March 10, 2016 • 47 mins
Since the Supreme Court ruled in 2010 in the Citizens United case that political contributions are speech and should be protected, the floodgates of anonymous political contributions have opened. But does absolute funding corrupt absolutely?
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you. Stuff you should know from House Stuff
Works dot com. Bush and Duccas on crime. Bush supports
the death penalty for first degree murderers. Du Concas not
only opposes the death penalty, he allowed first degree murderers
to have weekend passes from prison. One was Willie Horton,
(00:24):
who murdered a boy and a robbery, stabbing him nineteen times.
Despite a life sentence, Horton received ten weekend passes from prison.
Horton fled, kidnapped a young couple, stabbing the man and
repeatedly raping his girlfriend. Weekend prison passes. Ducacas on crime,
Hey and welten to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, there's
Charles to Be, Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there. And
(00:46):
what you've just heard was something we brought back with
us from via the way back machine. An attack ad.
The attack AD from the election between George Trebert Walker
Bush and one Michael du Caucus and Uh. That ad
is widely credited as turning the tide against du Caucus's campaign,
(01:10):
which was doing pretty good at the time. Well, some
people say so, other people say depends on who you asked.
Always dissent that's politics. As it turns out, there's always
more than one opinion. But the reason we bring up
this ad which UM first aired on September twenty one, nineteen. Yes, UM,
(01:32):
it's called weekend Passes for obvious reasons, and it was
UM funded by something called the National Security Political Action
Committee And n s PACK was a non affiliated pro
Bush political action committee that was aimed at sinking du
Caucus and getting Bush elected. Yeah. I think one of
(01:55):
Bush's uh maybe it was his chief campaign guy said
by the time we're done, people are gonna think Willie
Horton is du Caucus is running mate. And it worked too.
I mean, like still, if if you say the name
Willie Horton, people of a certain age e g. R
age can still say, oh I know who that is. Yeah. Well, quickly,
(02:18):
the story of Willie Horton is he was he was
in prison for murder, was furloughed as part of the
UH for a weekend as part of the Massachusetts furlough
program that was UM in effect at the time, and
he raped and killed somebody on this weekend pass on
the weekend pass, which was a big sign that it
(02:38):
may not be a good idea to furlow murders. I
guess they needed to test it out to find out
one way or another. But yeah, that pretty much closed
the book on it. And the thing was the Bush
campaign linked du Caucus is well, du Caucus himself with
the weekend passes and insinuated that he had come up
with this and that he was in support of it. Well,
(03:01):
he wasn't support of it. He didn't come up with
it though. Yeah, he inherited it from his Republican predecessor,
I believe. Yeah, it actually started in nine two, uh
with a Republican governor governor of Massachusetts, which apparently things
have been going fine up until then until Willie Horton
came along. Yeah, it kind of had a weird uh
along and winding road. Um. The initial program excluded first
(03:25):
degree murderers, and then the Supreme Court said, no, the
law doesn't specifically say that, so you can't exclude first
degree murders. So the legislature said, well, we gotta put
a stop to this, and we can't let first agree
murderers out on leave, and Ducacus vetoed that. So he
did support it until he decided to run for president,
(03:45):
and that's when he said let's get this off. So
the n speck ad was very um widely criticized. It
was criticized as being misleading, It was criticized as fostering
racist attitudes. Um. And but it still worked. A lot
of people say, and I understand some people say, no,
(04:07):
a lot of people say, this did work. So people
say it was the tank gride remember that. Oh I
forgot about this road around that tank. Yeah, I totally
forgot about that. He was off the rails there for
a little bit. Um. But the the thing is is
George Bush's campaign I was able to say, hey, this
had nothing to do with us, blame an s pack.
(04:28):
So it still worked in George Bush's favor. But George
Bush got to got to say, this had nothing to
do with me. Remodel it. That was Clinton. I just did. Um.
It was. It was pretty dead on Clinton. Really, it's
called a political matchup. Um. And the whole way that
this pack was was funded was with what's called dark money. Yeah.
(04:51):
We should uh, we should just title this one how
to Exploit a Loophole in America. Yeah, and the Supreme
Court really screwed things up. Yeah. Or if you don't
like Josh and chuck talking politics. Turn it off now,
but we're taking down the system. Yeah. Yeah, here's the thing, man,
(05:13):
Billionaires controlling who gets elected in the United States is
not a conservative or liberal issue. We're all being screwed
over equally. Here everyone, I got a stat for you,
and then we'll get right into it. This will shake
you to the core. Uh. Since two thousand ten of
the one billion dollars spent in federal elections by superpacks,
(05:36):
almost sixty of that money came from one hundred and
ninety five people and their spouses one hundred and nine
people of campaign of superpack spending. And as as it
is crazy, but it's not that surprising if you really
step back and look at what's been going on the
last decade or so. And that's what people I mean,
(05:57):
some people say like spending tons of money on a
elections isn't bad. It's the fact that people are the
ones doing the majority of the spending that it's not right.
And the the that's a billion dollars spent by super
packs or political action committees, and super packs up until
recently had to disclose um who donated money to him.
(06:21):
So this is just the money that's traceable, and what
we're talking about is the money that's not traceable here.
So we're gonna go back a little bit um in
the way back machine, back to the early twentieth century
once again. Yeah, and um, we're gonna talk about money
(06:43):
in politics. There's this really good Mother Jones article called
Follow the Dark Money, and it gives a bit of
a history of politics and money. Uh and says Congress
is always reacting to some sort of money scandal, but
there's this long history and tradition of knowing who is
funding campaigns transparency in America. Yeah, and it started with
(07:07):
Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt ran as a trust buster. He
was against the big corporations that controlled so much in
the robber barons, but he was also simultaneously secretly going
to these same corporations and robber barons and getting secret
funding for his campaigns. Yes, one tycoon said Teddy Roosevelt
got down on his knees for us. That's not the
(07:28):
normal description of Teddy Roosevelt. And as far as corporations
are concerned, not the public image of him. Teddy Roosevelt,
you wouldn't think got on his knees for anybody. So
as a result, after Roosevelt was elected, he actually did
something about it. He signed into law the Tilman Act
that prevented it. Outlawed corporations from directly contributing to candidates.
(07:50):
That's illegal, still is today. It is. That's why we
need loopholes. Watergate came along in uh the I think
the nineteen seventy four, nineteen yeah, nine seventy two election
when Nixon was running for UM office. He um, okay,
he accepted twenty million dollars in nineteen seventy two money
(08:15):
UM in secret political contributions. And we're talking like delivered
in cash and checks in briefcases by couriers who were
flying private jets from Texas to d C. For Pete's sake. Yeah,
and his personal attorney when Herbert Kombach Uh, he was
the deputy finance chair for the Committee for re Election
for President, he destroyed this evidence and went to prison
(08:37):
for it. So it was a real thing that happened.
What's crazy is their their Political Action Committee was the
Committee to re Elect the President and the acronym was Creep.
They called themselves creep and they were trying to reelect Nixon.
Funny I mean, come on, it's a little on the nose.
Don't you think maybe it was lost on them? So um,
(08:57):
you fast forward and you just say, okay, guys, let's
bashing Teddy Roosevelt and Richard Nixon. How about some some
Democrats in there. And uh, Bill Clinton was a really
good example of that as well. Yeah, you want to
go jogging with Bill, I want to play a little
golf six figure check. Please. Access to the president or
even somebody who's running for the presidency is not supposed
(09:20):
to be purchasable. You or you or I. We can't
do that. We don't have access to the president because
we don't have that much money. So it's just simply
not fair for somebody who does have that much money
to have that much more access to the president or
somebody running for the president. So over the years have
been scandal and then uh some sort of change to
(09:42):
campaign finance laws. But there's been this through thread over
the twentieth century that America has said, we want to
know who is giving money to uh two candidates. We
want to know who they're indebted to when they win. Yeah,
but there's also a been at the head of every
time law comes into action. There is a loophole that
(10:05):
is invariably found that can get around that, created by
the same politicians who passed the Act to begin with,
because it's a game. They really upsetting if you think
about it. Oh, it's very upsetting. I'm I'm really doing
a good job here staying calm. Well, you have a
vein in your forehead that's pulsing. I can see it is.
There's this blood spurting out of it. So um chuck.
(10:29):
There's a there's another thread to um to all of this.
It's semi political, and that is the tax code. Right,
So if you go look at the tax code after,
you're going to see something called the five oh one
C four organization called a social welfare organization, or you
(10:49):
can also be a local association of employees and be
a five one four Those are also known as unions. Right,
And as of nineteen thirteen the Underwood terrorf Act, which
brought back in taxes, five oh one four organizations are
nonprofits that are tax exempt, right, Yeah, and they can
(11:10):
accept donations. But because of this uh there five oh
one C four status, they don't have to reveal who
their donors are, right, which wouldn't seem like a big
problem because all nonprofits are are people trying to save
animals and save the rainforest. Right, social welfare. One. Sure,
so you want to just donate your money and I
want it to be anonymous and it's no big deal.
