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from Breakingviews:

Election reveals clear calculus: 47 pct > 1 pct

By Jeffrey Goldfarb
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

This U.S. election provided a valuable math lesson for those worried about the consequences of income inequality: the 47 percent of the population dismissed by Mitt Romney during his campaign can wield greater power than the richest 1 percent.

Ultra-wealthy Republican candidates included professional wrestling maven Linda McMahon, who ran for a Senate seat in Connecticut. Rich GOP supporters like the billionaire Koch brothers also worked spreadsheets hoping to somehow reverse the algebraic reality. They learned the hard way that money can’t buy everything in America.

The Occupy movement’s 1 percent label distinguished the haves from the have-nots. And Romney, for many the personification of that financially elite group, inadvertently provided the 47 percent reference. Roughly speaking, he quantified that mostly Democrat proportion of the U.S. population as irredeemably reliant on the government.

from The Great Debate:

Why doesn’t Mitt Romney contribute to his own campaign?

Lately, Mitt Romney has been so consumed with fundraising that his aides have had to defend his absence from the stump. Like his foe, the Republican nominee is in the midst of a frenzied financial arms race. But one hugely wealthy individual has not yet been persuaded to part with much cash to support the Republican cause: Mitt Romney himself.

Mitt Romney is hardly the first wealthy individual to seek the White House. John F. Kennedy once quipped he had received a telegram from his father: “Don’t buy another vote. I won’t pay for a landslide.” But Romney, for whatever reason, has failed to use his personal wealth to pay his campaign’s bills. His refusal to self-finance is one of the mysteries of this campaign.

from Tales from the Trail:

“Outside” spending for 2012 election already beats 2010

 

There are still six weeks before Election Day on Nov. 6, but spending by Super PACs and other outside groups has already hit $465 million, more than all of the entire 2010 campaign season, with Republican-aligned groups spending well over twice as much as those backing Democrats.

Democratic-aligned Super PACs have spent $108.4 million this year, and Republican-aligned Super PACs have spent $270.5 million, according to the Sunlight Foundation, which tracks political spending. The total independent expenditures by other Super PACs was $15.6 million.

from Alison Frankel:

The Supreme Court’s next corporate campaign finance quandary

If you hate the current state of campaign finance, in which corporations and non-profits exert influence through trade associations, political action committees and so-called super PACs, you can't lay all of the blame at the doorstep of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which held that corporations and labor unions have the same First Amendment rights to free speech as individuals.

Nor can you say that the root of the problem was the court's 2007 ruling in Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life that corporations and labor unions are permitted to spend money on election ads as long as those ads do not contain "express advocacy" for or against a candidate.

from The Great Debate:

We need to make campaign finance a civil rights issue

Two Supreme Court decisions (Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission and, later, American Tradition Partnership v. State of Montana) and an appellate court decision (SpeechNow v. Federal Election Commission) are fundamentally transforming our political system and our democracy to a degree we may not grasp until the results of this year’s elections become clear. Never has our electoral process been more captive to vast – and mostly anonymous – sums of money from a handful of large corporations and wealthy individuals.

For all the scorn rightfully heaped on Citizens United, however, it’s actually SpeechNow v. Federal Election Commission that has been most destructive. SpeechNow allows not-for-profit organizations to accept unlimited contributions from individuals for independent expenditures, and this decision birthed both “super PACs,” which can accept unlimited contributions but must disclose donors, and “tax-exempt organizations” which are not subject to the disclosure requirements that apply to candidates, parties, PACs and super PACs.

from Tales from the Trail:

Outside campaign groups can coordinate – with each other

 

Super PACs and other outside campaign organizations are barred from coordinating with the candidates they support or political parties, but there is nothing keeping a Super PAC from coordinating with another Super PAC, or several Super PACs. And indeed, some of them do.

Jonathan Collegio, director of public relations for American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, Karl Rove's conservative Super PAC and non-profit, said outside groups on the right work together all the time.

from Breakingviews:

When shareholder democracy trumps the real thing

By Rob Cox
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. This column appears in the May 14 issue of Newsweek.

It’s worrying to think that shareholder democracy is needed to rectify shortcomings of the real thing. Yet this week two of the nation’s biggest corporations will give their investors precisely that opportunity. Motions on the ballots at the annual meetings of Bank of America and 3M will effectively act as referendums on the U.S. Supreme Court’s flawed decision in the Citizens United case to effectively hand companies the same freedoms of speech accorded to people. Happily, supporting proposals to restrict the use of corporate money in politics isn’t just good for democracy, it is good business.

from Tales from the Trail:

Lawyer behind Super PAC ruling launches his own

The lawyer behind the case that opened the door to U.S. "Super PACs" and more campaign cash now has one of his own. Thousands of U.S. dollars are seen here in this November 3, 2009 file photo at a Westminster, Colorado bank. REUTERS/Rick Wilking

The conservative lawyer who helped end political spending limits for corporations has now taken advantage of new campaign finance rules that allow "Super PACs" by launching one of his own.

from The Great Debate:

Democracy for sale – or billionaires’ folly?

It was said of Andrew Carnegie that he gave money away as quietly as a waiter falling down a steel staircase carrying a tray of tall-stemmed glasses. Not so the sotto voce superrich donors who are spending so much to keep Mitt Romney from declaring himself the winner of the Republican nomination.

With their chosen candidates out front, swinging at each other as they glad-hand from state to state, the multimillionaires and billionaires – a mere million is nowhere near enough to join this exclusive club – keep themselves out of sight, sitting around in a smoke-filled back room playing high-stakes hold ’em for the soul of the GOP. Not literally, of course, though many of them made their fortunes gambling everything on their hunches.

from Tales from the Trail:

Big campaign bucks don’t always spell victory

Expectations for massive fund-raising in the 2012 election may obscure one point -- big bucks don't always lead to victory. And in fact, too much spending -- especially in the form of too many advertisements -- can turn off voters.

There have been several notable examples of heavy, but ultimately fruitless, outspending in recent elections.