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The Enduring Mystery of GOP Megadonor Bob Perry

by Isela Harris Posted on April 15, 2013

Mother Jones

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Bob Perry, the wealthy Texas homebuilder and Republican mega-donor who helped bankroll the infamous Swift Boat Veterans for Truth group that attacked John Kerry’s presidential campaign, died on Saturday night. He was 80 years old.

In 2012, I wrote a story about the Republican Governors Association, one of the many Republican causes to which Perry gave generously. During my reporting on the RGA, I interviewed an Austin attorney named Buck Wood who’d once crossed paths with Perry. Wood told me a head-scratcher of a story that, while hardly definitive, struck me as useful to understanding Perry’s place in GOP politics.

In the mid-2000s, Wood represented Chris Bell, a trial lawyer who’d run as the Democratic candidate in Texas’ 2006 gubernatorial election. Late in the race, Bell’s opponent, Gov. Rick Perry, received a $1 million donation from the RGA—an infusion that may well have contributed to Perry’s nine-point win. Bell believed that the $1 million originated with Bob Perry (no relation to Rick), and that Perry funneled the money through the RGA to Rick Perry’s campaign to wipe his fingerprints and avoid causing a fuss about such a big donation. (The RGA denied all this.) Bell sued the RGA in November 2007 for allegedly violating state campaign finance law.

Wood, Bell’s attorney, visited Bob Perry in Houston to depose him in the case. The two met in a conference room next to Perry’s personal office. Perry was pleasant, seemingly unbothered. Before the questioning began, Wood pointed out an aerial photograph on the wall of a new development in Austin built by Perry Homes. Perry looked at the picture, Wood recalled, studying it for an uncomfortably long time. “Yeah, that looks like one of our developments,” Perry replied unconvincingly, according to Wood. In the deposition, Perry recalled little about his RGA donations. Yes, that was his signature on the checks, he said, but he didn’t remember writing them.

Wood ended the deposition convinced that Perry really didn’t remember his $1 million donation to the RGA. He suspected that someone in Perry’s office, not the man himself, was handling Perry’s large political portfolio, as it were. “I wanted to know who was running the show so I could depose them,” he said. Wood asked a few local reporters if they knew anything more about the political affairs over at Perry Homes; he got nothing.

Perry went on to give tens of millions more to Republicans after the 2006 gubernatorial election. The 2010 Citizens United case freed Perry to give even more, which he did, doling out more than $20 million to super-PACs in 2012. When I spoke to Buck Wood on Monday morning, he told me he still didn’t have a clue who handled Perry’s political affairs, if it wasn’t Perry himself. All these years later, Bob Perry was still something of an mystery.

Perry preferred it that way. Here’s an excerpt of an April 2007 Texas Monthly profile that offered a rare glimpse inside Perry’s world:

Unseen by the public, uninvolved with his candidates, the most powerful political donor in the nation has until now remained largely an enigma. Few apart from a small circle of close friends in Houston know much about him. What they do know may surprise some people. For instance, Perry favors affirmative action. He has given money to Democrats, particularly black and Latino Democrats. He opposes his party’s hard line on immigration rights. He is a large-scale donor to an inner-city Houston foundation sponsored by a liberal black minister and to an educational scholarship program for Hispanic students founded by a liberal professor. So who is Bob Perry? Is he the monolithic, unyielding, far-right ideologue he is often portrayed to be? A philanthropist who gives generously to causes he believes in? Some hybrid of the two? Almost nobody knows, and that’s the way he likes it.

As under the radar as he was, Perry loomed large in Republican politics, in Texas and nationwide. His passing leaves the GOP without one of its biggest financial supporters.

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The Enduring Mystery of GOP Megadonor Bob Perry

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Washington’s Vanishing Lobbyists Hide Behind the Rules

by Ha Zega Posted on April 9, 2013

Mother Jones

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When President Obama took office in 2008, he promised to curb the influence of special interests. Yet his new lobbying rules and a Bush-era law passed in the wake of the Jack Abramoff scandal appear to have done little to curb lobbying—and may have created new loopholes for influence peddling. Even as the number of lobbyists has decreased, spending on lobbying has gone up, which experts attribute to a growing number of lobbyists operating under the radar.

A recent report by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) found that there were close to 15,000 officially registered lobbyists in 2007; by last year that number had dropped to slightly more than 12,000. In 2007, total spending on lobbying approached $3 billion, and by 2012 it had jumped to around $3.3 billion. “An amazing amount of money continues to go up, even as the number of people lobbying goes down,” says James Thurber, a professor of government at American University who has served on the American Bar Association’s lobbying reform task force. (The report attributed a small decline in lobbying spending in the past two years to a number of factors, including the economy.)

