

Top 10 Group	IRS 2009	IRS 2010	IRS 2011	Election- Year
Crossroads GPS	$0	$42,344,884	$22,375,630	65%
American Action Network	$1,446,675	$25,692,334	$11,482,833	67%
America Votes	$3,474,968	$14,193,741	$9,635,163	52%
American Future Fund	$1,913,598	$21,352,090	$3,637,462	79%
Americans for Tax Reform	$4,593,543	$11,379,668	$3,114,979	60%
Republican Jewish Coalition	$2,858,109	$12,409,886	$3,143,053	67%
Americans for Job Security	$3,490,547	$12,417,809	$2,481,855	68%
Susan B Anthony List	$2,837,834	$7,000,004	$3,531,134	52%
Americans for Limited Government	$1,840,743	$8,613,552	$1,038,919	75%
Faith & Freedom Coalition	$880,421	$5,661,250	$3,582,897	56%

Likewise, some of the most prominent donor organizations — 10 dark money mailboxes, for example — demonstrate the same trends. 

Dark Money Mailbox	IRS 2009	IRS 2010	IRS 2011	Percent Election-Year Spending
Center to Protect Patient Rights	$12,048,952	$60,245,391	$23,172,155	63%
Freedom & Values Alliance	$0	$1,070,585	$651,557	62%
Wellspring Cmte	$664,628	$11,521,432	$2,204,730	80%
TC4 Trust	$7,758,262	$30,880,071	$0	80%
American Justice Partnership	$2,225,711	$8,147,071	$1,849,827	67%
Patriot Majority USA	$76,269	$5,315,658	$0	99%
America’s Families First	$0	$7,647,638	$800,093	91%
Alliance for Freedom	$0	$4,375,434	$197,433	96%
Common Sense Issues Coalition	$9,054	$201,954	$23,924	86%
Atlantic Advocacy Fund	$18,963,628	$43,462,445	$13,964,521	57%

Significance?  We know that dark money groups engage in a lot of political activity during periods that are outside the FEC’s reporting windows, which means that their spending as reported to the FEC is often not an accurate measure of their participation in the electoral process. Unfortunately, those FEC reports are often the best metrics we have. That’s because the financial information reported to the IRS partially or entirely lacks important details like the group’s vendors, how much they were paid, for what products or services, and on what dates.  

Given the shortcomings of both IRS and FEC financial data on nonprofits, it’s important to look at the available information from different angles. Checking the ebb and flow of overall spending reported to the IRS and how it relates to election cycles is one way to do this.  

Dark Money Mailboxes Multiply. 

Dark money mailboxes are nonprofits with no direct federal political spending of their own and no substantial programs, staff, or volunteers. A majority of the spending by these groups goes for grants to other politically active nonprofits. (CRP has detailed the activities of several dark money mailboxes in our Shadow Money Trail series.)   

These organizations have proliferated with every election cycle, and as the 2012 filings start coming in, there may well be new discoveries. The following is a list of the top 10 such groups.

Dark Money Mailbox	IRS Spending	Grants	Percent Grants
Center to Protect Patient Rights	$95,466,498	$70,189,431	74%
Green Tech Action Fund	$28,243,610	$23,547,726	83%
Wellspring Cmte	$23,745,592	$16,886,369	71%
TC4 Trust	$38,638,333	$36,778,493	95%
American Justice Partnership	$15,693,198	$10,487,000	67%
Patriot Majority USA	$5,315,658	$2,896,708	54%
America’s Families First	$8,447,731	$7,794,000	92%
Atlantic Advocacy Fund	$103,089,084	$100,317,633	97%
Freedom & Values Alliance	$1,722,142	$1,717,346	100%
Alliance for Freedom	$4,572,867	$4,515,000	99%

(The Patriot Majority USA listed above is only one of three iterations of Patriot Majority USA.) 

Significance?  From a practical standpoint, dark money mailboxes serve two purposes. First, they add another level of opacity in a system where the sources of funds that ultimately are spent on politics are already difficult or impossible to find. If the IRS were to investigate, say, the 60 Plus Association‘s sources of income, it would also have to investigate the provenance of the money given out by three of its largest donors: the Center to Protect Patient Rights, TC4 Trust and Free Enterprise America, two of which are now defunct. 

Dark-money mailboxes have been tied to questionable activities around the country. In California, millions of dollars were funneled through a daisy chain of three nonprofits, including the Center to Protect Patient Rights, in what the California Fair Political Practices Commission called “campaign money laundering.“ 

Also, dark money can be used to diminish the likelihood of IRS scrutiny. Large contributions from one individual or corporation can trigger an audit to evaluate whether or not the recipient organization is serving the financial interests of the donor, a major no-no in the 501(c) world. To get around this, a donor, or small set of donors, can establish a constellation of nonprofits that then channel contributions to the same ultimate destination. 

Tens of millions of dollars in political spending goes entirely unreported to the IRS.

In 42 instances over the last four years, groups that reported at least $25,000 in spending to the FEC did not report political spending to the IRS. In nearly three-fourths of the cases, the spending they reported to the FEC was above $100,000, and in nine it was above $1 million. In 14 instances, the unreported political spending made up at least one-fifth of the group’s total spending as reported to the IRS, and in eight instances, the unreported spending ranged from 40 percent to 65 percent of the group’s expenditures. Such high levels of political spending could have raised suspicions at the IRS. 

The following groups had the largest amount of unreported political spending that also made up more than 20 percent of total spending the group reported to the IRS over the specified period.

Top 10 Group	Period	Total IRS Spending	FEC spending	Percent
Americans for Job Security	Nov 2007-Oct 2008	$12,343,781	$8,084,268	65%
Vets for Freedom	Jan 2008-Dec2008	$9,095,588	$4,757,685	52%
American Rights at Work	July2008-June2009	$16,450,569	$3,667,018	22%
Let Freedom Ring	Jan 2008-Dec2008	$7,364,554	$3,535,786	48%
Center for Individual Freedom	Oct 2010-Sept 2011	$5,757,719	$2,482,313	43%
Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund	Jan 2010-Dec 2010	$2,728,232	$1,128,162	41%
Americans for Job Security	Nov 2008-Oct 2009	$3,490,547	$890,488	26%
Ending Spending	Jan 2011-Dec 2011	$2,282,332	$688,090	30%
Judicial Confirmation Network	July2008-June2009	$1,405,553	$571,063	41%
American Energy Alliance	Jan 2008-Dec2008	$1,675,617	$485,307	29%

Two organizations — Let Freedom Ring and Nevada Advocates for Planned Parenthood — answered “yes” to a question on their tax forms asking whether they had engaged in efforts to influence the outcome of elections, directly or indirectly. Yet they did not report any political spending to tax authorities. 

Two other organizations — Americans for Job Security and Vets for Freedom — neglected to report political spending to the tax agency on two separate occasions. The largest discrepancies were in 2008, when Americans for Job Security’s $8 million in unreported political spending made up 65 percent of its total spending reported to the IRS; and Vets for Freedom’s $4.8 million in spending reported to the FEC, but not the IRS, made up more than half of the groups’ total outlays. 

*It’s worth noting that the FEC and IRS definitions of political spending are not identical. The IRS asks all filers of 990 forms to answer the question: “Did the organization engage in direct or indirect political campaign activities on behalf of or in opposition to candidates for public office?” That’s more vague than the FEC’s reporting requirements and, on its face, would seem to include all spending reported to the FEC and possibly more. However, as the Congressional Research Service (CRS) noted in a report issued last year, spending on issue ads that run shortly before an election and must be reported to the FEC might not necessarily be required to be reported to the IRS. The only two rulings the IRS has released on when issue advocacy becomes campaign spending indicate that the agency applies a complicated “facts and circumstances” test, and, as CRS notes, there are no “bright-line rules.” 

