Money Didn't Matter This Past Election

So is the monied mouthpiece media spin (sigh)!

"Independent election spending had little impact" by Dan Eggen and T.W. Farnam  |  Washington Post, November 08, 2012

WASHINGTON — Record spending by independent groups largely defined how the 2012 elections were fought, but the money had no discernible impact on the outcome of most contests, according to an early analysis of ballot results and expenditures by the Washington Post.

Yes, what difference did a few millions make?

A clutch of conservative billionaires and privately held corporations fueled about $1 billion in spending by super PACs and nonprofit groups this cycle, unleashing a wave of attack ads unrivaled in US history. Yet Republican groups and their donors failed to achieve their two overarching goals — to unseat President Obama and return the Senate to GOP control.

In the Senate, Republicans lost ground, pouring well over $100 million in outside money into a half-dozen seats that went to Democrats. In the presidential race, GOP nominee Mitt Romney and his allies spent more than twice as much as John McCain in 2008, but only regained red-leaning Indiana and North Carolina for their trouble.

Even in the House, where last-minute surges of cash would seem to stand a good chance of swinging races, GOP money groups struck out repeatedly, according to the Post analysis. In 26 of the most competitive House races, Democratic candidates and their allies were outspent in the final months of the race but pulled out a victory. That compares with 11 competitive races where Republicans were outspent and won.

Of course, when the same intere$t$ control both parties.... as we see with Democrat senators now backing off the tax hikes on the wealthy as part of a budget deal. 

It's as I said, folks: all the campaign blather was just that. 

Outside money was the dog that barked but did not bite.

See: The Dog That Did Not Bark

Wow, you would have thought someone in the AmeriKan media would have heard that!

Obama and other Democrats had long made dire predictions about the potential impact of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which let corporations and unions spend unlimited funds on elections and created an new class of wealthy political groups.

The money did dramatically change the focus and character of many campaigns. Candidates up and down the ballot were forced to spend more time than ever raising donations, while political advertising funded by outsiders was even more negative than before. Wealthy donors were so central to Romney’s campaign that a swarm of private luxury jets caused a traffic jam at Logan International Airport just before the nominee’s Tuesday night election party in South Boston.

Yet super PACs and secretive nonprofit groups — which spent up to $10 million a day on the presidential race alone — couldn’t move the needle far enough to prevail in nearly any of the big races they targeted.

Yeah, Americans, everything is all right with your political $y$tem.

Outside money allowed Romney to be competitive with Obama, but that meant the candidate had no direct control over much of the spending, while his own campaign was plagued by high personnel costs and consulting fees.

In the end, the two sides reached a kind of dreary equilibrium, clogging the airwaves with so many attack ads that GOP groups began airing spots in California and other deep-blue states where they had little chance. By October’s end, more than a million commercials were broadcast in a presidential race that was nearly dead heat for much of the year.

Like I said, how many millions make a difference?

That is not to say that outside money did not matter: It was waves of super PAC cash that helped propel Romney to the Republican nomination earlier in the year. 

That's strange because the whole WaPo pos was spent convincing me of that. 

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And even though it was wasted cash(?).... 

"Despite election flops, super PACs likely to boost spending; Better prospects in smaller races" by Michael Kranish and Callum Borchers  |  Globe Staff, November 16, 2012

WASHINGTON — Republican Karl Rove’s much-discussed “Crossroads” committees, which were seen as game-changers in the 2012 presidential campaign, turned out to be such a failure that some have wondered whether the entire field of super PACs will wither away amidst an ­exodus of disenchanted donors.

But analysts and those who run the committees said in ­interviews that, for a number of reasons, the opposite could be true. With lessons learned from this year’s campaign, the amount of unlimited and sometimes undisclosed contributions could actually increase as backers of both parties rearm for the 2014 midterm elections....

I get tired of typing it's a corporate-controlled government. Needs to fall of its own corruption, doesn't it?

Overall, super PACs affiliated with Republicans spent $408 ­million compared with $195 million by similar Democratic committees, but Democrats were far more successful....

And the presidency was a $2 billion campaign in and of itself. 

How much health care would that have bought as we head over the fiscal cliff?

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Of course, with a world record of women being elected (yes, she won) things should be changing, right?

"Democrats, women make inroads" by Alan Fram and Donna Cassata  |  Associated Press, November 08, 2012

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats, once scrambling to save vulnerable incumbents and their tenuous numerical advantage, surprisingly gained a net of two seats as undecided races were settled Wednesday. The final results gave women a high-water mark of 20 in the 100-member chamber....

We are so advanced and so proud here in AmeriKa. That must be why we bomb Muslim women over lies. 

In Montana, Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat, turned back a challenge from Representative Denny Rehberg, a Republican....

Democrats will hold 53 seats to 45 for the Republicans, with the certainty that Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, will align with the Democrats and the expectation that Maine’s Angus King, an independent, will do the same to give Democrats an effective 55-45 majority....   

House Republicans still hold a majority large enough to confront and confound President Obama.... 

Yes, let the EXCUSES BEGIN for WHY YOU CAN'T GET WHAT YOU VOTED FOR, American citizens! Meanwhile, the U.S is FULLY-FUNDING ISRAEL'S IRON DOME as Obama fully endorses Israel's Thanksgiving Week slaughter.  

Yeah, I WOULD NOT EXPECT WEALTHY TAX RATES to be going ANYWHERE, 'murkn!

In the House, Republicans will have a smaller majority, but not so small that it affects their ability to control the chamber’s agenda and challenge Obama and Senate Democrats.

‘‘The message I got is Americans don’t want a runaway Congress and administration,’’ said Representative Greg Walden of Oregon, who is expected to head the Republicans’ campaign committee next year. ‘‘If they wanted one-party control, they could have done that this election cycle.’’

We had that with veto-proof Democrats -- or so we were told -- from 2009-2011, and all we got was a crappy corporate health law and Bush tax cut extensions when we wanted an end to the wars (to which Obama escalated and added).

And here is one more thing to think about: after losing the House in 2010, why didn't the Democrats lame-duck a tax-hike through for Obama to sign? Then we could have avoided the alleged fiscal cliff, right? 

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I guess the rest of this shit didn't really matter then, did it?  Just filler, wasn't it?

"Ultra-rich account for more than half of super PAC giving" by Bill Turque  |  Washington Post, August 03, 2012

WASHINGTON — It’s no secret that some very rich people support the super PACs and other groups that have inundated the 2012 campaign with unlimited sums of cash. But a study released Thursday details the extent to which this kind of donating is the sport of the One Percent....

It is. 

At the top of the individual donor pyramid is billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam. They have given (along with their children) more than $36 million, much of it to Winning Our Future, a super PAC aligned with Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and Republican primary candidate. More recently, the couple contributed $10 million to Restore Our Future, the super PAC founded by a group of former aides to Mitt Romney, the presumptive GOP nominee.

Coauthors Blair Bowie and Adam Lioz point out that big-check writing is not restricted to wealthy conservatives. Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, for example, recently contributed $2 million to Priorities USA Action, a super PAC supporting President Obama. But they said massive contributions such as those from the Adelsons — which represent a sliver of the couple’s estimated $24.9 billion net worth — distort the democratic process....

It does. 

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But it matters:

"After burning through cash, Obama loses upper hand" by Jo Craven McGinty and Nicholas Confessore |  New York Times, August 05, 2012

NEW YORK — President Obama has spent more campaign cash more quickly than any incumbent in recent history, betting that heavy early investments in personnel, field offices, and a high-tech campaign infrastructure will propel him to victory in November.

Since the beginning of last year, Obama and the Democrats have burned through millions of dollars to find and register voters. They have spent almost $50 million subsidizing Democratic state parties to hire workers, pay for cellphones, and update voter lists. They have spent tens of millions of dollars on polling, online advertising, and software development to turn Obama’s fallow volunteer corps into a grass-roots army.

The price tag: about $400 million from the beginning of last year to June 30 this year, according to a New York Times analysis of Federal Election Commission records, including $86 million on advertising.

How much food would that buy people?

But now Obama’s big-dollar bet is being tested. With less than a month to go before the national party conventions begin, the president’s once-commanding cash advantage has evaporated, leaving Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee with more cash on hand than the Democrats at the beginning of July.