What’s happening here? Monte Ward, the president of the American League of Lobbyists (ALA), estimates that lots of folks are still lobbying; they’re just not telling the government. “With all the restrictions the administration has placed on lobbyists, I think some have decided it’s not worth registering,” he says, adding that they’re doing the same job, but just “getting in under the radar.” Tim LaPira, a political science professor at James Madison University who focuses on lobbying law, says the well-intentioned Bush and Obama policies “actually created a gross disincentive to want to be open and public about what it is you’re doing.”

Reform advocates say lobbyists are weaseling around the definition of lobbying activities. The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 states that if influence peddlers spend less than 20 percent of their time lobbying on the Hill (or in “preparation”), they don’t have to register as lobbyists. LaPira says this is “silly”: “Most doctors I know don’t spend 20 percent of their working hours in the operating room, but that doesn’t mean they’re not surgeons.” William Luneburg, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law who coauthored the American Bar Association’s lobbying manual, agrees. “You can do a hell of a lot of lobbying for somebody when you’re only doing 19 percent of your time for the client,” he says.

A good example of the less-than-20-percent lobbyist is former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), who, after nearly 20 years in the House and Senate, went on to serve as a “special policy adviser” to the law firm Alston & Bird. The firm doubled its lobbying income during Daschle’s first year there. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich made hundreds of thousands of dollars not lobbying for Freddie Mac, claiming he was paid $300,000 a year to be a “historian.”

Some lobbyists slide under the threshold by changing how they “interpret” their job duties, says LaPira: “There’s no way of knowing exactly how many minutes of the day any one lobbyist spent on any one thing.” Likely due to these slippery tactics, the CRP report says, almost half of lobbyists who were active in 2011 but not 2012 are still working for the same employer. Of those who changed firms, more than a third moved to employers in similar industries.

“In all likelihood, there are many, many, many, more people in Washington doing policy advocacy, broadly defined, than people doing actual lobbying,” LaPira says. Thurber, who helped Obama craft his lobbying rules, has advocated a more inclusive definition of lobbying, which would lump in folks in the advertising and PR industries, as well as grassroots activists, coalition builders, and think tanks that do advocacy. That would total some 100,000 people, he says. He adds that a more accurate number for the amount spent on lobbying could be up to “three times each year’s reported expenditures.”

Some lobbyists argue that the recent restrictions on them are unwarranted. Wayne Weidie, a senior governmental affairs adviser at the lobbying firm Adams & Reese, told the CRP, “I think some of the restrictions post-Abramoff were just overkill. Congress was just protecting itself from itself. Nobody buys anyone’s soul with a glass of iced tea.” ALA president Ward disagrees. He says he wants “an open and transparent process,” and notes that his organization backs several lobbying reforms, including lowering the 20 percent threshold, getting rid of various exemptions, and requiring ethics training for lobbyists.

Absent these kinds of fixes, the public doesn’t really know what forces are shaping the policies that affect them, says LaPira. “The public should have a right to know who’s working to advocate for their own interest and for interests that they…may not agree with.” Right now, he says, “We don’t really know what’s happening.”

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Washington’s Vanishing Lobbyists Hide Behind the Rules

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How Walmart, ExxonMobil, and Coke Buy Latino Friends in Congress

by ggkk2121333 Posted on April 8, 2013

Mother Jones

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In late February, some 70 guests arrived for dinner at a hotel near Washington, DC’s Union Station. Nine members of Congress were there, including Reps. Rubén Hinojosa (D-Tex.), Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.), and Gloria Negrete McLeod (D-Calif.), as was former Labor Secretary Hilda Solis. Also in attendance were lobbyists and executives for Fortune 500 companies and big industry trade groups. Lonnie Johnson, a lobbyist for ExxonMobil, sat next to Hinojosa at dinner; Walmart lobbyist Ivan Zapien gave the closing remarks. Exxon, American Gas Association, Darden Restaurants, and Coca-Cola had underwritten the event. That was how, seven weeks into the 113th Congress, as lawmakers began work on immigration reform and a tax code overhaul, powerful corporate lobbyists scored premium access to politicians.

The dinner was organized by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI), an obscure offshoot of the 27-member, all-Democratic Congressional Hispanic Caucus. (Caucuses are factions of lawmakers formed around an issue or ideology, such as the Progressive Caucus, the Black Caucus, and the Tea Party Caucus.) The CHCI, founded in 1978 by a small group of Hispanic lawmakers, says its mission is to “develop the next generation of Latino leaders” by underwriting scholarships and fellowship programs for young Latinos, funding college readiness courses for them, and placing them in jobs and internships on Capitol Hill. But like other nonprofits nominally affiliated with congressional caucuses, CHCI sells access to influential lawmakers in exchange for big donations.