However, some experts say that organizations should not imagine there’s a practical difference between what the two agencies are asking for. “I have never been presented with an example of spending that is sufficiently political to be reported to the FEC, but would not be political under the IRS definition,” said tax attorney Marcus Owens, a former head of the exempt organizations office at the IRS. 

Significance? The IRS has no system in place to monitor spending reported to the FEC, and, as we’ve noted, even if it did, the FEC doesn’t require nonprofits to provide their EINs; without those unique identifiers, it would be hard for the IRS to check political spending by the organizations it oversees. To assess the political activity of a nonprofit, the IRS relies to a great degree on how much the group claims to have spent engaging “in direct or indirect political campaign activities on behalf of or in opposition to candidates for public office.”  

Millions more are only partially reported to the IRS.

At least thirteen groups that reported spending more than $25,000 to the FEC in either 2008 or 2010 reported spending much less than that on politics when they filed their 990s with the IRS. Together, these groups reported more than $51.6 million in spending to the FEC, while only reporting political spending of $24 million to the IRS over the exact same period.  

Top 10 Groups	Period	Total IRS Spending	Spending Reported to FEC	Political Spending Reported to IRS
American Action Network	July 2010-June 2011	$25,692,334	$18,885,679	$5,535,845
Freedom’s Watch	Jan 2008-Dec 2008	$36,933,305	$16,307,398	$10,745,848
Americans for Job Security	Nov 2009-Oct 2010	$12,417,809	$7,696,267	$4,351,478
Americans for Tax Reform	Jan 2010-Dec 2010	$11,379,668	$4,160,299	$1,859,239
Republican Jewish Coalition	Jan 2008-Dec 2008	$6,521,230	$1,163,002	$104,567
Alliance for a Better Minnesota	Jan 2008-Dec 2008	$3,752,685	$1,415,453	$754,500
Alliance for America’s Future	Feb 2010-Dec 2010	$7,669,093	$703,772	$343,776
West Virginia Conservative Foundation	Jan 2010-Dec 2010	$652,574	$534,974	$49,829
Citizens for the Republic	Jan 2010-Dec 2010	$1,177,452	$195,411	$88,456
Citizen Action of Wisconsin	Jan 2010-Dec 2010	$680,456	$110,617	$88,460

In all, about $67 million less in political spending was reported to the IRS than to the FEC in 2008 and 2010 by all groups that either failed to report or underreported political spending to the tax agency.

Significance? The IRS can’t effectively evaluate the political activity of a particular organization if it is not getting all the information it needs.  The agency does not systematically monitor spending that’s reported to the FEC, so it relies to a large extent on the political spending claimed by the filers on their 990s.  

Some organizations’ 2012 political spending alone surpassed their entire 2010 budgets.

Among groups that spent more than $50,000 on politics in 2012, 10 emerge as standouts because they spent more on politics in 2012 than they spent on everything in 2010.  

Group	IRS 2010	FEC 2012
Crossroads GPS	$42,344,884	$71,161,698
American Future Fund	$21,352,090	$25,404,956
Americans for Prosperity	$24,064,187	$36,364,103
Americans for Tax Reform	$11,379,668	$15,794,552
American Energy Alliance	$1,019,928	$1,361,500
Center Forward	$130,358	$2,057,089
Hispanic Leadership Fund	$228,613	$838,417
Emergency Cmte for Israel	$439,081	$827,965
Michigan League of Conservation Voters	$219,775	$860,237
Colorado Family Action	$64,578	$78,045

These 10 groups spent a combined total of almost $155 million in 2012 on politics, according to what they reported to the FEC — more than all of the spending reported to the FEC by 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(6) groups in 2010. In order to keep that total safely within IRS limits of political activity, they’re going to have to report more than $380 million in combined total expenditures to the IRS when they file their 990s covering 2012. That’s $280 million more in combined total IRS spending than these groups reported in 2010. Crossroads GPS alone accounts for $136 million of that increase. Its 2012 political spending of more than $71 million, as reported to the FEC, is nearly double its total 2010 budget. In order to keep that $71 million well under half of its total expenditures, it will need to report more than $177 million in total expenditures in 2012 on its tax return.  

Significance? It is normal for organizations promoting an agenda to be more active during an election year. Naturally, that is the time when the public and the media are paying the most attention, so organizations take advantage of election-year conditions to gain traction for their cause.  Of the groups CRP tracks, 160 filed 990s in the three-year period from 2009 to 2011, and 134 reported a rise in expenditures during 2010. 

But when a group’s spending surges dramatically in election years, particularly when the group in question is known to have made large political expenditures, it raises questions. 

Over the four-year period from 2009 through 2012, nine of the 10 groups listed here will have made, at a minimum, between 71 and 93 percent of their total expenditures for those four years combined during the election years of 2010 and 2012. Viewed together, these 10 groups reported a combined total of $68.7 million in total spending during the off years of 2009 and 2011. Using their total spending from 2010 and the spending they reported to the FEC in 2012, we’ve calculated a projected minimum estimate of what we expect their overall expenditures to be when they file their 990s covering last year. That analysis shows that the combined election-year overall spending totals for these 10 groups will come in at more than $483 million, a nearly seven-fold increase over off-year spending.

Attributable political spending puts some groups over the limit.  

Dark money groups rarely report that more than 30 or 40 percent of their total expenditures went towards political activities. One way they get around reporting too much in direct political expenditures is to make large grants to like-minded dark money groups and, sometimes, coordinate the expenditures. Factoring in this recipient political spending — by comparing the size of the grant to the group’s spending as reported to the FEC, then taking the smaller number — puts nine groups over the 50 percent political spending limit. Not factoring in recipient political spending shows just one group, American Action Network, spending above the limit.

Group	Period	Total IRS Spending	Donor’s FEC Spending	Attributable Recipient Spending	Total FEC Spending	FEC Spending with Recipients
Center to Protect Patient Rights	Jan 2010-Dec 2010	$60,245,391	$0	$36,675,105	0%	61%
Crossroads GPS	June 2010-May 2011	$42,344,884	$16,564,728	$11,095,406	39%	65%
American Action Network	July 2010-June 2011	$25,692,334	$18,885,679	$200,000	74%	74%
Republican Jewish Coalition	Jan 2010-Dec 2010	$12,409,886	$1,143,465	$8,000,000	9%	74%
Environment America	July 2008-June 2009	$10,573,775	$214,848	$6,514,090	2%	64%
Green Tech Action Fund	Aug 2008-Dec 2008	$2,375,000	$0	$2,375,000	0%	100%
Freedom & Values Alliance	Jan 2010-Dec 2010	$1,070,585	$0	$1,067,000	0%	100%
Common Sense Issues Coalition	Nov 2009-Oct 2010	$201,954	$0	$195,000	0%	97%
Annual Fund	July 2011-June 2012	$103,612	$0	$100,000	0%	97%

Even with recipient political spending factored in, these estimates are still on the low end for most groups, because many have state-level political expenditures and unreported “issue advocacy” that isn’t included here.  For example, in 2012, Americans for Job Security spent more than $1 million in judicial races in Michigan, according to the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, on top of the $16 million it reported spending at the federal level in 2012.

Significance? These totals do not attribute all political spending by recipients to the donor.  We compare the size of the grant with the recipients’ spending as reported to the FEC over the same period, then take the lower figure.  The aim is to get an estimate of how much political spending was facilitated by the donor.

The IRS has not yet made it clear whether giving large grants to other organization with political activities is a valid “social welfare” function. If not, the agency could take action against the groups that do this on a large scale.
_____________________ 

End Open Secrets

If you read the Open Secrets piece and are not alarmed at what you read, you are lost in a web of plutocracy.

Open Secrets: Dark Money

The following is a re-blog from Open Secrets Dot Org.  

The piece is as relevant to US politics and US society as state and federal government.  Money is flowing into US politics at an alarming and dangerous rate.  Ultimately, lobbying dollars and political contributions work for business entities and special interest groups. There are few to no organizations, which pour money into Congress on behalf of “The People.” It just does not happen comparable to money funneled to support 360 degree wealthy accumulation by the nation’s Top 20% (ers). 

