Because there's not enough money in politics and elections already, the United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear a challenge to the current biennial limits on individual campaign contributions. This time around, it's likely they'll bolster the Citizens United with a parallel decision lifting limits on what individuals may contribute to individual candidates, because money is speech, right?

Huffington Post reports:

The case, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, argues that the limit on what individuals are allowed to give candidates ($46,200 per two-year cycle) and parties and PACs ($70,800 per two-year cycle) is an unconstitutional violation of the individual donor's free speech rights.

The U.S. Court of Appeals already ruled in favor of keeping the biennial limits, which have been in place since 1971 and were upheld in the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo case. By accepting the case, the court is stepping into the thick of another controversial campaign finance case just three years after ruling in Citizens United v. FEC that corporations and unions can spend freely on elections.

If the court rules against the two-year limits, it would mark the first time a court has overturned a part of the landmark Buckley ruling that deals with campaign contribution limits. This is not terribly surprising as the court has been hostile to campaign finance laws ever since Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a supporter of campaign finance regulation, was replaced by Justice Samuel Alito, a member of the court's conservative bloc who is opposed to campaign regulation.

Campaign finance reformers are already calling on the court to maintain the Buckley precedent and rule against the challenge in McCutcheon, for fear that any overturning of Buckley will eventually lead to future erosion of contribution limits and other campaign finance precedents meant to protect against corruption or the appearance of corruption.

I think we can predict the outcome on this, can't we? After the Montana case where they ruled that there was no corruption because of excessive money in campaigns even though the Montana law was passed to prevent rampant corruption, I'm certain those limits will go away.

If Congress has any will for anything, they should quit trying to limit campaign contributions and instead focus on real-time disclosure. If the Supreme Court is going to allow unlimited money, we should expect to know in real time who is spending that money. I don't want any nonsense about anonymous speech, either. Voters have a right to assign weight to a candidate's motives based upon who is paying for them to ascend to office. In real time. Not eighteen or twenty months past the election.

We're not going to win the limits argument with this court. But we might win the disclosure argument handily in lieu of the actual solution -- an amendment to the constitution.

Yesterday, the president of the United States held a press conference with the DC elite press corps. They had the opportunity to ask the president what our government is doing about the nation's most serious problems.

There were no questions about the climate change emergency.

There were no questions about the 400,000+ Americans killed by cigarettes each year.

There were no questions about ways to get millions and millions of unemployed and hurting people into jobs.

There were no questions about what we should do about our crumbling infrastructure.

There were no questions about the huge trade deficit that drains hundreds of billions out of our economy.

There were no questions about the trade agreements that pit our workers against exploited, underpaid workers in countries where people have no say, thereby undermining our democracy, wages and middle class.

There were no questions about the government's failure to hold banks and banking executives accountable for fraud and other crimes.

There were no questions about worsening income and wealth inequality, with all income gains going to the top 1% and the bulk of new jobs being low-wage jobs

There were no questions about the obesity/diabetes epidemic, and the possible link to corn syrup.

There were no questions about the crushing student-loan debt that holds so many of our younger people back.

There certainly and for obvious reasons were no questions about what the government is doing to fight media concentration, with most media now owned by only six giant corporations.

There certainly were no questions about how we are going to return to democracy from this corporate/billionaire plutocracy.

There were no questions about the influence of money over our government and the things we talk and even think about.

But the influence of the billionaires and their corporations over our government and our media and the things we talk and even think about is WHY there were no questions about any of these problems. The solutions to the problems are obvious, but are being blocked. We are even being blocked -- by money -- from even talking about the problems, never mind solving them.

This Is Not About Ideology

Getting paid by corporations to block government action from helping We, the People but hurting corporate profits isn't an ideology, it's corruption.

Getting paid by corporations to cut taxes and regulations for corporations isn't an ideology, it’s corruption.

Getting paid by billionaires to cut taxes for billionaires isn't an ideology, it is corruption

Call it what it is, don’t launder it by calling it ideology. It is corruption.

