The power of dark money

Not much new in this Koch Brothers rehash. They raised 400 million from undisclosed donors and they had to hide the donors because, all these obscenely wealthy people are deathly afraid of hate mail. Or something. We'll leave aside that you can't get near a Koch Brothers confab with an army of angry citizens. I suspect between the few hundred oligarchs that pretty much run the world, they probably employ the equivalent of the entire Blackwater corporation, or whatever it calls itself these days.

As always, Charlie pinpoints the cause of this corruption. It is of course, Citizens United.

This is what Justice Anthony Kennedy helped bring about with a single sentence:

"We now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption."

In a tragic sense, he was right. In a tragic sense, the system is not corrupt at all. The Koch brothers, and the forces that they represent, are getting exactly what they've paid for. It is an above-the-board transaction, and a fundamentally conservative one at that. The peddling of the public influence is now fully privatized.

Good to remember that it's not just the Kochs. The plutocrats have taken over all our public institutions. I mean, look at who owns CBS, new home of crackpot con propaganda. Who do think they're serving? Pretty sure it's not us little people.

Kill the filibuster before it kills us

I'm one of the last holdouts on this. I've argued for years that we should keep the filibuster to protect the Senate minority. But that was before the entire Republican party's brains melted before our eyes. Now convinced Paul Waldman is right.

The crackpots have taken over the GOP. When they manage to take the majority again, and they will, they will kill the filibuster. My only quibble with Paul is I don't think they'll wait a hot minute. They'll kill it preemptively on the first day of the session. So Harry Reid should just let it die with dignity now, while we still have a chance to get some sane legislation passed.

Tea Party not a victim of IRS vendetta after all

Here's the first non-hysterical piece I've seen on the IRS mess. Tea Party groups were not the only ones singled out by the IRS. Some "471 groups received additional scrutiny, a total that indicates a crackdown on politically active nonprofit groups that extends beyond the Tea Party outfits." Liberal groups were targeted for additional scrutiny too and at least one had their status denied. So far no Tea Party group has claimed their applications wasn't approved. No doubt more of them were targeted but only because they filed many more applications than anyone else. And this is still true:

“The real problem is that phony 501(c)(4) groups are exploiting the tax laws to protect donors who don’t want to be held accountable for vicious, deceitful political ads,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The good news about this pseudo-scandal is it spurred some action on Capitol Hill to address the larger issues.

Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who sits on the Senate Finance Committee, which is conducting its own IRS investigation, has introduced legislation with Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski to require all groups spending money on politics to disclose their donors.

“These problems will continue as long as there is an absence of clear and enforceable rules,” Wyden told reporters yesterday. “In the absence of clear and enforceable rules the bureaucracy pretty much makes it up as they go along.”

This would help. The deep pocket funders of the dark money groups don't care so much about the tax break as they do about keeping their donors secret. Force them to disclose their donors and they may lose interest in forming these groups at all. At worst, they couldn't hide behind fake grassroots front groups anymore. That would help some.

Worst practices in journalism

Increasingly convinced Big Media is a greater threat to the Republic than Republicans. The failure to inform verges on criminal negligence. Take for instance, this process piece glaringly titled, "Obama blames Republicans for failing to stop sequester." It's not that it's wrong. Obama is blaming the GOPers but that's because, it's the Republican's damn fault. Yet this is how The Hill describes the situation.

Democrats are pressing for offsetting the spending cuts through a combination of increased taxes and replacement spending cuts.

This dutifully transcribes the daily Republican talking point but it's not true. Democrats aren't trying to raise tax rates, they're trying to close tax loopholes only useful to the wealthy as a avenue to avoid fair tax contribution to the national treasury. The Hill buries this well down into the piece.

Obama called the spending cuts unnecessary, adding that they are only happening because "Republicans in Congress chose this outcome over closing a single wasteful tax loophole that helps reduce the deficit."

And then there's the endless stenography that slavishly repeats the entirely false GOP refrain accusing Obama (and Dems) of failing to compromise. As Greg Sargent has been pointing out seemingly forever, any honest reporting would make clear that nothing could be farther from the truth.

The GOP position is explicitly that there is nothing Democrats can offer that will get them to agree to new revenues. Nothing. Therefore, any offer from Dems — no matter how much in serious spending cuts it contains — is automatically a nonstarter for Republicans if it closes any tax loopholes to generate new revenue. There is no scenario under which Republicans can be induced to compromise — if we take Republicans themselves at their word. The only option for avoiding the sequester is for Democrats to propose only cuts to replace it — cuts that Republicans themselves won’t even propose. No “leadership” can avert the sequester. Only giving Republicans 100% of what they want can.