As is the case with all ‘high information”, the following is not a quick read.  Of course, we are aware, people really do not like long reads. Well, there are times when our tendencies contribute to “low information.” Do you want to live your life as do most Fox News viewers? How about Beck viewers and listeners?  Or, better yet, people who visit Breitbart News Dot Com and actually feel they are being informed vs. entertained.  In fact, entertainment and political posturing is the basic media model for each of the three entities. 

Open Secrets, nor  do we have an answer to the horrors of purchased legislation, purchased votes, and purchased politicians However, we feel an obligation to inform. When information flows, good things eventually happen. What we do know is Citizens United open a door that leads to nothing the horrors of plutocracy. As the IRS attempted to investigate the legitimacy of the Citizens United money flood, it became immersed in conservative, “hands-off” our SCOTUS decision rhetoric  that lingers even today. 

OpenSecrets.org’s New Dark Money Data Measures Groups’ Politicization

by Robert Maguire on September 9, 2013 11:00 AM 

Update, Sept. 11: For clarity, we have added two paragraphs to this story (see *) explaining that the IRS and FEC definitions of political spending are not identical, and have rephrased headlines to two charts.

Building on our previous work on “dark money” nonprofits, the Center for Responsive Politics is rolling out new information on the activities of these groups that are playing an increasing role in U.S. elections. 

Dark money groups — politically active 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations and 501(c)(6) trade associations that, under tax law, don’t have to disclose their donors — aren’t supposed to spend the majority of their resources on politics. But over the last six years, a combination of Supreme Court decisions that loosened restrictions on their electoral activity, coupled with regulatory confusion, has led to a surge in their political expenditures. Direct spending on federal elections by 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(6) groups has risen from $10 million in 2004 to well over $300 million in 2012 — and that’s just counting what they reported to the Federal Election Commission, which doesn’t include all of their political spending.

And the nature of their activity has changed in recent elections. Nearly half of the political spending by these groups in 2004 went for communications to their own members — what the FEC calls “communication costs.” Now, it shows up almost entirely in the form of negative, often misleading ads aimed at influencing the outcome of elections. In 2012, only 2 percent of the spending by these groups was directed at their own members. 

But trying to sort out exactly what these groups are doing ranges from very difficult to impossible, given how little information is available to the public. For example, the groups must disclose their total spending on their IRS Form 990s, due annually. But nowhere do they have to break down those expenditures in detail and say exactly how they spent the money, as unions must in reports with the Department of Labor. On top of that, the 990s are filed anywhere from five to 23 months after the spending in question actually takes place. Once they’re filed, the IRS offers no searchable database or machine readable data to the public. It provides only scant summary data. 

To help get around some of the hurdles posed by the dearth of IRS data, CRP has manually input more than 14,000 records, with the aim of bringing more clarity to the financial activities of nonprofits that have spent money to influence, directly and indirectly, federal elections over the last three cycles. 

CRP’s data includes all politically active 501(c)(4)s and 501(c)(6)s, whether or not they have been granted tax-exempt status by the IRS. Such groups as Crossroads GPS, American Commitment, and Citizens for Strength and Security either have not received or not applied for exempt status. The IRS does not include such groups in the data it makes available. Also, CRP’s new data includes other information that’s absent from the IRS data: total expenditures, total grants and total political spending reported to the IRS, over a period of multiple years. 

On the other side of the divide, at the FEC, these groups must file reports when they make certain political expenditures, but the agency doesn’t require them to provide identifying information — such as Employee Identification Numbers (EINs). So CRP has gone through three cycles of outside spending data and matched FEC filers with IRS identifiers, allowing us to link the two sets of data. 

The result is that we are providing multiple years of data reported to the IRS and the FEC, matched over the same time periods that the spending took place. We’ve included direct political spenders as well as what we call “dark money mailboxes” that reported no spending to the FEC themselves, but sent more than half their funds to politically active nonprofits. 

Not only have we matched spending reported to the FEC for the spenders themselves over the exact dates covered by each IRS report, but we have also incorporated recipient political spending into the donor profiles, so that users can get a better understanding of how much a donor’s grant recipients spent on politics. This information has never been provided anywhere until now.

Here are some of the larger findings that stand out in the new data.

From 2009 through 2011, overall spending reported to the IRS was often much greater during the election year.  

Looking at overall spending reported to the IRS for the three-year period from 2009 to 2011, at least 27 dark-money groups active in the 2010 midterms reported election-year expenditures that were more than the combined total of the two off-years, 2009 and 2011. On average, during this three-year period, more than 70 percent of the groups’ expenditures came during the election year. 

Top 10 Group	IRS 2009	IRS 2010	IRS 2011	Election- Year
Crossroads GPS	$0	$42,344,884	$22,375,630	65%
American Action Network	$1,446,675	$25,692,334	$11,482,833	67%
America Votes	$3,474,968	$14,193,741	$9,635,163	52%
American Future Fund	$1,913,598	$21,352,090	$3,637,462	79%
Americans for Tax Reform	$4,593,543	$11,379,668	$3,114,979	60%
Republican Jewish Coalition	$2,858,109	$12,409,886	$3,143,053	67%
Americans for Job Security	$3,490,547	$12,417,809	$2,481,855	68%
Susan B Anthony List	$2,837,834	$7,000,004	$3,531,134	52%
Americans for Limited Government	$1,840,743	$8,613,552	$1,038,919	75%
Faith & Freedom Coalition	$880,421	$5,661,250	$3,582,897	56%

Likewise, some of the most prominent donor organizations — 10 dark money mailboxes, for example — demonstrate the same trends. 

Dark Money Mailbox	IRS 2009	IRS 2010	IRS 2011	Percent Election-Year Spending
Center to Protect Patient Rights	$12,048,952	$60,245,391	$23,172,155	63%
Freedom & Values Alliance	$0	$1,070,585	$651,557	62%
Wellspring Cmte	$664,628	$11,521,432	$2,204,730	80%
TC4 Trust	$7,758,262	$30,880,071	$0	80%
American Justice Partnership	$2,225,711	$8,147,071	$1,849,827	67%
Patriot Majority USA	$76,269	$5,315,658	$0	99%
America’s Families First	$0	$7,647,638	$800,093	91%
Alliance for Freedom	$0	$4,375,434	$197,433	96%
Common Sense Issues Coalition	$9,054	$201,954	$23,924	86%
Atlantic Advocacy Fund	$18,963,628	$43,462,445	$13,964,521	57%

Significance?  We know that dark money groups engage in a lot of political activity during periods that are outside the FEC’s reporting windows, which means that their spending as reported to the FEC is often not an accurate measure of their participation in the electoral process. Unfortunately, those FEC reports are often the best metrics we have. That’s because the financial information reported to the IRS partially or entirely lacks important details like the group’s vendors, how much they were paid, for what products or services, and on what dates.  

Given the shortcomings of both IRS and FEC financial data on nonprofits, it’s important to look at the available information from different angles. Checking the ebb and flow of overall spending reported to the IRS and how it relates to election cycles is one way to do this.  

Dark Money Mailboxes Multiply. 

Dark money mailboxes are nonprofits with no direct federal political spending of their own and no substantial programs, staff, or volunteers. A majority of the spending by these groups goes for grants to other politically active nonprofits. (CRP has detailed the activities of several dark money mailboxes in our Shadow Money Trail series.)   

These organizations have proliferated with every election cycle, and as the 2012 filings start coming in, there may well be new discoveries. The following is a list of the top 10 such groups.

