2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumAmerican Action Network Exists To Buy GOP Representatives
AAN seems to function as the Congressional race arm of the Karl Rove/Haley Barbour funding network. This would explain the higher expenditures in 2010 during the midterms, when a higher concentration of money can be put toward buying the House of Representatives. It's clearly a favorite of Sheldon Adelson and other Rove cohorts. Despite the claim that it exists to "educate" the public, it's clear that its sole purpose for existence is to be the conduit for high-rolling donors who don't want to be identified.
It's worth noting that Fred Malek, Mitt Romney's finance chair serves on the AAN board along with C Boyden Gray, late of FreedomWorks. I'm sure there was no coordination going on there, of course. Other board members include Vin Weber, billionaire B. Wayne Hughes, Jr., George Allen, Mel Martinez, and Home Depot co-founder and financier Ken Langone.
As we roll toward the 2014 midterms, watch the ads. I'm willing to bet AAN will play big for any district where Democrats are running. It's not just the gerrymandering that costs us the House; it's the huge money poured into those districts.
http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/american-action-network-exists-buy-gop-repr
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(9,600 posts)JHB
(37,161 posts)As an efficiency expert to Nixon, Malek helped restructure Nixon's staff and officials and streamline the bureaucracy. In his memoirs, Nixon described Malek as a "tough young businessman whose specialty was organization and management."
In the first Nixon administration, Malek designed and directed the "Responsiveness Program", a strategy to replace civil servants with Nixon supporters and to steer government resources to benefit Nixon's 1972 re-election. According to the Senate Watergate report, Malek wrote in a 1972 memo to Haldeman that someone was needed to "take the lead in the program to politicize Departments and Agencies" and to "supervise the patronage operation and closely monitor the grantmanship operation." In advocating the plan, Malek wrote of "substantial risks" to politicizing the Executive Branch and expressed concern that the plan would "undoubtably backfire" if made public; therefore he recommended that "to minimize any links to the President, there should be no directions on this project in writing."
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In 1971, Richard Nixon became convinced the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) had come under the control of Democratic rivals and what Nixon termed a "Jewish cabal." He instructed aides Charles Colson and H. R. Haldeman to identify a list of Democrats and "important Jewish officials" at the agency. Malek provided the data on Democrats after a check of voter registration rolls, but balked at fulfilling the rest of Nixon's query. "I refused four times. The fifth time he came back and gave me a direct order through Haldeman, so I gave him a number. I regret my compliance. It was a mistake." Malek did not have access to BLS employees' religious affiliations, so his list comprised those BLS employees with "Jewish-sounding names", and two months after he sent the list, two of the officials on it were reassigned to "less visible jobs" within the Labor Dept. Slate columnist Timothy Noah, however, asserts that a September 8, 1971 memo from Malek to Haldeman appears to contradict Malek's assertions of limited involvement, in which Malek states he has recommended to the Secretary of Labor "fairly drastic moves" including the "compromise" reassignment of three officials. Documents released by the Nixon library in January 2010 also appear to contradict Malek's statement.