But somehow we never see headlines that scream, "Republicans refuse to compromise." Instead, from nearly every major news organization, we get some milquetoast version of "Republicans warn Obama has ‘poisoned’ relations with campaign-style attacks."

What we have here is an abject failure to inform. As Greg notes in his thought experiment, if Democrats took the position they would only accept revenue and absolutely no spending cuts in a deal, you can be certain the headlines would be shouting Dems refuse to compromise in eleventy point type. This isn't journalism. It's very nearly GOP advocacy.

[Big thanks to Jon Perr from Perrspectives for linking it at Mike's Blog Round-up.]

Disorder in the court

I'm late to Scalia's scumbaggery at SCOTUS this week during the arguments on the Voting Rights Act matter. May Tom Toles forgive me for stealing his work and never giving him any money, but this is the perfect summation of the moment:



[via The Platzner Post]

Sequester is killing the internet

It appears the general public is burned out on manufactured crises. Almost nobody paying attention to the scary sequester showdown except obsessives and paid media who doggedly continue to transcribe the tactical minutia of the contest. Which at this point on the Republican side is a desperate bid to try to shift ownership of the sequester solely onto President Obama. Yes I know, stupid and deceitful but that didn't stop Bob Woodward from delivering some of the dumbest punditry ever to come from a website that doesn't have Zombie Breitbart's imprimatur stamped on it.

Woodward's farcical case for blaming Obama had all of Wingnuttia drooling into their keyboards today. It matters not at all that Woodward ignored the salient facts that disproved his whole thesis. Didn't stop the wingnuts from rushing to spread Woodward's validation of their cockamamie meme.

So, in a way, Woodward wins. He surely generated some page hits. But in general, the paid media is moaning about the boring sequester killing the internet, like this:

Meanwhile, at The Atlantic Wire's sister site, Atlantic politics editor David Graham speculated that since the sequester was a bipartisan invention, it has failed to generate the kind of left-versus-right food fight that is typically great for traffic.

Apparently, the electorate still remembers the sequester was a stupid deal made necessary by Boehner's inability to corral his caucus into a sensible solution. It was made in desperation and haste; based on the flawed notion establishment Republicans just needed a little more time to co-opt their crackpot contingent. Except the well-funded insurgents refused to be co-opted and instead doubled down on the crazy. Their livelihood depends on never accepting any deal that is in any way associated with the "Democrat Party" in general and President Obama in particular.

Of course Big Media won't tell you that, and even the less corporate, more honest news sites won't either. Everyone making a living on delivering news is just biding their time with an eye to the fallout:

But while voters may be tired of their elected officials inventing phony deadlines rooted in their own dysfunction rather than in reality, there's little doubt that if the cuts do go into effect, the consequences will be very real. And so journalists continue to labor on through the valley of page view death.

"It's a worthy topic to cover," said Stein. "And it is bound to get more important and interesting if sequestration does, in fact, hit. There will be tons of stories to tell then, both inside and outside of Washington, D.C."

Interesting that he's saying "if" it goes through. There's a fair number of Big Media pushing a sequester - meh - theme to keep it from dying under its own destructive absurdity.

File that under what's wrong with everything. The 24/7 news beast is insatiable. It demands page views. The news media's incentive is to heat up the controversy, not quash it with cold facts. But you can't blame them entirely. It's also what the outrage addicts on all sides want. It's their job to give it to them.

Holiday reading

Wet, gray Christmas here in my little city. Perfect day to catch up on some lighter reading.

Every year some undercover (or not quite undercover) journalist goes on the National Review's annual Carribean cruise where well-heeled cons take to the sea with the stars of the NRO. I never get tired of these stories. The mood on this year's cruise was bleak and angry. Worth a read in full, but this one graf summed up the crowd's mindset perfectly:

“Their conception of what the country is about, they really were sure the country would reject Barack Obama,” he continued. “I do think it hits them hard. The fear I have, why this election stung, I think, Obama has successfully ­de-ratified some of the Reagan revolution in a way that Clinton never could and didn’t even try to. That’s what freaks people out, that feeling in their gut, either Obama has changed the country, or the country has sufficiently changed that they don’t have a problem with Obama. That’s what eats at people.”

Because this is their country dammit and everyone else who isn't them is ruining their sense of superiority and entitlement.