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How Walmart, ExxonMobil, and Coke Buy Latino Friends in Congress

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Is Your Team’s Owner a Major League Asshole?

by aleidasharrington Posted on April 5, 2013

Mother Jones

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In early February, a US Patent and Trademark Office court in Washington, DC, confirmed what baseball fans had suspected for more than a century: The New York Yankees are evil. After an internet startup, Evil Empire Inc., had attempted to trademark the phrase “Baseball’s Evil Empire,” the Yankees filed an injunction, and the panel of judges agreed. As the court put it, “The record shows that there is only one Evil Empire in baseball and it is the New York Yankees.” If only it were true. The ranks of Major League Baseball owners include some of the richest men—and they are almost exclusively white males—in the country, as likely to open their wallets for a super-PAC as they are a top-shelf free agent. Viewed in the context of the competition, with its anti-discrimination settlements and SEC investigations, the Yankees are, like their Opening Day roster, fairly pedestrian.

So where does your team’s ownership rank? We took a stab at it, analyzing each franchise by its level of political activity (based on campaign donations and office-seeking) and relative degree of evil—copyrighted or not. Read below the matrix for the full breakdown.

AMERICAN LEAGUE

Baltimore Orioles: Peter Angelos made his big break in 1992, when his law firm scored $100 million from a class-action lawsuit against asbestos manufacturers. Henceforth, he made bank by (mostly) sticking up for the little guy—taking on more asbestos companies, the lead paint industry, and a diet pill manufacturer. But he also uses his money and influence to get what he wants. Angelos agreed to take the lead in a massive suit by the states against tobacco giant Philip Morris only after demanding 25 percent of the winnings—far greater than any other attorney received. (He eventually settled for half that.) Angelos and his wife gave $1.8 million to Democratic candidates and PACs last fall.

Boston Red Sox: John Henry, the team’s majority owner, purchased the franchise in 2002 with the earnings from his commodities futures trading company. Hedge funds, of course, have produced some of the worst excesses in an industry notorious for them, while arguably producing little of merit for society. But there are probably worse ways to make your money than what Slate’s Matt Yglesias calls “a scam where one class of rich people rips off another class of rich people.” When minority partner Phillip Morse (who founded a medical device company) chartered his private jet to the CIA, he never expected that it might end up being used for something nefarious—like the rendition of terror suspects to countries with less humane methods of interrogation. ”I was glad to have the business, actually,” he told the Boston Globe. “I hope it was all for a real good purpose.” But Morse wanted to make one thing clear in his interview with the Globe: “When it’s chartered, it never has the logo of the Red Sox on it.” Henry gave almost $1 million to Democrats between 1992 and 2004, but nothing in 2012.

Chicago White Sox: Jerry Reinsdorf made his fortune as a real estate developer who specialized in building tax shelters. One of the league’s most anti-union owners, he was accused of colluding with fellow owners to drive down player salaries in the 1980s. He gives millions to charter schools, but takes even more out of the city’s coffers thanks to a sweetheart deal that allows him to pay just 25 percent of the standard property tax rate for the United Center (home of the NBA’s Chicago Bulls, which he also owns). Reinsdorf also threatened to move the White Sox unless the city and state agreed to build it a new $125 million stadium on the South Side. In March, he teamed up with a former Secret Service director, a top aide to Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano, and a private prison lobbyist to launch SRB2K LLC, billed as a “global security firm.” (We’re guessing they’ll come up with a better name.) Whatever happens, though, he’s probably better than Charles Comiskey.

Cleveland Indians: The worst thing about lawyer Larry Dolan is actually his nephew, James, the widely derided owner of the New York Knicks. One thing Larry hasn’t done: change that awful logo.

Detroit Tigers: Little Caesar’s founder Mike Ilitch can’t compete with the team’s former pizza-mogul owner, Domino’s founder Tom Monaghan, who built his own quasi-theocratic township in South Florida. Ilitch and his wife, Marian, gave $184,000 to federal candidates in 2012, mostly to Republicans.

Houston Astros: Jim Crane’s company, Eagle Global Logistics, was forced to pay the federal government more than $4.3 million to settle charges of war profiteering related to contracts in Iraq. In 2001, Eagle paid a $9 million settlement after an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigation found rampant racial and gender discrimination at the company. (Among other things, the agency’s report included an allegation that Crane had told subordinates, “Once you hire blacks, you can never fire them.”) Crane gave $45,800 to political causes in 2012, most of it to the Obama Victory Fund—which may explain why he went golfing with the prez and Tiger Woods in February.