Dark Money Mailbox	IRS Spending	Grants	Percent Grants
Center to Protect Patient Rights	$95,466,498	$70,189,431	74%
Green Tech Action Fund	$28,243,610	$23,547,726	83%
Wellspring Cmte	$23,745,592	$16,886,369	71%
TC4 Trust	$38,638,333	$36,778,493	95%
American Justice Partnership	$15,693,198	$10,487,000	67%
Patriot Majority USA	$5,315,658	$2,896,708	54%
America’s Families First	$8,447,731	$7,794,000	92%
Atlantic Advocacy Fund	$103,089,084	$100,317,633	97%
Freedom & Values Alliance	$1,722,142	$1,717,346	100%
Alliance for Freedom	$4,572,867	$4,515,000	99%

(The Patriot Majority USA listed above is only one of three iterations of Patriot Majority USA.) 

Significance?  From a practical standpoint, dark money mailboxes serve two purposes. First, they add another level of opacity in a system where the sources of funds that ultimately are spent on politics are already difficult or impossible to find. If the IRS were to investigate, say, the 60 Plus Association‘s sources of income, it would also have to investigate the provenance of the money given out by three of its largest donors: the Center to Protect Patient Rights, TC4 Trust and Free Enterprise America, two of which are now defunct. 

Dark-money mailboxes have been tied to questionable activities around the country. In California, millions of dollars were funneled through a daisy chain of three nonprofits, including the Center to Protect Patient Rights, in what the California Fair Political Practices Commission called “campaign money laundering.“ 

Also, dark money can be used to diminish the likelihood of IRS scrutiny. Large contributions from one individual or corporation can trigger an audit to evaluate whether or not the recipient organization is serving the financial interests of the donor, a major no-no in the 501(c) world. To get around this, a donor, or small set of donors, can establish a constellation of nonprofits that then channel contributions to the same ultimate destination. 

Tens of millions of dollars in political spending goes entirely unreported to the IRS.

In 42 instances over the last four years, groups that reported at least $25,000 in spending to the FEC did not report political spending to the IRS. In nearly three-fourths of the cases, the spending they reported to the FEC was above $100,000, and in nine it was above $1 million. In 14 instances, the unreported political spending made up at least one-fifth of the group’s total spending as reported to the IRS, and in eight instances, the unreported spending ranged from 40 percent to 65 percent of the group’s expenditures. Such high levels of political spending could have raised suspicions at the IRS. 

The following groups had the largest amount of unreported political spending that also made up more than 20 percent of total spending the group reported to the IRS over the specified period.

Top 10 Group	Period	Total IRS Spending	FEC spending	Percent
Americans for Job Security	Nov 2007-Oct 2008	$12,343,781	$8,084,268	65%
Vets for Freedom	Jan 2008-Dec2008	$9,095,588	$4,757,685	52%
American Rights at Work	July2008-June2009	$16,450,569	$3,667,018	22%
Let Freedom Ring	Jan 2008-Dec2008	$7,364,554	$3,535,786	48%
Center for Individual Freedom	Oct 2010-Sept 2011	$5,757,719	$2,482,313	43%
Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund	Jan 2010-Dec 2010	$2,728,232	$1,128,162	41%
Americans for Job Security	Nov 2008-Oct 2009	$3,490,547	$890,488	26%
Ending Spending	Jan 2011-Dec 2011	$2,282,332	$688,090	30%
Judicial Confirmation Network	July2008-June2009	$1,405,553	$571,063	41%
American Energy Alliance	Jan 2008-Dec2008	$1,675,617	$485,307	29%

Two organizations — Let Freedom Ring and Nevada Advocates for Planned Parenthood — answered “yes” to a question on their tax forms asking whether they had engaged in efforts to influence the outcome of elections, directly or indirectly. Yet they did not report any political spending to tax authorities. 

Two other organizations — Americans for Job Security and Vets for Freedom — neglected to report political spending to the tax agency on two separate occasions. The largest discrepancies were in 2008, when Americans for Job Security’s $8 million in unreported political spending made up 65 percent of its total spending reported to the IRS; and Vets for Freedom’s $4.8 million in spending reported to the FEC, but not the IRS, made up more than half of the groups’ total outlays. 

*It’s worth noting that the FEC and IRS definitions of political spending are not identical. The IRS asks all filers of 990 forms to answer the question: “Did the organization engage in direct or indirect political campaign activities on behalf of or in opposition to candidates for public office?” That’s more vague than the FEC’s reporting requirements and, on its face, would seem to include all spending reported to the FEC and possibly more. However, as the Congressional Research Service (CRS) noted in a report issued last year, spending on issue ads that run shortly before an election and must be reported to the FEC might not necessarily be required to be reported to the IRS. The only two rulings the IRS has released on when issue advocacy becomes campaign spending indicate that the agency applies a complicated “facts and circumstances” test, and, as CRS notes, there are no “bright-line rules.” 

However, some experts say that organizations should not imagine there’s a practical difference between what the two agencies are asking for. “I have never been presented with an example of spending that is sufficiently political to be reported to the FEC, but would not be political under the IRS definition,” said tax attorney Marcus Owens, a former head of the exempt organizations office at the IRS. 

Significance? The IRS has no system in place to monitor spending reported to the FEC, and, as we’ve noted, even if it did, the FEC doesn’t require nonprofits to provide their EINs; without those unique identifiers, it would be hard for the IRS to check political spending by the organizations it oversees. To assess the political activity of a nonprofit, the IRS relies to a great degree on how much the group claims to have spent engaging “in direct or indirect political campaign activities on behalf of or in opposition to candidates for public office.”  

Millions more are only partially reported to the IRS.

At least thirteen groups that reported spending more than $25,000 to the FEC in either 2008 or 2010 reported spending much less than that on politics when they filed their 990s with the IRS. Together, these groups reported more than $51.6 million in spending to the FEC, while only reporting political spending of $24 million to the IRS over the exact same period.  

Top 10 Groups	Period	Total IRS Spending	Spending Reported to FEC	Political Spending Reported to IRS
American Action Network	July 2010-June 2011	$25,692,334	$18,885,679	$5,535,845
Freedom’s Watch	Jan 2008-Dec 2008	$36,933,305	$16,307,398	$10,745,848
Americans for Job Security	Nov 2009-Oct 2010	$12,417,809	$7,696,267	$4,351,478
Americans for Tax Reform	Jan 2010-Dec 2010	$11,379,668	$4,160,299	$1,859,239
Republican Jewish Coalition	Jan 2008-Dec 2008	$6,521,230	$1,163,002	$104,567
Alliance for a Better Minnesota	Jan 2008-Dec 2008	$3,752,685	$1,415,453	$754,500
Alliance for America’s Future	Feb 2010-Dec 2010	$7,669,093	$703,772	$343,776
West Virginia Conservative Foundation	Jan 2010-Dec 2010	$652,574	$534,974	$49,829
Citizens for the Republic	Jan 2010-Dec 2010	$1,177,452	$195,411	$88,456
Citizen Action of Wisconsin	Jan 2010-Dec 2010	$680,456	$110,617	$88,460

In all, about $67 million less in political spending was reported to the IRS than to the FEC in 2008 and 2010 by all groups that either failed to report or underreported political spending to the tax agency.

Significance? The IRS can’t effectively evaluate the political activity of a particular organization if it is not getting all the information it needs.  The agency does not systematically monitor spending that’s reported to the FEC, so it relies to a large extent on the political spending claimed by the filers on their 990s.  

Some organizations’ 2012 political spending alone surpassed their entire 2010 budgets.

Among groups that spent more than $50,000 on politics in 2012, 10 emerge as standouts because they spent more on politics in 2012 than they spent on everything in 2010.  