Then there's this related but not quite the same subset of conservatives. Meet the doomsday preppers whose gurus are not only the slickest of grifters but also serve as the saviours of the true believers.

Though doomsday evangelists fantasize about reaching mainstream consumers, hardcore prepping attracts a fairly limited demographic. Stevens pegs the market at about 4 million people, and he has his theories on why it's not for everyone. "It's the upper-middle white class that shows up here," he says. "I've seen two or three black people and that's about it. They never show up to these places. They don't get it. Culturally. It's not brainpower, it's not color, it's cultural. They've never lived this lifestyle. More important is the car with thin tires and the beautiful finish and nice clothes and rings. I'm sorry, that's just the way it is!"

Translation: those shiftless negroes only care about the bling and free stuff from the gummit. Can't get any money out of them. Fascinating read.

And another long read that's more entertaining is Alex Pareene's annual media hack list. Hours of snarky fun here.

A happy Christmas Eve to all. Whether you celebrate this holiday or not, may your days be filled with joy and peace. [photo via]

Burning down the House

Over at The Corner, HQ of the very serious cons, they're somewhat mystified by the Tea Party cons pushing Boehner overboard during their mutiny on Plan B.

One false claim making the rounds about the House Republicans who defeated John Boehner’s “Plan B” last night is that they don’t understand that higher taxes are inevitable. A lot of them understand that point perfectly well. Some of them have been privately advising the Republican leaders to pursue a strategy that they know would lead to higher taxes than Plan B contained.

Establishment GOPers should have thought of that when they empowered these champions of "enlightened self-interest" in 2010.

It's not that complicated. The people who elected them don't do nuanced agreements. There is only one cardinal rule among purity cons. If Democrats are for any part of it, they are against it. Compromise is the dirtiest of all words in their vocabulary. [photo credit]

GOP releases latest hostage demand

[Mike Luckovich cartoon]

The GOP apparently now realizes they're going to have to cave on the tax rate hike for the wealthy 2 percenters. So the "new" GOP plan is to replay last year's debt ceiling fiasco:

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) introduced a bill Wednesday to trade nearly $1 trillion in entitlement savings for an equal hike in the debt ceiling.

Corker said the Dollar For Dollar Act would include $937 billion in savings from Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, with an equivalent, dollar-for-dollar hike to the debt ceiling. [...]

Corker said his bill would raise the age of Medicare eligibility to 67 and would include the Medicare Total Health package that would increase private-sector competition for covering the elderly. ...

Because everybody knows private insurers are just going to fight each other to the death in order to grab the lucrative coverage for the olds and their increasing health issues.

Corker said he’d also “slowly” raise the age of eligibility for Social Security benefits, but did not specify an age.

The bill also includes a chained Consumer Price Index for Social Security, which will slash benefits, especially for those tiresome olds that refuse to die. The longer you live, the less you get. And as an added bonues, if those old moochers expect to get a free ride on the poverty gravy train, well he'll show them. The bill institutes "a waiver program for states for Medicaid coverage." Which means the states can effectively kill the coverage for anyone they consider underserving. You know, like old moochers who refuse to die in a timely manner.

Makes you kind nostalgic for the old "death panels," doesn't it? And did I dream that the GOPers just spent the whole last election cycle wailing hysterically about how the Democrats were trying to kill Medicare? Not sure, since I've yet to see a single Big Media report mention it.

GOP: There's a price for everything

Apparently the Republican plan is just keep on doing the same thing over and over again. Looks like yet another hostage situation over emergency relief funds to repair Hurrican Sandy damage.

But Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) told reporters on Tuesday that he could not support the $60.4 billion supplemental in its current form, and that he hoped offsets would be part of any negotiation of a final package.

“At $60 billion? In this time when we’re trying to solve the deficit problem?” Kyl said. “Can I verbalize that stinky look on my face?

I don't know if he can verbalize it but the stink of GOP obstruction permeates all across America.

Perverse incentives

Adding a bit to my previous post on polling, herein lies the problem.

Josh Marshall of TPM: PollTracker Mobile just got its 40k download. 40k poll fanatics cant be wrong!! (or they totally can be, but in this case they're not)

I would guess at least 20K of those subscribers also bitch regularly on the internets about how the horserace obsessed media doesn't cover the issues and never makes the connection. Deeper sigh...

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Romney embraces the crazy

So much for Willard Rmoney moving to the center now that he presuambly has the nomination locked up. As confirmed today on the Sunday bobblehead shows, Romney firmly hews to the Tea Party line.