Kansas City Royals: In 1992, when he was still president and CEO of Walmart, David Glass was confronted by NBC’s Dateline with evidence of child labor at a T-shirt factory in Bangladesh. His response: “You and I might, perhaps, define children differently.” As Glass explained, looks can be deceiving—Asians are short. Then he ended the interview. Meanwhile, as the Royals’ owner he’s pocketed profits without making any discernible investment in the on-field product. He also once revoked press credentials of reporters who asked critical questions.

Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim: They say your first billion is always the hardest. Arte Moreno made his hawking roadside billboards. Staunch Republicans, the Morenos gave $100,000 to the Romney Victory Fund in 2012. Moreno’s worst move as an owner was his insistence on giving his team its clunky new, multi-city moniker. But in his defense, nothing says “don’t be evil” like lowering the price of beer.

Minnesota Twins: Jim Pohlad, a Minneapolis banker, hasn’t had much time to prove himself after inheriting the franchise from his late father, Carl—who was infamous for volunteering to kill off the team in exchange for $150 million from Major League Baseball. That is, until Hennepin County ponied up $350 million for a new stadium. In 2012, the Pohlad clan doled out $644,000 to political causes and candidates, almost all of it to Democrats.

New York Yankees: The Steinbrenner brothers’ father, shipping magnate George, was banned from baseball twice—once for paying a gambler to spy on his own player, and once for attempting to cover up illegal donations to Richard Nixon’s 1972 reelection campaign. Current Yanks owners Hal and Hank haven’t given anything to candidates. They did, however, manage to copyright the expression “Evil Empire.”

The Bronx Bombers pay their respects to the Sith Lord.

Oakland Athletics: Lewis Wolff, a real estate magnate and hotel developer, bought the A’s in 2005 and has talked openly about moving the team more or less ever since. But his biggest crime may have been shutting down the upper deck of the mostly-empty O.co Coliseum, which had become a refuge for fans wishing to smoke pot during the middle innings. He gave just $2,500 to federal candidates in the 2012 cycle; now politicians know how the A’s fans feel.

Seattle Mariners: Hiroshi Yamauchi is the former president and chairman of Nintendo, and the man responsible for introducing the world to Pokémon—even though he can’t stand video games. Or even baseball: He has been the owner of the Mariners for the last two decades, but has never once been to a game. It’s time to seriously consider the idea that Yamauchi, whom profiles describe without fail as “autocratic,” is actually just a bot. His fellow owners are a bit more active, though. You may know minority owner Wayne Perry as the president of the Boy Scouts of America, which is still weighing whether it should keep discriminating against gay children. Last year, Perry and co-owner Robert Glaser gave six figures to Republican and Democratic super-PACs, respectively.

Tampa Bay Rays: Goldman Sachs alum Stuart Sternberg took controlling interest of the club in 2005. He had left Goldman in 2002, two years after it had acquired his firm, Spear, Leeds & Kellogg—and six years before Goldman helped bring down the global economy. SLK was no angel either. Prior to its acquisition by Goldman, it had been fined $1 million by the National Association of Securities Dealers for delaying paperwork in order “to secure a competitive advantage, protect its interests and maximize its profits or minimize its losses.” But by the standards of 21st-century Wall Street, the Rays’ Goldman-stocked front office—ably chronicled in Jonah Keri’s The Extra 2%—looks more George Bailey than Bernie Madoff. Sternberg’s only political gift in 2012, a grand total of $1,000, went to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY).

Texas Rangers: Compared with one of its previous owners, George W. Bush, who went on to invade two countries and enter the United States into an intractable War on Terror, the Rangers’ current front office is downright tame. Principal owner Ray Davis made his billion on gas pipelines; in the aftermath of Hurricane Rita his company, Energy Transfer, paid the federal government $10 million to settle an allegation of price manipulation (the company did not admit to any wrongdoing). Bob Simpson, Davis’ co-chair, sold his fracking giant XTO to Exxon Mobil for $41 billion. Former hurler Nolan Ryan, who also has a stake in the team, was instrumental in getting Ron Paul elected to the House in 1996.

Toronto Blue Jays: The Jays are one of only two Major League teams owned entirely by corporations. In this case, it’s the Canadian telecom giant Rogers Communications, which is prohibited by law from contributing to American political campaigns. We don’t really have anything to add to that.

NATIONAL LEAGUE

Arizona Diamondbacks: Ken Kendrick made headlines back in April 2010 when he announced that he had purchased one of the rarest and most expensive baseball cards ever produced—a 1909 Honus Wagner—for $2.8 million. Soon thereafter, he was back in the news: Arizona legislators passed the state’s draconian anti-immigration law, SB 1070, and activists were calling for boycotts of the Diamondbacks and the 2011 All-Star Game at Chase Field. Why? While Kendrick claimed to oppose the bill, the Republican donor also reportedly held a private fundraiser for an SB 1070 proponent, state Sen. Jonathan Paton, in his private box at Chase Field.