Group	IRS 2010	FEC 2012
Crossroads GPS	$42,344,884	$71,161,698
American Future Fund	$21,352,090	$25,404,956
Americans for Prosperity	$24,064,187	$36,364,103
Americans for Tax Reform	$11,379,668	$15,794,552
American Energy Alliance	$1,019,928	$1,361,500
Center Forward	$130,358	$2,057,089
Hispanic Leadership Fund	$228,613	$838,417
Emergency Cmte for Israel	$439,081	$827,965
Michigan League of Conservation Voters	$219,775	$860,237
Colorado Family Action	$64,578	$78,045

These 10 groups spent a combined total of almost $155 million in 2012 on politics, according to what they reported to the FEC — more than all of the spending reported to the FEC by 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(6) groups in 2010. In order to keep that total safely within IRS limits of political activity, they’re going to have to report more than $380 million in combined total expenditures to the IRS when they file their 990s covering 2012. That’s $280 million more in combined total IRS spending than these groups reported in 2010. Crossroads GPS alone accounts for $136 million of that increase. Its 2012 political spending of more than $71 million, as reported to the FEC, is nearly double its total 2010 budget. In order to keep that $71 million well under half of its total expenditures, it will need to report more than $177 million in total expenditures in 2012 on its tax return.  

Significance? It is normal for organizations promoting an agenda to be more active during an election year. Naturally, that is the time when the public and the media are paying the most attention, so organizations take advantage of election-year conditions to gain traction for their cause.  Of the groups CRP tracks, 160 filed 990s in the three-year period from 2009 to 2011, and 134 reported a rise in expenditures during 2010. 

But when a group’s spending surges dramatically in election years, particularly when the group in question is known to have made large political expenditures, it raises questions. 

Over the four-year period from 2009 through 2012, nine of the 10 groups listed here will have made, at a minimum, between 71 and 93 percent of their total expenditures for those four years combined during the election years of 2010 and 2012. Viewed together, these 10 groups reported a combined total of $68.7 million in total spending during the off years of 2009 and 2011. Using their total spending from 2010 and the spending they reported to the FEC in 2012, we’ve calculated a projected minimum estimate of what we expect their overall expenditures to be when they file their 990s covering last year. That analysis shows that the combined election-year overall spending totals for these 10 groups will come in at more than $483 million, a nearly seven-fold increase over off-year spending.

Attributable political spending puts some groups over the limit.  

Dark money groups rarely report that more than 30 or 40 percent of their total expenditures went towards political activities. One way they get around reporting too much in direct political expenditures is to make large grants to like-minded dark money groups and, sometimes, coordinate the expenditures. Factoring in this recipient political spending — by comparing the size of the grant to the group’s spending as reported to the FEC, then taking the smaller number — puts nine groups over the 50 percent political spending limit. Not factoring in recipient political spending shows just one group, American Action Network, spending above the limit.

Group	Period	Total IRS Spending	Donor’s FEC Spending	Attributable Recipient Spending	Total FEC Spending	FEC Spending with Recipients
Center to Protect Patient Rights	Jan 2010-Dec 2010	$60,245,391	$0	$36,675,105	0%	61%
Crossroads GPS	June 2010-May 2011	$42,344,884	$16,564,728	$11,095,406	39%	65%
American Action Network	July 2010-June 2011	$25,692,334	$18,885,679	$200,000	74%	74%
Republican Jewish Coalition	Jan 2010-Dec 2010	$12,409,886	$1,143,465	$8,000,000	9%	74%
Environment America	July 2008-June 2009	$10,573,775	$214,848	$6,514,090	2%	64%
Green Tech Action Fund	Aug 2008-Dec 2008	$2,375,000	$0	$2,375,000	0%	100%
Freedom & Values Alliance	Jan 2010-Dec 2010	$1,070,585	$0	$1,067,000	0%	100%
Common Sense Issues Coalition	Nov 2009-Oct 2010	$201,954	$0	$195,000	0%	97%
Annual Fund	July 2011-June 2012	$103,612	$0	$100,000	0%	97%

Even with recipient political spending factored in, these estimates are still on the low end for most groups, because many have state-level political expenditures and unreported “issue advocacy” that isn’t included here.  For example, in 2012, Americans for Job Security spent more than $1 million in judicial races in Michigan, according to the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, on top of the $16 million it reported spending at the federal level in 2012.

Significance? These totals do not attribute all political spending by recipients to the donor.  We compare the size of the grant with the recipients’ spending as reported to the FEC over the same period, then take the lower figure.  The aim is to get an estimate of how much political spending was facilitated by the donor.

The IRS has not yet made it clear whether giving large grants to other organization with political activities is a valid “social welfare” function. If not, the agency could take action against the groups that do this on a large scale.
_____________________ 

End Open Secrets

If you read the Open Secrets piece and are not alarmed at what you read, you are lost in a web of plutocracy.

Great and Relevant Sequester Meme!

Congressional Progressive Caucus

A response to the Facebook meme (copied as is in informal Facebook style, so no issues with spelling). Some of us really cannot criticize spelling!

(Name deleted)This is of course, completely misleading as the money the Flight controlers used came from redistributing money dedicated to upgrading airports, not taken form these programs. It is not a “fair” comparison. If the airlines didn’t do this then it would become even more difficult to conduct business for the few (yes, the fewest since 1979) people who work, pay taxes and support the rest of the country… What will it take to get this government to quite politicizing everything and just do the business they are getting paid handily for. cheesh!

The problem with this response  It is completely off the mark as we consider relevance.  I hear little about taking money from one program to pay for another (Implied human services).  I hear and read much (much) more concern with the fact the sequester was broken for sake of convenience to law-makers who regularly fly back and forth to Washington, DC.  The issue for us seems more about privilege and priority vs. meager dollars for Air Traffic Controllers!  

Additionally, I hear and read more about a defeat for President Obama.  After record breaking timing in pushing a bill through both houses of congress, Obama signed the bill.  How could so many Democrats including the president cave to such a level of privileged members of Congress?

The Facebook introduction of the poignant meme is as follows.

70,000 children kicked out of Head Start. 4 million meals for seniors eliminated. 125,000 Americans without rental assistance. But your next flight will be on time. End the sequester.

A case can be made regarding paying the salaries of the controllers.  I suggest, however, a much deeper meaning form the meme.  Why are the Congress and the Executive Branch stalled in a state of ‘no place” while critical programs go unfunded?  While I have no idea of the political preferences of the Facebook commenter, the comment sees revealingly conservative and typically shallow.

Keystone XL: JOBS? Pants of Fire! How About 1% (Percent-ism)?

Keystone XL & the Midwest Grain Belt

Since the first thing you saw when you opened to this article was the map above, you should have noticed something very dire.  The proposed Keystone Pipeline, as planned, cuts directly across the U.S. heartland. The heartland is a veritable grain-belt which feeds the nation and many nations across the globe.  It also serves as an agricultural-economic foundation for the nation.

BP, Trans Ocean and Halliburton tragically showed dangers of fossil fuel extraction technology. How many times did we hear BP executives say, “this should not have happened”.  Are we to believe the Trans Canada CEO, as he claims the industry is predominately free of damaging accidents? (also linked below “take”)

I am no oceanographer nor am I a scientist, but I believe an oil spill in the mid-west would take far longer to overcome than an ocean spill.  Of course, no one really knows the long-term effect of major ocean spills, but there is something about the regenerative forces of oceans compared to the destructive contamination of land spills (ruined water tables, unrecoverable land, and destroyed farm land.)

Lest we forget the GOP generally has less interest in the previous points. Yet, the party seems hell-bent on  proliferation of the ‘lie’ about jobs.  Let’s take a brief look at Keystone XL Jobs.

Switchboard.nrdc 

The Republican party, Trans Canada, and the oil industry have been promoting the Keystone XL pipeline promising jobs.   The numbers they promise are all over the map ranging anywhere from between 13,000 to 100,000 jobs created.  In some cases, Trans Canada has claimed a staggering 250,000 jobs permanent will be created.  These jobs benefits have been significantly exaggerated – and discredited.

Independent studies by the University of Cornell Labor Institute and the State Department further confirmed by the Washington Post report that actual job creation numbers are much much lower.

