GOP Consultant Accuses Karl Rove Of Lying About Claim He Made No Money At Super PAC

Source:

Former George W. Bush political advisor and head of the pro-Republican Super PAC American Crossroads, Karl Rove, has claimed in the past that he drew virtually no salary in his position as chief fundraiser for the candidates his group supported. Rick Tyler, Republican consultant and political adviser to former Missouri Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin – a vocal opponent of former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney during the Republican primaries – does not believe it. In an appearance on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews on Friday, Tyler charged that Rove made a significant amount of money for his work with Crossroads and has not disclosed his financial gains.

Old, Rich White Men Are Buying This Election

Source: Frank Rich, New York Magazine:

This isn’t quite what was supposed to happen. When the Supreme Court handed down its five-to-four Citizens United decision in 2010, pre-vetting Mitt Romney’s credo that “corporations are people,” apocalyptic Democrats, including Obama, predicted that the election would become a wholly owned subsidiary of the likes of Chevron and General Electric. But publicly traded, risk-averse corporations still care more about profits than partisanship. They tend to cover their bets by giving to both parties. And they are fearful of alienating customers and investors. Witness, most recently, the advertisers who fled Rush Limbaugh, or the far bigger brands (­McDonald’s and Wendy’s, Coke and Pepsi) that severed ties with the conservative lobbying mill responsible for pushing state “stand your ground” laws like the one used to justify the shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida. While corporations and unions remain serious players in the campaign of 2012, their dollars don’t match those of the sugar daddies, who can and do give as much as they want to the newfangled super-PACs.

Sugar daddies—whom I’ll define here as private donors or their privately held companies writing checks totaling $1 million or more (sometimes much more) in this election cycle—are largely a Republican phenomenon, most of them one degree of separation from Karl Rove and his unofficial partners in erecting a moneyed shadow GOP, David and Charles Koch. At last look, there were 25 known sugar daddies on the right (or more, if you want to count separately the spouses and children who pitch in). You’ve likely heard of Sheldon Adelson, the Vegas tycoon who is Benjamin Netanyahu’s unofficial ambassador to the GOP. But you may be less familiar with Irving Moskowitz, the bingo entrepreneur who funnels his profits into East Jerusalem settlements. Or Robert Mercer, the hedge-fund master of “flash trading” who poured a clandestine $1 million into ads attacking the “ground-zero mosque” and nearly another $3 million into a scale-model railroad in his Long Island mansion. Or Steven Lund, the co-founder of Nu Skin, which became “direct selling” sponsor of the Romney-run 2002 Winter Olympics after having spent much of the nineties settling complaints over false advertising and other unscrupulous practices with the Federal Trade Commission and six different states’ attorneys general.

Karl Rove's Secret $10 Million Donor

This scum was a major player in the crimes of the previous administration. Now he is poisoning the well of American politics with the sinister fundraising made possible by the 'Citizens United' decision:

The dark money group founded by Karl Rove and other Republican luminaires, Crossroads GPS, reportedly received a contribution from one anonymous donor for $10 million, according to the Washington Post. WaPo reports, "The tax returns show that Crossroads GPS has collected the vast majority of its donations from the super rich. It reported that nearly 90 percent of its contributions through end of 2011 had come from as few as two dozen donors, each giving $1 million or more. Overall, the nonprofit raised more than $76 million since it was founded in May 2010 through the end of last year. 'That’s certainly not a grassroots movement, is it,' said Bill Allison, editorial director of the Sunlight Foundation, which advocates for transparency in government and politics. 'These donors can have a very disproportionate effect on politics, and the fact that we don’t know who they are and what kind of favors they will ask for is very troubling.'"

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Bernie Sanders: We Need a Constitutional Amendment to Overturn 'Citizens United'

We need to start yesterday to fight for a Constitutional amendment that will get rid of the 'Citizens United' decision has robbed of us of the little democracy we have left:

If you are concerned about the collapse of the middle class, you should be concerned about how American campaigns are financed. If you wonder why the United States is the only country in the industrialized world not to have a national health care program, if you're asking why we pay the highest price in the world for prescription drugs, or why we spend more money on the military than the rest of the world combined, you are talking about campaign finance. You are talking about the unbelievable power that big-money interests have over every legislative decision.

An already horrendous situation was made much worse two years ago this month when the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. the Federal Elections Commission that multinational corporations have a constitutional right to spend whatever they want to influence election outcomes. A bare 5-4 majority lowered the floodgates on unchecked, unlimited, unaccountable corporate cash in political campaigns. Corporations were equated with people. A century of laws regulating business spending on elections were upended. In one fell swoop, five justices fantasized for corporations a right never conceived by the founders whose preamble to our Constitution begins with the words, "We the people..."

The ruling not only poisoned our political process. It contaminated the legislative process. It cast a permanent chill over all policymaking. Will the merits or the money tip the balance when an issue comes before Congress? What do you think? If the question is on breaking up huge banks, for example, every member of the Senate and the House, in the back of their minds, will ask themselves what the personal price would be for taking on Wall Street. Am I going to be punished? Will a huge amount of money be unleashed in my state? They're going to think twice about how to cast that vote. Not to put too fine a point on it, you will see politicians being adopted by corporations and becoming wholly-owned subsidiaries of corporate entities.

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