--

I am a Fellow with Campaign for America's Future. Follow me and CAF on Twitter:

After an extensive audit of Obama for America's 2008 campaign disclosures, the FEC and OFA have agreed to settle the specific complaints with a $375,000 fine, one of the largest in campaign finance history.

The RNC released the settlement agreement to Politico last week. Here are the violations they settled:

1. Misreported dates of contributions: The Obama Victory Fund transferred $89 million in contributions to OFA, which OFA reported. However, OFA used the date of transfer from OVF in their FEC reports instead of the date the actual contributions were made.
2. Contributions Required to Be Reported on 48-hour notices: Campaigns are required to report contributions made in excess of $1,000 which are received less than 20 days but more than 48 hours before an election. There were 1,266 contributions received by the campaign which totalled $1,895,956 in that time frame which were not reported on a 48-hour notice. Of the 1,266 contributions received, 711 of them were transfers from OVF, presumably with the incorrect date, which exacerbated the problem. The fine for that was $191,135 and was paid in full.
3. Excessive contributions Contributions were received which totalled $1,363,529 and were from individuals who had already contributed the maximum. Of those, the campaign refunded nearly $500,000 upon discovery, and the FEC discovered the remaining contributions on audit, which they will now refund to donors. If the donors cannot be located or don't cash the refund check, the funds will revert to the US Treasury.

As a strict matter of legal compliance, these are serious violations and presumably were corrected by the time the 2012 campaign finance cycle rolled around. I say presumably because I do not see the same inquiries in 2012 that I saw for the 2008 reports. In fairness to OFA, they overwhelmed the FEC electronic filing system because of all of the small donors. Reports had to be broken into smaller pieces because they were too large for the system, the universe of small donors stretched across OVF and OFA, and were difficult to track with existing database technologies in 2008. In 2012, that should not be the case.

One other point worth making: It was the required disclosure process that revealed these issues, and the resolution process that resolved them. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Republican fundraising efforts, since they're done outside of FEC oversight and without any disclosure.

Still, this is certainly a learning exercise in managing campaign finances, and one that should be taken seriously by OFA and all organizations raising money for candidates.

Now that the final FEC reports are in for Election 2012 and we can survey the damage, it's clear that the Kochtopus has grown, spread, and infected everything from state redistricting initiatives to the national races.

In the process, they've promoted some of their rising stars to lead positions, and so we've got some new names to watch for in the upcoming midterms.

Getting the information for this post was a little difficult, because it seems that the right wing Kochtopus entities have decided to make it difficult for anyone to access their federal form 990 after the 2010 filing year. I've sent out requests to 29 different organizations for their most recent forms. As they come in, I'll share them all with you. For now, here's what we are able to figure out about these new organizations and people.

American Commitment

American Commitment was born in April, 2012. According to their website, the purpose of American Commitment is to "fill the capabilities gap between think tanks engaged in pure public policy work and grassroots organizations engaged in mobilizing citizen activists."

American Commitment's Executive Director and general man-in-charge is Phil Kerpen, who seems to have received a promotion from his former position as policy director at Americans for Prosperity. Kerpen has moved up the Koch ladder to a place of honor as the new director of their newest project. The video at the top is a segment he did with Sean Hannity bashing Van Jones while tying him to Barack Obama, all of which was done without much mention of which organization Kerpen represented at the time.

Here are some of their projects, in no particular order, just to give you a flavor of the tone and tenor of their "grassroots" efforts:

• HouseStandStrong.com
• NoMandateTax.com
• WarOnCoal.com
• ALECPetition.com
• KeystoneXLNow.com
• StandWithWalker.com
• ObamaDoublespeak.com

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Despite what you may hear on Fox News, the Obama Administration and the rest of us saw a huge victory in the Supreme Court's ruling on Arizona's "Papers Please" law. In a 5-4 ruling, they struck down three out of four key provisions, leaving the question about proving one's legal resident status open to narrow implementation. Their decision on the Affordable Care Act is expected Thursday morning.