The number of temporary construction jobs created over the two year period the pipeline will be built will be no more than 6,000 jobs according to the Secretary of State.  The Cornell Labor Institute puts that temporary construction job figure to be closer to 2,500-4,650 jobs.

The number of permanent jobs created by the pipeline are as low as 20 according to the State Department.  Even the pipeline company Trans Canada has admitted the pipeline will only create“hundreds” of permanent jobs.

University of Cornell Labor Institute

Pipe Dreams? Jobs Gained, Jobs Lost

By the Construction of Keystone XL  (A report by Cornell University GLobal Labor Institute)

The purpose of this briefing paper is to examine claims made by
Trans Canada Corporation and the American Petroleum Institute that,
if constructed, TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline
will generate enough employment to kick-start important sections of
the US economy through the creation of tens of thousands—perhaps
even hundreds of thousands—of good, well-paying jobs for American
workers.

The report is relatively brief but a more focused information map will help.

KXL will generate 2,500-4,650 construction                                                                                              Jobs                                                                                                                                     Page 7

Most jobs created will  be temporary and non-LocaL                                Page 8

The data places John Boehner’s claim of 15,000 to 20,000 jobs from Keystone Pipeline construction is ‘pure bunk’ basket.

Another ‘take‘ on Keystone includes information about  ‘big oil’ and ‘big energy’ will gain much more from its construction than the U.S. job Market.

The GOP first has no productive business linking the XL Pipeline to bills related to improving the economy or providing assistance to people.  The Party really is the Party of  self-serving Moguls like the Koch Brothers.

Additionally, there is no way the GOP Trans Canada’s CEO, or any expert can assure of pipeline operations free of spills.

Boehner and company are merely pandering to special interest and playing self-serving “Anti-Obama’ politics.

They do so at our expense!

Keystone XL: JOBS? Pants of Fire! How About 1% (Percent-ism)?

Keystone XL & the Midwest Grain Belt

Since the first thing you saw when you opened to this article was the map above, you should have noticed something very dire.  The proposed Keystone Pipeline, as planned, cuts directly across the U.S. heartland. The heartland is a veritable grain-belt which feeds the nation and many nations across the globe.  It also serves as an agricultural-economic foundation for the nation.

BP, Trans Ocean and Haliburton tragically showed dangers of fossil fuel extraction technology. How many times did we hear BP executives say, “this should not have happened”.  Are we to believe the Trans Canada CEO, as he claims the industry is predominately free of damaging accidents? (also linked below “take”)

I am no oceanographer nor am I a scientist, but I believe an oil spill in the mid-west would take far longer to overcome than an ocean spill.  Of course, no one really knows the long-term effect of major ocean spills, but there is something about the regenerative forces of oceans compared to the destructive contamination of land spills (ruined water tables, unrecoverable land, and destroyed farm land.)

Lest we forget the GOP generally has less interest in the previous points. Yet, the party seems hell-bent on  proliferation of the ‘lie’ about jobs.  Let’s take a brief look at Keystone XL Jobs.

Switchboard.nrdc 

The Republican party, Trans Canada, and the oil industry have been promoting the Keystone XL pipeline promising jobs.   The numbers they promise are all over the map ranging anywhere from between 13,000 to 100,000 jobs created.  In some cases, Trans Canada has claimed a staggering 250,000 jobs permanent will be created.  These jobs benefits have been significantly exaggerated – and discredited.

Independent studies by the University of Cornell Labor Institute and the State Department further confirmed by the Washington Post report that actual  job creation numbers are much much lower.

The number of temporary construction jobs created over the two year  period the pipeline will be built will be no more than 6,000 jobs according to the Secretary of State.  The Cornell Labor Institute puts that temporary construction job figure to be closer to 2,500-4,650 jobs.

The number of permanent jobs created by the pipeline are as low as 20 according to the State Department.  Even the pipeline company Trans Canada has admitted the pipeline will only create“hundreds” of permanent jobs.

University of Cornell Labor Institute

Pipe Dreams? Jobs Gained, Jobs Lost

By the Construction of Keystone XL  (A report by Cornell University Global Labor Institute)

The purpose of this briefing paper is to examine claims made by Trans Canada Corporation and the American Petroleum Institute that,if constructed, Trans Canada’s proposed Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline will generate enough employment to kick-start important sections of the US economy through the creation of tens of thousands—perhaps even hundreds of thousands—of good, well-paying jobs for American workers.

The report is relatively brief but a more focused information map will help.

KXL will generate 2,500-4,650 construction                                                                                              Jobs                                                                                                                                          Page 7

Most jobs created will  be temporary and non-locaL                                Page 8

The data places John Boehner’s claim of 15,000 to 20,000 jobs from Keystone Pipeline construction is ‘pure bunk’ basket.

Another ‘take‘ on Keystone includes information about  ‘big oil’ and ‘big energy’ will gain much more from its construction than the U.S. job Market.

The GOP first has no productive business linking the XL Pipeline to bills related to improving the economy or providing assistance to people.  The Party really is the Party of  self-serving moguls like the Koch Brothers.

Additionally, there is no way the GOP Trans Canada’s CEO, or any expert can assure of pipeline operations free of spills.

Boehner and company are merely pandering to special interest and playing self-serving 1 % (er), “Anti-Obama’ politics.  

They do so at our expense!

Poll Shows….Reasons to Get Your News From Multiple Sources.

Don’t rely on a single news source!

I received an email notification related to the following linked article and excerpted information.  The email notification was from a blog that I have grown to often view.  You will find articles from the blog on the Talent Place for Special People page, on the http://www.theprogressivesinfluence.com blog.

I thought I would share the information after reading the linked  blog, and thinking about how the media impacts us everyday and most certainly influenced the 2008 and 2010 elections.   Of more importance; how information will influence the critical vote in 2012. The World Public Opinion article will leave the reader with an impression worth serious contemplation.  (See at end of this article)

The “Press” was widely debated by men who ‘crafted’ the United States Constitution.  They took great pains to build a governing document and governing foundation of a nation with serious respect and appreciation for the press and its a role in society.  I use the word respect;  the word also embodies ‘fear of abuse’, by the press. A bit of history and perspective before going further.

Poll Shows…. Reasons to Get Your News From Multiple Sources.

 

I received an email announcement related to the following linked article and pasted information.  The email announcement was from a blog that I have grown to often view.  You will find articles from the blog on the Talent Place for Special People page, on this website; posted on another website also, www .thepardu .wordpress .com.

I thought I would share the information after reading the linked blog, and thinking about how the media impacts us everyday and most certainly influenced the 2008 and 2010 elections.   Of more importance; how information will influence the critical vote in 2012. The World Public Opinion article ,Voters Say Election is Full of Misleading Information will leave the reader with an impression worth serious contemplation.  (See at end of this article).

The men who ‘crafted’ the United States Constitution must have extensively debated the “Press.” They took great pains to build a governing document and governing foundation of a nation with serious respect and appreciation for the press and its a role in society.  I use the word respect;  the word also embodies ‘fear of abuse’, by the press. How about a little  history and perspective before going further?

Media, Politics, and Pop Culture

By David Schultz
Publication Information: Book Title: It’s Show Time!: Media, Politics, and Popular Culture. Contributors: David A. Schultz – author. Publisher: Peter Lang. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 2000. (highlight for emphasis).

The Democratic Functions of Media

A free press is important to the maintenance of a democratic society because it provides for a forum for political debate, public scrutiny of the government. It provides citizens with the objective information they need to make political judgments. Because of its importance in a free society, the press is the only economic enterprise specifically mentioned in the United States Constitution ( Grossman 1995, 69 ).

The press has long enjoyed a privileged position within the United States. From the earliest colony days of the United States, freedom of the press has been important to the dissemination of political ideas and the criticism of ruling authority. Back in 1735, Peter Zenger was put on trial in colonial America because an article in his paper criticized the local British governor of New York ( Levy 1985, 125 ). Yet a jury acquitted him of libel, stating that the printing of truth was a defense to this charge. The Zenger trial stood for the proposition that the press should be unrestrained in its efforts to report and criticize.

