Political Irony

I’ve complained about “dark money” – unlimited money coming from 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(6) organizations that don’t have to disclose their donors, and who can use that money for political campaigns. Because they don’t have to disclose their donors, their money can come from foreign enemies, even criminal or terrorist organizations.

Well, it is getting worse. According to PolitiFact, the amount of dark money that has been spent so far in the 2016 election (almost a year away) is ten times as much as was spent at the same point in the 2012 election cycle.

In the 2012 election, the total amount of dark money spent was over $308 million. Not surprisingly, 86% of dark money was spent by conservative groups (including groups headed by Karl Rove and by the Koch brothers), and only 11% by liberal groups.

Of the $4.88 million of dark money spent so far on the 2016 election, more than 98% was spent by conservative groups.

Does that mean we will see over $3 billion of dark money (the vast majority of it from conservative groups) spent on this election before it is over? It is both possible and likely. Already in some elections, spending by dark money groups has surpassed all money spent by traditional political action committees, both PACs and “Super PACs”.

That is a very scary thought.

While the Citizens United decision and the rise of big money and Super PACs had a huge effect on the 2010 midterm election, they don’t seem to be having as much of an impact on the current presidential primaries. Don’t get me wrong, there is even more money being spent this time, but it doesn’t seem to be having as much of an effect.

Exhibit A is Jeb Bush, whose Right to Rise Super PAC has aired a stunning $15.5 million in TV ads while his polling numbers sank.

Likewise, candidates who focused completely on raising lots of money through Super PACs, including Scott Walker and Rick Perry, have mostly dropped out of the race. The exception to this is Marco Rubio, but his rising star was largely fueled by two strong debate performances.

There are two, somewhat related reasons why Super PACs aren’t helping as much as they used to. First is because Super PACs are not allowed to coordinate with the campaign directly. So they cannot be used to build ground operations, pay employees, or organize campaign fundraisers. Which leaves them mainly paying for TV ads. Once upon a time, TV ads were the things that broke or made campaigns.

Which brings us to the second reason, which is that TV ads aren’t working as well as they used to. Part of this is because of sheer fatigue – right now, roughly half of all TV ads in Iowa are political. The advertising law of threes says that somebody has to see an ad three times before it has any effect on them, but after they see it three hundred times? But the main part is probably because of media changes. The rise of the internet means that people are watching more video online, rather than on broadcast TV or cable. Super PACs have been slow to adapt to this change. And finally, political campaigns get steep discounts on advertising, which are not available to Super PACs. A Super PAC typically pays four times as much per commercial as a candidate’s campaign does.

So, does this mean we shouldn’t worry about Super PACs? Not at all. Super PACs can still be a huge accessory to the main campaign, they are just not as effective on their own. When they are used as the campaign’s center of gravity (as they were for Walker or Perry) they fail. But they are still good at keeping a candidate alive in the lean times.

However, the main reason we should worry about Super PACs is because of their lack of accountability or transparency. The form of Super PACs called 501c4 do not have to disclose any information about their donors, and is now the second biggest overall TV ad spender. This means that our political candidates could be bought off by our country’s enemies and there is no way we would even know.

Maybe they already have been.

© Joel Pett

Special interests want you to be apathetic. The less you know, and the less you vote, the more power they get.

Everyone is given the right to vote. If you don’t, you’re just throwing your power away.

It takes less time to vote than it does to complain about how corrupt and dysfunctional our government is. And if you don’t vote, you don’t really have the right to complain.

So far, no.

Yesterday, the voters of Ohio rejected a ballot measure that would amend the Ohio constitution to legalize marijuana.

What’s ironic about this is that many of the organizations who are working to legalize marijuana urged voters to reject the measure. And (even more ironically) I’m glad the measure failed.

Drugs are big business, so it is amazing that it took this long for business to realize that they could make a lot of money off of marijuana. But once they figured that out, they didn’t waste any time. The ballot measure in Ohio was a blatant greedy power grab.

The ballot measure would have authorized ten (and only ten) specific businesses to supply legal marijuana, and keep it illegal for anyone else to sell it. And how did the writers of this measure select those ten businesses? They were the businesses that contributed a bunch of money to get the ballot measure passed. If it had passed, those ten companies would have had a collective monopoly to make a great deal of money, likely forever.

It wasn’t that long ago that we had a similar oligopoly, selling another (even more addictive) drug, tobacco. We don’t need big business pushing drugs again.