SCOTUSblog reports that the three stricken provisions are as follows:

• State Law Crime of Being In The Country Illegally. Although federal law already makes it illegal for someone to be in the country without proper authorization, Section 3 of the Arizona statute also makes it a state crime, subject to additional fines and possible imprisonment. The Court held that this provision was preempted and cannot be enforced. The Court held that Congress has left no room for states to regulate in this field, even to implement the federal prohibition.
• Ban on Working In The State. Section 5(C) of the statute also makes it a state crime for undocumented immigrants from applying for a job or working in the state. It is also held preempted as imposing an obstacle to the federal regulatory system. Because Congress obviously chose not make working in the country without proper authorization a federal crime, states cannot enact additional criminal penalties Congress decided not to impose.
• Warrantless Arrest Of Individuals Believed To Have Committed A Deportable Crime. Section 6 of the statute authorizes state law enforcement officials to arrest without a warrant any individual otherwise lawfully in the country, if law enforcement officials have probable cause to believe the individual has committed a deportable offense. The Court held that this provision is preempted. Whether and when to arrest someone for being unlawfully in the country is a question solely for the federal government.

On the identification provision, the Court ruled that the Ninth Circuit Court was wrong to have prevented implementation of the identification portion of the law, but left the door open for other challenges to it.

This particular case challenged the question of whether Arizona had the right to supercede federal immigration laws. The answer was mostly no, but the Court did hold that Arizona could possibly implement the identification requirement with the understanding that it is subject to further challenge as other cases progress through the courts.

In other words, it might be allowable for states to do this, but if it's implemented in a way that discriminates, it may not withstand challenge.

The ruling was 5-3, with Kagan recusing due to her involvement while she worked for the Obama administration.

In a rather stunning dissent, Justice Scalia reached over the record made in the case to discuss President Obama's executive order -- DREAM Act lite. In his dissent, he pointed to that executive order for his reasoning that the federal government had the resources, but not the will, to enforce immigration law, and then went on to say this:

The President said at a news conference that the new program is “the right thing to do” in light of Congress’s failure to pass the Administration’s proposed revision of the Immigration Act. Perhaps it is, though Arizona may not think so. But to say, as the Court does, that Arizona contradicts federal law by enforcing applications of the Immigration Act that the President declines to enforce boggles the mind.

Overreach, thy name is Scalia. You don't have to be a lawyer to understand that legal opinions are based on the record as made in a courtroom and not on Fox News! He concluded his dissent, which was read from the bench, with this:

Arizona has moved to protect its sovereignty—not in contradiction of federal law, but in complete compliance with it. The laws under challenge here do not extend or revise federal immigration restrictions, but merely enforce those restrictions more effectively. If securing its territory in this fashion is not within the power of Arizona, we should cease referring to it as a sovereign State. I dissent.

Justice Scalia is in lockstep with his friend Kris Kobach, it seems, which shouldn't surprise anyone. Scalia's ties to the Federalist Society run deep, and Kobach is their go-to for immigration laws.

The Romney campaign just released this statement, saying nothing:

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"It is more blessed," Jesus said, "to give than to receive." That may be, but the billionaire backers of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign and Super PAC plan to do both. As they gather this weekend for a three-day Romney conclave in Park City, Utah and a secret Koch brothers summit in San Diego, the deep-pocketed donors and bullish bundlers ultimately hope to shower $1 billion on the Republican nominee. If the captains of industry and finance succeed, they can expect a golden shower of their own in return. After all, Romney has not merely promised to roll back environmental regulations, open federal lands to energy exploration and undo the Dodd-Frank reforms of Wall Street. Just by eliminating the estate tax, President Romney would divert tens of billions of dollars currently destined for the United States Treasury into the bank accounts of the richest families in America.

Despite record high corporate profits, historically low effective upper income tax rates and a stock market which has risen by over half since January 2009, Barack Obama is not enjoying the usual fundraising advantage of incumbency. Nowhere is this more true than on Wall Street. As Politico documented:

Mitt Romney's presidential campaign and the super PAC supporting it are outraising Obama among financial-sector donors $37.1 million to $4.8 million.