Similarly, the language and ideas of the American revolution were spread through the press, in terms of political pamphlets, handbills, and letters to newspapers ( Bailyn 1967, 2 ; Hyneman and Lutz 1983, xi ). Without the freedom of the press, the language of rebellion could not have been spread. The use of the press was critical in 1787, with James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay using The New York Tribune newspaper as the forum to publish the Federalist Papers and urge adoption of the new Constitution. Benjamin Franklin spoke for many when he stated in 1789 that one ought to “leave the liberty of the press untouched, to be exercised in its full extent, force, and vigor” ( Franklin 1983, 708 ). George Washington echoed this sentiment, indicating that the press was important to “facilitating the circulation of political intelligence and information”( Davis 1996, 21 ). Thomas Jefferson best stated the Framers’ views on a free press when he declared: “The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers -15- without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter” ( Jefferson 1984, 880 ).

I can only imagine that if those Founding Crafters spoke openly about freedom of the press, the 79 member Continental Congress must have included men who heldt diametrically opposite views.

As predicted by the Crafters listed above, the press (hereafter referred to as the “media”), has been a major influence on public opinion.  The coming of radio and television raised media to new heights in the 20th Century. The Internet has exponentially increased access to information, provided a vehicle for opining, and opened new outlets for news.

Since the early 1980’s the media has become as fractured and divided into camps as has the voting public.  Of course, the press and media were fractured into political arenas before the 1980s.  As the nation came out of the Richard Nixon Era (early 1970s) and, “the liberal press” the information sources took on a different role.  I recently listened to Tom Brokaw  on NPR speak about how society has changed and the change has affected the delivery of news.

Today we have radio, network and cable television, and print personalities who earn extreme amounts  of money delivering information.  They at times deliver  information that feeds our fractured society by (at times)  providing potentially misleading information. As the blogger MMetrics1 states, “they are influencing, not informing”. (paraphrased).

Again, the article that I mentioned above and linked here offers an enlightening perspective: Voters Say Election is Full of Misleading Information   from the World Public Opinion.org. The information in the article is too critical for breaking into excerpts but I will list a couple of example pieces of information.

Item I.  The Stimulus

Though the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) concluded that the stimulus legislation has saved or created 2.0-5.2 million jobs, only 8% of voters thought most economists who had studied it concluded that the stimulus legislation had created or saved several million jobs. Most (68%) believed that economists estimate that it only created or saved a few jobs and 20% even believed that it resulted in job losses.

Item II.  HealthCare Reform

  Though the CBO concluded that the health reform law would reduce the budget deficit, 53% of voters thought most economists have concluded that health reform will increase the deficit.

I have posted only two examples to avoid the perception of instilling my bias.  The article includes information about network or cable television news broadcast media outlets. From mistakes by Dan Rather just before he ended his television career to misleading editing on cable news, to ‘straight-up’ lies be famous radio host (s), the information flows. 

My bias is clear and I am unabashed in admitting my preference for the evening shows on MSNBC.  That said, I may have witnessed broadcast of a set of statistics that  bothered even me.  A noted on-air personality stated the Herman Cain has 6 to 7 accusers.  Well, I have only heard of 4 possibly 5.  If the 6 or 7 is correct, I stand corrected. If the number is 4 for certain and one possible additional accuser, that does not bode well for my viewing preference.  If I have miss heard the numbers, I apologize for my lapse in hearing or proper listening.

I fully intend to stick with my viewing preference as the Fox News and CNN alternatives, for differing reasons, do not fit well with my socio/political paradigm.

The message from the World Public Opinion Article is, get news and information from multiple sources.

Unemployment A GOP Trojan Horse and a President’s Achilles Heel!

If you think charts and graphs are boring, you might pass on this article. If you care for a picture of how unemployment might hurt President Obama’s reelection, you should probably deal with the charts and think about the images they convey. The Republicans are not going to help with the nation’s economy because the economy is their political leverage for 2012. If you know Bush/Cheney was bad, think about the prospects for 2012.

Occupy Wall Street is making committed sacrifices, at least you and me can, “Educate, Postulate and Agitate”.

Unemployment in the United States remains at the 9.0% level.  High unemployment levels have been election killers for all past administration with above 7.0 percent unemployment.  It is  impossible today to find any media without hosts and pundits are not  discussing the possible election doom of the Obama Administration.

Unemployment A GOP Trojan Horse and a President’s Achilles Heel!

If you think charts and graphs are boring, you might pass on this article. If you care for a picture of how unemployment might hurt President Obama’s reelection, you should probably deal with the charts and think about the images they convey. The Republicans are not going to help with the nation’s economy because the economy is their political leverage for 2012. If you know Bush/Cheney was bad, think about the prospects for 2012.  

Occupy Wall Street is making committed sacrifices, at least you and me can, “Educate, Postulate and Agitate”.

Unemployment in the United States remains at the 9.0% level.  High unemployment levels have been election killers for all past administration with above 7.0 percent unemployment.  It is  impossible today to find any media without hosts and pundits are not  discussing the possible election doom of the Obama Administration.

Should the Democratic Party even run a candidate for the Presidency in 2012? Why bother?

Can President Obama win re-election with an unemployment rate above 8 percent?  I  believe that rate will drop to 8.5 % just about the time the two parties go into their fall conventions.  Even, the 8.5 % is a dire employment statistics when you think about the number of people who are part of  documented unemployed.  But, 8.5 % is a reach from the 9.0 %  last month:  October 2011.

Of course, President Obama will run for reelection. Of course, the Democrats will win some seats in the  112th Congress.  The Left can win in 2012 if, and only, if they continue efforts to pass a jobs bill while boldly publicizing efforts from the Right to stifle their efforts.  A straightforward approach to the unemployment picture including all obstructionist efforts from the Right will pay dividends in the Fall of 2012.

Of course, I am going write about nothing  the powerful minds who lead the Democrats through elections will not explore.

The United Kingdom publication The Guardian publishes an interactive “Jobless” Map of the United States.  The map is shows U.S unemployment  since January 2009 . The map represents data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Environment for Review

The Guardians DATA BLOG

US jobless mapped: unemployment state by state across America

Roger Simon, The Guardian-UK Map…

Which states have been hardest hit by unemployment?

Where are jobs scarcest?

We’ve mapped the official data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing the percentage of people unemployed. Click on a state to explore it – or click the drop-down menu to choose ways of seeing the data and how it’s changed

• Explore the data behind this map‘

The Guardian Data is linked and not available for visuals here.  For purpose of direct viewing I am posting a graph from the Economic Populist website.

As  stated above the October unemployment rate dropped a meager .01% during  the  month of October (depicted below).

The Economic Populist

Unemployment 9.0% for October 2011 – 80,000 Jobs

Submitted by Robert Oak on Fri, 11/04/2011 – 11:12

The October 2011 monthly unemployment figures show the official unemployment rate dropped -0.1 percentage points to 9.0% and the total jobs gained were 80,000. Total private jobs came in at 104,000. Government jobs dropped -24,000. 15,000 of those jobs added were temporary.

A Backstory

As the Bush Administration crumbled under the pressure of a financial collapse comparable  only  to pre-Great Depression recession the unemployment rate started to climb.  About the time that John McCain declared the economy was “fundamentally sound”,  the  unemployment rate was at an enviable rate of less than 6.0 percent.   Bush  Administration  started to experience job losses of the  500,000 to 750,000 over a one month period in late 2008 and early 2009.  The unemployment rate climbed from 7.6 % as President Elect Obama took office on January 20, 2009.  The rate peaked at just over 10 % in October of 2009.

While it is a horror story for many Americans and I state it here for no purpose other than perspective, the current unemployment rate is 1.4 % higher than the day President Obama took the oath of office.

