#Republican CEO’s and oligarchs

[socialjusticeinamerica]

“For years, unions have bemoaned the fact that employers have essentially unfettered access to their workers to make the case against organizing, while unions can only mount their arguments in voluntary, offsite settings. There is even a term for when employers force workers to listen to anti-union messaging in group or one-on-one talks: “captive audience” meetings.

Like in other states, the Illinois measure, called the “Worker Freedom of Speech Act,” goes beyond the subject of collective bargaining, forbidding employers from holding mandatory meetings on “religious or political matters.” That means employers could not force a worker to attend a meeting where the company promoted a political candidate or particular religious views.”

[rejectingrepublicans]

[tomorrowusa]

Corporations pay their CEOs extravagantly while trying to cheat on taxes.

It would be one thing if, alongside the exorbitant executive pay, the quality of American CEO-ing was going up. But these executives are making off with bigger bags of boodle despite their persistent incompetence: Media executives keep running their businesses into the ground, tech firms are laying people off because of vibes, the planes keep nearly crashing, and examples of insane eye-popping greed—like Rite-Aid’s decision to claw back severance paid out to laid-off workers on the same day they handed their CEO a $20 million bonus—keep on coming. So it may come as no surprise that there’s a robust connection between the overindulged CEOs and the firms that are most flagrantly dodging their fair share of taxes. For a report released Wednesday, the Institute for Policy Studies teamed up with Americans for Tax Fairness to spelunk into the balance sheets at some of America’s best-known tax scofflaws between 2018 and 2022. What they found was pretty consistent: The firms took home high profits and lavished their top executives with exorbitant pay, all while stiffing Uncle Sam. The excess is stunning. “For over half (35) of these corporations,” the study reports, “their payouts to top corporate brass over that entire span exceeded their net tax payments.” An additional 29 firms managed this feat for “at least two of the five years in the study period.” Eighteen firms paid a grand total of zero dollars during that five-year span, 17 of which were given tax refunds. All in all, the 64 companies in the report “posted cumulative pre-tax domestic profits of $657 billion” during the study period, but “paid an average effective federal tax rate of just 2.8 percent (the statutory rate is 21 percent) while paying their executives over $15 billion.” Which firms are the worst of the worst? You can probably guess the company that tops the list because it’s the one run by The New Republic’s 2023 Scoundrel of the Year. During the five years of the study, Tesla took home $4.4 billion in profits as CEO Elon Musk carted off $2.28 billion in stock options, which, since his 2018 payday, have ballooned to nearly $56 billion—a compensation plan so outlandish that the Delaware Court of Chancery canceled it. Tesla has, during that same period of time, paid an effective tax rate of zero percent through a combination of carrying forward losses from unprofitable years and good old-fashioned offshore tax dodging.

Elon Musk is either the world's richest or second richest person. But he still wants more. Give him credit for pathological greed.

In all fairness, Musk is not alone when it comes to enriching himself while screwing workers.

What sort of innovations have these CEOs wrought from this well-remunerated period? T-Mobile’s Mike Sievert presided over the Sprint merger that led to $23.6 million in stock buybacks and 5,000 layoffs. Netflix’s Reed Hastings poured $15 billion in profit into jacking up subscription rates. Nextera Energy has devoted $10 million in dark money in a “ghost candidate scheme” to thwart climate change candidates. Darden Restaurants has been fighting efforts to raise the minimum wage. Metlife has been diverting government money meant to fund low-cost housing into other, unrelated buckraking ventures. And some First Energy executives from the study period are embroiled in a corruption scandal that’s so massive that even Musk might find it to be beyond the pale.

These oligarchs are going to spend lavishly to elect Republicans who would give them even bigger tax breaks.

Fortunately, they can't literally buy votes. If we return to old school grassroots precinct work then we can thwart the MAGA Republican puppets of billionaire oligarchs.

One to one contact is a more important factor than TV or online ads in convincing people to vote your way. It takes more effort, but democracy was not built by slacktivism in the first place.

[wilwheaton]

Frederick Douglass, who was born into Southern slavery, described the South as “a little nation by itself, having its own language, its own rules, regulations, and customs.” Fewer than 2000 families — six-tenths of one percent of the Southern population — owned more than 50 enslaved people and ruled the oligarchy that we call the Confederacy with an iron fist. The 75 percent of white people in the South during that era who did not own any enslaved persons generally lived in deep poverty. Women had no rights, queer people were routinely tortured and murdered, education for both enslaved Africans and poor whites was generally outlawed, religious attendance was often mandated, and hunger and disease stalked all but those in the families of the two thousand morbidly rich planter dynasties. Modern-day Red states are doing their best to recreate that old Confederacy, right down to state Senator Kathy Chism’s new effort to return the Confederate battle flag to Mississippi's state flag. Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence have both emphasized their presidential pledges to restore the names of murderous Civil War traitors to American military bases, celebrating their armed defense of the “values” of the Old South. Today’s version of yesteryear’s plantation owners are called CEOs, hedge and vulture fund managers, and the morbidly rich. They use the power of political bribery given them by five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court — with Clarence Thomas’ tie-breaking Citizens United vote on behalf of his sugar daddy Harlan Crow — to lord over their Red states, regardless of the will of those states’ citizens.

Why are red state 'welfare queen' oligarchs allowed to mooch off of blue states?

[qqueenofhades]

I don’t understand. Why is not only the NYT but EVERYONE screaming in circles about Biden’s age? I mean I too would love a slightly younger president, but faced with Trump, I don’t understand how this is even a discussion. What can the motive possibly be?

First answer: Money. The corporate media is not your friend for many reasons, but especially because it will happily shill for open fascism, and sabotage Biden left and right, because the corporations and/or oligarchs who own the media (think how hard Elon has been trying to shill for Trump partly due to Biden's promised 25% billionaire tax) do not give a shit about American democracy. It's kind of nice in theory, maybe, but they do not give a shit as long as they get their tax breaks and "pro-business" legislation, which Trump has perforce promised to give them again. They are also not fans of Biden for other reasons, especially since he has been busy promoting unions, new labor laws, new industrial requirements/standards (even as fast as SCOTUS is trying to strip them away) and other things that interfere with the Reagonomics pursuit of the rich getting richer by any means necessary. Biden is the first US president since Reagan to openly call trickle-down economics bullshit, say that it doesn't work, and try to install a new economic model. Everyone who got rich under Reagonomics, therefore, has incentive to get rid of him.

First-continued, the money element also extends to the fact that Trumpists/MAGA love reading stories about how old and frail Biden is (especially if this distracts from their candidate being a raging fascist lunatic), so they will click on the story and read it and gleefully share it with other Trumpists/MAGA to shout about how terrible Biden is and how the Trump Vengeance Train is coming. "Biden actively dying RIGHT NOW!!" stories also make Democrats panic, so they will click on it and read it to find out how much they should be panicking, then share it with other Democrats to let them know that they should ALSO be panicking. Either way, it drives page views and advertising revenue, so the media is once more financially incentivized to produce these kinds of stories and to find "facts" that fit these stories, regardless of whether or not they are, uh, true. American media swings conservative in many ways, but especially if they can promote the "both sides the same!" or "Horserace!!!" narrative to keep Republicans gleeful and Democrats nervous.