Despite Obama’s multimillion-dollar advertising barrage against Romney, he is now being outspent on the airwaves, with Romney benefiting from a deluge of spending by conservative super PACs and outside groups. While Romney has depleted much of his funds from the nominating contest, he is four weeks away from being able to tap into tens of millions of dollars in general election money. And many polls show the race to be very close.

Obama’s cash needs — he spent $70.8 million in June alone, more than half on advertising and far more than he raised — has brought new urgency to his campaign’s fund-raising efforts. His advisers have had to schedule more fund-raising trips than originally planned to big-money states like New York, according to donors involved in the effort. The super PAC supporting his campaign, Priorities USA Action, is enlisting President Clinton as a rainmaker, hoping to counter conservative groups.

Obama’s heavy expenditures — and his campaign’s pressure on bundlers to find and groom new donors — have stirred worries among other Democrats, who have long taken Obama’s financial supremacy for granted.

“There is a lot of worry that Romney’s folks are raising so much more,” said one of Obama’s top fund-raisers, who was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations with the campaign. “I just don’t think there’s a lot of high-dollar money left on the table.”

But in interviews, party and campaign officials defended the approach of spending money to build out the campaign, saying they believed that the wisdom of Obama’s strategy would be demonstrated at the voting booth in November.

“The earlier the better,” said Adam Fetcher, an Obama campaign spokesman. “Starting a conversation with a persuadable voter months before Election Day allows us to be more effective in responding to that voter’s priorities than if they first hear from us a few weeks out. Building and maintaining our grass-roots foundation takes time and resources, but we believe those early investments will make a difference.”

But grass-roots movements do not come cheap.

Through June 30, Obama and the Democratic National Committeespent $46 million on direct mail and postage, according to FEC records. Legal fees added up to $3 million, while $25,000 went to flower arrangements. Phones and telemarketing have eaten up at least $24 million, and Internet advertising $36 million, part of a sophisticated effort to try out different fund-raising appeals, test attacks on Romney, and reach small donors. The campaign reached 2 million total donors in May, a campaign official said, a tally it did not reach until August during the 2008 election cycle.

Mindful that the recession has displaced many people who voted for Obama in 2008, especially those with low incomes, the campaign has also invested heavily in voter registration. That has paid dividends in states like Nevada, where Democrats have steadily expanded their registration advantage over Republicans in recent months. In Ohio, the early deployment of money and a field staff last year also allowed the campaign to help Democrats fight a Republican-led effort to restrict early voting in the state.

The campaign has opened field offices far earlier than past campaigns in swing communities around the country, hiring people to train volunteers, find pockets of Democrats, and identify voters who might be persuaded to vote for Obama in November. With staff members in virtually every state, the Obama campaign and the have spent $52 million on payroll and benefits since the beginning of last year, along with $5 million for rent.

“You can pay for direct mail or TV ads at the last minute, but you can’t shortcut long-term volunteer-training programs,” said a party official, who was granted anonymity to discuss the campaign’s spending strategy. “The relationships we’ve built, the depth of what people know about their communities, our data systems, the training, and organization — good luck doing that in less than 100 days.”

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"Romney tops Obama in July fund-raising" August 07, 2012|Callum Borchers

Mitt Romney’s joint fund-raising committee announced a July haul of $101.3 million on Monday, outraising President Obama’s joint committee for the third straight month.

No presidential candidate had ever had two $100 million months in a single election.

Romney’s joint committee — which collects money for his campaign, the Republican National Committee and several state GOP committees — now has $185.9 million cash on hand.

Obama’s joint fund-raising committee collected $75 million in July, his reelection campaign reported, its highest total of the election....

Romney has been on a fund-raising roll since locking up the Republican nomination....

Romney and the Republicans still trail Obama and the Democrats in total fund-raising, $627 million to $495 million. But the president’s cash advantage is effectively gone. The New York Times reported Sunday that Obama and the Democrats spent about $400 million between the beginning of last year and the end of last month....

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Spare change that was scrubbed from the web version(?):

"Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party organization backed by the Koch brothers, is set to begin a $25 million advertising assault aimed at President Obama, its largest effort to date. The ad campaign is the latest example of how independent political groups funded by a small number of wealthy donors are shaping the presidential campaign in key swing states....

