Harlan Crow made a $500,000 payoff to Virginia Thomas’s shiny new Liberty Central in November of 2009. Two months later her husband, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas cast the deciding vote on Citizens United, making unlimited contributions by wealthy individuals legal. Eight days after that Virginia filed for 501c4 status for Liberty Central, stating that she’d receive a salary of $150,000 in 2010, $165,000 in 2011, and $180,000 in 2012.
Don’t have your calculator handy? Crow gives $500,000, Clarence makes it legal and tax free, and then Ginny launders $495,000 of it through Liberty Central straight into her pocket.
PAYOFF
You can’t call it anything but that. The only consolation I’ve got is that unlimited donations in 2012 are going to eliminate some of these panhandling twerps at the DSCC who Just. Don’t. Get it …
This ain’t rocket science. Harlan Crow payoff comes in, Clarence Thomas decision is made in favor of the ultra-wealthy, then Virginia Thomas administrative move is made to start the money laundry working.
And it’s all nice and neat, $500,000 comes in, then 99% of it is dispersed over the next thirty six months.
So Clarence Thomas turns elections into auctions and what do Democrats do about this? Some people whine about judicial ethics. Others clamor for impeachment, which would happen in the House, where luminaries like Darrell Issa and John Boehner are in charge.
Least effective and most offensive of all are the beltway geniuses who’ve decided that this one dollar/one vote scheme could work in favor of Democrats. Rather than smashing this abomination into a million pieces, the DSCC is sending me thrice weekly pandhandling attempts like this:
I don’t know who you are, Guy Cecil. You were probably sitting in a meeting about how to fundraise from the grassroots, watching boring Power Point slides being show by some overpaid douche that wouldn’t know a soul at Netroots Nation, while the rest of us were at Netroots Nation. Since you missed it, I’ll fill you in …
The consensus was that DNC now stands for Do Not Contribute. The decision (that only makes sense to overpaid, out of touch consultants inside the beltway) that Democrats can go toe to toe with the same corporate forces that brought us Citizens United is STUPID.
What does make sense is the work Velvet Revolution is doing. Fight the GOP on their own terms? Hell, no! How about their Protect Our Elections campaign? And look at what’s on the front page …
This Murphy guy, not so active here on DailyKos as far as I know, but Chris Murphy gets it. He sees the hazard, he's reaching for the remedy closest to him. As I've said above I don't think the GOP dominated House will do anything about GOP fomented corruption, but he's on the right track in pushing the issue ...
I had to Google a bit to check this guy out, turns out he wants to be the one to replace Joe Lieberman as the junior Senator from Connecticut. And he doesn’t want to have to campaign uphill, coming and going, against an unregulated blizzard of special interest money coming from the wealthiest 1% of America.
So that’s that. If any of you Murphy supporters care enough to hunt up an ActBlue page for the guy I’ll post it. But you had all damn well better get over and donate to Velvet Revolution today.
Send $5 now and if they really can set the Department of Justice on Ginny Thomas it’ll save you $500 in donations in 2012.
And here's another pandhandler heard from ...