Basically, no mainstream media outlet (even the so-called liberal ones like MSNBC) has any financial interest or incentive in supplying Americans with accurate information (we live in late-stage capitalist hell, etc) and many of them are openly pining for Trump back in office so they can be Principled Truth Tellers In Exile, get clicks and coverage from reporting on the crazy things he does (think the CEO of CBS saying that Trump was "bad for America but great for CBS") and other activities that drive the bottom line. This also adds up to an impulse to shill for Trump and sabotage Biden, who is competent but boring. After, American politics are a reality show and should be Driving Headlines!!!! Fascist America would be a great story!!! Think of the ratings!!!

.... anyway. We! live! in! hell!

Second, the media also loves to push "Democrats in disarray" stories, because there has always been a WILD double standard in regard to how they cover the Democrats vis-a-vis the Republicans. As such, they have completely given up on mentioning anything even slightly critical about Trump, and the 500 disqualifying and awful things he has already done and continues to do every day, in favor of driving as hard as they can at the "Biden should step down!!" story. Now, I'm not denying that obviously, I wish we had a better (and younger) candidate and that Biden's health is a legitimate issue, but trying to do it to the incumbent FOUR MONTHS BEFORE THE ELECTION is an exercise in sheer insanity and something that the media wants to do because again, It Would Get Clicks!!, regardless of how insane it would in fact be. It's also insane because this is the same exact fucking thing that the media did to Hillary Clinton in 2016 (running MONTHS of stories about her health problems, her emails, how she was secretly ill and/or the Democrats should replace her, etc) and A LOT OF Y'ALL ARE FALLING FOR IT AGAIN. Which isn't terrifying or anything, but also.

Now, of course, the establishment Democratic party is partly complicit in the tone of this coverage, and that is also a problem. I personally want to smack every "anonymous Democratic adviser" or "Democratic politician" giving these Anxiety Concern Quotes to Politico, NYT, the BBC, and wherever else with a brick over the goddamn head and tell them to Shut the Absolute Fuck Up and dedicate all their energy to helping Biden win, instead of deliberately and unhelpfully perpetuating the narrative that he's about to die at any moment. (And also, if he did have to step aside before or after the election for any reason: THE ONLY DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED CANDIDATE TO REPLACE HIM IS KAMALA HARRIS. KAMALA HARRIS IS THE ONLY PERSON WITH ANY LEGITIMACY TO TAKE OVER THE NOMINATION AND/OR OFFICE OF POTUS FROM BIDEN. IF YOU DON'T LIKE THAT AND THINK YOUR MAGICAL WHITE MAN WILL PARACHUTE IN THERE INSTEAD, SHUT UP. THERE IS NO OTHER OPTION EXCEPT HARRIS. SHUT THE FUCK UP FOREVER.)

/deep breaths

Anyway. That is how you end up here: where the media is still diligently pretending this is an absolutely normal race between a terrible degenerate ancient Sekritly Dying Biden and.... some totally normal establishment Republican and not literally Donald Goddamn Trump. They are running many of the exact same hatchet jobs that they ran on Hillary Clinton for the same exact reasons, and ask yourself this: if Biden is just the status-quo stooge who will never change anything, HAS never changed anything, and is otherwise completely acceptable to the American/global power structure, why are they SO FUCKING DESPERATE to get him out? Why are they throwing absolutely everything they have at prying out a successful (albeit yes, old) incumbent when that incumbent is, by any reasonable metric, the most progressive president since at LEAST FDR, very definitely in any of the post-Reagan years, and possibly ever? Why are they so shit-scared of Biden as demonstrably the only candidate who can (and has) already beaten Trump, and therefore his entire ghoulish agenda of American fascism forever?

I just think it's worth pondering these questions. Yes, I had an awful anxiety attack today and applied to several jobs in Europe because the Fight or Flight instinct kicked in HARD that I needed to start working on a plan to get out of Fascist America, just in case. However, we can still forestall it. Yet again, as I will include in every post on the subject between now and November:

The end.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

The Federal Election Commission recently let a US company that was quietly bankrolled by Russian oligarchs off with a slap on the wrist despite discovering that it had illegally funneled Russian funds to US political candidates in the 2018 midterm elections, two Democratic FEC commissioners said in a scathing statement issued Friday.

“Half the Commission chose to reject the recommendation of the agency’s nonpartisan Office of General Counsel and turned a blind eye to the documented use of Russian money for contributions to various federal and state committees in the 2018 elections,” wrote the two commissioners, Ellen Weintraub and Shana Broussard.

Anyone who follows campaign finance knows that the FEC has been toothless for years due to GOP commissioners’ opposition to any enforcement of laws designed to oversee money in politics. But Weintraub and Broussard suggest the agency hit a new low by letting the US firm, American Ethane, off with a deal in which it agreed to pay only a small civil fine.

Though based in Houston, Texas, and run by American CEO John Houghtaling, 88% of American Ethane was owned by three Russian nationals—Konstantin Nikolaev, Mikhail Yuriev, and Andrey Kunatbaev. The FEC report said that Nikolaev, an oligarch and Russian billionaire with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, is the controlling shareholder. Separately, Nikolaev also underwrote efforts by Maria Butina, a Russian gun rights activist, to cultivate ties with the National Rifle Association officials and with associates of Donald Trump around the time of the 2016 election. In 2018, Butina acknowledged acting as an unregistered Kremlin agent and pleaded guilty to participating in a conspiracy against the United States. She was sentenced to 18 months in prison but was deported six months later.

According to lobbying disclosures, the company was seeking help from US officials in its efforts to sell US ethane to China and, in 2018, had hired a US lobbying firm, Turnberry Solutions, with close ties to former Trump campaign chief Corey Lewandowski. A year later, Lewandowki officially joined Turnberry, after previously disputing his connections to the firm. Turnberry, which traded on ties to Trump, shut down in 2021, months after he left office.

The FEC investigation began after it received a complaint citing press reports on American Ethane’s ties to Nikolaev and its donations to lawmakers. Weintraub and Broussard noted that the FEC found that American Ethane “made contributions using funds derived from loans from foreign entities ultimately owned by Russian nationals.” Federal law bans foreign funds in US elections, as well as direct corporate donations to candidates. American Ethane seems to have done both. The FEC found that the company made more than $66,000 in donations using money it got from offshore firms in the form of loans. According to an FEC general counsel’s report released last year, the owners of the offshore firms included Alexander Voloshin, a Russian politician and former state power company official, and Roman Abramovich, an infamous Russian oligarch and former owner of the British football powerhouse Chelsea. The money the company used to dole out donations ultimately came from the oligarchs, the FEC said.

During its four-year investigation, the FEC found that the funds initially put up by Abromovich and other Russian nationals were then funneled to Republicans in Louisiana: Sens. John Kennedy and Bill Cassidy, a political action committee run by Kennedy, a leadership fund run by House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, a PAC backing Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, and the campaigns of Reps. Mike Johnson and Garrett Graves. Other contributions went to state lawmakers. The report didn’t explain why the company focused on Louisiana but the state is home to many natural gas firms, and its lawmakers advocate for the industry.

