Who are these people? Via Taegan.
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) “eclipsed her record-setting 2010 fundraising total to win a fourth term in the U.S. House of Representatives, despite a strong challenge from local hotel magnate Jim Graves (D),” KARE-TV reports.
New filings show Bachmann “raked in $14.4 million for her 2012 race, almost $1 million more than what she raised during the previous two-year campaign cycle.”
How do you fight against this shit, all propped up by more money than most of us will see ever? Hopefully the only people it will reach will be those who already believe this crap. Via Politico. THIS is why Supreme Court Justices matter.
Citizens United has struck a deal with a dozen television stations to run its hour-long film featuring voters disaffected with President Barack Obama, sending the Republican critique of the incumbent into tens of millions of homes in the lead-up to Election Day, the group’s officials told POLITICO.
“The Hope and the Change” directed by Stephen Bannon, who made the Sarah Palin movie “The Undefeated,” was first unveiled last month and it aired during the Republican National Convention in Tampa.
The movie’s wide release — backed by a large advertising campaign behind it — was part of the goal of the Citizens United court case that was decided in 2010 by the U.S. Supreme Court and helped to dramatically alter the landscape for political donations by allowing the unfettered flow of corporate cash into campaigns.
“This (the court case) is why I did ‘Citizens United,’” David Bossie, the group’s president said. “This would have been a criminal act under McCain-Feingold before my court case.”
Doesn’t it seem like all this cash flying around should stimulate the economy? Just amazing.
Washington (CNN) – The major Republican super PAC American Crossroads will hit the airwaves Friday with a new ad that aims to defend Mitt Romney and his record against the onslaught of attacks by the Obama re-election team. This comes as Romney’s campaign has bought its largest amount of ad time this general election season.
Crossroads said it is buying $9.3 million of broadcast television and internet advertising for their commercial. Romney’s campaign bought approximately $6.3 million for ad time, according to a Democratic source tracking ad buys.
(snip)
Romney’s campaign bought approximately $6.3 million for commercial time that began Tuesday and will run for a week, according to the Democratic source.
The buy breaks down this way:
Colorado: $600,000
Florida: $1.3 million
Iowa: $500,000
Nevada: $500,000
New Hampshire: just under $100,000
North Carolina: $700,000
Ohio: $1.4 million
Iowa: $500,000
Virginia: $1.2 million
Today during my regular spot on the Nicole Sandler radio show, Nicole and I were expressing our amazement that the news media, such as they are, covered the Supreme Court decision on the Arizona Papers Please Law, but barely touched on the Montana ruling that overturned a 100-year-old campaign finance law:
Court rejects corporate campaign spending limits
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday reaffirmed its 2-year-old decision allowing corporations to spend freely to influence elections. The justices struck down a Montana law limiting corporate campaign spending.
By a 5-4 vote, the court’s conservative justices said the decision in the Citizens United case in 2010 applies to state campaign finance laws and guarantees corporate and labor union interests the right to spend freely to advocate for or against candidates for state and local offices.
The majority turned away pleas from the court’s liberal justices to give a full hearing to the case because massive campaign spending since the January 2010 ruling has called into question some of its underpinnings.
Just what we need, more deregulation. Corporations Gone Wild! Super PAC Nation! Billionaire sugar daddies! Because of the horrendous Montana decision, those who have supported a movement to amend the U.S. Constitution will be going into overdrive, and let’s hope they don’t stop until Citizens United is overturned. However, amending the Constitution requires a two-thirds majority in Congress and ratification by at least 38 states.
This will not be easy, but it is the single most worthy effort I can think of, and one about which we must be relentless if we want to avoid an America of the Super Corporate and the Corporate Lite parties (even worse than we have now) that thrive on unrestricted campaign spending.
Monday’s ruling “underscores the need for a constitutional amendment since there’s no prospect of this court undoing the damage it’s done,” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, which is helping lead a state and local campaign to pressure Congress to amend the Constitution. “And if we take seriously how consequential is that damage, then we need an amendment to remedy it.”
Hawaii, New Mexico, Vermont and Rhode Island have already approved resolutions supporting constitutional amendments aimed at reversing Citizens United. Massachusetts and California are scheduled to vote on similar resolutions as early as Thursday.
