NYT:"Evidently,corporate donors love having a secret route to influence politics& elect Republicans"

[Pirate Smile]

Evidently, the corporate donors love having a secret route to influence politics and elect Republicans without showing their hands to a Washington still controlled by the Democrats.

2012 - "most political experts agree that the secret money spent by outside groups this year will look like a pittance by then, when President Obama will face re-election."

The 1972 campaign had its own dry run for the fund-raising abuses of Watergate. In 1970, President Nixon tried to orchestrate a Republican sweep in the off-year Congressional elections. Known as the Townhouse Operation, a group of Nixon loyalists, some of whom are leading this year’s nonprofit push, operated out of a townhouse near DuPont Circle in Washington, raising illegal corporate cash and distributing it in key Senate races."

Return of the Secret Donors


In 1972, the Nixon campaign sought secret donations from corporations and individuals. The list of donors was kept by Rose Mary Woods, Nixon’s secretary, bottom left.

To old political hands, wise to the ways of candidates and money, 1972 was a watershed year. Richard M. Nixon’s re-election campaign was awash in cash, secretly donated by corporations and individuals.
Fred Wertheimer, a longtime supporter of campaign finance regulation, was then a lawyer for Common Cause. He vividly recalls the weeks leading up to April 7, 1972, before a new campaign finance law went into effect requiring the disclosure of the names of individual donors. “Contributors,” he said, “were literally flying into Washington with satchels of cash.”

The Committee for the Re-Election of the President was also illegally hauling in many millions of dollars from corporations, many of which felt pressured into making contributions.
The record of donors was so tightly held that it was kept in a locked drawer by Rose Mary Woods, Nixon’s secretary. The list — which came to be known as “Rose Mary’s Baby” — wasn’t released until Mr. Wertheimer forced the issue through a lawsuit. Among those on the list were William Keeler, the chief executive of Phillips Petroleum, who pleaded guilty, during the post-Watergate prosecutions, to making an illegal corporate donation.

In this year’s midterm elections, there is no talk of satchels of cash from donors. Nor is there any hint of illegal actions reaching Watergate-like proportions. But the fund-raising practices that earned people convictions in Watergate — giving direct corporate money to a campaign and doing so secretly — are back in a different form in 2010.
This time around, the corporations are still giving secretly, but legally. In 1907, direct corporate donations to candidates were legally barred in a campaign finance reform push by President Theodore Roosevelt. But that law and others — the foundation for many Watergate convictions — are all but obsolete. This is why many supporters of strict campaign finance laws are wringing their hands.

Certainly, it is still illegal for corporations to contribute directly to candidates. But they now have equally potent ways to exert their influence. This election year is the first since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which allows corporations for the first time to finance ads that directly support or oppose political candidates. And tax laws and loopholes have permitted a shadow campaign network of Republican-leaning nonprofit groups to collect a flood of anonymous donations and spend it widely.

If the Republicans make big gains in the House and Senate on Election Day, there is rare bipartisan consensus that they will owe part of their victory to the millions of dollars raised and spent by these nonprofit groups, much of which has come from businesses.
The groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, the American Action Network and Crossroads GPS, which is linked to the Republican strategist Karl Rove, have committed to spending well over $150 million this year. President Obama has railed against these groups as they have poured money into races in which once-secure Democrats are hanging by a thread.

-snip-
With so many different Republican groups spending so much, he said, no desk drawer is big enough to hold the 2010 list of secret donors, like the one that held his hard-fought-for Rose Mary’s Baby.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/weekinreview/17abramson.html

Wall Street, Oil Companies, Mining & Coal - every industry the Obama Administration has tried to regulate back to sanity will be dumping hundreds of millions of dollars in 2012. As it says above, this years corporate, secret money "will look like a pittance" in 2012.

The 5 Supreme Court Justices who voted for Citizens United are truly a disgrace and abomination.

[Kdillard]

1. Good that this is getting exposure and traction.

[monmouth]

2. The NYT seems to really be making this up front and out there. n/t

[ProSense]

3. Reps. Driehaus And Kilroy Join Call For Investigation Into Chamber Of Commerce’s Foreign Funding

Think Progress: Reps. Driehaus And Kilroy Join Call For Investigation Into Chamber Of Commerce’s Foreign Funding

[Pirate Smile]

4. kick

[Pirate Smile]

5. Monday kick

[Supersedeas]

6. this country has a history