The lawmakers who received funds have not been accused of knowingly taking Russian money, though the final report from the initial investigation noted, “American Ethane attempted to make more political contributions, but those recipient committees never deposited American Ethane’s checks.”

American Ethane argued that the funds the company first received appeared as loan to the American corporation. Therefore, they claimed the donations it made were not foreign. The FEC rejected that argument. But it still recommended the firm only pay $9,500 as a civil penalty.

“The foreign-influence problem has not gone away in the meantime, to put it mildly,” Weintraub and Broussard wrote. “In this case, it is beyond unfortunate that for three of our colleagues, it was a bridge too far to penalize the use of Russian oligarchs’ money to influence U.S. elections.”

[arpov-blog-blog]

...."Speaking about the recordings on Newsmax Tuesday, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) said lawmakers “don’t know if they’re legit or not, but we know that the foreign national claims he has them.”

Comer pressured the FBI into showing his committee a redacted copy of the form during a private briefing last week. He said the June 2020 document, an FBI worksheet for recording tips from confidential human sources, indicates someone claimed to have paid Biden and his son Hunter $5 million in bribes several years prior.

The FBI has resisted handing over a copy of the form for public consumption, maintaining that such documents contain uncorroborated information and that releasing them can endanger sources.

The allegation that Biden was caught on tape has seemingly forced Republicans to remind an eager conservative media that the allegations might be untrue.

“We don’t know for sure if these tapes exist,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said on “The Chris Salcedo Show” Wednesday when asked if Republicans would consider impeaching the president.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) suggested on a program called “The Conservative Circus” that not only might the tapes not exist, but also that the foreign national who spoke to the FBI informant might lack credibility. (Some Republicans on the Oversight Committee have said the source is former Burisma executive Mykola Zlochevksy, a fugitive Ukrainian oligarch.)

“We don’t know really if the tapes exist, we just don’t know that, whether this was just a bluff on the part of, whoever the executive was, I think it was Mykola Zlochevsky, the CEO of the... the corrupt oligarch,” Johnson said."

[robertreich]

The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It 

The coronavirus has starkly revealed what most of us already knew: The concentration of wealth in America has created a a health care system in which the wealthy can buy care others can't. 

It’s also created an education system in which the super-rich can buy admission to college for their children, a political system in which they can buy Congress and the presidency,  and a justice system in which they can buy their way out of jail. 

Almost everyone else has been hurled into a dystopia of bureaucratic arbitrariness, corporate indifference, and the legal and financial sinkholes that have become hallmarks of modern American life. The system is rigged. But we can fix it. Today, the great divide in American politics isn’t between right and left. The underlying contest is between a small minority who have gained power over the system, and the vast majority who have little or none. 

Forget politics as you’ve come to see it -- as contests between Democrats and Republicans. The real divide is between democracy and oligarchy.

The market has been organized to serve the wealthy. Since 1980, the percentage of the nation’s wealth owned by the richest four hundred Americans has quadrupled (from less than 1 percent to 3.5 percent) while the share owned by the entire bottom half of America has dropped to 1.3 percent.

The three wealthiest Americans own as much as the entire bottom half of the population. Big corporations, CEOs, and a handful of extremely rich people have vastly more influence on public policy than the average American. Wealth and power have become one and the same. As the oligarchs tighten their hold over our system, they have lambasted efforts to rein in their greed as “socialism”, which, to them, means getting something for doing nothing.

But “getting something for doing nothing” seems to better describe the handouts being given to large corporations and their CEOs. 

General Motors, for example, has received $600 million in federal contracts and $500 million in tax breaks since Donald Trump took office. Much of this “corporate welfare” has gone to executives, including CEO Mary Barra, who raked in almost $22 million in compensation in 2018 alone. GM employees, on the other hand, have faced over 14,000 layoffs and the closing of three assembly plants and two component factories.

And now, in the midst of a pandemic, big corporations are getting $500 billion from taxpayers. 

Our system, it turns out, does practice one form of socialism -- socialism for the rich. Everyone else is subject to harsh capitalism.

Socialism for the rich means people at the top are not held accountable. Harsh capitalism for the many, means most Americans are at risk for events over which they have no control, and have no safety nets to catch them if they fall.

Among those who are particularly complicit in rigging the system are the CEOs of America’s corporate behemoths. 

Take Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, whose net worth is $1.4 billion. He comes as close as anyone to embodying the American system as it functions today.

Dimon describes himself as “a patriot before I’m the CEO of JPMorgan.” He brags about the corporate philanthropy of his bank, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to his company’s net income, which in 2018 was $30.7 billion -- roughly one hundred times the size of his company's investment program for America’s poor cities. 

Much of JP Morgan’s income gain in 2018 came from savings from the giant Republican tax cut enacted at the end of 2017 -- a tax cut that Dimon intensively lobbied Congress for.

Dimon doesn’t acknowledge the inconsistencies between his self-image as “patriot first” and his role as CEO of America’s largest bank. He doesn’t understand how he has hijacked the system.

Perhaps he should read my new book.

To understand how the system has been hijacked, we must understand how it went from being accountable to all stakeholders -- not just stockholders but also workers, consumers, and citizens in the communities where companies are headquartered and do business -- to intensely shareholder-focused capitalism.

In the post-WWII era, American capitalism assumed that large corporations had responsibilities to all their stakeholders. CEOs of that era saw themselves as “corporate statesmen” responsible for the common good.

But by the 1980s, shareholder capitalism (which focuses on maximizing profits) replaced stakeholder capitalism. That was largely due to the corporate raiders -- ultra-rich investors who hollowed-out once-thriving companies and left workers to fend for themselves.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, for example, targeted major companies like Texaco and Nabisco by acquiring enough shares of their stock to force major changes that increased their stock value -- such as suppressing wages, fighting unions, laying off workers, abandoning communities for cheaper labor elsewhere, and taking on debt -- and then selling his shares for a fat profit. In 1985, after winning control of Trans World Airlines, he loaded the airline with more than $500 million in debt, stripped it of its assets, and pocketed nearly $500 million in profits.

As a result of the hostile takeovers mounted by Icahn and other raiders, a wholly different understanding about the purpose of the corporation emerged.

Even the threat of hostile takeovers forced CEOs to fall in line by maximizing shareholder profits over all else. The corporate statesmen of previous decades became the corporate butchers of the 1980s and 1990s, whose nearly exclusive focus was to “cut out the fat” and make their companies “lean and mean.”

As power increased for the wealthy and large corporations at the top, it shifted in exactly the opposite direction for workers. In the mid-1950s, 35 percent of all private-sector workers in the United States were unionized. Today, 6.4 percent of them are.

The wave of hostile takeovers pushed employers to raise profits and share prices by cutting payroll costs and crushing unions, which led to a redistribution of income and wealth from workers to the richest 1 percent. Corporations have fired workers who try to organize and have mounted campaigns against union votes. All the while, corporations have been relocating to states with few labor protections and so-called “right-to-work” laws that weaken workers’ ability to join unions.

Power is a zero-sum game. People gain it only when others lose it. The connection between the economy and power is critical. As power has concentrated in the hands of a few, those few have grabbed nearly all the economic gains for themselves.

