Should Anonymous Billionaires be able Secretly to buy our Elections? Lawsuit against IRS says Not (

[unhappycamper]

http://www.juancole.com/2013/02/anonymous-billionaires-elections.html

Should Anonymous Billionaires be able Secretly to buy our Elections? Lawsuit against IRS says Not (Barker)
Posted on 02/24/2013 by Juan

A former Illinois congressional candidate and a government watchdog organization have teamed up to sue the Internal Revenue Service, claiming the agency should bar dark money groups from funding political ads.

The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday by David Gill, his campaign committee and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, is the first to challenge how the IRS regulates political spending by social welfare nonprofits, campaign-finance experts say.

As ProPublica has reported, these nonprofits, often called dark money groups because they don’t have to identify their donors, have increasingly become major players in politics since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling in early 2010.

Gill, an emergency room doctor who has advocated for health-care reform, including a single-payer plan, was the Democratic candidate for the 13th district in Illinois last year. After a tight race, Gill ended up losing to the Republican candidate by 1,002 votes — a loss the lawsuit blames “largely, if not exclusively,” on spending by the American Action Network, a social welfare nonprofit.

[global1]

1. WWRD?.....

What Would Repugs Do?.......

I've been thinking about this for a while now. If the shoe were on the other foot and the Repugs thought that Citizens United was stacked against them - what would they do to counteract it or have it knocked down. It seems that the Repugs get organized and they bring a lawsuit up that somehow winds up in the Supreme Court for a decision on things they don't particularly think are advantageous to them.

It's time that Dems start doing the same thing.

I hope this lawsuit is the start of some activism that Dems in general begin to take to challenge all the counterproductive ways that the Repugs angled to sway and steal elections.

[JayhawkSD]

2. How do you determine your vote?

Do you determine your vote based on the paid advertisements you see on television?

Your discussion suggests that the majority of voters will answer yes to that question, in which case it doesn't matter who is paying for those ads, because we don't have democracy anyway. We have voters who are perfectly happy basing their votes on lies and propaganda.

If voters based votes on the actual performance of incumbents, including that of those holding lower office seeking higher office, then the payers of those ads is irrelevant because they are not going to influence votes. Unfortunately, voting that way requires a little bit of work, not really all that much, but some. Voting based on television ads is much easier.

Why should we require voters to put any thought or energy into voting? Maybe talk about civic responsibility? That certainly would not fly. People have jobs, and kids to raise, and football games to go to, and television programs to watch. They don't have time to put effort into the well being of their nation. Are you nuts?

The money is not the problem, really. The problem is the voters who are bought by the money. Heck, almost half of our voters don't even vote. And of those who do, a very few bother to actually inform themselves about the people for whom they are voting. They walk into the voting booth and look at the names, and they punch the ticket for the guy whose name looks familiar because that's the one who ran the most ads.

They reelected Jesse Jackson Jr. when he wasn't even running and was under federal investigation.

"You have a democracy," Ben Franklin said, "if you can keep it." Well, we didn't lose it, we didn't have it taken from us, we were just too lazy to hold onto it.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

3. Will they start with Bloomberg?

[donnasgirl]

4. The same

Bloomberg who changed the rules so he could run as mayor again,is that the same bloomberg.