The first ad, titled “President Obama: A One-Term Proposition,” hits the president over the rising national debt — an issue that conservative political groups like Americans for Prosperity and American Crossroads, which is run with the help of Karl Rove, believe is particularly powerful with swing voters in this election."

"Romney, Obama spar over welfare work requirements" by Callum Borchers  |  Globe Correspondent, August 08, 2012

Mitt Romney said in Elk Grove Village, Ill. ‘‘We will end the culture of dependency and restore a culture of good hard work.”

Tell it to Israel, Wall Street, and the war machine, Mitt. 

The assertion was an attempt by the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to introduce the issue of welfare reform into the campaign debate as he reaches out to middle-class voters. The campaign also released an ad using a similar line of attack against the president.

“On July 12,” the ad states, “President Obama quietly announced a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements. Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check.”

The Obama campaign countered by citing a waiver request Romney made to Congress in 2005, as governor of Massachusetts, a waiver that it said was even more lenient on welfare work mandates....

Requests for such waivers have come primarily from Republican governors.

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Is it just me, or is their something disgusting about candidates awash in millions of campaign dollars waxing on about welfare and work? 

Related: Obama’s tough new attack ad deemed accurate

Cambridge firms develop software to check campaign facts

Facts? In an AmeriKan presidential campaign? Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! 

"Romney campaign pushes back against Obama super PAC ad" by Callum Borchers  |  Globe Correspondent, August 09, 2012

Mitt Romney’s campaign pushed back hard Wednesday against a highly sensitive ad produced by a pro-Obama ­super PAC that suggests a cause-and-effect relationship between Romney’s business practices and the death of a Kansas City steelworker’s wife.

The ad launched Tuesday by Priorities USA Action features former GST Steel employee Joe Soptic describing his wife’s swift death from cancer after he lost his job and health insurance when the steel plant — owned by Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney founded — went bankrupt in 2001.

“Mitt Romney and Bain closed the plant. I lost my health care and my family lost their health care,” Soptic says in the ad. “And a short time after that, my wife became ill.”

Soptic adds he is unsure how long his wife was sick, saying “maybe she didn’t say anything because she knew that we couldn’t afford the insurance.”

By the time Soptic’s wife was examined by doctors, he says, her cancer was so advanced that “there was nothing they could do for her. And she passed away in 22 days.”

But contrary to Soptic’s assertion that his wife became ill “a short time” after GST Steel closed, Politico reported, Ranae Soptic died in 2006, five years after the plant closure.

And despite Soptic’s assertion that his family “couldn’t afford the insurance,” CNN reported that Soptic acknowledged in an off-camera interview that his wife’s employer provided her with health insurance after the steel plant was shuttered.

Later, Ranae Soptic tore her rotator cuff and left her job at a thrift store, according to CNN. It was then — not when Soptic lost his job — that she was left uninsured.

Even before these details were reported, the Romney campaign labeled the ad “contemptible” on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, the campaign accused President Obama’s aides of lying when they declined to condemn the ad, claiming not to know whether Joe Soptic’s story was portrayed accurately.

“This is an ad by an entity that’s not controlled by the campaign,” Obama campaign adviser Robert Gibbs said in an interview with MSNBC on Wednesday morning. “I certainly don’t know the specifics of this man’s case.”

“I don’t know the facts about when Mr. Soptic’s wife got sick or the facts about his health insurance,” Stephanie Cutter, Obama’s deputy campaign manager, added on CNN.

But two months ago, the Obama campaign featured Soptic on a conference call with reporters after launching a pair of ads spotlighting GST Steel. Cutter directed the press call, during which Soptic told the story of his wife’s death.

“With unemployment at a five-month high and stagnant economic growth, President Obama and his campaign are willing to say and do anything to hide the president’s disappointing record,” Romney campaign spokesman Ryan Williams said. “But they’re not entitled to repeatedly mislead voters. Americans deserve better — they deserve a president who’s willing to run an honest campaign and be honest about his own record.”

Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul contended in an appearance on Fox News that if the Soptics had lived in Massachusetts “under Governor Romney’s health care plan, they would have had health care.”