(11:31):
But that is not always the case. Um. By the
well late nineteen fifty nine, early nineteen sixties, the government
realized that politics and uh five oh one see where
they five one c fours at that time, Okay, um,
they were intertwined. Uh, there was nothing they could do
about it, and so they started loosening rules. In a
(11:53):
nineteen eight one they said, you know what, you can
be politically engaged as long as it's under the banner
of the promotion of quote social welfare, or that the
work you're doing is primarily social welfare. And the way
that that translated as far as the I R S,
who you know, um enforces the tax code. As far
(12:14):
as the I R S was concerned, it was if
fifty one of your funds are spent on social welfare,
you can spend up to forty on political stuff. Yeah,
And the I R S had to fight for that
designation because previously it just said primarily which is such
a loose uh word. You know, they said, you know,
(12:34):
we what does this really mean? Right? And so that
they just through I think they released an interpretation a
rule that said this is what primarily means nine And
that was the rule from one on basically, um and so, okay,
you've got five ohen C. Four is they're hanging out
there over there, they're doing their own thing. Nobody's paying
too much attention to them. Uh. And then two ten
(12:56):
rolls along, and there was a lawsuit that had made
its way through the lower courts up to the Supreme Court,
and it was called Citizens United versus the Federal Election Committee.
It sounds so boring that I hazard to say that
Americans have never even heard of it. And it's and
it may be one of the most influential Supreme Court
(13:16):
rulings in the history of this country. But it just
listened to it. Citizens United versus the FEC Snooze. So
Citizens United was a m a political action committee and uh, well,
I think it still is as a matter of fact.
And Citizens United was spending money on advertisements for a
(13:40):
video on demand movie that was basically um a attack
ad one giant attack ad on Hillary Clinton. I thought
you're gonna say it was one of those Kirk Camera
in movies. I think it was similar. He had a
cameo I think, right, and so in this movie, um,
like the Citizens United didn't. I don't believe they funded
(14:01):
the movie Your Finance if, but they were. They were
running ads about it, and they were running ads within
I think thirty days of the election, no, sixty days
of the prime no, sorry, thirty days of a primary election,
which under the McCain Fine Goal of Act, which is
a campaign finance Reform Act that came along in two
do to um, you're not allowed to do And Citizens
(14:24):
United said, you know what, why wouldn't we be allowed
to do? This is political speech. Um, We're going to
sue the Federal Elections Commission, And they did, and the
Supreme Court ruled on it, and the Supreme Court in
Citizens United ruled in favor of Citizens United. But then
they released one of the most sweeping explanations of what
they'd ruled that just completely changed the face of American
(14:48):
politics from that point on. It said, it's open season.
Bring in as much money as you want uh into
the American political system, because we are opening the floodgates
as wide as they can go. Yeah, what they basically
did was they equated speech with money. And they said,
(15:10):
basically they took the term money talks to the reaches
that we can't even comprehend that you can make huge
donations and that is a political statement. That is, your
speech is a corporation, and you are protected because corporations
are individuals. Right, So, so that's exactly what they did.
They said, spending money on political campaigns, any political contribution
(15:32):
is a form of political speech. Speech is protected under
the First Amendment, but the speech of individuals is protected. Well.
Corporations are considered artificial people, so therefore they should have
that same thing extended to them, right, And so that
the ruling was that you can spend as much as
you want as long as it doesn't go directly to
(15:54):
a candidate. And um, you can also now that since
there's five four's, you can funnel as much money as
you want two or five O four and remain an
anonymous donor. Yeah. And the problem, well, there are a
lot of problems. One of the biggest problems is is
these corporations are spending tons and tons, millions and millions
(16:15):
of dollars. The court essentially said, uh, Joe Schmo on
the street donating ten dollars to a campaign is the
same thing as a corporation donating hundred thousand dollars to
a campaign, because they're both individuals. So it created this
huge loophole. And I think the Supreme Court they were
relying on was uh that these groups would be independent
(16:37):
of the candidates. And that's not only not how it
worked out. That was the plan all along. It was
extremely naive, the ruling was. And if you look at
naive or was it, I don't know, but if you
look at the I have the same questions. You know,
a lot of people do the the If you look
at the ruling though, there's a section on transparency where
they say, with the Supreme Court uphold the constitutionality of
(17:00):
requiring transparency in campaign finance eight to one, which is
like they're the only person descending was Clarence Thomas, and
it was like, yes, we're saying you need to be transparent,
and they said, okay, well, then transparency is going to
come through people demanding the corporations that they own stock
in to release what what political donations they've done. That
(17:23):
makes total sense. If you have stock in the company,
if your life's fortune is invested in a corporation, you
should know who are they're who they're giving their money to. Okay,
so that's one way. And they also said, well, the
Federal Elections Commission, they've got their job to do, the
I R S, the SEC. There's all these regulatory agencies
that are tasked with keeping transparency in the political process,
(17:47):
and um, we're we're just going to rely on them.
And as we're about to see after this break, relying
on that was an enormous mistake. Foolhardy. All all right,
(18:15):
we're back boy. We're getting riled up today. I'm remaining calm.
Still up election season. So the Supreme Court said, guys,
spend as much money as you want, spend it anonymously
if you want. Um, the only thing that remains illegal
is UH corporations contributing directly to candidates, right, which, once
(18:37):
you have these loopholes, who cares, you don't need to anymore. Right. Plus, also,
don't even worry about the mega donors donating directly to
candidates because you, um, there's there's requirements for reporting, there's
transparency requirements. If you under McCain. Fine gold. If you
contribute a thousand dollars or more to a candidate or
(18:59):
a pack that has to report donors, um, you have
to report it. Somebody's got to report it. Sure there's transparency, right,
the Federal Elections Commission, the i R S, all these
guys are tasked with making sure that happened. So we're fine.
Supreme Court went home and took a giant NAT together
on their enormous nine person bed. UH. And here's one
(19:21):
of the other big problems is a lot of this
money goes toward UH campaign ads, television ads, which have
a lot of sway um nine out of ten and
people have studied this. The uh Annenberg Public Policy Center
UH determined that in the two thousand twelve campaign cycle,
nine out of ten ads UH funded by dark money
(19:42):
were negative. So that's why you see those negative ads.
And not only that, but twenty of those were misleading.
And there's no accountability. So they're being funded anonymously and
there's no fact checker. They don't have to run it
by anybody to get approval and say, well, this is
all true, it's not misleading at all. So you could
basically say whatever you want the ad runs, it's anonymously funded,
(20:04):
and someone's campaign is destroyed in the process. So the
point is, as long as the candidate is not coordinating
with the political action committee, the superpacker, the five oh
one CE four, then it's all kosher. It's all illegal coordinating,
meaning like so blatantly like come on, it's still going on.
So every every election season as it starts to kick off,
(20:26):
you'll you'll see on the news like Ted Cruz or
Bernie Sanders or whoever just released of an eerie twelve
hour tape of them doing different things with no soundtrack whatsoever.
And and the whole thing is they they'll release a
real and it's them hanging out with their mom, them
(20:46):
writing a tractor, them like standing on like a mountain
looking as the sun comes up, with their foot on
the head of a small child. Sure, they're like there,
and it's just that there's no sound to it whatsoever.
And they just put it out there. I'm just putting
it out there, and then anybody wants to use it
can do whatever they want with it. And then the
political action committees, the super from the come along use
(21:07):
that footage to make their ads in support of the candidate.
I kind of wondered. I was like, how are they
getting this footage anyway? If they can't be directed putting
it out there? I had no idea. Yeah, it's pretty
cynical really if you think about it, the idea that
they're not coordinating in any way, shape or form. They're
just putting all this footage out there. And and again,
guys like if you're getting riled up if you're a
(21:28):
Republican when we say they like the Democrats do this too,
But it's really disingenuous to say that all parties are
equally equally at fault here for using dark money, because again,
studies show that if you quantify the amount of money
spent by the GOP and by the Democrats, the GOP
(21:49):
has outspent the Democrats mind boggling anything to sevent Yes.
As far as using dark money goes, it's it's definitely
not a like. The Democrats do it, for sure, and
they sometimes do it cynically. I wade about a a
dark money committee that released an ad in favor of
(22:12):
Harry Reid lambasting dark money. That's pretty cynical as well. Yeah,
so both sides do it. The Republicans just do it way,
way more. Yeah. And I think Hillary Clinton has come
under fire for her reliance on super packs being attacked
by Bernie of course, who's like, I don't want any
part of that stuff. Um, although there are some super
(22:33):
packs for Bernie, but I think he's disavowed them. Maybe. Yeah,
you have to look at George Bush disavowed the weekend
passed his ad to you still benefit from it. It's
not like he's like, guys, you have to stop. Well
that was my Bernie standards. No, that was your Larry
David right. Oh wait, same guy. Uh. Leading up to
(22:54):
the primaries here in New Hampshire and Iowa not too
long ago, Bernie came under fire from Hillary because there's
a group called Friends of the Earth Action. Uh there
are five oh one c four and um they are
in strong support of Bernie. And she's like, hey, dude,
you're getting dark money too from this outfit. Uh. Friends
(23:15):
of Earth Action said, Hey, first of all, we've been
around since early seventies. We've been around long before dark
money has been around. Uh, that's not what we are.
We are mainly small donor based. Um, do not compare
us to these corporations. Uh, and you know they have
a point in a lot of ways. You can't compare
(23:35):
Friends of Earth action to the Koch brothers. UM. But
I think Hillary was just trying to get in some like, hey,
you're not completely clean either, Right, It's true. And the
Koch brothers is good that you mentioned them because they
are basically the poster boys for dark money contributions. Right,
Americans for Prosperity spent thirty six million dollars and that's
(23:56):
their group right in twelve, UM, and they actually got
outspent by other groups like Karl Rove created UM Crossroads
GPS and that are so dumb. They spent seventy one
million in two thousand twelve. But the Koch Brothers in
particular have pledged nine hundred million dollars for the two
thousand and sixteen cycle. That's how much they're going to
(24:19):
spend on the two thousand and sixteen cycle. And UM,
if you read up on those guys and their dark
money contributions UM or just their general political contributions, they've
definitely amassed a lot of friends in state legislatures, in
the Senate, in the in the the UM, the House,
and the one that's left is the presidency, and they're
(24:41):
spending a tremendous amount of money making friends with whoever
is going to become president. All right, so let's talk
for a second about does money when you in election?
Because that's really what's it the route here? If money
doesn't win the elections? And who cares? I take issue
with that, but go ahead? What what was the issue? Well,
the issue is like in this article, the author says,
(25:02):
you know a lot of people raise a lot of
money and flame out, they don't make it even to
the primary. Look at Jeb Bush. Yeah he I think
he raised a hundred and three million through super PACs alone. Yeah,
and and just burned right through it, didn't get anywhere
with it. But that's a disingenuous that's a straw argument
because it's it's saying like, yeah, you can raise all
the money you want and you're still not gonna win.
(25:24):
The thing is somebody's gonna win, and the people that
help them win through these huge donations, they're gonna be
indebted to those people. Well, I'll help you out even further,
my friend. Uh. People that say you can spend a
ton of money and still not win. Who he or
she who spends the most money almost always wins. Yeah, yeah,
(25:45):
not sort of. Yeah. Nine out of ten uh in
the House and eight out of ten in the Senate. Uh,
winners are the people who spent the most money. Yeah,
eight two. So you can't ignore that. If you raise
the most money, you have an eight or nine out,
it's a chance of winning. So money is buying elections,
(26:05):
it is. And then people say, well, if these are
as long as the packs and the super packs in
the five and one C four is all stay separate
from the candidate, then and there's no coordination and there's
no crossover whatever, then the candidates not indebted to these
people who gave nine million dollars to their campaign. Um,
which is just the most ridiculous assertion you can possibly
(26:29):
think of. And I really I read this this um.
I think it was a Bloomberg article or U S News,
I can't remember. And it basically explained it how you're
indebted to these people. It's not necessarily nefarius, although I'm
quite sure there is a tremendous amount of nefarious nous
out there. But even if you remove the nefarious angle, right,
(26:52):
if you are a presidential candidate, and you're moving and shaken. Yeah,
you're going to like the local diner and somewhere in
like Rhode I Land or whatever and shaking hands or whatever.
But the people you're really interacting with that you see
over and over again at the same fundraisers. Those are
the mega donors. You don't see the dude who's sitting
(27:12):
at the diner asking you a question more than that
one time at that one dime you you you do
see the same mega donors time after time after time
after time. So the very at least they have your ear,
and even if they don't have your ear, they become
who you think of when you think of your electorate,
These people who you saw time and time and time again,
(27:34):
who contributed money after money after money. So even if
you're not saying, yeah, give me some money and I'll
make your your legal troubles go away with the I
R S, even if it's not quid pro quo like that,
there's still a mentality that crops up where if you're
exposed to these people who are giving you tons of
cash to get you elected, you're going to equate their
(27:56):
help with your success at being elected. That's at the
very least how it influences politics. Yeah, all right, we
definitely need to take a break now because I can't
even coming out of your eye ducks. All right, we're back.
(28:28):
You're good, You got the tissue. Yeah good, you're crying
bloody tears. Uh, I get riled up to man, It's
just it's when you look at the state of American
politics these days, it's very hard to not want to
go live on a deserted island somewhere. Canada your own oligarchy. Yeah, myself,
(28:50):
I wonder what it's. I don't know much about politics
around the world. I know other like you know, wealthy
countries are corrupt as well. Um, like we're leading the
race though, the race downward. Yeah, I'd like to hear
from other countries out there, other like big wealthy countries,
(29:11):
Um about your systems. Yeah, I'm sure they're largely broken. Right.
Are we the only ones? No, We're definitely not the
only ones, right the Finns. I mean you look at
Skaninavia and you're like, yeah, they're like a model of
of you know, using taxes for good and all that.
But how much of it do you not hear about?
(29:31):
Like how much like like waste is there, How much
graft is there? How you know? I'm like, well, they
pay so much much in taxes over there. But everything
we hear though from people in that part of the
world say we're happy to because everything's great. It's like
we have no crime, we have no gun violence, everyone's healthy,
we all get healthcare, schools are awesome, We're all happy.
(29:55):
I don't know, maybe I'll move to Finland. So we
we've talked about um, like why how money influences politics,
But the underlying key is this is if you um,
if you can purchase campaigns, you can purchase everything else.
(30:16):
Because you get people who owe you or who you
have influenced, or who you just share a tremendous amount
of common viewpoints with into office. You back the right horse,
your guy got in there. Right. You can put it
as crassly or as nicely as you want, but you
help get somebody into office, and now they kind of
(30:36):
owe you, and now the policies are probably going to
fall into your favor. And just the ability to do
this is such a symptom of the inequality in the
United States that we're dealing with right now that I
think that's what disheartens me the most. It's it's like
when the Supreme Court rule in two thousand ten, we're
(30:57):
opening the floodgates, you have a voice individual? Yeah, but
yeah it did. But did we ever? Was the Supreme
Court really just saying like, hey, we're gonna take the
scales off your eyes. Right, We're not. We're gonna take
away any pretense. Here's how it is. Here's probably how
it's always been. But now it's legal. Man, just get
used to it. Yeah, but no one was paying attention
(31:21):
because people but I mean like back in the seventies
when Watergate happened, people paid attention to that, you know,
because the idea that if you were wealthy you could
become an ambassador for k or that you add access
to the president. It's always ticked Americans off. Uh. So
remember when we talked a little bit ago about um,
the five oh one c fours have to of their
(31:46):
uh spending cannot be political. Uh no comment on that part.
But it's unenforceable. Basically, Well, IRIS did try to enforce
it once. Yes, that's where I was headed. The I
R s uh made the mistake of going too hard
at the tea party um because they felt like they
(32:06):
were the worst offenders, and it backfard on him in
a big way. Um to say the least, would you say, Yeah, Well,
the GOP in Congress came down hard on the i
r S. They got the I R S director removed
from her position, got a new person installed, and this
new guy has basically said, like you know this, I'm
(32:27):
just going with everything the Supreme Court thinks. So I'm
gonna stop enforcing this. And even if the I R
S wanted to enforce these rules that that they're tasked
with making sure that there's transparency, right. Um. Uh. The
Senate actually inserted a couple of bills, and by Senate
I mean Mitch McConnell, who hates campaign finance laws. Uh,
(32:51):
he got a couple of bills inserted in the omnibus
spending bill, a couple of writers. Yes. Um. And if
you guys, a lot of people may not know what
an omnibus spending bill is. It's basically a big, large, sweeping, uh,
set of many many bills and writers all under one banner.
It pays it's the government's budget. Well yeah, but it's
(33:14):
a it's they don't have to do with one another.
You can when you hear like a writer was attached
to it. That that a lot of times means someone
is trying to sort of sneak something through. Right, So
if you attach a rider to the right bill, you
can get almost anything passed. And you know, I shouldn't
say sneak something through because it's not like it's in secret,
(33:35):
but it's a way. It's a very convenient way to
pass a controversial amendment. Right. Okay, So if you if
you take a very cherry bill like one that has
to pass, like the bill that pays for the government
spending for the next year, and you insert a writer
in there that says the I R. S is not
allowed to make clearer rules on UH five oh one,
(33:56):
S fours and political action committees spending politics, you're gonna
get it passed. And it did get passed. Yeah. And
another thing that got passed was, remember when we talked
about the fact that shareholders wanted to know if their
corporations who they were donating to, They also got a
almost had snuck it in. They almost also got in
(34:16):
a writer that said, no, corporations don't have to do that.
They did, They said that they said that the SEC
is not allowed to make rules considering making corporations disclosed
political contribution. Yeah, you cannot force them to do that.
So there's a ban on the I R S clarifying
its rules and the SEC creating a rule just clarifying
(34:38):
they just wanted it more clearly defined in existing You
can't do that, but we like it really nebulous. So
Congress said, sit down when it comes to campaign finance stuff.
You you don't do your jobs anymore. Your regulatory stuff
is over with now. Uh, individuals have petitioned uh these
companies um, and sometimes they voluntarily given it up. But
(35:00):
if that's the solution, then it's not much of one.
And then so lastly, so the SEC is down, the
I R S is down, um, And the last the
last agency that was tasked with enforcing transparency was the
Federal Elections Commission itself. Yeah, surely they would step up
and do the right thing. So the Federal Elections Commission
(35:22):
is now split three and three along party lines and
apparently deadlocks as a matter of routine. So you need
four commissioners for FEC commissioners to take action on anything
to get a quorum, right, they can't even get a quorum.
So as far as campaign finance stuff goes, they have
(35:43):
been sitting on their hands since two thousand ten. And
there was a couple of rulings about um transparency that
that that are about the last things they did. So
in two thousand and seven they said, you know that
McCain fine Gold requirement that says if you spend a
thousand dollars or more contributing to a political group or campaign,
(36:04):
you have to disclose it. We the Federal Elections Commission,
decided that that means that if you spend a thousand
dollars or more on a political like communication like an AD,
then you have to disclose it. So that means that
if you if you contributed a thousand dollars to a
(36:25):
political action committee, you would have to say this is
for ads well and for this AD specifically. That came later,
but yeah, that's the way it is now, which no
one ever does. It's another loophole. So this last thing,
this last bastion of transparency, to where you had to
(36:45):
say I donated a thousand dollars or more, you you
would have to say it is not just for an
attack AD, it's for attack AD number two thirty eight.
Hillary hates America. That's what this money is for. And
like you said, no one does that because they don't
have to. So you so that as far as the
Federal Elections Commission is concerned, you don't have to say
(37:07):
you donated that thousand dollars. Yeah, they don't have to,
so they won't because they don't want their name attached
to it, which is the most cowardly thing you can do,
you know if you think about it. Well, yeah, there's this,
Well that's the argument. That's a lot of people's argument
is anonymous political speech keeps you from, um getting blowback
from the powers that be or whatever. And there was
(37:28):
this woman who has caught handing out anonymous pamphlets that
she wrote outside of a polling place, which apparently was
illegal under McCain fine Gold, and everybody was like, well,
there's a long, proud tradition of handing out anonymous right.
The Federalist papers were originally anonymous, and Justice Scalia, who
was who died recently. Um, he was actually very very conservative,
(37:52):
and in his descent on that ruling in favor of
the woman's right to handle out anonymous pamphlets said anonymous
pamphlets have about as much historic tradition and precedents as
anonymous phone calls in this country, they're not honorable. There's
something honorable about anonymously lambasting something that didn't translate to
the rest of the court as far as Citizens United
(38:13):
is concerned. Yeah, it's the equivalent of of going in
the dark of night and like spray painting something on
a wall and running away. Right, it's true, you know.
So here's where we're at right now. The Supreme Court
ruled that corporations are people. They already had ruled that
they upheld it. Political money is protected speech, right, So
(38:36):
this opened the floodgates to unlimited money to five O
one s fours, which are nonprofit action groups who do
not need to disclose their donor's identities, which means that
you could you could contribute as much money as you
wanted to anonymously to a political campaign. So the SEC
was banned from requiring corporate disclosure, the I r S
was banned from investigating the political action groups themselves, and
(38:59):
then the VC the Federal Elections Commission removed the last
transparency requirements of the donors, and an estimated ten billion
dollars is going to be spent on this two thousand
sixteen campaign, five or six billion on the presidency right,
two billion was spent in two thousand twelve. So the
big question here is, are you the individual upping your
(39:23):
political contribution five times? Do you account for this enormous
increase from two billion to five or six billion dollars? No? No,
of course not. So there are some folks that started
digging around and said, all right, who's funding Who's funding
some of these uh efforts? Uh? Maybe like climate change denial,
(39:47):
Some somebody's funding this stuff. So there's a guy named
well at direct the University and Environmental It's like a
sociologist named Robert Brule. He said, you know what, let
me look into this and see somebody is giving a
lot of money to climate change. The aisle and um
Xon was was given a ton of money like blatantly
for years and years and again the Koke brothers, the
Koke brothers, and we all knew that because it was
(40:09):
all you know on record. But a weird thing happened
once these changes came about. Um the Koch Brothers, A
Coke Industries, and x On Mobile their cash flow to
climate change, and I'll disappeared without a trace Yeah, they're
traceable stuff. But a hundred and forty foundations funneled almost
six hundred million dollars to about one hundred climate denial organizations,
(40:32):
uh since then, and their money dried up, This money
increased into anonymous five. You don't need to be a
Sherlock Holmes to figure out what's going on here. Yeah.
And the other thing about a five O one C
four is, let's say you have a really great um,
a really great political action committee. You're a really great
(40:52):
um social uh social awareness group, right um or social
welfare group, and you don't want to at that brand
die because it's really established itself, but you don't want
to keep funneling money to it because climate denial has
a bad name these days. Right, You can funnel money
to a five oh one C four that funnels money
(41:13):
to that political action committee, and you your donation, it's
it's it's basically laundered. You're laundering your donation, turning it anonymous.
But it's still having the same effect, the same outcome
thanks to that loophole. Yeah, and then one more chuck.
One more criticism of this whole thing is if you say,
so what who cares? This is the way the world works,
(41:36):
especially with corporations in particular, if they start doing what's
called rent seeking, which is there's a there's an established pie,
and when you rent seek, you go to get your
piece of the pie. It keeps you from innovating. You
start going spending your money on legislation. Yeah, it's like
(41:56):
renting is basically if you're a big corporation spending a
hundred million dollars on lobbying for regulations against your competitor
instead of spending that one hundred million dollars investing in
your own corporation to grow, which is no good for shareholders. No,
your bottom line still kind of goes up, but really
you're just reaching the path towards stagnation because you're not
(42:17):
innovating anymore. And the public loses out because regulation decreases. Right, Um,
jobs are lost because you're not innovating, and then as
far as consumers are concerned, there's like less stuff to
buy because the corporations are going for the piece of
the pie rather than making the pie bigger or creating
new pies. Yeah, they going for the money that's already
out there. So so the solution I think is strictly
(42:42):
public financing of campaigns, like I have no problem with that.
Just say, here's a hundred million dollars to the candidates
who won the primaries, right and um, get creative. This
is all you got, you are. It's illegal to use
another penny outside of these public funds that were just
given to you as the the party candidates go to it.
(43:07):
Everything else is totally illegal. I can't imagine what a
sea change it would be in politics. I can't imagine
there would be another loophole. Well, you know what would
happen is suddenly these um, these political action committees would
start attacking this idea, saying, you, Joe Schmo, you can't
vote with your or you can't your political speech from
(43:28):
your campaign contributions being restricted. Your First Amendment rights are
being restricted. Going to give which is suddenly taken on
huge dimensions of import Uh, it's being restricted. And that's
exactly what would happen. Who So we moved into Finland. No,
we need to take this country back. Man. What's the
(43:49):
best country? That's what I want to know from listeners,
which one is the best? I can't wait to hear
Costa Rica. That's pretty nice, right if you want to
know more about campaign finance, dark money, all that jazz,
we want you to go check it out. Look up
dark money in the search bar at how stuff works
dot com, and just check out dark money all over
(44:10):
the web, including Jane Mayer from The New Yorker wrote
a really interesting book called dark Money All about the
Koch Brothers. Yeah, fantastic. Well, since I said Jane Mayer,
it's time for listener now, all right, I'm gonna call
this one uh maybe appropriate for this well, not really
(44:31):
somebody funding us. This is from a coal miner about
our Bill Gates podcast. He said, Hey, guys, one problem
that no one ever seems to talk about with renewable
energy is the people. The people you ask, well, I
was an underground coal miner for seven years until the
market got so bad that I lost my job. And
I'm just one of seven thousand plus people here in
(44:51):
eastern Kentucky that has been hit hard by this. I'm
not saying we need to stick with coal, it's just
the people. Don't think about the people that are behind
the fossil fuel industry losing jobs. Not only are people
losing their way of life, but entire towns are being killed.
I can't count how many people have had to leave
the place that they've called home their entire life to
find work. Along with new renewable, cheaper energy, we need
(45:13):
to find jobs to fill that void of those who
have been lost. Yeah you know. I mean it's not
like because creating renewable energy creates a lot of jobs,
but they're not going to the coal miners. You know
what I'm saying. But however, this is kind of neat. UM.
I was lucky enough to find work at bit Source,
a tech start up here. Uh. The company hired ten
(45:33):
former coal miners and began teaching us how to web
and how to be web and software developers. Uh. The
only problem is there only ten of us, uh, and
it's just this one company, and they cannot feel the
void of all those who lost jobs. I know that
you guys might be able to help shed some light
on this problem. Like I said, no one thinks about
the people and the families that are hurt by progress,
(45:54):
but it happens. Someone told me once, you can be
the best wheelmaker out there, but if no one needs
wheels anymore, doesn't matter how good you are. Thanks for
the podcast. I love to listen on my drive to
and from work. That is Michael Harrison. That is a
great point, Michael. Everybody should do something or maybe train
these people in new renewable energy boards. Sure, and this
(46:15):
bit source company is a pretty good example of how
the market can can swoop in and in foster progress basically, right. Sure,
But the fact that they're hiring ten coal miners out
of seven thousand who need jobs is also an example
of how the market doesn't do that. And like you could,
(46:37):
this is where government comes in government spending. Say okay,
let's move forward and lay the infrastructure for an enormous
high speed internet um national grid. We need people to
install that, we need people to design it, we need
people to develop it, we need people to maintain it.
Let's take people who don't have jobs, train them to
(46:58):
do this stuff, build this infrastruct sure, and just take
off like a rocket from there. That's one thing you
could do, agreed. Uh. Man, we're gonna get some mail
for this whole episode. Good. Uh. If you want to
get in touch with us to let us know what
you think about this whole jam, you can tweet to
us at s Y s K podcast. You can join
(47:19):
us on Facebook, dot com slash Stuff you Should Know
You can send us an email to stuff podcast how
stuff Works dot com and as always, joined us at
our home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot
com For more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff Works dot com
Welcome to you. Stuff you should know from House Stuff
Works dot com. Bush and Duccas on crime. Bush supports
the death penalty for first degree murderers. Du Concas not
only opposes the death penalty, he allowed first degree murderers
to have weekend passes from prison. One was Willie Horton,
(00:24):
who murdered a boy and a robbery, stabbing him nineteen times.
Despite a life sentence, Horton received ten weekend passes from prison.
Horton fled, kidnapped a young couple, stabbing the man and
repeatedly raping his girlfriend. Weekend prison passes. Ducacas on crime,
Hey and welten to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, there's
Charles to Be, Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there. And
(00:46):
what you've just heard was something we brought back with
us from via the way back machine. An attack ad.
The attack AD from the election between George Trebert Walker
Bush and one Michael du Caucus and Uh. That ad
is widely credited as turning the tide against du Caucus's campaign,
(01:10):
which was doing pretty good at the time. Well, some
people say so, other people say depends on who you asked.
Always dissent that's politics. As it turns out, there's always
more than one opinion. But the reason we bring up
this ad which UM first aired on September twenty one, nineteen. Yes, UM,
(01:32):
it's called weekend Passes for obvious reasons, and it was
UM funded by something called the National Security Political Action
Committee And n s PACK was a non affiliated pro
Bush political action committee that was aimed at sinking du
Caucus and getting Bush elected. Yeah. I think one of
(01:55):
Bush's uh maybe it was his chief campaign guy said
by the time we're done, people are gonna think Willie
Horton is du Caucus is running mate. And it worked too.
I mean, like still, if if you say the name
Willie Horton, people of a certain age e g. R
age can still say, oh I know who that is. Yeah. Well, quickly,
(02:18):
the story of Willie Horton is he was he was
in prison for murder, was furloughed as part of the
UH for a weekend as part of the Massachusetts furlough
program that was UM in effect at the time, and
he raped and killed somebody on this weekend pass on
the weekend pass, which was a big sign that it
(02:38):
may not be a good idea to furlow murders. I
guess they needed to test it out to find out
one way or another. But yeah, that pretty much closed
the book on it. And the thing was the Bush
campaign linked du Caucus is well, du Caucus himself with
the weekend passes and insinuated that he had come up
with this and that he was in support of it. Well,
(03:01):
he wasn't support of it. He didn't come up with
it though. Yeah, he inherited it from his Republican predecessor,
I believe. Yeah, it actually started in nine two, uh
with a Republican governor governor of Massachusetts, which apparently things
have been going fine up until then until Willie Horton
came along. Yeah, it kind of had a weird uh
along and winding road. Um. The initial program excluded first
(03:25):
degree murderers, and then the Supreme Court said, no, the
law doesn't specifically say that, so you can't exclude first
degree murders. So the legislature said, well, we gotta put
a stop to this, and we can't let first agree
murderers out on leave, and Ducacus vetoed that. So he
did support it until he decided to run for president,
(03:45):
and that's when he said let's get this off. So
the n speck ad was very um widely criticized. It
was criticized as being misleading, It was criticized as fostering
racist attitudes. Um. And but it still worked. A lot
of people say, and I understand some people say, no,
(04:07):
a lot of people say, this did work. So people
say it was the tank gride remember that. Oh I
forgot about this road around that tank. Yeah, I totally
forgot about that. He was off the rails there for
a little bit. Um. But the the thing is is
George Bush's campaign I was able to say, hey, this
had nothing to do with us, blame an s pack.
(04:28):
So it still worked in George Bush's favor. But George
Bush got to got to say, this had nothing to
do with me. Remodel it. That was Clinton. I just did. Um.
It was. It was pretty dead on Clinton. Really, it's
called a political matchup. Um. And the whole way that
this pack was was funded was with what's called dark money. Yeah.
(04:51):
We should uh, we should just title this one how
to Exploit a Loophole in America. Yeah, and the Supreme
Court really screwed things up. Yeah. Or if you don't
like Josh and chuck talking politics. Turn it off now,
but we're taking down the system. Yeah. Yeah, here's the thing, man,
(05:13):
Billionaires controlling who gets elected in the United States is
not a conservative or liberal issue. We're all being screwed
over equally. Here everyone, I got a stat for you,
and then we'll get right into it. This will shake
you to the core. Uh. Since two thousand ten of
the one billion dollars spent in federal elections by superpacks,
(05:36):
almost sixty of that money came from one hundred and
ninety five people and their spouses one hundred and nine
people of campaign of superpack spending. And as as it
is crazy, but it's not that surprising if you really
step back and look at what's been going on the
last decade or so. And that's what people I mean,
(05:57):
some people say like spending tons of money on a
elections isn't bad. It's the fact that people are the
ones doing the majority of the spending that it's not right.
And the the that's a billion dollars spent by super
packs or political action committees, and super packs up until
recently had to disclose um who donated money to him.
(06:21):
So this is just the money that's traceable, and what
we're talking about is the money that's not traceable here.
So we're gonna go back a little bit um in
the way back machine, back to the early twentieth century
once again. Yeah, and um, we're gonna talk about money
(06:43):
in politics. There's this really good Mother Jones article called
Follow the Dark Money, and it gives a bit of
a history of politics and money. Uh and says Congress
is always reacting to some sort of money scandal, but
there's this long history and tradition of knowing who is
funding campaigns transparency in America. Yeah, and it started with
(07:07):
Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt ran as a trust buster. He
was against the big corporations that controlled so much in
the robber barons, but he was also simultaneously secretly going
to these same corporations and robber barons and getting secret
funding for his campaigns. Yes, one tycoon said Teddy Roosevelt
got down on his knees for us. That's not the
(07:28):
normal description of Teddy Roosevelt. And as far as corporations
are concerned, not the public image of him. Teddy Roosevelt,
you wouldn't think got on his knees for anybody. So
as a result, after Roosevelt was elected, he actually did
something about it. He signed into law the Tilman Act
that prevented it. Outlawed corporations from directly contributing to candidates.
(07:50):
That's illegal, still is today. It is. That's why we
need loopholes. Watergate came along in uh the I think
the nineteen seventy four, nineteen yeah, nine seventy two election
when Nixon was running for UM office. He um, okay,
he accepted twenty million dollars in nineteen seventy two money
(08:15):
UM in secret political contributions. And we're talking like delivered
in cash and checks in briefcases by couriers who were
flying private jets from Texas to d C. For Pete's sake. Yeah,
and his personal attorney when Herbert Kombach Uh, he was
the deputy finance chair for the Committee for re Election
for President, he destroyed this evidence and went to prison
(08:37):
for it. So it was a real thing that happened.
What's crazy is their their Political Action Committee was the
Committee to re Elect the President and the acronym was Creep.
They called themselves creep and they were trying to reelect Nixon.
Funny I mean, come on, it's a little on the nose.
Don't you think maybe it was lost on them? So um,
(08:57):
you fast forward and you just say, okay, guys, let's
bashing Teddy Roosevelt and Richard Nixon. How about some some
Democrats in there. And uh, Bill Clinton was a really
good example of that as well. Yeah, you want to
go jogging with Bill, I want to play a little
golf six figure check. Please. Access to the president or
even somebody who's running for the presidency is not supposed
(09:20):
to be purchasable. You or you or I. We can't
do that. We don't have access to the president because
we don't have that much money. So it's just simply
not fair for somebody who does have that much money
to have that much more access to the president or
somebody running for the president. So over the years have
been scandal and then uh some sort of change to
(09:42):
campaign finance laws. But there's been this through thread over
the twentieth century that America has said, we want to
know who is giving money to uh two candidates. We
want to know who they're indebted to when they win. Yeah,
but there's also a been at the head of every
time law comes into action. There is a loophole that
(10:05):
is invariably found that can get around that, created by
the same politicians who passed the Act to begin with,
because it's a game. They really upsetting if you think
about it. Oh, it's very upsetting. I'm I'm really doing
a good job here staying calm. Well, you have a
vein in your forehead that's pulsing. I can see it is.
There's this blood spurting out of it. So um chuck.
(10:29):
There's a there's another thread to um to all of this.
It's semi political, and that is the tax code. Right,
So if you go look at the tax code after,
you're going to see something called the five oh one
C four organization called a social welfare organization, or you
(10:49):
can also be a local association of employees and be
a five one four Those are also known as unions. Right,
And as of nineteen thirteen the Underwood terrorf Act, which
brought back in taxes, five oh one four organizations are
nonprofits that are tax exempt, right, Yeah, and they can
(11:10):
accept donations. But because of this uh there five oh
one C four status, they don't have to reveal who
their donors are, right, which wouldn't seem like a big
problem because all nonprofits are are people trying to save
animals and save the rainforest. Right, social welfare. One. Sure,
so you want to just donate your money and I
want it to be anonymous and it's no big deal.
(11:31):
But that is not always the case. Um. By the
well late nineteen fifty nine, early nineteen sixties, the government
realized that politics and uh five oh one see where
they five one c fours at that time, Okay, um,
they were intertwined. Uh, there was nothing they could do
about it, and so they started loosening rules. In a
(11:53):
nineteen eight one they said, you know what, you can
be politically engaged as long as it's under the banner
of the promotion of quote social welfare, or that the
work you're doing is primarily social welfare. And the way
that that translated as far as the I R S,
who you know, um enforces the tax code. As far
(12:14):
as the I R S was concerned, it was if
fifty one of your funds are spent on social welfare,
you can spend up to forty on political stuff. Yeah,
And the I R S had to fight for that
designation because previously it just said primarily which is such
a loose uh word. You know, they said, you know,
(12:34):
we what does this really mean? Right? And so that
they just through I think they released an interpretation a
rule that said this is what primarily means nine And
that was the rule from one on basically, um and so, okay,
you've got five ohen C. Four is they're hanging out
there over there, they're doing their own thing. Nobody's paying
too much attention to them. Uh. And then two ten
(12:56):
rolls along, and there was a lawsuit that had made
its way through the lower courts up to the Supreme Court,
and it was called Citizens United versus the Federal Election Committee.
It sounds so boring that I hazard to say that
Americans have never even heard of it. And it's and
it may be one of the most influential Supreme Court
(13:16):
rulings in the history of this country. But it just
listened to it. Citizens United versus the FEC Snooze. So
Citizens United was a m a political action committee and uh, well,
I think it still is as a matter of fact.
And Citizens United was spending money on advertisements for a
(13:40):
video on demand movie that was basically um a attack
ad one giant attack ad on Hillary Clinton. I thought
you're gonna say it was one of those Kirk Camera
in movies. I think it was similar. He had a
cameo I think, right, and so in this movie, um,
like the Citizens United didn't. I don't believe they funded
(14:01):
the movie Your Finance if, but they were. They were
running ads about it, and they were running ads within
I think thirty days of the election, no, sixty days
of the prime no, sorry, thirty days of a primary election,
which under the McCain Fine Goal of Act, which is
a campaign finance Reform Act that came along in two
do to um, you're not allowed to do And Citizens
(14:24):
United said, you know what, why wouldn't we be allowed
to do? This is political speech. Um, We're going to
sue the Federal Elections Commission, And they did, and the
Supreme Court ruled on it, and the Supreme Court in
Citizens United ruled in favor of Citizens United. But then
they released one of the most sweeping explanations of what
they'd ruled that just completely changed the face of American
(14:48):
politics from that point on. It said, it's open season.
Bring in as much money as you want uh into
the American political system, because we are opening the floodgates
as wide as they can go. Yeah, what they basically
did was they equated speech with money. And they said,
(15:10):
basically they took the term money talks to the reaches
that we can't even comprehend that you can make huge
donations and that is a political statement. That is, your
speech is a corporation, and you are protected because corporations
are individuals. Right, So, so that's exactly what they did.
They said, spending money on political campaigns, any political contribution
(15:32):
is a form of political speech. Speech is protected under
the First Amendment, but the speech of individuals is protected. Well.
Corporations are considered artificial people, so therefore they should have
that same thing extended to them, right, And so that
the ruling was that you can spend as much as
you want as long as it doesn't go directly to
(15:54):
a candidate. And um, you can also now that since
there's five four's, you can funnel as much money as
you want two or five O four and remain an
anonymous donor. Yeah. And the problem, well, there are a
lot of problems. One of the biggest problems is is
these corporations are spending tons and tons, millions and millions
(16:15):
of dollars. The court essentially said, uh, Joe Schmo on
the street donating ten dollars to a campaign is the
same thing as a corporation donating hundred thousand dollars to
a campaign, because they're both individuals. So it created this
huge loophole. And I think the Supreme Court they were
relying on was uh that these groups would be independent
(16:37):
of the candidates. And that's not only not how it
worked out. That was the plan all along. It was
extremely naive, the ruling was. And if you look at
naive or was it, I don't know, but if you
look at the I have the same questions. You know,
a lot of people do the the If you look
at the ruling though, there's a section on transparency where
they say, with the Supreme Court uphold the constitutionality of
(17:00):
requiring transparency in campaign finance eight to one, which is
like they're the only person descending was Clarence Thomas, and
it was like, yes, we're saying you need to be transparent,
and they said, okay, well, then transparency is going to
come through people demanding the corporations that they own stock
in to release what what political donations they've done. That
(17:23):
makes total sense. If you have stock in the company,
if your life's fortune is invested in a corporation, you
should know who are they're who they're giving their money to. Okay,
so that's one way. And they also said, well, the
Federal Elections Commission, they've got their job to do, the
I R S, the SEC. There's all these regulatory agencies
that are tasked with keeping transparency in the political process,
(17:47):
and um, we're we're just going to rely on them.
And as we're about to see after this break, relying
on that was an enormous mistake. Foolhardy. All all right,
(18:15):
we're back boy. We're getting riled up today. I'm remaining calm.
Still up election season. So the Supreme Court said, guys,
spend as much money as you want, spend it anonymously
if you want. Um, the only thing that remains illegal
is UH corporations contributing directly to candidates, right, which, once
(18:37):
you have these loopholes, who cares, you don't need to anymore. Right. Plus, also,
don't even worry about the mega donors donating directly to
candidates because you, um, there's there's requirements for reporting, there's
transparency requirements. If you under McCain. Fine gold. If you
contribute a thousand dollars or more to a candidate or
(18:59):
a pack that has to report donors, um, you have
to report it. Somebody's got to report it. Sure there's transparency, right,
the Federal Elections Commission, the i R S, all these
guys are tasked with making sure that happened. So we're fine.
Supreme Court went home and took a giant NAT together
on their enormous nine person bed. UH. And here's one
(19:21):
of the other big problems is a lot of this
money goes toward UH campaign ads, television ads, which have
a lot of sway um nine out of ten and
people have studied this. The uh Annenberg Public Policy Center
UH determined that in the two thousand twelve campaign cycle,
nine out of ten ads UH funded by dark money
(19:42):
were negative. So that's why you see those negative ads.
And not only that, but twenty of those were misleading.
And there's no accountability. So they're being funded anonymously and
there's no fact checker. They don't have to run it
by anybody to get approval and say, well, this is
all true, it's not misleading at all. So you could
basically say whatever you want the ad runs, it's anonymously funded,
(20:04):
and someone's campaign is destroyed in the process. So the
point is, as long as the candidate is not coordinating
with the political action committee, the superpacker, the five oh
one CE four, then it's all kosher. It's all illegal coordinating,
meaning like so blatantly like come on, it's still going on.
So every every election season as it starts to kick off,
(20:26):
you'll you'll see on the news like Ted Cruz or
Bernie Sanders or whoever just released of an eerie twelve
hour tape of them doing different things with no soundtrack whatsoever.
And and the whole thing is they they'll release a
real and it's them hanging out with their mom, them
(20:46):
writing a tractor, them like standing on like a mountain
looking as the sun comes up, with their foot on
the head of a small child. Sure, they're like there,
and it's just that there's no sound to it whatsoever.
And they just put it out there. I'm just putting
it out there, and then anybody wants to use it
can do whatever they want with it. And then the
political action committees, the super from the come along use
(21:07):
that footage to make their ads in support of the candidate.
I kind of wondered. I was like, how are they
getting this footage anyway? If they can't be directed putting
it out there? I had no idea. Yeah, it's pretty
cynical really if you think about it, the idea that
they're not coordinating in any way, shape or form. They're
just putting all this footage out there. And and again,
guys like if you're getting riled up if you're a
(21:28):
Republican when we say they like the Democrats do this too,
But it's really disingenuous to say that all parties are
equally equally at fault here for using dark money, because again,
studies show that if you quantify the amount of money
spent by the GOP and by the Democrats, the GOP
(21:49):
has outspent the Democrats mind boggling anything to sevent Yes.
As far as using dark money goes, it's it's definitely
not a like. The Democrats do it, for sure, and
they sometimes do it cynically. I wade about a a
dark money committee that released an ad in favor of
(22:12):
Harry Reid lambasting dark money. That's pretty cynical as well. Yeah,
so both sides do it. The Republicans just do it way,
way more. Yeah. And I think Hillary Clinton has come
under fire for her reliance on super packs being attacked
by Bernie of course, who's like, I don't want any
part of that stuff. Um, although there are some super
(22:33):
packs for Bernie, but I think he's disavowed them. Maybe. Yeah,
you have to look at George Bush disavowed the weekend
passed his ad to you still benefit from it. It's
not like he's like, guys, you have to stop. Well
that was my Bernie standards. No, that was your Larry
David right. Oh wait, same guy. Uh. Leading up to
(22:54):
the primaries here in New Hampshire and Iowa not too
long ago, Bernie came under fire from Hillary because there's
a group called Friends of the Earth Action. Uh there
are five oh one c four and um they are
in strong support of Bernie. And she's like, hey, dude,
you're getting dark money too from this outfit. Uh. Friends
(23:15):
of Earth Action said, Hey, first of all, we've been
around since early seventies. We've been around long before dark
money has been around. Uh, that's not what we are.