The oligarchy has triumphed because no one has paid attention to the system as a whole – to the shifts from stakeholder to shareholder capitalism, from strong unions to giant corporations with few labor protections, and from regulated to unchecked finance.

As power has shifted to large corporations, workers have been left to fend for themselves. Most Americans developed 3 key coping mechanisms to keep afloat.

The first mechanism was women entering the paid workforce. Starting in the late 1970s, women went into paid work in record numbers, in large part to prop up family incomes, as the wages of male workers stagnated or declined. 

Then, by the late 1990s, even two incomes wasn’t enough to keep many families above water, causing them to turn to the next coping mechanism: working longer hours. By the mid-2000s a growing number of people took on two or three jobs, often demanding 50 hours or more per week.

Once the second coping mechanism was exhausted, workers turned to their last option: drawing down savings and borrowing to the hilt. The only way Americans could keep consuming was to go deeper into debt. By 2007, household debt had exploded, with the typical American household owing 138 percent of its after-tax income. Home mortgage debt soared as housing values continued to rise. Consumers refinanced their homes with even larger mortgages and used their homes as collateral for additional loans.

This last coping mechanism came to an abrupt end in 2008 when the debt bubbles burst, causing the financial crisis. Only then did Americans begin to realize what had happened to them, and to the system as a whole. That’s when our politics began to turn ugly.  

So what do we do about it? The answer is found in politics and rooted in power.

The way to overcome oligarchy is for the rest of us to join together and form a multiracial, multiethnic coalition of working-class, poor and middle-class Americans fighting for democracy.

This agenda is neither “right” nor “left.” It is the bedrock for everything America must do.

The oligarchy understands that a “divide-and-conquer” strategy gives them more room to get what they want without opposition. Lucky for them, Trump is a pro at pitting native-born Americans against immigrants, the working class against the poor, white people against people of color. His goal is cynicism, disruption, and division. Trump and the oligarchy behind him have been able to rig the system and then whip around to complain loudly that the system is rigged.

But history shows that oligarchies cannot hold on to power forever. They are inherently unstable. When a vast majority of people come to view an oligarchy as illegitimate and an obstacle to their wellbeing, oligarchies become vulnerable.

As bad as it looks right now, the great strength of this country is our resilience. We bounce back. We have before. We will again.

In order for real change to occur -- in order to reverse the vicious cycle in which we now find ourselves -- the locus of power in the system will have to change.

The challenge we face is large and complex, but we are well suited for the fight ahead. Together, we will dismantle the oligarchy. Together, we will fix the system.

[msclaritea]

“The Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts has been extraordinarily friendly turf for corporations. It has been more than four years since the Court has reversed a lower court decision favoring corporate interests, according to a new analysis by the Constitutional Accountability Center, a progressive think tank.

Now, with the clock ticking for Senate Republicans to confirm President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, federal judge Amy Coney Barrett, the groups that helped push through Trump’s two previous nominees are again ready to spend tens of millions of dollars on advertisements to ensure Barrett receives the lifetime appointment.

With 53 Senate Republicans in this soon-to-end 116th Congress, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell needs to prevent no more than three defections to confirm Barrett with a simple majority. Two Republicans have publicly expressed disapproval of confirming Trump’s nominee so close to the election, Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, though it is not clear they have unequivocally committed to voting against Barrett—and the developing coronavirus outbreak among Republican senators is changing the vote count and confirmation timeline.

The conservative groups spending millions on television, digital, and direct mail ads hope to shore up GOP support for a nominee who is expected to be anti-abortion, socially conservative, and favorable to corporate interests.

All signs indicate that a potential Justice Barrett would continue the pro-corporate tilt of the Court. According to an analysis by the nonpartisan watchdog group Accountable.us, Judge Barrett sided with corporations over people 76% of the time on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, in 44 of 55 cases reviewed. For example, in the 2018 case of Bruce Betzner and Barbara Betzner v. The Boeing Company, Barrett voted to reverse a district court’s decision to send a personal injury lawsuit back to state courts, the outcome Boeing was seeking. In August, Barrett delivered a ruling that could block gig workers from suing when tech companies deny them overtime pay, according to a report from The Daily Poster.

The Roberts court has been stuffing its docket with cases in which lower courts ruled against corporate interests—fully 91% in the 2018-2019 term. Already on the docket for the term that starts on Oct. 5 are a number of cases that involve state rulings: Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District Court, which could limit where individuals can pursue personal injury suits; Rutledge v. Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, on whether states can regulate pharmacy benefit managers; and Carney v. Adams, on whether states can require judges to be affiliated with one of the two major political parties. Other cases to be heard by the Supreme Court will feature deceptive commercial activities, arbitration agreements that limit peoples’ ability to sue corporations, and even the enforcement of IRS reporting requirements.

FOLLOW THE MONEY

Many of the top funders of groups backing Barrett, including many Republican megadonors, are billionaire corporate executives—in industries like manufacturing, transportation, shipping supplies, and private equity financing—whose economic outlooks could benefit from Barrett being confirmed to the vacant seat.

Here are the top donors to conservative groups spending on the Barrett confirmation, according to FEC data from Jan. 1, 2019 to Aug. 31, 2020:

Club For Growth

The right-wing Club For Growth, known for backing far-right candidates against moderate Republican incumbents and a past recipient of funding from the Koch-linked Center to Protect Patient Rights, recently pledged to spend $5 million on ads to back Trump’s nominee. The group’s nonprofit arm received nearly $6.8 million from undisclosed donors from July 2017 through July 2018, according to tax documents. Its super PAC, Club For Growth Action, has reported receiving nearly $56 million in the 2020 election cycle, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

Club For Growth President David McIntosh said in a statement praising Barrett, “This choice will shape America’s future, as the Court considers cases relating to issues like the constant unconstitutional growth of government and whether federal agencies should have free rein to enact arbitrary rules without Congressional approval.”

Club For Growth has had huge support this year from Republican megadonor Richard Uihlein, the right-wing founder of shipping supplies company Uline, whose donations total $26.5 million this election cycle. Uihlein contributed $10 million to Club For Growth Action, the group’s super PAC, on Jan. 12, then $4 million on April 21 and another $10 million on August 8, according to FEC records.

Right-wing billionaire Jeff Yass, co-founder of financial firm Susquehanna International Group, donated over $17.5 million to the super PAC this cycle. Yass, a Pennsylvania-based options trader, has also contributed over $4 million to the conservative Protect Freedom PAC this cycle, making up the vast majority of its funding as reported in FEC records.

Also in this cycle, Club For Growth Action received over $2.1 million from the late Republican megadonor Richard Gilder, who died in May of congestive heart failure at the age of 87, and his ex-wife Virginia James. James has donated to the conservative Wisconsin state judge David Prosser in a 2011 recount battle and other Koch-related causes.