Mitt Romney is doubling down on the now-infamous rejection of a fiscal policy deal that would provide $1 in new taxes for every $10 in spending cuts.

During a Republican primary debate last August, all GOP candidates – including Romney – said they would reject a hypothetical proposal to trade $10 in spending cuts for $1 in tax increases.

And this is a bald-faced lie:

“One of the absolute requirements of any tax reform that I have in mind is that people on the high end . . . will still pay the same share of the tax burden that they are paying now. I am not looking for a tax cut for the very wealthiest. I am looking to bring tax rates down for everyone,” he said.

There's reams of analysis on the interwebs that shows his policy proposals, such as as they are, would significantly lower the tax contribution of the super wealthy. Of which is he is one. Not that The Hill bothered to add that as a addendum.

This is why our democracy is dying.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Down and out in Muncie

Found this Sunday read fascinating. A profile of the societal breakdown of trust in our oldest institutions as viewed through the lens of Muncie, Indiana. It covers a broad spectrum of the town, but I found the saga of the former homeowner the most compelling story.

Here's a guy with old fashioned values. He did everything right. Worked hard, bought a home, took good care of it. Then the Republicans swooped into power with their austerity plan. His wife lost her state job in the first cuts. Eventually they couldn't pay the mortgage but they applied for the Obama administration's loan modification program. Which the bank rescinded after only three months and demanded full and immediate back payment in full for the rescinded discount.

He couldn't pay. His lawyer told him to just stay in the home anyway till they were kicked out, but he's not the kind of guy to play the game under the new rules of morality. He left his home, only to find out later that the bank didn't take title and he's being fined for not keeping up the yard. So now he's mowing the lawn for a house he doesn't actually own, He can't live in it, though he hopes to buy it back someday. Of course, he lost his job too because of the recession, so not clear how he'll accomplish that.

The irony is, he got his local government to rescind the $300 fine. It doesn't say, but guessing the local gov is Republican. So even though it's basically GOP policy that screwed him the first place, he'll probably never make the connection. He'll likely still vote GOP across the board in 2012 because those local guys were the only ones that helped him.

It's a tribal thing in heartland America. Democrats, and especially Obama, are not part of his tribe. Expect he'll be living in that trailer for the rest of his life.

The article is much deeper and more complicated that just this though. A bit depressing, but seriously worth a read in full. Some real food for thought.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

All they're asking for is a little respect

I've been saying for years, after the first million, it's not about money anymore; it's about power. Of course, times being what they are, perhaps I should revise it to say the first ten million, but the point is the same. No one needs more than a few million to live a comfortable life. After the point of ensuring economic security, accumulating money is just a way to buy influence and respect.

But respect isn't so easy to buy these days and as Dr. Krugman points out, the increasingly thin-skinned filthy rich are pissed that the automatic kowtowing has ceased.

For all the brashness and bravado that goes with their world, it seems the managers are oddly insecure about their purpose. For years, “most people in the financial service sector were viewed with enormous, out-of-the-box respect and adulation,” says Daley. “These guys were on pedestals, and now that pedestal’s gone, and now, in a lot of people’s minds, the industry doesn’t have that glow, and that bothers them, and now they join that with the president and his theoretically bashing the wealthy. They’ve got to blame somebody, and they blame him because he is representative of that group of people who ‘aren’t us.’” Former Official B told me, “Whether it’s [former Fed Chairman Paul] Volcker saying there’s been no financial innovation worth a shit since the ATM or the president saying his thing, they’re hypersensitive.” Former House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank was more scathing: “They don’t just want us to represent their interest, they want to be told that what they do is very good. They want to be honored for what they do for society. And Obama has hurt their feelings. Raising their taxes is not simply a blow to their income. It is a blow to their psychic income, a failure to recognize the enormous good they do for the world.”

What they seem to not to have noticed is the "enormous good" they're doing these days is for each other at the expense of the underclasses. Even the slowest witted out among the hoi polloi have finally caught on to their game and they want to review the rule book.

Related, a new study finds holding power can make you stupid. Sadly, the proposed cure of shaming the oligarchs into reality probably won't work. As long as they pay no price for cheating and unbridled greed, what reason would they have to be ashamed?

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Alas, the uninformed voter

Hate to link to Pravda on the Potomac, but can't resist Alexander Burns' lament for the uninformed voter. Actually it's a piece about polling, which everybody on the A list seems to be talking about this morning. And didn't I just say this yesterday?