Atlanta Braves: Liberty Media started as a spin-off of cable giant Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI). Its chairman, John Malone, currently owns more land than any other American—2.1 million acres. (Interestingly enough, America’s No. 2 landowner is none other than former Braves owner Ted Turner.) Malone, according to a 1994 Wired profile, was “widely considered the Darth Vader of the infobahn” because of his insatiable push to conquer the industry. His Wall Street nickname is marginally more favorable: “swamp alligator.”

Chicago Cubs: Remember the plan hatched last year by Cubs family patriarch Joe Ricketts to defeat the “metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln” (a.k.a. Barack Obama)? ‘Nuff said. The Ricketts family, which owns the team through a trust, spent almost $14 million on elections last year. Most of it went to Republicans, but daughter Laura, an Obama bundler, gave more than $575,000 to Democrats. (She also launched a super-PAC to support LGBT candidates.) Pete Ricketts, one of Joe’s three sons, is a Republican National Committeeman from Nebraska and former US Senate candidate; he may run again next year.

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Cincinnati Reds: Robert Castellini took over his family’s business and turned it into one of the nation’s largest fruit, vegetable, and flower distributors. Profiles of the septuagenarian invariably mention how, when he was starting out, his workdays would start at the crack of dawn (hard work!) and how he promised Reds fans a World Series when he bought the team in 2006 (passionate and driven!). In 2011 and 2012, he gave more than $100,000 to Republican candidates and committees, including $30,800 to the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Colorado Rockies: From the family that brought you factory farms and coked-up cattle! Charlie and Dick Monfort helped run the eponymous Big Ag empire until 1987. That’s when family patriarch Kenneth Monfort sold out to ConAgra, and the Monfort boys became ConAgra execs. Kenneth made his fortune by busting the union that served his workforce and replacing union workers with immigrant laborers—many of them undocumented. (At one point, the company’s annual employee turnover rate hit 400 percent.) Also represented in the Rockies’ ownership group is former GOP senate candidate Pete Coors, purveyor of super cold beer and brother to Joe Coors Jr., who once predicted that Armageddon would arrive in 2000. Here’s Pete explaining how poor people caused the financial crisis:

Los Angeles Dodgers: Lead owner Mark Walter’s financial house, Guggenheim Partners, is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission over his ties to former junk bond trader Michael Milken. Walter and co-owner Magic Johnson (yes, him) teamed up to give six figures to the Obama Victory Fund. The families of Dallas investor Bobby Patton ($93,800) and Todd Boehly ($169,000) gave big to both Democrats and Republicans. The most offensive thing about this ownership group was probably The Magic Hour.

Miami Marlins: Jeffrey Loria, the millionaire art dealer and Charlie Brown-as-philosophy author, is widely considered the worst baseball owner of his generation. The Marlins’ boom-and-bust cycles were already diminishing the team’s shaky South Florida fanbase when along came the Miró-inspired Marlins Park. Built last year with $474 million in public financing, the deal, which will end up costing Miami-Dade County $1.1 billion, has made Loria the second least popular person in South Florida (behind Fidel Castro), according to one 2012 poll. Carlos Gimenez, who parlayed his opposition to the stadium deal into a successful run for Miami-Dade mayor, described Marlins Park to Sports Illustrated‘s S.L. Price as “the gift that keeps on giving.”

Milwaukee Brewers: By all accounts, Mark Attanasio is a laid-back, baseball-savvy guy who also happens to run an investment company that manages some $11 billion in assets. Commissioner (and former Brewers owner) Bud Selig had this to say about him in the New York Times: “Mark is quiet, thoughtful—he has a personality that really fits Milwaukee, even though he’s not from here. He has the same passion I have for the game, and he lives and dies with each pitch, which I can understand completely.” But Selig is terrible, so never mind. Attanasio didn’t give to any candidates in 2012, but his co-owners chipped in about $1 million.

New York Mets: Sterling Equities cofounder Fred Wilpon famously was a major mark for Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme: At one time, according to The New Yorker‘s Jeffrey Toobin, Madoff had 480 accounts from Sterling employees or clients. By the time the scam fell apart in December 2008, Wilpon and his partners had invested some $550 million. On top of that, the Mets’ stadium sold its naming rights to Citigroup in 2006 for $400 million, shortly after the bank had received $45 billion in TARP money. As if all that weren’t enough, an Amway meeting space/recruiting center recently moved into Citi Field.

Philadelphia Phillies: David Montgomery worked his way up through the ranks in the Phillies organization, even working as the team’s scoreboard operator in the early ’70s. But his long tenure hasn’t exactly made the mild-mannered “Gentleman Dave” a fan favorite, probably because he’s said things like this: “I just believe the organization needs an image that’s not directly tied to wins and losses.” The ownership group’s $200,000-plus in 2012 contributions came mostly from pipe-tobacco magnates John and Leigh Middleton.

