October, 04 2011, 01:09pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Erin Kesler, Democracy 21: 202-355-9600 or ekesler@democracy21.org
David Vance, Campaign Legal Center: 240-605-8600 or dvance@campaignlegalcenter.org
Michael Beckel, Center for Responsive Politics: 202-354-0108 or press@crp.org
Elite Donors Do Double Duty: Presidential Super PACs Attract Wealthy Donors Who Have Maxed Out to Candidates
During the second quarter of 2011, more than 50 individuals donated the legal maximum to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and also dug deeper into their pockets and made additional contributions to Restore Our Future, a candidate-specific Super PAC formed to promote Romney's campaign for president.
WASHINGTON
During the second quarter of 2011, more than 50 individuals donated the legal maximum to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and also dug deeper into their pockets and made additional contributions to Restore Our Future, a candidate-specific Super PAC formed to promote Romney's campaign for president.
A new analysis by Democracy 21, the Campaign Legal Center and the Center for Responsive Politics shows that 55 of the 75 individuals that donated to Restore Our Future also contributed to Romney's presidential campaign committee. These double-dipping donors represent almost three-quarters (73 percent) of all of Restore Our Future's individual donors.
Their contributions to Restore Our Future ranged in size from as little as $3,500 to as much as $100,000, $500,000 and even $1 million. These contributions are far in excess of the $2,500 limit per individual, per election, that applies to contributions made to Romney or any other federal candidate.
Overall, these 55 donors to Romney's presidential campaign contributed a combined total of $6.4 million to the Super PAC supporting Romney -- a majority (52 percent) of all the money Restore Our Future raised as of June 30, the joint analysis shows.
Super PACs report semi-annually in an off election year, so there is no information available, for example, on the principal candidate Super PAC supporting Texas Gov. Rick Perry, which was formed after the June 2011 reporting deadline.
In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling last year, Super PACs are allowed to raise unlimited amounts of money from donors -- individuals, corporations and unions -- which they can use to fund political advertisements for or against federal candidates and to otherwise support or oppose candidates. They cannot donate the money they raise directly to candidates, nor are they allowed to coordinate with candidates' campaigns, although FEC coordination rules are weak and ineffective.
"The information in the study being released today provides further evidence to confirm that presidential campaigns and presidential candidate Super PACs are deeply intertwined and are, in reality, one entity to which the contribution limits applicable to a single federal candidate should be applied," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that promotes campaign finance reform. "The presidential candidate Super PAC exists for one reason: to serve as an arm of the presidential campaign for big-money donors to launder unlimited contributions to support the presidential candidate and thereby evade and eviscerate the contribution limits for a presidential candidate enacted to prevent corruption."
"This analysis offers yet more proof that these candidate-specific Super PACs are nothing more than an end-around existing contribution limits," said Paul S. Ryan, FEC Program Director at the Campaign Legal Center. "The revolving door of staff between candidates and the Super PACs supporting them makes clear the close relationships between the two. The Super PACs are simply shadow candidate committees. Million-dollar contributions to the Super PACs pose just as big a threat of corruption as would million-dollar contributions directly to candidates."
"The data set reported so far is still small," added Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, "but it demonstrates the largely uniform donor base shared by these ostensibly 'independent' Super PACs and the candidates they support. We will have a much better sense of this relationship after we can review the year-end reports that Super PACs must file on January 31, 2012."
This is the first presidential election in which Super PACs have existed -- and the first where candidate-specific Super PACs are being used by donors to contribute far more money than the candidate contribution limits allow to directly support the candidate.
And Romney's supporters are not the only ones to be milking the new campaign finance landscape for all it's worth. >> Read More
Nonpartisan, independent and nonprofit, the Center for Responsive Politics is the nation's premier research group tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy.
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'My Child Is Human': Palestinian American Mother Disrupts Austin Testimony
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A week after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told lawmakers that the U.S. has no "evidence of genocide being created" in Gaza, peace activists disrupted the Pentagon chief's testimony on the Biden administration's 2025 budget request and demanded he acknowledge the humanity of Palestinian children.
"My child is human!" said Nasbeebah Hajjaj, a Palestinian-American woman who held up her 16-month-old son, Hamza. "Stop killing Palestinian children!"
