Robert Reich: Super PACs must face accountability

[babylonsister]

Reich: Super PACs must face accountability

Robert Reich

Sunday, June 17, 2012


JPMorgan, BP, Walmart and the multibillionaire Koch brothers have just launched a TV advertisement blasting President Obama for the national debt. Actually, I don't know who's behind the ad because there's no way to know. And that's a big problem.

The front group for the ad is Crossroads GPS, the sister organization to the super PAC American Crossroads run by Republican political operative Karl Rove. But because Crossroads GPS is a nonprofit, tax-exempt "social welfare organization," it can spend unlimited money and doesn't have to reveal its sources.

In reality, it's a political front group, and the ad is blatantly partisan. The narrator in the ad says Obama is "adding $4 billion in debt every day, borrowing from China for his spending. Every second, growing our debt faster than our economy," and concludes, "Tell Obama, stop the spending."

To make matters worse, it's a bald-faced lie.

Obama isn't adding to the debt every day. Contributing to the debt are policies of George W. Bush, including two giant tax cuts that went mostly to the very wealthy. The tax cuts were supposed to be temporary, but they're still going, courtesy of Republican blackmail over raising the debt limit.

more...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/06/17/INE31P0K4T.DTL&type=printable

[Tennessee Gal]

1. An on point description of what is wrong with Citizens United.

It must be reversed! It is allowing this to happen:

"The plan is to inundate America with a few big lies, told over and over: The debt is Obama's fault, and it's out of control; corporations and the very rich are the "job creators" that must get tax cuts to generate more jobs; government spending is wasteful unless it's on the military; regulations are strangling the private sector; unionized workers are being paid too much; and so on.

Tell these big lies so often over the next six months that Americans assume they must be true. Then take over the White House, Congress and remaining states that haven't yet succumbed to the regressive right. (Look at last week's recall election in Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker's supporters outspent his rival 7 to 1 with contributions from 14 billionaires, including $11 million from the Koch brothers.)

I doubt the billionaires and corporate executives behind this onslaught of advertising intend to replace our democracy with a plutocracy. They just want to have their way. But the unprecedented sums they're pouring into politics, much of it secretly, is undermining our system of government as we once knew it."

[geckosfeet]

2. Buying it all... and rolling back progress

Reich: Super PACs must face accountability

You might also blame something deeper, more sinister.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist (you can't have served in Washington and seriously believe that more than two people can hold onto a big story without it leaking), but I fear that at least since 2010 we've been witnessing a quiet, slow-motion coup d'etat whose purpose is to repeal every bit of progressive legislation since the New Deal and entrench the privileged positions of the wealthy and powerful - who haven't been as wealthy or as powerful since the Gilded Age of the late 19th century.

The plan is to inundate America with a few big lies, told over and over: The debt is Obama's fault, and it's out of control; corporations and the very rich are the "job creators" that must get tax cuts to generate more jobs; government spending is wasteful unless it's on the military; regulations are strangling the private sector; unionized workers are being paid too much; and so on.

Tell these big lies so often over the next six months that Americans assume they must be true. Then take over the White House, Congress and remaining states that haven't yet succumbed to the regressive right. (Look at last week's recall election in Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker's supporters outspent his rival 7 to 1 with contributions from 14 billionaires, including $11 million from the Koch brothers.)

Reich: Super PACs must face accountability