Pittsburgh Pirates: The Nutting family has had an ownership stake in the Pirates since the mid-’90s, and a majority share since 2007. During that time, the team hasn’t had a single winning season. Robert Nutting apparently has been content to collect handsome profits without reinvesting in better personnel—although the Pirates did manage to secure $228 million in public funding for PNC Park. Nutting’s contribution to the general collapse of society has been negligible, however. He runs a four-star resort in Pennsylvania* and a chain of small newspapers.

San Diego Padres: Last year, Southern California beer distributor Ron Fowler headed up an ownership group that included the son and four grandsons of former big-league owner Walter O’Malley, the guy who moved the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles.

San Francisco Giants: Charles B. Johnson, a mutual-funds baron and the 211th-richest person in the world according to Forbes, spent some $200,000 to try to defeat California’s Proposition 30, the sales and income tax increase that included elements of the state’s millionaire’s tax initiative. (Prop. 30 passed in November.) Other political expenditures: $50,000 for Prop. 32, which would have kept unions and corporations from using automatic payroll deductions to bankroll political activity, and $200,000 for Karl Rove’s American Crossroads.

St. Louis Cardinals: In the early 1990s, William DeWitt Jr. helped put together an ownership group—including George W. Bush—that would go on to buy the Texas Rangers. Years later, he would buy the Cardinals from Anheuser-Busch and raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to help elect (and reelect) his former partner.

Washington Nationals: “Nobody tells Ted Lerner what to do,” former business magazine publisher Bill Regardie told the Washington Post. “Ted Lerner is not used to being told what to do. In the last 30 years, no one has told this man to do anything.” One of the things Nationals’ owner Lerner hasn’t done, whether told to or not, was to pay for a doctor or certified athletic trainer at the team’s Dominican academy, even after teen prospect Yewri Guillén died of a brain infection in 2011.

Correction: This piece originally placed Robert Nutting’s luxury resort in West Virginia.

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Is Your Team’s Owner a Major League Asshole?

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Reformers: Publicly Funded Elections Will Tackle New York’s Corruption Problem

by graptorm Posted on April 3, 2013

Mother Jones

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It was a ham-handed scheme straight out of an episode of “Law and Order.” Federal prosecutors revealed on Monday that New York State Sen. Malcolm Smith, a Democrat, allegedly tried to bribe his way onto the New York City mayoral ballot—as a Republican. Envelopes stuffed with cash changed hands in hotel rooms and restaurants. Local Republican officials talked about “money greasing the wheels” and “the fucking money” driving local politics. Smith’s plan depended on paying off two Republicans from Queens who could get his name on the ballot in time for the November election. Instead, an undercover FBI agent and a cooperating witness infiltrated the deal and laid bare just the latest seamy corruption scandal to rock New York politics.

Preet Bharara, the US attorney in Manhattan spearheading the Smith case, told reporters on Monday that “today’s charges demonstrate, once again, that a show-me-the-money culture seems to pervade every level of New York government.” New York City Councilman Daniel Halloran, one of the two Republicans allegedly implicated in Smith’s scheme, would seem to agree. In the complaint filed against Smith et al, Halloran offers this nugget of wisdom:

“That’s politics, that’s politics, it’s all about how much. Not about whether or will, it’s about how much, and that’s our politicians in New York, they’re all like that, all like that. And they get like that because of the drive that the money does for everything else. You can’t do anything without the fucking money.”

The Smith scandal comes as a well-funded coalition of progressive groups are pressuring Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other legislators to pass legislation replacing the state’s current elections regime with publicly financed campaigns. Now, those reformers are pointing to the Smith scandal as further evidence that New York’s political systems need a major overhaul. “This is the kind of conduct that we believe comes out of a culture that is a pay-to-play, money first, voters don’t count culture,” Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, told the Journal News. “What we’re trying to change is the role money plays in our political system.”

The editorial page of the Albany Times Union, a supporter of public financing, asked on Tuesday: “What better evidence can there be of the need for such reform than this case, in which one of their own, the onetime Senate president and Democratic leader, stands accused of trying to bribe Republican leaders to get a place on the ballot as a GOP candidate for mayor of New York City?”

The Fair Elections for New York campaign, the main force behind the public financing bill, said in a statement that the Smith scandal will only harden New Yorkers’ belief that corruption pervades every corner of state politics. “We can all agree the system is broken,” the statement reads. “Now it’s time to stand shoulder to shoulder with Governor Cuomo and the growing bipartisan majority of New Yorkers who support comprehensive campaign finance reform, which must include a system of publicly financed elections at its core.”