Richard and Barbary Gaby contributed over $1.6 million to Club For Growth Action. Barbara Gaby is the youngest child of Amway co-founder Jay Van Andel, who, with the DeVos family, has been a major funder of the the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a nonprofit that helps Republican legislators collaborate with corporate lobbyists, and the Center for International Private Enterprise, a non-profit affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

America First Action

The pro-Trump super PAC America First Action is also promising ad buys totaling $5 million to promote Barrett in national television, digital and direct mail. Its nonprofit arm, America First Policies, took in $22 million in 2017 from donors whose identities it was not required to publicly disclose, while the PAC has received nearly $83 million this cycle, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

The leading donors to the Trump super PAC, at $10 million apiece, have been Republican megadonor Timothy Mellon, the majority owner of transportation holding company Pan Am Systems, and Kelcy Warren, the billionaire co-founder and CEO of pipeline company Energy Transfer Partners whose Dakota Access pipeline has been mired in court battles over its potential to pollute key water sources in South Dakota.

Geoffrey Palmer, a Republican donor and billionaire real estate developer based in Los Angeles, has donated $6 million to America First Action. Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein threw in over $2.7 million. Three more familiar Trump megadonors have chipped in: Linda McMahon, the former pro wrestling executive who is now the super PAC’s chairwoman, with over $3.5 million; Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman, with $3 million; and Diane Hendricks of Wisconsin, chair of a roofing supply company and a Republican megadonor, with $2 million.

Richard DeVos, co-founder of Amway and husband of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, has contributed $400,000 to America First Action. GOP megadonor Marlene Ricketts, wife of TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, has given half a million dollars to the PAC.

Americans For Prosperity

Through a standalone website and by mobilizing its membership, the Koch brothers-founded libertarian advocacy group says it has sent 200,000 letters in support of Barrett to U.S. senators in the past week. The group’s super PAC has spent over $20 million this cycle in independent expenditures.

The majority of that amount has come from $7 million from Charles Koch’s fossil fuel conglomerate Koch Industries and close to $6.5 million from the Koch network’s Freedom Partners Action Fund, but several more corporate megadonors have given to Americans For Prosperity Action this cycle. Major GOP donor Ron Cameron, president of the Little Rock, Arkansas-based Mountaire Corporation, a chicken products producer, has contributed $3.5 million. Richard “Dick” Haworth, the former CEO of an eponymous office-interiors manufacturer company, and his wife Ethelyn contributed $1.5 million to AFP Action. Haworth attended an exclusive Vail, Colorado retreat convened by the Koch Brothers for donors who had given over $1 million to right-wing causes. Trucking executive Clarence L. Werner, a previous million-dollar donor to the Kochs’ Freedom Partners super PAC, kicked in $1.5 million on July 1. Individuals from several energy, timber, pipeline, and coal companies have given at least $100,000 each to the PAC.

Judicial Crisis Network

The Judicial Crisis Network’s leading role in the communications push to confirm Trump’s nominees has been funded recently through some $30 million received between July 2018 and June 2019, led by a $15.9 million donation from an anonymous donor, according to IRS records reviewed by the Daily Poster. JCN is organized as a “social welfare” nonprofit and is not required to disclose the identities of its donors.

In 2017, a secret donor behind a $17 million gift readied JCN for the Kavanaugh confirmation showdown, providing over three-fourths of the total amount it received that year. Together in the efforts to confirm Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch in 2017, JCN was estimated to have laid out $22 million.

Three additional groups on the right have said they’ll be spending money on efforts to confirm Barrett: anti-abortion nonprofit Susan B. Anthony List, conservative nonprofit Catholic Vote, and conservative, anti-LGBT nonprofit think tank American Principles Project. The Susan B. Anthony list has reported raising a bit over $1 million to its PAC this cycle from hundreds of donors giving $5,000 and below, while its non-profit arm received over $12 million in funding according to its most recent Form 990, for 2018.

Millions More Spent on State Judicial Races

While the Supreme Court hears cases involving lower courts’ rulings on consumer lawsuits and government regulations, the conservative groups pushing Trump’s nominees have also spent millions to influence state judicial races.

A December 2019 report by the nonpartisan policy institute Brennan Center for Justice, titled “The Politics of Judicial Elections, 2017–18,” noted that JCN quietly spent $3.8 million on state elections in those years. After JCN donated nearly $1 million last year to the Republican State Leadership Committee, a national 527 group dedicated to electing Republicans to state office, the RSLC transferred $1.2 million to the Judicial Fairness Initiative, which works as an effort under the RSLC to elect conservative state judges. In the 2018 election cycle, the Judicial Fairness Initiative received over $4.3 million from RSLC, according to IRS records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The Brennan Center tracked how in 2013-14, JCN sent half a million dollars to Wisconsin Club for Growth, which spent money that cycle for the successful reelection campaign of conservative Justice Patience Roggensack. In May, during oral arguments in front of the Wisconsin Supreme Court regarding a stay-at-home order issued by the state health department, Justice Roggensack appeared to downplay the importance of some cases by contrasting the workers at a meatpacking plant who had been exposed to a coronavirus outbreak with “the regular folks in Brown County.” She then joined the majority on the state Supreme Court in a 4-3 decision to strike down the order, which was supported by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.

The Judicial Ads Act, introduced in the Senate on July 2 by Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), would bring transparency to secretive groups like those that blasted out ads promoting Kavanaugh’s confirmation. The bill would require any group spending at least $50,000 in a year on federal judicial nomination advertisements to disclose the identity of any donor giving $5,000 or more. Recently introduced in a House version as well by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), the measure is supported by the nonpartisan watchdog Campaign Legal Center. It could be taken up by Congress next year—most likely, if Democrats take control of the Senate—as part of the next version of H.R. 1, the For the People Act, a sweeping ethics package passed by the Democratic House in March 2019 that is not supported by any Republicans in Congress.”

[anonymoushouseplantfan]

... And What Do YOU Do?

Hi Plant! If royal finances are your catnip, I recommend a book released Oct 2019 by Norman Baker “… And What Do YOU Do?” (What the Royal family don’t want you to know).

Baker was a Lib Dem MP from 1997 – 2015 and would like the BRF to be held to the same standards of probity, accountability and transparency as we expect of politicians.  The juicy scandals topics covered are wide ranging but, unsurprisingly, many chapters are devoted to their numerous lurks, perks and the mechanisms which enable vast amounts of intergenerational wealth to be accrued and passed on, aided by acquiescent governments and press. 

Eg the secret process which approved into law the sealing of royal wills, a side effect of which could be that “public” property (that acquired during public duties) slips into private hands.  The catalyst was the death of Prince Francis, brother-in-law of George V who embarrassingly bequeathed family jewels to his mistress and the BRF were forced to buy them back LOL.

In regard to the question of whether the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall are public or private, “John Kirkhope refers to the Duchy [of Cornwall] as occupying a “convenient limbo”, which claims the benefits of a private landholding when it suits their argument, and claims public status when that is more advantageous.” (Page 125).  The switching between public or private status to their benefit is a recurring point. 

I believe the Harkles would like to profit by occupying an ambivalent space of royal/non royal.  Since Baker is on the Privy Council I hope he applies the same microscope to their affairs as he does the other BRF members.

It is replete with examples of the Queen’s enormous privileges; one example, it’s good to be Queen when family members are given money from the Duchy income, “The Queen claims these payments as a deductible expense, though as the rest of her family play no role in the Duchy this is questionable in the extreme.” (Page 172).  So when you give your kids pocket money, try claiming it as a tax deduction LOL.