Evidence that the GOP is using the unemployed as a political game chip is almost irrefutable. The unemployment rate directly impacts the unemployed’s  basic human need for life-sustaining employment in a capitalist economic system. Our economic systems is such that able people who do not work receive no income, thus no opportunity for a proper life. The undesirable state of unemployment is by no means a surprise as a political issue; deplorable but nor surprising.

After the inauguration of President Obama the nations job losses reversed from the spiraling  ‘celestial black hole’ of the previous 1.5 years of the Bush Years.  The following chart spans a period from December 2007 (the period of Bush’s denied recession) through January 2010.  My reason for choosing this chart is the period between December (the month the Bush Administration admitted the recession) and April 2009, job losses reversed.

A more comprehensive Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) look at unemployment for Bush/Obama over an extended period back to January, 2001.

NOTE: Private Sector Job losses

Reasons for the immediate ‘job loss’ bleed-letting escaped me. I like most Americans was pleased with the  slow job loss reversal;  the reason was of no significance (during the turn-around period). Factually, something significant took place and companies slowed in releasing employees.

Since I piqued my curiosity with the last paragraph, I conducted a Google search with the following question, “Why did the job losses from the Bush years stop when Obama was elected president?” 

The following link was mixed-in with many links related to the Bush Years:  President Elect Obama’s Office.  The information was published before Obama took office but it lays-out pre-inauguration overview of  strategies for the economy.  The U.S. Political process includes a void of information transfer between administrations until a few months before the newly elected president takes the Oval Office. I often wonder if the Obama Administration completely underestimated the damage done to the economy by eight years of Bush Administration mishandling.  While it would be easy (and simple) to lay such fault on the Obama team, I doubt anyone in the nation knew the extent ofeventual hemorrhaging  from the Bush Administration.

I find the President Elect’s information interesting but I doubt the plans contributed to the immediate turn-around in job losses.  It would be more likely that companies stooped hiring during last years of the Bush Administration based on an economy that was not fundamentally sound.  Aminitial thought might be, “well that is the problem with the Obama Administration and jobs.”, I think not, I think obstructionism is a major contributor to an unemployment that is stuck higher then 8 percent.

Where are the current job losses?

Think Progress’s Matthew Yglesias suggests that job losses in the Public (Government) Sector is a major contributor  to the current high unemployment rate.

CHART: Over 500,000 Government Jobs Lost Since Obama’s Inauguration

By Matthew Yglesias on Jul 8, 2011 at 9:14 am

So should we blame today’s bad jobs numbers on Barack Obama’s big government policies? Again, I doubt it. What we continue to see are decent—though not great—private sector job numbers offset by tumbling public sector employment:

For a while temporary census-related jobs masked the underlying trend, but we’ve been steadily shedding government work. Maybe you think that’s a good thing. Certainly most of President Obama’s critics from the right claim to believe it’s a good thing. But what happens when you shed public sector jobs amidst an already weak economic climate is the sharply reduced incomes of the former teachers and whatnot lead to them spending less in their local communities. In total, we have about 500,000 fewer people working for the government since Obama’s inauguration even though the national population is larger than it used to be.

And, yes, Yglesias updates the article with the following information aboutprivate sector job losses.

UPDATE

Steve Benen’s , Washington Monthly- POLITICAL ANIMAL Blog, chart highlights private job creation is deteriorating, too.

Article excerpt…….

The new numbers are the weakest in over a year, and further evidence that the economy is in desperate need of a boost. It can’t get that boost, of course, because congressional Republicans refuse to consider anything other than austerity measures, which necessarily make unemployment worse.

Making matters slightly worse, the private-sector totals for April and May were also revised in the wrong direction.

And with that, here’s a different homemade chart, showing monthly job losses/gains in the private sector since the start of the Great Recession. The image makes a distinction — red columns point to monthly job totals under the Bush administration, while blue columns point to job totals under the Obama administration. (The chart is now smaller to fit the redesigned website.)

What is a president to do?

As Benen stated in his article, and as you and I know, Republican obstructionism is at an all-time high.  The House passed a piece of legislation reinforcing garbage, such as “in GOD We Trust”, when the national motto has stood for over 250 years without question. Yet, that same body will pass no jobs related legislation. In many cases not brought-up for vote. The House has also used unemployment payments as fodder for negotiations related to avoiding raising taxes on the nation’s wealthy.

If local, state and federal government job losses contribute in any way contribute to the 9.0 % unemployment rate, what can the president do about that government job reductions?  Besides, how can the Obama Administration policies contribute to public job losses.

I am no economist but I cannot find cause to attribute public sector job losses in anything other than a down-economy.  An economy that slid almost too far for recovery in 2007/2008.  Of course, President Obama’s improvement strategies so far have only kept the economy at he  a ‘ just above the water’ state of the economy; signification improvement has not been forthcoming.

Hindsight is usually worth nothing but as we look to 2012, a look back has value.

The Stimulus

What happened from the  Stimulus (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act 2009).  The stimulus was cut from the proposed $1.2 Trillion to $760 billion despite GOP talking-points about the Stimulus did not work. Some economist believe that it helped to ward-off continue economic decay.  How many elected GOP officials to photos with those extra-large (Photo op) stimulus checks?

Obstructionism

I will not spend words on comments from McConnell, De Mint, Cantor and others about ‘dooming’ the Obama Administration based on no-support for his proposal or initiatives. You know those stories and they stand for all of history to archive.

Yet, it is clear that the GOP votes in solidarity blocks regardless of vote outcome and their voting blocks have not helped to ease the unemployment rate.

Before the end of July 2011, the Democrats in the House introduced 10 Jobs Bills; the Republicans in the that chamber voted ‘no’ on each bill. The house also voted ‘no’ to the president’s American Jobs Act.  They House and Senate Republicans (plus Blue Dog Dems and one Independent ) continue to vote no on parts of the bill.

A 1 % mindset

The only mention of jobs from the GOP emanates from ‘disclaimer’ sound bits from House leaders and McConnell from the Senate.  It is not an active part of any GOP debates, it is not an item that GOP candidates want to bring-up in interviews. Even the one candidate who tries to guide interviewers to topics, Santorum, has avoided the jobs issue.

Occupy Wall Street has ‘jobs;’ as one of their grievances.  Yet, Right-wing media is busily labeling the OWS as un-American and other less complimentary adjectives.

I am reading and hearing there are companies in the Untied States that are advertising to hire and placing the following words in the ads,“Unemployed Need not apply”.





 How indicative is that of the OWS’s anti 1% stance?  How outside of the American mainstream is that insensitivity and callousness? Those words aresickening elitist more so than an indication of political posturing.  such posturing, however, is as certainly ass our 24 hour rotation of the Sun.

If an issue as serious as the unemployed becomes and issue of political posturing, it does not speak well for those of us who have elected the representative.

The President and his Re-election Team

I do not see how Obama and his team can avoid attacking issues of the unemployed from a perspective of what  “we have done and what we have tried to do“.

* What would the unemployment rate be if the President had not fought for loans to  our Automobile industry.

* Publicize position statements on how the American Jobs Act could, or would, have helped the economy.

* Continue to force taxation issue for those who are not ‘f contributing to the financial well-being of the nation.

* Face-up-to and fess-up-to mistakes about unemployment. Frankly state the  economist who said,  and apparently convinced high level officials that,  the   stimulus would hold unemployment at eight per cent was a clear  of under-estimation mistake and lesson learned.

* Somehow find a method to express to the nation that despite the rise to over 10 %  unemployment was reduced to just over 9 percent.  A strategy that should  accompany the reality that as he took office the president faced  unemployment   at 7.6%; thus we have  1.4% difference  of today.

laissez-faire approaches to the GOP lead to loss elections.  we performed an act in 2000 that resembles the image below. We can ill afford to pull another Trojan Horse over the nation.

Do not open the Gates, and allow it again!