Near the front of the pack are 19 Obama donors from 2008 who are giving big to Romney. The 19 have already given $4.8 million to Romney's presidential campaign and the super PAC supporting it through the end of April, according to a POLITICO analysis of Federal Election Commission filings. Four years ago, they gave Obama $213,700. None of them has given a penny to the president's reelection campaign or the super PAC supporting it.

(As the New York Times reported this week, Robert Wolf, one of the few high-profile financiers publicly supporting President Obama, has been "muzzled" by his bosses at UBS.)

The energy industry, too, is proving a gusher for Mitt Romney and his Restore Our Future Super PAC. Hours after being named an oil adviser to the Romney campaign, Harold Hamm of Continental Resources contributed $1 million of his $11 billion net worth to Restore Our Future. Charles and David Koch have pledged $395 million for the 2012 election cycle, which combined with Karl Rove's American Crossroads and Tom Donohue's U.S. Chamber of Commerce could produce a billion-dollar tidal wave of cash to wash Barack Obama out of the White House. (As one Democratic consultant described the operation, "It's just like the Cold War. They're going to force Obama to spend himself into oblivion.")

Others among the usual suspects on the right are opening their vaults as well. Former Newt Gingrich sugar daddy and casino mogul Sheldon Adelson has said his donations could be "limitless" and will likely top $100 million. While billionaire investor and Chicago Cubs owner Joe Ricketts may have abandoned his Jeremiah Wright smear campaign, his is bankrolling other projects including the ersatz documentary based on Dinesh D'Souza's book, "The Roots of Obama's Rage." Meanwhile, Texas billionaire Harold Simmons has already delivered $18.7 million to Republican political organizations, a sum which will likely double by November.

(It is worth noting, as the New Republic and Huffington Post did recently, that many of Mitt Romney's Super PAC donors are embroiled in corporate bribery scandals. Adelson's casinos, the Walton family's Walmart operation in Mexico, Koch Brothers businesses in the Middle East and Meg Whitman's Hewlett Packard are all entangled with alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.)

But Mitt Romney's gilded-class allies won't merely win if he slashes taxes and regulations for their businesses. They will reap a huge return on their multi-million dollar investments from the massive tax cut windfall for the wealthy would-be President Romney has in mind for them.

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Hey, Obama campaign, here's your next campaign ad. Get on it and keep hammering it.

After Sheldon Adelson announced a $10 million donation to a Romney SuperPAC with the promise of "unlimited funds" to come, Senator John McCain sat down for this interview with Judy Woodruff.

After making the declaration that "corporations are not people", Senator McCain says that Adelson's profits are largely from his casino in Macau, and therefore it's likely that Romney's campaign is being funded with foreign money as a result. He goes on to criticize the Citizens United decision as the "most misguided, naive, uninformed, egregious decision of the United States Supreme Court" and predicts many scandals as a result of their decision. Ya think?

Key points:

JUDY WOODRUFF: This question of campaign money highlighted today by this -- the announcement that there's a huge amount of money coming in from one donor in the state of Nevada.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: Mr. Adelson, who gave large amounts of money to the Gingrich campaign. And much of Mr. Adelson's casino profits that go to him come from this casino in Macau.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Which says what?

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: Which says that, obviously, maybe in a roundabout way, foreign money is coming into an American campaign -- political campaigns.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Because of the profits at the casinos in Macau?

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: Yes. That is a great deal of money. And, again, we need a level playing field and we need to go back to the realization that Teddy Roosevelt had that we have to have a limit on the flow of money, and that corporations are not people.

Full transcript below the fold.

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Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse discusses one of the proposed solutions to the problem of anonymous campaign contributions

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia refused to grant a stay on an earlier decision that told the Federal Election Commission that the secret donors behind millions of dollars of electioneering communications must be revealed. The court rejected the request for a stay on a 2-1 vote and ordered that the full appeal go forward in the fall.