On Harry having a “private” meeting with the African heads, that is straight out of Andrew’s playbook when he was trade envoy.  There are some apposite stories which show where the Harkles could be headed:

“In 2006, [Sarah] started a lifestyle company called Hartmoor, but it collapsed just three years later with debts of more than $1 million. Of course, none of this was apparently Sarah’s fault, with a source close to the Duchess saying, ‘She had business partners who were supposed to manage the business and they didn’t do that.  She was the talent.  She was not the CEO.  There were far too many people being paid far too much in swanky offices.’” (Pages 237-8).  Well, that’s Jess M’s script written.

Prince Michael of Kent appeared on TV to promote the House of Windsor Collection, a tacky mail order business selling cheap royal trinkets.  It was a financial flop.  But he also received around 50 payments over more than ten years totalling 320,000 UKP (and channelled through offshore companies) from Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who claimed through his lawyer he never sought any benefit or service in return from the prince. (Pages 260-270).

The Bibliography lists other books specifically to do with finances:

Phillip Hall, Royal Fortune:  Tax, Money and the Monarchy (Bloomsbury, 1992)

Jon Temple, Living off the State:  A Critical Guide to Royal Finance (Progress Books, 2008)

Disclosure:  Baker’s wiki page says he’s a republican.

______________________________________________________________________

Thanks you so much! I’ll check it out.

[realitista]

As a virtual unknown, Buttigieg started his campaign backing progressive policies. In February, he called the Green New Deal “the right beginning.” He called for structural reforms, like adding Justices to the Supreme Court and abolishing the Electoral College. He said he was “all for” a single payer health care system and tweeted, “I, Pete Buttigieg, politician, do henceforth and forthwith declare, most affirmatively and indubitably, unto the ages, that I do favor Medicare for All.”

"As things stand today, Mayor Pete is the candidate most likely to ensure that no reforms seriously threaten the interests of these oligarchs."

Buttigieg has flip-flopped on all of these policies. He has now become the most outspoken Democratic candidate in opposing Medicare for All. It would be one thing if his opposition were merely tactical. (While I support Medicare for All, there’s at least a principled argument that it’s not achievable right away and that a slower approach meant to move towards Medicare for All in the medium range is more politically practical.) But Buttigieg has started parroting Republican talking points opposing Medicare for All on principle because it takes away people’s “free choice” to choose private insurance.

Buttigieg’s “Medicare for All Who Want It” is a slick campaign slogan, but bad policy as a long-term solution. Rep. Ro Khanna (D. CA.) said Buttigieg’s plan “won’t bring the administrative costs down of private insurers or maximize negotiation with Big Pharma and hospitals…This means higher premiums, higher drug costs, higher deductibles, and more denied claims for the middle class.” The New Republic's Libby Watson called Buttigieg’s health care plan “the worst yet,” saying it was “deeply stupid.”

Why has Buttigieg flipped from being a putative progressive to being perhaps the most conservative, pro-corporate Democrat remaining in the field? A good place to start would be to follow the money.

Buttigieg has become one of the biggest recipients of contributions from the health care, financial services, and big tech industries. Under the proposals advanced by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, Buttigieg’s big money donors are the ones who would have to pay higher taxes to support things like free college tuition and universal health care. In Buttigieg, they’ve found a candidate to speak up for their interests.

Buttigieg is the second-largest recipient of contributions from the health care industry, after only Donald Trump. Buttigieg donors include the chief corporate affairs officer at Pfizer, the president of Astex Pharmaceuticals, a state lobbyist for Biogen, a vice president of public policy at Novartis, and the deputy vice president at the nation’s largest pharmaceutical trade association, PhRMA, plus lawyer for AbbVie, Johnson & Johnson, and Merck.

Meanwhile, top executives of the largest tech companies have flocked to contribute to Buttigieg. Among those holding fundraisers for Buttigieg are Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Nest Lab’s co-founder Matt Rogers, and Uber director of product communications, Chelsea Kohler. Other rich big tech donors include Ron Conway, who has led San Francisco mayors to back tech-friendly policies; Scott Belsky, the chief product officer and executive vice president at Adobe Inc; Tony Xu, CEO of Doordash Inc.; David Marcus, the head of Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency project; and Wendy Schmidt, wife of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

[socialjusticeinamerica]

[sanderspunk2020]

My favourite brand of anti-Bernie “discourse”...

Are the this serious right-winger/republican/CEO/hedge fund manager/war criminal thinks Bernie Sanders is wrong! articles.

If oligarchs, fascists, and war-profiteers dislike you, then you are probably doing  the right thing. 

This is not a bug, this is a feature.

[rjzimmerman]

Unfortunately, this article ignores the fact that a substantial number of our fellow citizens have become so partisan that they have become dumb-stupid about anything from a policy perspective, or that they are just plain so dumb-stupid that they act irrationally against their best interests.

Excerpt from this Nation of Change article:

Listening to Republicans, it’s apparent they don’t have much respect for the intelligence of the American people.

The Green New Deal is supported by 81 percent of registered voters, but, Republicans tell us, Americans just aren’t as smart as Norwegians (who have 60 percent of all car sales electric now and will totally phase out gas and diesel cars in eight years) or Germans (who produced more than 100 percent of the electricitytheir country needed a few days last year from renewable sources). We have to keep digging coal and drilling for oil and gas, polluting the planet, causing tens of thousands of cancers, and destroying the biosphere, because, after all, we wouldn’t want to cut the revenue to a vital industry, would we? Republicans even think that Americans will believe them when they say that the Green New Deal will mean we all have to stop eating hamburgers and flying, and must turn our cars over to “jackbooted thugs from the big government.”

Whether it’s strengthening environmental regulations, breaking up monopolies, restraining CEO pay, fully funding our public schools, or getting money out of politics—all things that have been done by most if not all of the fully developed countries in the world—Republicans tell us we just can’t do those things here in America. We’re just not that intelligent.

The story goes that Lincoln, during his debates with Stephen Douglas, said, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

Clearly the modern Republican Party, its billionaire funders and its media oligarchs have decided to stick with Lincoln’s logic. As long as they can fool some of the people all of the time, they don’t give a rat’s ass about the rest of us; that’s enough to win elections, particularly if they can continue to strategically suppress millions of votes.

They have their plan, and they’re sticking to it. They’re really, really smart.

And, in the process, Republicans have turned the USA into the world’s village idiot.

[phroyd]

Editor's note May 8, 2018: This column originally published December 15, 2017. New allegations about$500k in payments from a Russian oligarch made to Trump attorney Michael Cohen have placed it back in the news.

Buried in the campaign finance reports available to the public are some troubling connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to President Donald Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. We have allowed our campaign finance laws to become a strategic threat to our country.

An example is Len Blavatnik, a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik's family emigrated to the U.S. in the late '70s from the U.S.S.R. and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late '80s.

Data from the Federal Election Commission show that Blavatnik's campaign contributions dating back to 2009-10 were fairly balanced across party lines and relatively modest for a billionaire. During that season he contributed $53,400. His contributions increased to $135,552 in 2011-12 and to $273,600 in 2013-14, still bipartisan.

In 2015-16, everything changed. Blavatnik's political contributions soared and made a hard right turn as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Sens. Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham.

