Hi,
In the
post-election "reflections" sweeping the media, one person getting a
lot of attention is Karl Rove, the organizer of the SUPER PAC
"Crossroads" and its "sister" 501c4 "Crossroads
GPS". Below is a link to a front page article in yesterday's
NYTIMES.
The gist of these
media "stories/articles" seems to be that Rove is on the "hot
seat" because he raised and spent somewhere between $340 - $390
million dollars on campaign ads and seems to have nothing to show for it.
Apparently none of the candidates his organizations supported got
elected.
So the discussion
is focusing on whether all this money flowing into the campaign process (due to the Supreme Court's Citizen United decision) can actually influence elections, or
was Rove incompetent, or was he just backing a "bad" product.
Interestingly, I’m not hearing a corresponding evaluation of the effectiveness
of Rove's "opposition", the millions of dollars in pro-OBAMA campaign
ads.
Unfortunately,
this discussion misses the real point. In previous blogs and two
presentations I've made this fall, I've argued that using 501c4s as PACs is particularly damaging to our democracy and to the reputation of the nonprofit
sector because the 501c4s are funneling undisclosed money into political campaigns.
From my partisan perspective, "the bad" 501c4s didn't
"win" on Tuesday and that is "good." But as Robert Reich, former US Labor Secretary, said on MSNBC last night, this is only the beginning. As
long as the 501c4 option is available, very wealthy people will secretly pour more
and more money into political campaigns and--regardless of the election
outcome--this will not be good for our democracy or the reputation of the
nonprofit sector.
Thoughts?
Jeff
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/us/politics/little-to-show-for-cash-flood-by-big-donors.html?pagewanted=all
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