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Reformers: Publicly Funded Elections Will Tackle New York’s Corruption Problem

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The Taxman Turns the Screws on Dark-Money Nonprofits

by Arkady549e Posted on April 1, 2013

Mother Jones

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The Internal Revenue Service is taking a closer look at the finances of some 1,300 nonprofit organizations, including unions, trade associations, and the type of dark-money groups that controversially spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the 2012 elections. That includes Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the pro-Obama outfit Priorities USA, all of which keep their donors secret.

The IRS’ is asking these groups to answer a questionnaire (PDF) explaining how they spent their money, how their top staffers were paid, if they flew first-class or charter, any perks they received, and more. The taxman’s request for more information comes as campaign finance reformers, disclosure advocates, and at least one angry lawmaker, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), pressure the IRS to crack down on big-spending nonprofits like Crossroads GPS, which spent at least $67 million on politics during the 2012 campaign. Levin, who is retiring after his current term, said that a priority of his remaining time in Congress is investigating “the failure of the IRS to enforce our tax laws and stem the flood of hundreds of millions of secret dollars flowing into our elections, eroding public confidence in our democracy.”

Here’s more from NPR on the IRS’ latest move on dark money:

The IRS calls the move a “compliance check.” It asks a wide range of questions about a group’s finances and internal structure. Some of the information will turn up, eventually, in a group’s tax return on the Form 990. But other intriguing information will not. For instance, how did the group set the compensation for its most highly paid officers? Did it give them first-class or charter travel? How about country-club memberships? Any other perks?

The agency has targeted groups that are “self-declared.” That is, they claim they qualify for 501(c) tax-exempt status, but they’ve never filed the application with the IRS. That lets them avoid the application form asking the group to describe its proposed tax-exempt activities.

The IRS says the questionnaire is meant “to help us understand” the self-declared groups and to learn “how they satisfy their exemption requirements.”

But the IRS may be weighing other factors, too. The questionnaire’s most explicit questions are about 501(c)(4) political activity, and the document follows months of critics’ complaints that the IRS has treated 501(c)(4) groups too gently.

Unfortunately, the IRS won’t disclose respondents’ answers to the questionnaire. But with this questionnaire—and with one IRS official’s pledge last fall that the agency would scrutinize dark-money nonprofits—it’s obvious that the agency is digging into the issue of dark money.

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The Taxman Turns the Screws on Dark-Money Nonprofits

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Ed Rendell Backs Fracking, Fails to Mention His Industry Ties

by pfmufle Posted on March 29, 2013

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the ProPublica website.

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell took to the New York Daily News op-ed page Wednesday with a message to local officials: stop worrying and learn to love fracking.

As New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo agonizes over whether to allow the controversial natural gas drilling technique, Rendell invoked his own experience as a Democratic governor who presided over a fracking boom. New York state, Rendell argued, has a major part to play in the nation’s fracking “revolution” 2014 and it can do so safely. He rejected what he called the “false choice” of “natural gas versus the environment.”

What Rendell’s passionate plea failed to note was this: since stepping down as governor in 2011, he has worked as a paid consultant to a private equity firm with investments in the natural gas industry.

The op-ed piece was widely noted in other media outlets, and Cuomo wound up being asked about it during a radio appearance on Wednesday. The New York State Petroleum Council promptly issued a press release hailing Rendell’s “strong and confident argument.”

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Ed Rendell Backs Fracking, Fails to Mention His Industry Ties

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Whatever Happened to the $100 Million Mark Zuckerberg Gave to Newark Schools?

by Unique Article Posted on March 28, 2013

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Reports are surfacing that Mark Zuckerberg and other technology leaders are planning to launch a new, yet-to-be-named advocacy group that will push for immigration and education reform. The move is a big deal for Zuckerberg, who has mostly avoided politics in the past, but has a reported $13.3 billion to put into the game if he chooses to.

What would this influence look like? There could be clues from Zuckerberg’s last foray into advocacy work, the high-profile $100 million he donated to Newark public schools in the fall of 2010. That September, Zuckerberg appeared with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Newark Mayor Cory Booker to announce the donation on the Oprah Winfrey Show. This was right before the premier of The Social Network, which portrayed Zuckerberg as a narcissist who stole the idea for Facebook.

News of the donation captured national attention for a moment, then faded. In Newark, a local foundation established by Zuckerberg and the state have spent more than two years deciding how to best create a schoolyard revolution with $100 million dollars. At first, the “Facebook money,” as it’s called in Newark, helped the state hire consultants and establish several new charter schools. But the reform effort has floundered at moments: The first million dollars went towards a poorly conducted community survey that had to be re-worked by Rutgers and New York University, and criticism was fierce when a foundation board established to decide how the Facebook money was spent included only one Newark resident: Cory Booker. (“Yes, it’s their money. But it’s Newark’s kids,” an op-ed that ran in the Star-Ledger read.)