In 2017, donations continued, with $41,000 going to both Republican and Democrat candidates, along with $1 million to McConnell's Senate Leadership Fund.

So is this legal?

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the ranking Democratic leader on the House Intelligence Committee, told ABC News in September: "Unless the contributions were directed by a foreigner, they would be legal, but could still be of interest to investigators examining allegations of Russian influence on the 2016 campaign. Obviously, if there were those that had associations with the Kremlin that were contributing, that would be of keen concern."

Under federal law, foreigner nationals are barred from contributing directly or indirectly to political campaigns in local, state and federal elections.

Should Blavatnik's contributions concern Mueller's team of investigators? Take a look at his long-time business associates in Russia.

The Oligarchs

Oleg Deripaska is said to be one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's favorite oligarchs, and he is founder and majority shareholder of Russia's Rusal, the second-largest aluminum company in the world. Blavatnik holds a stake in Rusal with a business partner.

Further, nearly 4 percent of Deripaska's stake in Rusal is owned by Putin's state-controlled bank, VTB, which is currently under U.S. sanctions. VTB was exposed in the Panama Papers in 2016 for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Putin.

Earlier this year, The Associated Press reported that Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, began collecting $10 million a year in 2006 from Deripaska to advance Putin's interests with Western governments. Deripaska's name turned up again in an email handed over to Mueller's team by Manafort's attorneys. According to The Washington Post, in the email dated July 7, 2016, just two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination for president, Manafort asked an overseas intermediary to pass a message on to Deripaska: "If he [Deripaska] needs private briefings, tell him we can accommodate."

Viktor Vekselberg is one of the 10 richest men in Russia. He and long-time business partner Blavatnik hold a 20.5 percent stake in Rusal. (They met while attending university in Russia.)

In 1990, Blavatnik and Vekselberg co-founded the Renova Group for large-scale investments in energy, infrastructure, aluminum and other metals. One of their earliest investments was in Tyumen Oil Co. (TNK), founded in 1995. TNK is best known for its contentious partnership with British Petroleum after the two entities formed a joint venture in 2003. That rocky relationship ended 10 years later when they sold out to the state-controlled energy giant, Rosneft, under pressure from the Russian government.

As for BP, that pressure took the form of growing harassment and intimidation from Russian authorities who at one point, according to Forbes, refused to renew visas for BP employees, forcing BP's joint venture chief Robert Dudley (who is now chief executive of BP) to flee Russia and manage TNK-BP from a foreign outpost in a secret location.

Vekselberg has connections to at least two Americans who made significant GOP campaign contributions during the last cycle. They are among several Americans who also merit Mueller's scrutiny.

The Americans

Andrew Intrater, according to Mother Jones, is Vekselberg's cousin. He is also chief executive of Columbus Nova, Renova's U.S. investment arm located in New York. (FEC records list his employer as Renova US Management LLC.)

Intrater had no significant history of political contributions prior to the 2016 elections. But in January 2017 he contributed $250,000 to Trump's Inaugural Committee. His six-figure gift bought him special access to a dinner billed as "an intimate policy discussion with select cabinet appointees," according to a brochure obtained by the Center for Public Integrity.

Alexander Shustorovich, chief executive of IMG Artists, attempted to give the Republican Party $250,000 in 2000 to support the George W. Bush presidential campaign, but his money was rejected because of his ties to the Russian government,according to Quartz. So why didn't the Trump team reject Shustorovich's $1 million check to Trump's Inaugural Committee?

Simon Kukes is an oil magnate who has something in common with Intrater. From 1998 to 2003, he worked for Vekselberg and Blavatnik as chief executive of TNK. Redacted CIA documents released in 2003 under the Freedom of Information Act said "TNK president Kukes said that he bribed local officials." The CIA confirmed the authenticity of the reports to The Guardian newspaper but would not comment further. In 2016, Kukes contributed a total of $283,000, much of it to the Trump Victory Fund. He had no significant donor history before last year's election.

There is no doubt that Kukes has close ties to the Putin government. When he left his job as CEO of TNK in June 2003, he joined the board of Yukos Oil, which at the time was the largest oil company in Russia owned by the richest man in Russia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Four months after Kukes joined the board, authorities arrested Khodorkovsky at gunpoint on his private plane in Siberia on trumped up charges of tax evasion and tapped Kukes to be CEO. This decision could only have been made at the highest levels in the Kremlin. The arrest of Khodorkovsky rattled the nerves of international investors and was the first tangible sign that Putin was not going to be the kind of leader that global executives and Western governments had expected him to be when he first took office in 2000.

Khodorkovksy was given a 13-year sentence in a Siberian prison and served 10 years before being released by Putin in December 2013, a month before the start of the 2014 winter Olympics in Sochi, as a sign of goodwill. As for the fate of Khodorkovksy's company, its largest oil subsidiary was sold in a sealed bid auction to Baikal Financial Group, a shell company with an unpublished list of officers. Baikal was registered at an address that turned out to be a mobile phone store in Tver, Russia. Three days after the auction, all of Baikal's assets were acquired for an undisclosed sum by Rosneft, the Russian oil giant that went on to buy TNK-BP in 2013.

In total, Blavatnik, Intrater, Shustorovich and Kukes made $10.4 million in political contributions from the start of the 2015-16 election cycle through September 2017, and 99 percent of their contributions went to Republicans. With the exception of Shustorovich, the common denominator that connects the men is their association with Vekselberg. Experts who follow the activities of Russian oligarchs told ABC News that they believe the contributions from Blavatnik, Intrater and Kukes warrant intense scrutiny because they have worked closely with Vekselberg.

Even if the donations by the four men associated with Russia ultimately pass muster with Mueller, one still has to wonder: Why did GOP PACs and other Trump-controlled funds take their money? Why didn't the PACs say, "Thanks, but no thanks," like the Republicans said to Shustorovich in 2000? Yes, it was legal to accept their donations, but it was incredibly poor judgment.

McConnell surely knew as a participant in high level intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, McConnell's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after former FBI Director James Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.

And consider Steve Mnuchin, Trump's campaign finance chairman. Could he have known that the Trump Victory Fund, jointly managed by the Republican National Committe and Trump's campaign, took contributions from Intrater and Kukes? Mnuchin owned Hollywood financing company RatPac-Dune with Blavatnik until he sold his stake to accept Trump's appointment as the Treasury secretary.

Which PAC officials are making the decisions to accept these donations?

The Supreme Court

The contributions are legal because the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling, Citizens United, and several subsequent decisions, allowed American corporations and citizens to give unlimited amounts of money to PACs and non-profit 501c4 organizations, regardless of how they make their money, where they make their money, or with whom they make their money. The only caveat is that PACs and non-profits cannot coordinate their activities with the political candidates they support.

The man who led the winning fight for Citizens United was David Bossie, president of the conservative non-profit since 2001. In 1996, Bossie was hired by Republican Rep. Dan Burton to lead an investigation into President Bill Clinton's campaign fundraising. Burton fired him 18 months later for manipulating recordings of conversations among law officials and Webb Hubbell, a Clinton confidant who resigned as associate attorney general and pleaded guilty to tax fraud during the Whitewater investigation. CNN reported at the time that Newt Gingrich, who was speaker of the House, called Bossie's tampering with the Hubbell recordings an embarrassment to the Republicans.

