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Donors With Agendas
The presidential primary season is being brought to you by a handful of multimillionaires and companies who have propped up the candidates with enormous donations to their super PACs. Just two dozen or so individuals, couples and companies have given more than 80 percent of the money collected by super PACs, or $54 million, according to disclosure forms released on Monday.
Freed of nearly all regulations or good sense by Citizens United and other court decisions, the super PACs are raising money in ludicrously large sums. The $10 million from Sheldon and Miriam Adelson to Winning Our Future, which has sustained Newt Gingrichs trailing campaign, is the biggest single donation to a candidate. But every candidate now has his own millionaire supporter, and the concentration of wealth in the campaign is growing.
The people writing these outsize checks are committed to defeating President Obama, but their interests dont stop there. Many are involved in businesses or ideological causes that have clear policy agendas with the federal government. Their huge influence on individual candidates demonstrates the potential for corruption inherent in the super PAC era. Among the biggest givers:
¶Harold Simmons, a billionaire corporate raider, has given $1 million to Mr. Gingrichs political action committee, $1.1 million to Rick Perrys PAC, $100,000 to Mitt Romneys PAC, and $10 million to American Crossroads, the super PAC advised by Karl Rove that is supporting many Republican candidates. Mr. Simmonss companies make metals, paints and chemicals, among other things, and have gotten into trouble over lead and uranium emissions from previous decades. He also runs a radioactive waste dump in Texas that has clashed with environmental regulators over its proximity to a nearby aquifer. He controls Waste Control Specialists, which has contracts to clean up federal hazardous waste sites, including emissions from other companies he controls.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/opinion/donors-with-agendas.html?pagewanted=print
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)Icicle
(121 posts)It's influence peddling. These guys don't just drop that kind of cash without expecting a return for it.
We must overturn Citizens United.
cbrer
(1,831 posts)This is disinterested, lazy, or ignorant voters.
PERIOD
white_wolf
(6,238 posts)Of course, our "democracy" was always designed to benefit the ruling class. "The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie."