Thanks to the Republican investment in the Supreme Court and the Citizen's United decision, this is the year the GOP is free to spend as much money as they want on attack ads. The big untold scandal of this election is the way the Republicans have built a network of 'independent' groups working in coordination to target Democrats. Channeling huge amounts of money with little or no disclosure as to the source, the conservatives are drowning Democratic voices in a sea of toxic lies, distortions, and worse.
National Public Radio has been doing an outstanding job of digging behind the scenes to follow the money and the overlapping organizations shoveling it around. If we still had functioning election laws and regulatory bodies that did something besides twitch in dying reflex months after the dust settles, there'd be fines, jail terms and more. Instead there's barely a whimper - if you don't count conservative Goon Squads forming up to 'police' the polls and prevent election 'fraud' by intimidating targeted voters.
Follow me over the jump to NPR reports that will make your blood boil - plus New Scientist covers Twitter Swiftboating.
If you've been following the news, chances are you've heard the assertion that Democrats are matching the Republican party or are ahead in raising money for their candidates this year. What so often is omitted is the rest of the story: the number of 'independent' groups that have suddenly materialized in support of GOP candidates. The fig leaf is that they're just engaging in educating the public; they're not endorsing anyone and they don't coordinate with the candidates.
How Independent are these group?
NPR has done an invaluable job with this October 27 story, which turns over the rocks to reveal what's lurking beneath.
'Independent' Groups Behind Ads Not So Independent PETER OVERBY and ANDREA SEABROOK
These are the final frantic days of the campaign season. From Missouri to Hawaii, New York to California, political groups are jamming in their last attacks. It's a banner year for attack ads — and the organizations making them — partly due to the sea of cash unleashed by a Supreme Court decision early this year.
Advocacy groups have popped up all over the country, raising and spending millions of dollars — without having to name their donors. Never before has so much of the congressional election campaign been waged by groups that operate independently of the parties and candidates.
But in reality, those so-called independent groups may not be so independent after all.
You can read the text version at the link above, and also listen to the audio broadcast version. Be sure to listen to the political ad quiz - they've created a synthetic attack ad that shows how it all works.
Connecting the Dots
Even more revealing is the map NPR has put together of how these organizations are all tied together: the common addresses, the shared personnel, the usual suspects from previous election nastiness. Remember Swift Boat Veterans for Truth? They haven't strayed far from their roots. Do you remember when somebody was attacked by the media for talking about a 'vast right-wing conspiracy"? It's operating on steroids thanks to Chief Justice Roberts.
So Much for Tax Laws
Overby and Seabrook looked at one group yesterday with a report on the Commission on Hope, Growth & Opportunity.
Its name tells you almost nothing. It is not a commission by any normal definition, and who's not for hope, growth and opportunity?
Conservative strategists say the group is one of three important advertisers in the Republican drive to win a big House majority.
But the commission is not a formal political committee. And it doesn't say anything — at least not in public — about promoting GOP candidates.
In fact, in public, it hardly says anything at all.
But it does run some pretty creative ads, including a mock sales pitch for a commemorative coin — "a piece of American history, enshrining forever President Obama increasing our national debt."
There's no question that this is a blatantly political group masquerading as a non-profit, whose mission is to "advance the principle that sustained and expanding economic growth is central to America's economic future." That's the way they portray themselves in filings with the IRS, who is doubtless too busy hiring thousands of new agents to go after people who refuse to buy health insurance to pay attention to this group. (snark, for those who haven't heard that Big Lie yet.)
Snake Oil
There's a simple reason the GOP and their allies in the shadows are engaging in this all-out campaign to buy the election: they can't win it on the merits. Their ideas don't work, they have nothing new to offer, and they don't give a damn anyway. They KNOW in their heart of hearts they are the only legitimate rulers of the U.S.A. and they're not going to let a little thing like democracy get in their way. So, when you've got nothing to sell but snake oil - market the hell out of it, scare the rubes, and trash the competition.
Twittering the Masses
Jim Giles at New Scientist reports on some forensic computing that's dragging manipulation of Twitter into the light.
Ploys like that may soon be detected automatically. Filippo Menczer and colleagues at Indiana University in Bloomington collected suspicious tweets by looking for unusual activity, such as sudden bursts of similar messages. After investigating the patterns of tweets generated by and between Twitter accounts they found several ways in which some accounts were being used in potentially deceptive ways.
One involved a pair of anonymous and apparently automated accounts named @PeaceKaren_25 and @HopeMarie_25 – both now suspended by Twitter – which mainly relayed messages from Republican politicians. The former generated over 10,000 tweets since June; the latter retweeted them, but produced no messages of its own, says Menczer.
The goal is simple - the more times a tweet gets forwarded, the more likely it is to pop up in search engines which track numbers like that. It's a way to grow astroturf, and swiftboat it around the net.
Why This Is The Story Your Local News Won't Cover
You'd think something like this would get local or even national news coverage. But it ain't happenin' baby. Wonder why? An NPR report by Jeff Brady on the vast sums of money pouring into the Colorado race buries it towards the end.
All that money spent on ads has left the Senate race in Colorado virtually tied, according to polls. And the biggest beneficiaries from that spending may have been the local media. The Gannett Co., which owns the leading television news station in Denver, says it expects advertising revenue for its broadcasting unit to jump by more than 20 percent this quarter over the same period last year, largely because of political ads.
emphasis added
In a trashed economy with advertising revenues way down, cash-starved TV stations are not going to look the gift horse of political ads in mouth. And it has been a long time since anyone gave a damn about 'equal time' provisions on the air waves. Plus, the corporate consolidation of media outlets in recent years means directives from HQ about the kind of material going out on the air is pretty unlikely to encourage anything that doesn't support the corporatization of the country. And then there's the usual disclaimer that the Left is doing it too - because unions are free to spend as much money as corporations now - and we all know how big unions are these days, right?
This election season, Money doesn't just talk - it SCREAMS!