We are mainly small donor based. Um, do not compare
us to these corporations. Uh, and you know they have
a point in a lot of ways. You can't compare
(23:35):
Friends of Earth action to the Koch brothers. UM. But
I think Hillary was just trying to get in some like, hey,
you're not completely clean either, Right, It's true. And the
Koch brothers is good that you mentioned them because they
are basically the poster boys for dark money contributions. Right,
Americans for Prosperity spent thirty six million dollars and that's
(23:56):
their group right in twelve, UM, and they actually got
outspent by other groups like Karl Rove created UM Crossroads
GPS and that are so dumb. They spent seventy one
million in two thousand twelve. But the Koch Brothers in
particular have pledged nine hundred million dollars for the two
thousand and sixteen cycle. That's how much they're going to
(24:19):
spend on the two thousand and sixteen cycle. And UM,
if you read up on those guys and their dark
money contributions UM or just their general political contributions, they've
definitely amassed a lot of friends in state legislatures, in
the Senate, in the in the the UM, the House,
and the one that's left is the presidency, and they're
(24:41):
spending a tremendous amount of money making friends with whoever
is going to become president. All right, so let's talk
for a second about does money when you in election?
Because that's really what's it the route here? If money
doesn't win the elections? And who cares? I take issue
with that, but go ahead? What what was the issue? Well,
the issue is like in this article, the author says,
(25:02):
you know a lot of people raise a lot of
money and flame out, they don't make it even to
the primary. Look at Jeb Bush. Yeah he I think
he raised a hundred and three million through super PACs alone. Yeah,
and and just burned right through it, didn't get anywhere
with it. But that's a disingenuous that's a straw argument
because it's it's saying like, yeah, you can raise all
the money you want and you're still not gonna win.
(25:24):
The thing is somebody's gonna win, and the people that
help them win through these huge donations, they're gonna be
indebted to those people. Well, I'll help you out even further,
my friend. Uh. People that say you can spend a
ton of money and still not win. Who he or
she who spends the most money almost always wins. Yeah, yeah,
(25:45):
not sort of. Yeah. Nine out of ten uh in
the House and eight out of ten in the Senate. Uh,
winners are the people who spent the most money. Yeah,
eight two. So you can't ignore that. If you raise
the most money, you have an eight or nine out,
it's a chance of winning. So money is buying elections,
(26:05):
it is. And then people say, well, if these are
as long as the packs and the super packs in
the five and one C four is all stay separate
from the candidate, then and there's no coordination and there's
no crossover whatever, then the candidates not indebted to these
people who gave nine million dollars to their campaign. Um,
which is just the most ridiculous assertion you can possibly
(26:29):
think of. And I really I read this this um.
I think it was a Bloomberg article or U S News,
I can't remember. And it basically explained it how you're
indebted to these people. It's not necessarily nefarius, although I'm
quite sure there is a tremendous amount of nefarious nous
out there. But even if you remove the nefarious angle, right,
(26:52):
if you are a presidential candidate, and you're moving and shaken. Yeah,
you're going to like the local diner and somewhere in
like Rhode I Land or whatever and shaking hands or whatever.
But the people you're really interacting with that you see
over and over again at the same fundraisers. Those are
the mega donors. You don't see the dude who's sitting
(27:12):
at the diner asking you a question more than that
one time at that one dime you you you do
see the same mega donors time after time after time
after time. So the very at least they have your ear,
and even if they don't have your ear, they become
who you think of when you think of your electorate,
These people who you saw time and time and time again,
(27:34):
who contributed money after money after money. So even if
you're not saying, yeah, give me some money and I'll
make your your legal troubles go away with the I
R S, even if it's not quid pro quo like that,
there's still a mentality that crops up where if you're
exposed to these people who are giving you tons of
cash to get you elected, you're going to equate their
(27:56):
help with your success at being elected. That's at the
very least how it influences politics. Yeah, all right, we
definitely need to take a break now because I can't
even coming out of your eye ducks. All right, we're back.
(28:28):
You're good, You got the tissue. Yeah good, you're crying
bloody tears. Uh, I get riled up to man, It's
just it's when you look at the state of American
politics these days, it's very hard to not want to
go live on a deserted island somewhere. Canada your own oligarchy. Yeah, myself,
(28:50):
I wonder what it's. I don't know much about politics
around the world. I know other like you know, wealthy
countries are corrupt as well. Um, like we're leading the
race though, the race downward. Yeah, I'd like to hear
from other countries out there, other like big wealthy countries,
(29:11):
Um about your systems. Yeah, I'm sure they're largely broken. Right.
Are we the only ones? No, We're definitely not the
only ones, right the Finns. I mean you look at
Skaninavia and you're like, yeah, they're like a model of
of you know, using taxes for good and all that.
But how much of it do you not hear about?
(29:31):
Like how much like like waste is there, How much
graft is there? How you know? I'm like, well, they
pay so much much in taxes over there. But everything
we hear though from people in that part of the
world say we're happy to because everything's great. It's like
we have no crime, we have no gun violence, everyone's healthy,
we all get healthcare, schools are awesome, We're all happy.
(29:55):
I don't know, maybe I'll move to Finland. So we
we've talked about um, like why how money influences politics,
But the underlying key is this is if you um,
if you can purchase campaigns, you can purchase everything else.
(30:16):
Because you get people who owe you or who you
have influenced, or who you just share a tremendous amount
of common viewpoints with into office. You back the right horse,
your guy got in there. Right. You can put it
as crassly or as nicely as you want, but you
help get somebody into office, and now they kind of
(30:36):
owe you, and now the policies are probably going to
fall into your favor. And just the ability to do
this is such a symptom of the inequality in the
United States that we're dealing with right now that I
think that's what disheartens me the most. It's it's like
when the Supreme Court rule in two thousand ten, we're
(30:57):
opening the floodgates, you have a voice individual? Yeah, but
yeah it did. But did we ever? Was the Supreme
Court really just saying like, hey, we're gonna take the
scales off your eyes. Right, We're not. We're gonna take
away any pretense. Here's how it is. Here's probably how
it's always been. But now it's legal. Man, just get
used to it. Yeah, but no one was paying attention
(31:21):
because people but I mean like back in the seventies
when Watergate happened, people paid attention to that, you know,
because the idea that if you were wealthy you could
become an ambassador for k or that you add access
to the president. It's always ticked Americans off. Uh. So
remember when we talked a little bit ago about um,
the five oh one c fours have to of their
(31:46):
uh spending cannot be political. Uh no comment on that part.
But it's unenforceable. Basically, Well, IRIS did try to enforce
it once. Yes, that's where I was headed. The I
R s uh made the mistake of going too hard
at the tea party um because they felt like they
(32:06):
were the worst offenders, and it backfard on him in
a big way. Um to say the least, would you say, Yeah, Well,
the GOP in Congress came down hard on the i
r S. They got the I R S director removed
from her position, got a new person installed, and this
new guy has basically said, like you know this, I'm
(32:27):
just going with everything the Supreme Court thinks. So I'm
gonna stop enforcing this. And even if the I R
S wanted to enforce these rules that that they're tasked
with making sure that there's transparency, right. Um. Uh. The
Senate actually inserted a couple of bills, and by Senate
I mean Mitch McConnell, who hates campaign finance laws. Uh,
(32:51):
he got a couple of bills inserted in the omnibus
spending bill, a couple of writers. Yes. Um. And if
you guys, a lot of people may not know what
an omnibus spending bill is. It's basically a big, large, sweeping, uh,
set of many many bills and writers all under one banner.
It pays it's the government's budget. Well yeah, but it's
(33:14):
a it's they don't have to do with one another.
You can when you hear like a writer was attached
to it. That that a lot of times means someone
is trying to sort of sneak something through. Right, So
if you attach a rider to the right bill, you
can get almost anything passed. And you know, I shouldn't
say sneak something through because it's not like it's in secret,
(33:35):
but it's a way. It's a very convenient way to
pass a controversial amendment. Right. Okay, So if you if
you take a very cherry bill like one that has
to pass, like the bill that pays for the government
spending for the next year, and you insert a writer
in there that says the I R. S is not
allowed to make clearer rules on UH five oh one,
(33:56):
S fours and political action committees spending politics, you're gonna
get it passed. And it did get passed. Yeah. And
another thing that got passed was, remember when we talked
about the fact that shareholders wanted to know if their
corporations who they were donating to, They also got a
almost had snuck it in. They almost also got in
(34:16):
a writer that said, no, corporations don't have to do that.
They did, They said that they said that the SEC
is not allowed to make rules considering making corporations disclosed
political contribution. Yeah, you cannot force them to do that.
So there's a ban on the I R S clarifying
its rules and the SEC creating a rule just clarifying
(34:38):
they just wanted it more clearly defined in existing You
can't do that, but we like it really nebulous. So
Congress said, sit down when it comes to campaign finance stuff.
You you don't do your jobs anymore. Your regulatory stuff
is over with now. Uh, individuals have petitioned uh these
companies um, and sometimes they voluntarily given it up. But
(35:00):
if that's the solution, then it's not much of one.
And then so lastly, so the SEC is down, the
I R S is down, um, And the last the
last agency that was tasked with enforcing transparency was the
Federal Elections Commission itself. Yeah, surely they would step up
and do the right thing. So the Federal Elections Commission
(35:22):
is now split three and three along party lines and
apparently deadlocks as a matter of routine. So you need
four commissioners for FEC commissioners to take action on anything
to get a quorum, right, they can't even get a quorum.