Then last November, nearly $50 million of Zuckerberg’s money went to pay for a new teacher’s contract, the first in New Jersey to offer performance pay for teachers who are deemed as “highly effective.” The contract offers up to $12,500 in bonuses for the teachers rated as the best in the district. It’s the first contract in New Jersey to offer performance-based pay, a policy that’s been instituted in a few cities such as Washington, DC. In DC, the plan was so controversial that it might have cost Mayor Adrian Fenty his job. “I think it helped—I know it helped—to be on our side of the table and have deeper pockets,” one school district official said about the Newark negotiations.

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Whatever Happened to the $100 Million Mark Zuckerberg Gave to Newark Schools?

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Hillary Clinton Holds the Purse Strings

by Aaron Duff Posted on March 27, 2013

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The courtship has already begun. A select few politicians are traveling the country, schmoozing with 1-percenters, attending the odd fundraiser, and quietly laying groundwork for—yes, that’s right—a 2016 presidential campaign. Mere days after the November 2012 elections, for instance, several Republican governors met with casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who reportedly gave $150 million to GOP causes last election cycle. On the Democratic side, Governors Martin O’Malley of Maryland and Deval Patrick of Massachusetts are getting friendly with big left-leaning funders and building up their name recognition at invite-only meet-and-greets and out-of-state Jefferson-Jackson dinners.

But there’s a striking dynamic at play in the donor world that is apparently unique to the Democratic side. Call it the Hillary Clinton Cash Freeze. According to Clinton’s friends, fundraisers, and former campaign staffers, big Democratic money isn’t going anywhere until she makes up her mind about launching a second presidential campaign.

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Hillary Clinton Holds the Purse Strings

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Scandal-Plagued Menendez Donor Feted Obama and Chauffeured Harry Reid on His Jet

by Larissaiyb Posted on March 20, 2013

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Salomon Melgen is the eye doctor, investor, and big-time political donor embroiled in controversy for his cozy relationship with Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), one of the most powerful Democrats in the Senate. On two occasions, Menendez pressed government officials—once over Medicare and Medicaid billing practices and another time over Latin American governments not honoring trade-related contracts—in ways that appeared to benefit Melgen, who has donated handsomely to Menendez and Democratic causes. Menendez also took two round-trip flights on the doctor’s private jet, reimbursing the doctor only after the details spilled into public view.

Menendez, it turns out, wasn’t the only powerful politician Melgen feted. Politico reported Tuesday night that Melgen hobnobbed with President Obama at 2010 fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (though Melgen was peeved at Obama’s reluctance to fully schmooze him). Melgen also ferried Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on his private jet to a fundraiser in Boston for Majority PAC, a super-PAC devoted to electing Senate Democrats and run by former Reid aide Susan McCue. Reid flew back to Washington with Melgen. Reid’s office said the senator reimbursed Melgen for the flights.

Politico gleans some more details about Melgen’s quirkiness as a big-time bankroller:

Some rich folks looking for special treatment would work through a lobbyist with experience navigating government bureaucracy.

Not Melgen—he was his own lobbyist, with access to lots of cash and a private jet owned by his company.

He went to top officials about the Dominican government’s reluctance to implement a $500 million port cargo-screening contract with one of his companies and to challenge the finding that another of his companies overbilled Medicare.

While he was glad-handing politicians, Melgen was living the high life. He was driven around South Florida by a chauffeur in a customized Audi A8 and invited all manner of politicos to his mansion in the Dominican Republic.

Melgen keeps an enviable collection of photos with politicians—including one of him golfing with Bill Clinton—and bragged of using his plane to transport the rapper Pitbull to a super PAC fundraiser at the Democratic National Convention last summer, according to sources who know him.

Yet Democratic fundraisers interviewed for this story say Melgen fits a particular model of naive, high-maintenance donor: the type that expects politicians to help further their business or philosophical interests but don’t know enough about the process to figure out if they’re getting anything for their money.

Let’s not forget that Melgen is under federal investigation over a port deal in Latin America and his company’s Medicare billing practices. The Senate ethics committee, meanwhile, is probing Menendez’s trips on Melgen’s plane, and a grand jury is looking into the senator’s advocacy on Melgen’s behalf, according to the Washington Post.

Even if nothing comes of these probes, the whole affair has been an embarrassment for Menendez. You can bet other politicians with even the faintest connection to Melgen will be distancing themselves from the donor so as to avoid any future stories like Tuesday’s Politico item.

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Scandal-Plagued Menendez Donor Feted Obama and Chauffeured Harry Reid on His Jet

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