And “fickle” is a nice way of describing the voters of 2012, who appear to be wandering, confused and Forrest Gump-like through the experience of a presidential campaign. It isn’t just unclear which party’s vision they’d rather embrace; it’s entirely questionable whether the great mass of voters has even the most basic grasp of the details – or for that matter, the most elementary factual components – of the national political debate.

Gosh. If only there was some kind of organized profession dedicated to informing these poor unfortunates about issues, maybe they wouldn't be so confused. Maybe somebody can figure out how to start up something like that.

Meanwhile, you have to love this defense of the ever declining reliability of opinion polling.

And besides, said Quinnipiac pollster Peter Brown, if voters seem to the political class like they are temperamental or unreasonable, it’s sort of beside the point. Americans may change their policy views as they learn more or as events change, or for no good reason at all. But in the end, those views are the only metric in electoral politics that really matters.

So sayeth the man whose livelihood depends on producing polls.

Makes you wonder how this country survived for 200 years or so without daily opinion polls. Which the media talks every freaking day instead of doing those boring, informative policy pieces that just doesn't drive enough traffic to satisfy the marketing department.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

The unbearable uselessness of polls

Channeling my inner Andy Rooney tonight, there's too many damn polls. Almost every day, multiple polls are released with wildly varying results. Nearly everybody with a media microphone, new media and old, large or small hangs on the numbers as if they're some great portent of the future. Hell, you might as well use a Magic 8 Ball. It would be about as helpful.

It's not to say polls are entirely useless. Well written questions asked at judicious intervals are a good measure of the public pulse. I'm so old, I remember when most polls were conducted in such a manner. But we don't have that anymore. Like just about everything else, polling went from a profession to a profit seeking business.

Polling is a medium prone to easy manipulation of results to satisfy the client and all too many opportunists have cashed in on that business model. And seriously, what's the point? How does the daily reporting of public reaction serve the public interest? It certainly doesn't inform on the actual policy. Which leads to stories about confused voters like this:

Marcus Luckie, a 70-year-old retiree, agreed.

“You can’t believe whatever they say,” he said. “They all say the same thing about each other, saying each one as bad as the next. And these PACS are all paying for ads saying the same things, too.”

Where did that leave him?

“I ain’t decided on any of them yet,” he said, standing just outside of the door to the voting booth. “It’s going to be close my eyes and point today.”

Aggregate and graph a whole year's worth of polls. Better yet, make it five years. What will you find? The electorate is fickle as hell, given to emo outbursts and extremely susceptible to media hype.

Not sure how to fix that, but reasonably certain daily polling is not helping.

[Thanks to The Week for the name check. Appreciate the encouragement.]

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here

CNN is live streaming so I'm watching GOP debate number Fifth Circle of Hell. Not sure how long I'll last. Definitely not going to live tweet. You want the snark go to the twitter or to that guy at the Guardian. He's good.

Addendum: Okay I lied. Going to liveblog this bit. Romney just announced he is having fun. I don't think he really is though.

Also too, this is the most amusing debate so far. Granted, it's a low bar.

[Original graphic Link includes brilliant theory on hell's thermic properties.]

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Boehner dances to Tea Party's tune

In this week's edition of "it's so obvious," having received his marching orders from the GOP Tea Party caucus, Boehner reneged on the payroll tax deal.

Yesterday, Boehner called it a "good deal." Today, hours after his conference call with the TP crackpots in his party, he rolled over like a well-trained dog.

[I]n an interview with NBC’s “Meet The Press” on Sunday, Mr. Boehner said the two-month extension would be “just kicking the can down the road.”

Which is exactly what he said when they were holding the economy hostage back in July over the debt ceiling. Oh wait, no he didn't. Pretty sure that was Cantor who said they could deliver a two year bill. Because nobody wanted to be debating another government shutdown at Christmas time. But Cantor blew up that arduously crafted "grand bargain" back then, leaving Boehner to play the useful fool.

And it was Cantor leading the crackpot caucus revolt yesterday. A cynic might think Cantor is still pissed off about being cheated out of that gavel he's been lusting over for years and is doing everything he can to undermine and embarrass Boehner. And if the rest of us get screwed while they wrangle over power, well, so be it.

Adding: If they're really so concerned about the short term uncertainty for middle class Americans, they could just amend the extentions and doc fix for a year now, with the pay-fors to be determined later. When they're not rushing to get out of town for the extended holiday.