So as far as campaign finance stuff goes, they have
(35:43):
been sitting on their hands since two thousand ten. And
there was a couple of rulings about um transparency that
that that are about the last things they did. So
in two thousand and seven they said, you know that
McCain fine Gold requirement that says if you spend a
thousand dollars or more contributing to a political group or campaign,
(36:04):
you have to disclose it. We the Federal Elections Commission,
decided that that means that if you spend a thousand
dollars or more on a political like communication like an AD,
then you have to disclose it. So that means that
if you if you contributed a thousand dollars to a
(36:25):
political action committee, you would have to say this is
for ads well and for this AD specifically. That came later,
but yeah, that's the way it is now, which no
one ever does. It's another loophole. So this last thing,
this last bastion of transparency, to where you had to
(36:45):
say I donated a thousand dollars or more, you you
would have to say it is not just for an
attack AD, it's for attack AD number two thirty eight.
Hillary hates America. That's what this money is for. And
like you said, no one does that because they don't
have to. So you so that as far as the
Federal Elections Commission is concerned, you don't have to say
(37:07):
you donated that thousand dollars. Yeah, they don't have to,
so they won't because they don't want their name attached
to it, which is the most cowardly thing you can do,
you know if you think about it. Well, yeah, there's this,
Well that's the argument. That's a lot of people's argument
is anonymous political speech keeps you from, um getting blowback
from the powers that be or whatever. And there was
(37:28):
this woman who has caught handing out anonymous pamphlets that
she wrote outside of a polling place, which apparently was
illegal under McCain fine Gold, and everybody was like, well,
there's a long, proud tradition of handing out anonymous right.
The Federalist papers were originally anonymous, and Justice Scalia, who
was who died recently. Um, he was actually very very conservative,
(37:52):
and in his descent on that ruling in favor of
the woman's right to handle out anonymous pamphlets said anonymous
pamphlets have about as much historic tradition and precedents as
anonymous phone calls in this country, they're not honorable. There's
something honorable about anonymously lambasting something that didn't translate to
the rest of the court as far as Citizens United
(38:13):
is concerned. Yeah, it's the equivalent of of going in
the dark of night and like spray painting something on
a wall and running away. Right, it's true, you know.
So here's where we're at right now. The Supreme Court
ruled that corporations are people. They already had ruled that
they upheld it. Political money is protected speech, right, So
(38:36):
this opened the floodgates to unlimited money to five O
one s fours, which are nonprofit action groups who do
not need to disclose their donor's identities, which means that
you could you could contribute as much money as you
wanted to anonymously to a political campaign. So the SEC
was banned from requiring corporate disclosure, the I r S
was banned from investigating the political action groups themselves, and
(38:59):
then the VC the Federal Elections Commission removed the last
transparency requirements of the donors, and an estimated ten billion
dollars is going to be spent on this two thousand
sixteen campaign, five or six billion on the presidency right,
two billion was spent in two thousand twelve. So the
big question here is, are you the individual upping your
(39:23):
political contribution five times? Do you account for this enormous
increase from two billion to five or six billion dollars? No? No,
of course not. So there are some folks that started
digging around and said, all right, who's funding Who's funding
some of these uh efforts? Uh? Maybe like climate change denial,
(39:47):
Some somebody's funding this stuff. So there's a guy named
well at direct the University and Environmental It's like a
sociologist named Robert Brule. He said, you know what, let
me look into this and see somebody is giving a
lot of money to climate change. The aisle and um
Xon was was given a ton of money like blatantly
for years and years and again the Koke brothers, the
Koke brothers, and we all knew that because it was
(40:09):
all you know on record. But a weird thing happened
once these changes came about. Um the Koch Brothers, A
Coke Industries, and x On Mobile their cash flow to
climate change, and I'll disappeared without a trace Yeah, they're
traceable stuff. But a hundred and forty foundations funneled almost
six hundred million dollars to about one hundred climate denial organizations,
(40:32):
uh since then, and their money dried up, This money
increased into anonymous five. You don't need to be a
Sherlock Holmes to figure out what's going on here. Yeah.
And the other thing about a five O one C
four is, let's say you have a really great um,
a really great political action committee. You're a really great
(40:52):
um social uh social awareness group, right um or social
welfare group, and you don't want to at that brand
die because it's really established itself, but you don't want
to keep funneling money to it because climate denial has
a bad name these days. Right, You can funnel money
to a five oh one C four that funnels money
(41:13):
to that political action committee, and you your donation, it's
it's it's basically laundered. You're laundering your donation, turning it anonymous.
But it's still having the same effect, the same outcome
thanks to that loophole. Yeah, and then one more chuck.
One more criticism of this whole thing is if you say,
so what who cares? This is the way the world works,
(41:36):
especially with corporations in particular, if they start doing what's
called rent seeking, which is there's a there's an established pie,
and when you rent seek, you go to get your
piece of the pie. It keeps you from innovating. You
start going spending your money on legislation. Yeah, it's like
(41:56):
renting is basically if you're a big corporation spending a
hundred million dollars on lobbying for regulations against your competitor
instead of spending that one hundred million dollars investing in
your own corporation to grow, which is no good for shareholders. No,
your bottom line still kind of goes up, but really
you're just reaching the path towards stagnation because you're not
(42:17):
innovating anymore. And the public loses out because regulation decreases. Right, Um,
jobs are lost because you're not innovating, and then as
far as consumers are concerned, there's like less stuff to
buy because the corporations are going for the piece of
the pie rather than making the pie bigger or creating
new pies. Yeah, they going for the money that's already
out there. So so the solution I think is strictly
(42:42):
public financing of campaigns, like I have no problem with that.
Just say, here's a hundred million dollars to the candidates
who won the primaries, right and um, get creative. This
is all you got, you are. It's illegal to use
another penny outside of these public funds that were just
given to you as the the party candidates go to it.
(43:07):
Everything else is totally illegal. I can't imagine what a
sea change it would be in politics. I can't imagine
there would be another loophole. Well, you know what would
happen is suddenly these um, these political action committees would
start attacking this idea, saying, you, Joe Schmo, you can't
vote with your or you can't your political speech from
(43:28):
your campaign contributions being restricted. Your First Amendment rights are
being restricted. Going to give which is suddenly taken on
huge dimensions of import Uh, it's being restricted. And that's
exactly what would happen. Who So we moved into Finland. No,
we need to take this country back. Man. What's the
(43:49):
best country? That's what I want to know from listeners,
which one is the best? I can't wait to hear
Costa Rica. That's pretty nice, right if you want to
know more about campaign finance, dark money, all that jazz,
we want you to go check it out. Look up
dark money in the search bar at how stuff works
dot com, and just check out dark money all over
(44:10):
the web, including Jane Mayer from The New Yorker wrote
a really interesting book called dark Money All about the
Koch Brothers. Yeah, fantastic. Well, since I said Jane Mayer,
it's time for listener now, all right, I'm gonna call
this one uh maybe appropriate for this well, not really
(44:31):
somebody funding us. This is from a coal miner about
our Bill Gates podcast. He said, Hey, guys, one problem
that no one ever seems to talk about with renewable
energy is the people. The people you ask, well, I
was an underground coal miner for seven years until the
market got so bad that I lost my job. And
I'm just one of seven thousand plus people here in
(44:51):
eastern Kentucky that has been hit hard by this. I'm
not saying we need to stick with coal, it's just
the people. Don't think about the people that are behind
the fossil fuel industry losing jobs. Not only are people
losing their way of life, but entire towns are being killed.
I can't count how many people have had to leave
the place that they've called home their entire life to
find work. Along with new renewable, cheaper energy, we need
(45:13):
to find jobs to fill that void of those who
have been lost. Yeah you know. I mean it's not
like because creating renewable energy creates a lot of jobs,
but they're not going to the coal miners. You know
what I'm saying. But however, this is kind of neat. UM.
I was lucky enough to find work at bit Source,
a tech start up here. Uh. The company hired ten
(45:33):
former coal miners and began teaching us how to web
and how to be web and software developers. Uh. The
only problem is there only ten of us, uh, and
it's just this one company, and they cannot feel the
void of all those who lost jobs. I know that
you guys might be able to help shed some light
on this problem. Like I said, no one thinks about
the people and the families that are hurt by progress,
(45:54):
but it happens. Someone told me once, you can be
the best wheelmaker out there, but if no one needs
wheels anymore, doesn't matter how good you are. Thanks for
the podcast. I love to listen on my drive to
and from work. That is Michael Harrison. That is a
great point, Michael. Everybody should do something or maybe train
these people in new renewable energy boards. Sure, and this
(46:15):
bit source company is a pretty good example of how
the market can can swoop in and in foster progress basically, right. Sure,
But the fact that they're hiring ten coal miners out
of seven thousand who need jobs is also an example
of how the market doesn't do that. And like you could,
(46:37):
this is where government comes in government spending. Say okay,
let's move forward and lay the infrastructure for an enormous
high speed internet um national grid. We need people to
install that, we need people to design it, we need
people to develop it, we need people to maintain it.
Let's take people who don't have jobs, train them to
(46:58):
do this stuff, build this infrastruct sure, and just take
off like a rocket from there. That's one thing you
could do, agreed. Uh. Man, we're gonna get some mail
for this whole episode. Good. Uh. If you want to
get in touch with us to let us know what
you think about this whole jam, you can tweet to
us at s Y s K podcast. You can join
(47:19):
us on Facebook, dot com slash Stuff you Should Know
You can send us an email to stuff podcast how
stuff Works dot com and as always, joined us at
our home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot
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