At issue is the ability of tax-exempt groups that run political ads within two months of the general election — or within one month of a primary — to keep secret the names of their donors. Such groups spent some $80 million in the 2010 congressional elections, primarily supporting conservative candidates or attacking their opponents. The donors behind less than 10 percent of that amount were ever disclosed.

"It's a very important victory in the battle to end the secret contributions that are currently being funneled into federal elections," said Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21, the liberal group that worked with Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., to sue the FEC.

The ruling applies specifically to so-called electioneering communications. Not addressed were nonprofit groups that make what are called "independent expenditures" in campaigns. Those are covered in a different section of campaign finance law.

Wertheimer says his group is contemplating a second lawsuit seeking to disclose the donors who finance those forms of ads as well.

If this ruling stands up to the appeal, it could go a long way to making elections at least more transparent. It won't deal with the real problem, which is the unlimited spending in campaigns, but at least we'll know who is buying the elections. While we know that people like the Koch Brothers and Karl Rove spent millions to purchase elections in 2010, there is a lot more spending from that cycle that we don't know about. That's no way to run democratic elections.

Mitt Romney's Super PAC, Restore Our Future, filed their March, 2012 disclosure statements Friday, giving us a pretty picture of who his billionaires are. The list is quite extensive, so I'll limit it to the six-figure and beyond donors for your reading pleasure.

• Huron Carbon, LLC, located at same address as William Koch's Oxbow Carbon and Minerals. William (Bill) Koch is the third Koch brother - $1,000,000
• Kenneth Griffin, Citadel LLC - $950,000
• Harold C. Simmons, Contran Corp: $800,000
• James S Davis, New Balance Athletic Shoes - $500,000
• JW Marriott, Jr, Marriott Hotels - $500,000
• Richard Marriott - $500,000
• Geoff Palmer, GH Palmer & Associates (Real Estate Developer) - $500,000
• Steven Webster, Avista Capital: $500,000
• Seaspray Partners, LLC (this donation seems to have a very mysterious origin): $400,000
• Fair Oaks Finance, LLC - $250,000
• Kevin Rollins, former chairman of Dell Computer, and spouse Debra: $250,000
• Charles Schwab, Charles Schwab Corp. and Helen Schwab: $250,000
• Robert C. Wetenhall, McConnell Wetenhall Co Chairman: $250,000
• Rod Aycox, Select Management Resource (auto title lender) - $200,000
• Betty Brown Casey, Casey Management - $200,000
• Robert Rosenkrantz, Delphi Financial Group: $150,000
• Douglas Berthiaume, Waters Corp - $100,000
• Ed Bosarge, Capital Technologies, Inc - $100,000
• Alan Fournier, Pennant Capital Management - $100,000
• Jeffrey Fox, Harbour Group - $100,000
• Marilyn Fox, Spouse - $100,000
• Sam Fox, Harbour Group - $100,000
• John A Griffin, Blue Ridge Capital - $100,000
• Johanna Howard, homemaker - $100,000 (Ms. Howard is the daughter of venture capitalist Peter Geier)
• William Laverack, Jr, Chairman, Laverack Capital Partners - $100,000
• Kelly Loeffler, Intercontinental Exchange - $100,000
• Mischer Investments - $100,000
• Robert Pence, Pence Group (Real Estate Developer) - $100,000
• Dale Rogers, Rogers Wealth Group - $100,000
• Nicholas Rosenkrantz, Georgetown Univ. Law Professor, former John McCain advisor: $100,000

But wait, there's more. There's also the Karl Rove Super PAC, American Crossroads, which operates for the benefit of Mitt Romney, too. And still more billionaires! This is a list of the largest contributors for 2011 and the first three months of 2012. Keep in mind that these contributions were for the primary. Imagine what they'll pony up for the general election, and that would include the billionaires funding Santorum and Gingrich, too; namely, Foster Friess and Sheldon Adelson. They gave at least $30,000,000 between them for the primary losing candidates. You think they'll step up for the general?

