NewsTrust - Campaign Reform - Most Recent Stories

Buddy Roemer: GOP Pres. Candidate Who Backs Occupy, Campaign Finance Reform, Excluded From Debates

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez - Jan. 06 (Interview) - We speak with Buddy Roemer, a candidate who is on the Republican ballot in New Hampshire, but has not been invited to this weekend’s two Republican debates — or any of the past 16 debates — even though he is a former governor of Louisiana and four-term member of Congress. Roemer's campaign is unusual in the Republican field: He has refused to accept campaign contributions more than $100, rejected all donations from political action committees, and has made campaign finance the key plank in his platform. He has also endorsed the Occupy Wall Street movement. "[President Obama] gets elected and he says he wants change, but he takes all his money from these same corporations who don't want change," Roemer says. "Special interests control Washington -- I've been there." [Rush transcript to come. Check back soon.]

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So You Want to Buy an Election?

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Mother Jones - By Tim Murphy - Dec. 06 (Opinion) - A short, shady history of how American elections are bought and paid for. The red giants and blue dwarfs spending millions to influence the 2012 election. Americans Elect says it wants to reform the political system. Campaign watchdogs say it should star

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Half the members of Congress are millionaires

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

iWatch News - By Amy Biegelsen - Nov. 16 (News Report) - Half the members of Congress enjoys “1 percent” status as millionaires, according to a new study by the Center for Responsive Politics. While the economy at home and abroad has limped along since 2008, Congress’ estimated median net worth remains robust—up about 7.6 percent from 2009 and about 13 percent from 2008.

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CNN Poll: Time to clean house in Congress?

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

CNN - Aug. 09 (Poll) - Need more evidence that Americans are extremely angry at Congress? Well, here you go: According to a new national survey, for the first time ever most Americans don't believe their own member of Congress deserves re-election.

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O'Donnell: Spending accusations are 'thug' tactics

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Associated Press - By Matthew Barakat, Ben Nuckols, Randall Chase - Dec. 29 (News Report) - Failed U.S. Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell said Thursday that accusations she misspent campaign funds are politically motivated and stoked by disgruntled former campaign workers.

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Will Stealth Spending Decide the 2012 GOP Presidential Primaries?

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Politics Daily - By Walter Shapiro - Nov. 12 (News Analysis) - After a GOP wave election that put the "tsu" in tsunami, Republicans have reason to feel smug as they look toward 2012. High on the GOP's gloating list is the way that wealthy conservatives and right-wing business groups exploited the new permissive

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Actually, Americans do care about corporate campaign cash

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Katrina vanden Heuvel - Nov. 10 (Opinion) - In Sunday's Post, former congressman and head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Martin Frost said that corporate campaign money is "something the average voter couldn't care less about" and that Congress should "leave campaign finance reform to the wine-and-cheese crowd." That's an obscene and false statement. It's exactly the "wine-and-cheese crowd" that the American people are concerned about -- wealthy Washington special interests that get to buy access and influence with politicians, drowning out the voice of everyday Americans.

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When Campaigns Manipulate Social Media

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - Nov. 10 (Investigative Report) - Politicians and tech evangelists alike see social media as the key to a new type of politics: Campaigns and candidates can better engage citizens, facilitate grassroots organization, and craft legislation with the direct input of a Tweeting electorate. The inevitable results, optimists argue, will be a sort of "digital democracy," defined by a closer, more coherent relationship between the elected officials and their constituents. But social media, like any tool, can be used to erode democratic practices as well.

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The 2010 FactCheck Awards

Tue, 02 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0700

FactCheck - By Jess Henig - Nov. 02 (News Analysis) - Election Day has arrived; every voter has made up his or her mind (or should have, by now). So — just as we’ve done on Election Days past — we offer here some of the ads that we thought deserved special attention, not for the facts they present but for sheer style points (or lack thereof).

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Corporate campaign ads haven't followed Supreme Court's prediction

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By David G. Savage - Oct. 27 (News Report) - Companies and unions have been able to avoid the transparency called for in the court's landmark ruling. Spending on next week's midterm election has been exorbitant.

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Obama's Focus On Election Funding Spurs Guarded Optimism Among Campaign Finance Reformers

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Sam Stein - Oct. 20 (News Analysis) - The intense focus placed on the money being spent in the 2010 elections has had an unexpected impact within the small the world of campaign finance reformers. While the delicate system of fundraising constraints born in the wake of Watergate has crumbled -- allowing for the unprecedented flow of corporate and even anonymous funds -- the chaos has also created a modicum of opportunity. The current climate, campaign finance reformers say, may be one of the most opportune moments to spur the reform of the system.

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Return of the Secret Donors

Sun, 17 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Jill Abramson - Oct. 17 (Special Report) - 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.

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Making Campaign Ads More Honest

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Ron Howard - Oct. 07 (Editorial) - Instead of candidates hiring people like yours truly, to create campaign media that works on both conscious and subconscious levels to sway the voting public, what if all TV ads were, by law, only allowed to feature the candidate, with, say, the American flag as the backdrop, alone, speaking directly to the camera?