Yeah, that turned out to be a big boo-boo on her part. 

As governor of Massachusetts, Romney led passage of a health care law that requires almost every resident to obtain health insurance and provides subsidies to people who cannot afford it on their own. But he has pledged to repeal a similar federal law, championed by Obama, if elected.

Priorities USA Action cofounder Bill Burton stood by his group’s ad in an interview with the Globe and said it was the Romney campaign that had stepped over the line.

“To use small details of this tragedy to make political points is really distasteful,” he said.

The point of the ad, Burton said, is that Romney’s business practices had long-term, harmful consequences.

Burton rejected the notion that the ad was designed to blame Romney for Ranae Soptic’s death.

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"Healthcare Law "Focus shifts to implementing, not repealing, health care law" by Tracy Jan  |  Globe Staff, November 08, 2012

WASHINGTON — “It’s a new ballgame now,” said Drew Altman, chief executive of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health policy group....

The deal, Altman said, is too good to pass up for states not to expand, especially as the economy improves over time and states could better afford to foot their share.

I don't know what economy he is talking about. 

Some states, most notably Texas, have refused to sign on. 

Related: Texas counties seek Medicaid help

UPDATE:

"She thought she’d be able to get health insurance after the Supreme Court upheld President Obama’s health care law. Then she heard that her own governor will not agree to the federal plan to extend Medicaid coverage to people like her."

The government is able to pay for the insurance expansion in part by taxing the biopharmaceutical and medical device industries, starting in 2013. Hospitals, at least initially, would be winners because they could expect to see a rise in the number of insured patients — and thus expand their profit margin....

That's the health that's important, folks.

But for the immediate future, analysts say, the health care spotlight will be on cuts threatening Medicare and Medicaid, given the upcoming debate over the budget deficit and the fiscal cliff facing Congress.

Wait until you see they guy who coined (hint, hint) that term. 

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Related: Mitt Romney has financial edge in final months

Spending limits favored, poll says

Obama edges Romney with $114m haul

Romney won’t release names of donation bundlers

Does it matter?

"Justice Samuel Alito takes on critics of Citizens United ruling" by Mark Sherman  |  Associated Press, November 18, 2012

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito rattled off the names of the nation’s leading newspapers and television networks, all owned by corporations and possessing acknowledged rights to print and say what they wish about politics and government.

Little known is that legally they can lie to you. An AmeriKan court decided as much. And thus, the self-implosion of the s*** AmeriKan media becomes clearer. 

‘‘The question is whether speech that goes to the very heart of government should be limited to certain preferred corporations; namely, media corporations,’’ he said. ‘‘Surely the idea that the First Amendment protects only certain privileged voices should be disturbing to anybody who believes in free speech.’’

Now, THAT I AGREE WITH, and we hope that THIS BLOG (despite the erratic and sparse amount of posts recently) will ALWAYS BE HERE FOR YOU, dear readers. 

It was not the first time Alito has taken on critics of the outcome in the Citizens United case....

The justice in his speech Thursday also briefly dealt with high court cases involving religion, private property, surveillance, immigration, and health care. In the latter case, Alito was among four justices who dissented from the ruling that upheld Obama’s health care overhaul.

Also see: Roberts Reversal Led to Obamacare

Pre$$ure was brought to bear, if you know what I mean. 

But he noted that, even in the health care ruling, the court rejected administration arguments in favor of congressional power at the expense of the states and individuals.

Taken together, Alito said, the views put forth by the government begin to suggest a vision of society ‘‘in which the federal government towers over people.’’ He noted that in several cases, not a single justice endorsed the administration’s arguments.

He also humorously recounted his experience at Yale Law School in the early 1970s when he was a student of constitutional law professor Charles Reich, who by then was more interested in American counterculture than the law.

He quoted from Reich’s bestselling ‘‘The Greening of America,’’ in which the author painted a frightening picture of a disintegrating society and called the era a ‘‘moment of utmost sterility, darkest night, most extreme peril.’’

Here, Alito paused and, to the delight of a crowd dismayed by Obama’s reelection, added, ‘‘So our current situation is nothing new.’’

Actually, no. The construction of empire began before the end of WWII and the Federal Reserve has been around for 100 years.

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