[photo credit]

Dems deck the halls with bows of folly

Since I left the business of law, I pretty much save my profanity for special ocassions. This would be one of them. So this is for the hapless sad sacks that populate what was once a political party I was proud to claim.

Dear President Obama and DC Dems: Fk you. No seriously, Just fk you, each and every one of you merry gentlemen and gentlewomen. Why the hell do you think we should fight for you, if you don't fight for us?

I was going to write up my disgust, but while I was getting ready for my big dinner date this evening, my new blogging hero beat me to it. So outsourcing my rage to Charles P. Pierce's eloquence:

Oh, they have made a day of it. First, the pillars of Jell-O in the Senate roll over on the itty-bitty surtax they wanted to lay on the plutocrats to pay for a payroll tax cut for the rest of us. Then, the president announces that he's not going to veto after all the bill in which 400 years of Western jurisprudence is pretty much torn to ribbons and tossed to the wind, albeit slightly less deeply into the wind than the original monstrosity would have liked. And, finally, Ron Wyden of Oregon steps forward to give cover to zombie-eyed granny-starver Paul Ryan's latest attempt to "reform" Medicare in the same way that Arthur (Bomber) Harris "reformed" the building codes in Dresden. It's a Very Special Holiday Episode of the long-running hit comedy, Ah, Who Gives a Fk Anyway? [...]

It cannot be emphasized enough. Of the three issues under discussion, the polling data on two of them simply could not be clearer. The American people want taxes raised on the very wealthiest among us, and the American people do not want Paul Ryan's clammy hands anywhere near the Medicare program. Public opinion is (distressingly) ambivalent on the detainee provisions, but it's not overly popular with the people who have to implement it, and it has retired Marine generals throwing bricks at it, and, dammit, the president taught constitutional law, or so we are told repeatedly. [...]

Here's a tip, gang: The American people are not angry at government because people yell at each other and nothing ever gets done. The American people are angry because people yell at each other and nothing the American people really want ever gets done. They want higher taxes on billionnaires. They want Medicare kept out of the hands of the vandals. If they think about it a little, they even like their jurisprudence with a little habeas corpus sprinkled on top. Instead, they get endless platitudes, and the steady, futile placating of an insatiable political opposition.

That's just the highlights. Definitely read it all to experience the full range of my anger.

It's not even that I didn't expect it. It's not like we haven't seen this movie before. But I had some small hope they would rewrite the script. Certainly they were trying out some new dialogue in the rehearsals for the last few months that promised this time there would be vetos. There would be an honest to God fight for equitable outcomes. But, no. As the saying goes, same shit, different day.

It's insulting. Do they really think we don't see what they're doing? That we won't remember by November? We won't forget. We remember every single betrayal. So far, like a battered spouse, we've accepted the proffered bouquets offered in contrition. Accepted the promises to change. To do it better next time. But there's a limit to how many promises can be broken.

I've been around a long time. I understand the need for pragmatic compromise. But this isn't compromise, it's the same devious cave-in to placate the plutocrats. It's not only spineless, it's stupid. I'm really sick of stupid.

Money changes everything

Building on my earlier post about media buys in the 2012 campaign, this cash tally on outside campaign spending reinforces the point about the Citizen United effect and also illustrates the sorry state of political journalism.

In the endless quest for false equivalency, the hed was "Political groups raking in the campaign cash" and the lede read: "Political groups representing the left and the right have already spent an eye-popping $35 million to influence the outcome of the 2012 election, according to an investigation by The Hill."

But read the report and see if you can find the problem:

Those that do not have to disclose their spending that participated in The Hill’s survey include the conservative Crossroads GPS ($20 million total with American Crossroads), American Action Network ($2.8 million total on advocacy and electioneering), Americans for Prosperity ($5 million on ads for federal issue advocacy) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (less than $1 million). On the Democratic side, Priorities USA has spent slightly less than $1 million, House Majority PAC is at $921,000 after spending some on House special elections, Patriot Majority PAC has doled out $400,000 and Americans United for Change has spent $350,000.

The main drivers of the outside-group spending have been American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, Republican-affiliated groups co-founded by Karl Rove. They have dropped an unprecedented $20 million attacking Democratic Senate candidates and President Obama. Liberal and conservative groups have combined to spend more than $10 million on Senate races alone.

In other words, Democrats are responsible for well under $3 million out of this $35 million that has been disclosed so far. Maybe it's just me, but a more honest hed might have read, "GOP front groups record smashing spending to influence elections." Or something like that.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]