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As a quick glance at January's presidential fundraising numbers confirms, the unlimited cash flowing into SuperPACs is fundamentally distorting the 2012 election. The millions flowing into conservative SuperPAC coffers are not only far outpacing the GOP candidates' own campaigns, but continuing to overwhelm their Democratic counterparts. But for the likes of Charles and David Koch, the Walton family, Foster Friess, Sheldon Adelson, Meg Whitman, the Marriotts and the rest of the SuperPAC-Men, a multimillion dollar contribution isn't an eccentric hobby, but a wise investment. After all, if Republicans win in November, their plan to eliminate the estate and capital gains taxes would divert billions of dollars from the United States Treasury to the accounts of nation's richest families. Of course, that gaping hole would have to be filled by all other American taxpayers.

As Mother Jones reported last month, as of December 31, 2011 conservative SuperPACs reaped $60 million of now-unlimited contributions, compared to just $8 million for liberal groups. That tidal wave of corporate cash and play money from the wealthy has filled the coffers of Karl Rove's American Crossroads, Mitt Romney's Restore the Future, Rick Santorum's Red, White and Blue Fund, Newt Gingrich's Winning the Future and a litany of other right-wing SuperPACs. Sheldon Adelson, the casino mogul worth an estimated $25 billion, said, "I might give $10 million or $100 million to Gingrich." And as Amanda Terkel detailed, the Koch brothers and their allies pledged to raise much more to defeat President Obama:

At a private three-day retreat in California last weekend, conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch and about 250 to 300 other individuals pledged approximately $100 million to defeat President Obama in the 2012 elections.

A source who was in the room when the pledges were made told The Huffington Post that, specifically, Charles Koch pledged $40 million and David pledged $20 million.

But that figure is chump change compared to the eye-popping return on investment the Kochs can expect if their side wins in November. Ending the estate tax, a policy endorsed by Mitt Romney and every other Republican presidential candidate, would literally be worth billions of dollars to the heirs of Charles and David Koch. As ThinkProgress explained last year:

According to a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation, the Koch brothers' heirs' would save a combined $17.4 billion in estate taxes thanks to Romney's plan.

Each of the Koch brothers -- Charles and David -- is worth about $25 billion. They are each married, so they would receive an exemption on the first $10 million that they pass down, and then theirs heirs would pay a 35 percent tax, or $8.7 billion, on the rest of their vast fortunes.

Now, this is an exceedingly rough calculation, as it's almost certain that the Koch's have engaged in extensive estate planning and would pay nowhere near that amount. But 35 percent is the rate on the books, and Romney's plan to eliminate the estate tax entirely would undeniably save the Kochs a boatload of money.

Here's why. Despite Republican mythology about family farms and businesses being lost to the so-called "death tax," by 2009 only 0.24 percent of estates even paid the levy. And that was before the December 2010 compromise President Obama inked with Congressional Republicans extending the Bush tax cuts further slashed the estate tax. The reduced 35 percent tax is now applied only to couples with estates greater than $10 million, a change which will cost Uncle Sam roughly $15 billion a year. Now, the Tax Policy Center calculated, only 0.1 percent of estates are impacted. Only 50 family farms and small businesses will be affected, and they contribute "less than one tenth of 1 percent point of the total revenue the tax will collect." Who pays the estate tax?

TPC estimates that 8,600 individuals dying in 2011 will leave estates large enough to require filing an estate tax return (estates with a gross value under $5 million need not file a return in 2011). After allowing for deductions and credits, an estimated 3,270 estates will owe tax. Roughly 90 percent of these taxable estates will come from the top ten percent of income earners and nearly half will come from the top one percent alone.

Estate tax liability will total an estimated $10.6 billion in 2011. The top ten percent of income earners will pay 98 percent of this total. The richest 1 in 1,000 will pay $5.4 billion or 51 percent of the total.

Among that richest 1 in 1,000 are the Koch brothers and the family behind Walmart, the Walton clan.

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