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Disappointed Supporters Question Obama

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 15:39:57 -0700

New York Times - By Sheryl Gay Stolberg - Sep. 20 (Special Report) - It was billed as “Investing In America,” a live televised conversation between President Obama and American workers, students, business people and retirees on the state of the economy, a kind of Wall Street to Main Street reality check. But it sounded like a therapy session for disillusioned Obama supporters. In question after question in Monday’s one-hour session, which took place at the Newseum here and was televised on CNBC, Mr. Obama was confronted by people who said, in short, that they had expected more from him. People from Main Street wanted to know if the American dream still lived for them. People from Wall Street complained that he was treating them like a piñata, “whacking us with the stick,” in the words of a former law school classmate of Mr. Obama’s who now runs a hedge fund

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Liberals becoming more disenchanted with Democrats, USA Today/Gallup poll finds

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 11:20:47 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Michael Muskal - Sep. 20 (News Report) - Liberals becoming more disenchanted with Democrats, USA Today/Gallup poll findsLos Angeles TimesThe latest USA Today/Gallup poll shows that fewer than one in five of those surveyed approve of the job Congress is doing, statistically the same as the ...Now that the Democratic Congress is back in session, its approval decline ...Los Angeles Times (blog)Poll Shows Approval Rating For Congress At Historically Low LevelsRTT NewsCongress Only Growing Less Popular With AmericansGallup.comall 12 news articles??

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An Antidote to Corporate Lies: How to still pass the DISCLOSE Act

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Paul Loeb - Aug. 03 (Opinion) - persuasion or even bending-backwards compromise gets little traction with the Party of No. Even those who decried Citizens United, like Snowe, seem more intent on bringing the Democrats down than preventing American democracy from becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of Exxon, Massey, BP, Goldman Sachs, and every other corporate interest willing to pay the cost.

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Maintaining the Undue Influence of Wealth

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

sensen-no-sen.blogspot.com - By Paul Belle Isle - Jul. 31 (Opinion) - One of the fundamental aims of campaign finance reform is to encourage large numbers of small donations from a broad spectrum of donors, while diminishing the undue influence of wealth. This is not - or at least it shouldn't be - an ideological proposition.

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The Influence Industry: Groups say time is now for public financing push

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Dan Eggen - Jul. 08 (News Report) - Two interest groups plan to spend as much as $15 million this year on a nationwide campaign in favor of new public-financing legislation aimed at limiting the influence of wealthy donors and large corporations in congressional races.

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NRA Remains The King On The Hill

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Sam Stein, Arthur Delaney - Jun. 16 (News Report) - Democrats on Monday touted a major breakthrough in campaign finance reform legislation that could drastically alter the shape and course of the 2010 elections. But in the process of securing the necessary concessions, the party confirmed the widespread assumption that special interests can literally write legislation if they have enough clout.

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Ride Along with Mitch

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Weekly Standard - By Andrew Ferguson - Jun. 10 (Special Report) - He treats waste in government as a moral offense. “Government isn’t a business, and it shouldn’t be run as a business,” he said. “But it can be more like business. It has a lot to learn from businessmen.” Government operates without the market pressures that produce efficiency and increase quality. The challenge for government leaders is to produce those pressures to economize internally, through an act of will. “Never take a dollar from a free citizen through the coercion of taxation without a very legitimate purpose,” he said in an interview last year. “We have a solemn duty to spend that dollar as carefully as possible, because when we took it we diminished that person’s freedom.” When you put it like that, overspending by government seems un-American. When Daniels took office, in 2004, the state faced a $200 million deficit and hadn’t balanced its budget in seven years. Four years later, all outstanding debts had been paid off; after four balanced budgets, the state was running a surplus of $1.3 billion, which has cushioned the blows from a steady decline in revenues caused by the recession. “That’s what saved us when the recession hit,” one official said. “If we didn’t have the cash reserves and the debts paid off, we would have been toast.” The state today is spending roughly the same amount that it was when Daniels took office, largely because he resisted the budget increases other states were indulging in the past decade.

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Judicial Watch Obtains New FBI Documents Regarding ACORN Voter Fraud Investigation

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

judicialwatch.org - By Anonymous - Jun. 09 (News Report) - Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has obtained documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) related to the 2007 investigation and arrest of eight St. Louis, Missouri, workers from the “community organization” Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) for violation of election laws and voter fraud. The documents include handwritten notes from FBI investigators interviewing canvassers working with Project Vote, an ACORN affiliate. Among the highlights from the FBI handwritten notes: •[ACORN] “Told employees not to talk to the FBI. ‘FBI trying to intimidate you.’” •Fraudulent cards: ◦To cause confusion on election day to keep polls open longer ◦To allow people who can’t vote to vote. ◦To allow to vote multiple times.

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Groups push for public financing

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

publicampaign.org - By Peter Overby - Mar. 23 (News Analysis) - This morning on NPR, Peter Overby interviewed several Fair Elections advocates about pushing for public financing of elections in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC.

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First Corporate Campaign Ads Appear

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Michael Falcone - Mar. 23 (News Report) - A Texas company recently took out a political ad in several local newspapers, making it one of the first corporations to do so in the wake of a landmark Supreme Court ruling that lifted restrictions on corporate political spending. The Texas Tribune reports that the company, KDR Development, paid for an ad against state Rep. Chuck Hopson.

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The Moment

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Lawrence Lessig - Mar. 22 (Opinion) - President Obama will savor, and rightly so, his extraordinary achievement in enacting fundamental health care reform. He has done something few thought possible, and he may well have revived the enormous faith that his election gave millions. But we should not miss the lesson in this fight. Nor the opportunity to rally this rebounded presidency to its real potential for reform.

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Higher Corporate Spending on Election Ads Could Be All but Invisible

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800

ProPublica - By Chisun Lee - Mar. 10 (News Report) - The Supreme Court recently freed [1] corporations to spend more money on aggressive election ads. But if businesses take advantage of this new freedom, the public probably won't know it, because it's easy for them to legally hide their political spending.

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