More than 200 such measures have been enacted at the local level. A coalition of more than 60 progressive, labor and environmental groups has also mounted local protests and state ballot initiatives around calls for an amendment.
Republicans are also trying to make revealing who is behind all that money even more secret. Foreign donors and a handful of billionaires can influence our elections, but that’s okay with them, because if anyone were to find out who is donating all those millions, they might get teased! Or protested! And that’s no fair! Waah!
How do you balance free speech (money) with more free speech (more money) if you don’t have the more-money? “Who has more money than the corporations and the super rich?” Rachel Maddow asks in the video below. Certainly not the 99%.
Please pay special attention to about 8:00 to about 12:00 regarding corporate money vs. union money:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Hot from Think Progress. Per Bloomberg News, this is the only decision they will announce today.
BREAKING: Supreme Court Rejects Challenge To ‘Show Me Your Papers,’ Strikes Down Part Of Arizona Immigration Law | The Supreme Court just announced that parts of Arizona’s harsh immigration law, SB 1070, are preempted by federal immigration law. Significantly, however, the justices did also held that it was “improper for the lower courts to enjoin Section 2(B), which requires police officers to check the legal status of anyone arrested for any crime before they can be released.”
Update
Two significant points about the decision is that the Court voted 8-0 to reject this particular challenge to the show me your papers provision, with Kagan recused. The majority opinion also leaves open the possibility that a future challenge to this provision could succeed, including a claim that the law leads to unconstitutional racial profiling.
More than one decision though-
Court rejects corporate campaign spending limits
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday reaffirmed its 2-year-old decision allowing corporations to spend freely to influence elections. The justices struck down a Montana law limiting corporate campaign spending.
By a 5-4 vote, the court’s conservative justices said the decision in the Citizens United case in 2010 applies to state campaign finance laws and guarantees corporate and labor union interests the right to spend freely to advocate for or against candidates for state and local offices.
The majority turned away pleas from the court’s liberal justices to give a full hearing to the case because massive campaign spending since the January 2010 ruling has called into question some of its underpinnings.
And=
Life Without Parole for Juveniles?
The Supreme Court has rejected the death penalty for juveniles, and it has said that juveniles who commit non-homicide offenses can no longer receive sentences of life without parole. Now it will address whether juvenile murderers – 13 and 14 year olds – should receive sentences of life without parole.
The court heard two cases regarding sentences of life without parole applied to offenders who were 14 at the time of their crimes. Evan Miller beat a neighbor and then set his trailer on fire so that the man burned to death. Kuntrell Jackson took part in a murder that occurred in 1999 less than three weeks after his 14th birthday. Jackson didn’t pull the trigger, but he was charged as an adult. (Miller v. Alabama, and Jackson v. Hobbs)
I’d guess they’re slow to join up for the same reason no one wants to be his running mate, they just don’t like the odds.
WASHINGTON — Donors who backed Republican rivals of presidential candidate Mitt Romney appear to be slow coming to his aid.
Romney raised more than $40 million last month as he solidified his chances of being the GOP nominee. Yet an Associated Press review of new financial data finds only a handful of his recent contributions came from donors to his former primary challengers.
Among the tens of thousands of donors who wrote checks for former candidates like Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum, roughly 500 contributed last month to Romney’s White House run.
Good, we’re going to need every penny to fight against all the Citizen’s United loving Super Pacs.
(CNN) – Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign says they raised nearly $12.6 million in primary funds in March.
In a release Friday, the campaign also announced that they’ve raised $87 million in primary funds over the past year, and that they have $10.1 million cash on hand. The campaign also said that as of the end of March, they had brought in only primary contributions. They also stated that the former Massachusetts governor, who has an estimated net worth of at least $190 million, had not made any personal loans to his campaign.
(snip)
President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign announced Monday that they raised $53 million in March, up about $8 million from the month before. That brings to nearly $350 million the amount of money raised by the re-election team since they formed a year ago. The money raised goes to the Obama Victory Fund, which is divided by the Obama re-election campaign, the Democratic National Committee and affiliated committees.
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