Bossie served as Trump's deputy campaign chairman.

The Super PAC, Make America Number 1, is primarily funded by Trump's largest donor, Robert Mercer. His Renaissance Technologies hedge fund donated $15.5 million to the PAC.

Mercer's daughter, Rebekah, assumed control of Make America Number 1 in September 2016 and is now tainted by her role in the communications between Wikileaks and Cambridge Analytica, the firm that Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, hired for $5.9 million to handle the digital portion of the Trump campaign.

Robert and Rebekah Mercer are major investors in Cambridge Analytica. According to The Wall Street Journal, Rebekah Mercer asked Cambridge chief executive Alexander Nix if the firm could compile stolen emails related to Hillary Clinton so that they could be more easily searched. (This suggestion came from someone she met at an event supporting Sen. Ted Cruz, according to The Hill. Cambridge Analytica had worked on digital marketing for Cruz before he dropped out of the Republican primary.)

Nix confirmed that he had asked Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to forward the Clinton-related emails. Assange said he declined the request.

Rebekah Mercer also heads the non-profit Making America Great, formed in March 2017. The non-profit ran a seven-figure ad campaign highlighting Trump's achievements. Bossie is the group's chief strategist.

Erik Prince, brother of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, contributed $150,000 to Mercer's Make America Number 1 PAC and another $100,000 to the Trump Victory Fund. Prince has recently testified to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence about his trip to the remote Seychelles for a secret meeting in December 2016 with a close ally of Putin, Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund. The purpose of the meeting was allegedly to setup a back channel of communication between then president-elect Donald Trump and the Russians, though Prince has denied this allegation. Before the 2015-16 elections, Prince's political contributions totaled a mere $31,800 as far back as 2007, according to FEC records.

The hybrid super-PAC, The Committee to Defend the President, was formed in 2013 under the name Stop Hillary PAC. It is managed by Dan Backer, the lead attorney who won the McCutcheon vs. Federal Election Commission case in 2014. The Supreme Court decision eliminated the cap on how much wealthy individuals can donate to federal candidates, parties and PACs in a single, two-year election cycle.

Like Bossie, Dan Backer helped to open the floodgatesto millions of dollars of influence brought to bear on incumbents and their political challengers who are now pressured to kowtow to their donors with the biggest bank accounts, even if their billions are earned in Russian rubles.

Backer was born in Russia and emigrated with his family to the U.S. in 1978.

The changes to our campaign finance laws created an avenue for Russia to try to influence our elections. There are holes in our firewall and they aren't on the internet.

Ruth May is a business professor at the University of Dallas and an expert on the economies of Russia and Ukraine. She wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News. Twitter: @ruthcmay

Graphics by Michael Hogue/Staff Artist

See The Article Here For The Interactive Graphic on the Specific Donations between All The Players!

Phroyd

[qqueenofhades]

Hello, i have a question about politics! Since i am not from America, i am not familiar with everything about the politcal system and such, but i would like to learn more about it. I saw on websites that you can sponsor political campaigns? Is that something that is common? Do companies also sponsor political campaigns? Have a nice day!

Ah. Oh dear. If I remember in your original message to me, you were a little startled at the idea that both private individuals and massive corporations could give money to political candidates, and somewhat alarmed at the thought that this could lead to money effectively shaping and governing the entire American political system, at the expense (literally) of any kind of public or shared interest or civic welfare. Alas, this is… pretty much exactly what happens. The American federal government is organized from top down around the influence of money, who can spend it, and who wants to have to not spend it (i.e. tax breaks for the super-rich). Among other things, it’s why we can’t ever have even moderate and common-sense gun law reform, because the National Rifle Association, a pro-gun lobby, spends lavishly to ensure that senators will never vote for it. Once the ban against assault weapons expired in 2004, it has been framed as a violation of a fundamental constitutional right (the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, giving the controversial right to “keep and bear arms” since America was, you know, an 18th-century militia fighting against an imperialist army) to introduce any kind of limits at all. So we keep having mass shootings, and politicians offer “thoughts and prayers,” because they’ve been handsomely paid to do absolutely dick-all nothing else. Fun!

If you want an in-depth look at the subject of campaign financing in the United States, the eponymous Wiki article is a great place to start. It explains the byzantine levels of different funding organisations, including “PACs” (political action committees) and “super PACs” (the same thing with more money). There are a class of people in DC known as lobbyists, whose job it is to spend the right amount of money in the right places to see their preferred legislation advanced, or if they object to it, buried. The 2010 Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. FEC also effectively ruled that setting any kind of limit on corporate spending or donating to campaigns unfairly abridges their First Amendment right to free speech (since you know, Corporations Are People Too!) All you really need to know about that decision is that Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader for the Republicans (and also the incarnation of pure evil) loved it. So yes, mega-corporations and the super-rich can now spend as much money as they want on political campaigns, and it goes without saying that what mega-corporations and super-rich are interested in supporting are… not issues that benefit the average American. At all.

The issue of dirty money (and private money) in American politics is, at this point, endemic and terrifying. The political activities of Charles and David Koch, often known as the Koch brothers (though Charles recently died) are a major case in point. As the CEOs of Koch Industries, the second-largest privately held company in America, they made decades-long contributions to Republican and libertarian (even more conservative, economically) candidates and causes, and reshaped the entire centre of gravity in right-wing politics around their influence. (You can also read Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America by Christopher Leonard, which explains how Koch built itself and became a monolith.) Once again, all of this is perfectly legal to do.

As a result, we now have a political landscape where candidates from both parties just go schmooze with wealthy donors and get big checks, and accordingly craft their policies to benefit those people. This is why it is noteworthy that Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, the two progressive Democratic candidates for president, have both publicly pledged that they don’t take these kind of donations, and are running their campaigns entirely on the small-dollar amounts (i.e. $5, $25, $100) given at a time by ordinary people, rather than thousands or millions handed over by the super-rich and the mega-corporations that they have promised, if elected, to extensively tax and regulate (the two things the free market HATES). It obviously sucks that ordinary people have to pay out of their own pocket to help finance the only candidates who are remotely interested in helping them out if they get into power, because we as Americans should not be forced to do this. But this is the land of hyper-capitalism, and we basically have no choice, because all the laws that even kind of tried to limit the influence of oligarchic and hegemonic interests have been systematically destroyed and dismantled.

If you’re a free market aficionado (i.e. make as much money as possible, in any circumstances, without regard to any mitigating factors or ideas of morality or government regulation, social Darwinism where only the strong survive) then this is great. For the rest of us, it has left us with /waves hand/ All This.

It’s very depressing, in short. It is also why I, an ordinary and not-rich person, have donated repeatedly to Warren, and will give money to Amy McGrath, Mitch McConnell’s 2020 Senate opponent, when I can afford it. (Sidenote: Amy McGrath’s website is here. If you are a US citizen, go give her a few bucks. We need McConnell out almost as badly as we need a Democratic president.) Because this is how the rules of the game have been deliberately set up, and why American people have increasingly accepted this as normalised. It also means that it’s not too surprising who the current system almost exclusively benefits, when they have made sure for years and years that it does.