The anti-war group CodePink said Hajjaj immigrated to the U.S. with her family when she was two months old, and has lost approximately 20 family members to Israel's bombardment of Gaza since October.
The group targeted Austin's testimony a month after the Biden administration released its 2025 budget request—a proposal that includes $1.1 trillion in military-related spending. Despite growing calls from U.S. lawmakers and rights advocates, the White House has not announced conditions for military aid to Israel, which has been widely accused of human rights violations as it has assaulted Gaza and blocked humanitarian aid from reaching Palestinians.
Israel's bombardment has killed at least 33,899 Palestinians so far, and more than two dozen people have died of starvation in recent months as international experts have warned parts of northern Gaza are facing famine.
At least 13,000 children have been killed, and the United Nations reported in February that 70% of those killed overall have been women and children—even as Israel and the U.S. have insisted Israeli forces are targeting Hamas.
The International Court of Justice issued a preliminary ruling in January saying Israel is "plausibly" committing genocide in Gaza, and lawmakers including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have expressed support for the ruling—but the U.S. has dismissed the court's findings, including at Austin's hearing last week.
While Hajjaj held up her son at Wednesday's hearing, another protester, identified by CodePink as Helen, addressed the defense secretary.
"Secretary Austin, why are you denying Israel's genocide in Gaza? Why are you denying genocide in Gaza?" said Helen, who was arrested after being led out of the hearing. "The whole world sees it! You know the laws of war! You know you have blood on your hands! You have blood on your hands! We have blood on our hands."
The advocates chanted, "Shame on you!" as they were led out of the hearing room.
Outside the hearing room, Hajjaj emphasized that the Biden administration has "the power to stop" Israel's attacks on Gaza by cutting off its military aid—of which the U.S. is the largest international supplier. The Foreign Assistance Act stipulates that the U.S. cannot provide military funding to countries that block American humanitarian aid.
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The center of the U.S. military-industrial complex has been shifting over the past decade from the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area to Northern California—a shift that is accelerating with the rise of artificial intelligence-based systems, according to a report published Wednesday.
The report—entitledHow Big Tech and Silicon Valley Are Transforming the Military-Industrial Complex—was authored by Roberto J. González, a professor of cultural anthropology at San José State University, for the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs.
The new paper comes amid the contentious rise of AI-powered lethal autonomous weapons systems, or killer robots; increasing reliance upon AI on battlefields from Gaza to Ukraine; and growing backlash from tech workers opposed to their companies' products and services being used to commit or enable war crimes.
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The report highlights the rise of a new class of billion-dollar military contractors, "a combination of gargantuan tech firms like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, and hundreds of smaller, pre-IPO startup companies supported by VC firms."
"The use of drones and AI-enabled weapons systems in Ukraine and Gaza, and a feared AI arms race with China, have fueled the
Pentagon's heavy investment in advanced digital tech," González wrote.
A lack of transparency is obscuring the true value of some of the largest military contracts to tech companies.
"One estimate indicates that U.S. military and intelligence agencies awarded at least $28 billion to Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet (Google's parent company) between 2018 and 2022," the report states. "The actual value of these contracts is likely much higher, because many of the largest known contracts with U.S. tech companies are classified and withheld from public procurement databases."
González found that the five largest military contracts to major tech firms between 2018 and 2022 "had contract ceilings totaling at least $53 billion combined."
"Major tech firms are also awarded large subcontracts from relatively obscure intermediaries or 'passthrough' companies that are granted primary contracts from the Pentagon—evading scrutiny and analysis," the paper adds.
González said that multi-year software-as-a-service contracts "could make the Pentagon and CIA more dependent than ever on the expertise of technical experts from the private sector."
The risk of conflicts of interest increases as military-dependent tech companies go public.
"As just one example, since going public, more than half of Palantir Technologies' revenue has come from the federal government," the report states. "Recent Palantir contracts with the U.S. Army Special Operations Command and the Air Force are worth more than $900 million. Palantir stock rose more than 170% in 2023."
There's also the danger of a "revolving door" between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon as many senior government officials "are now gravitating towards defense-related VC or private equity firms as executives or advisers after they retire from public service."
"The traditional 'revolving door' meant that a former defense official might accept an executive position with traditional weapons manufacturers; there are more lucrative options now," González wrote. "At least 50 former defense officials are working in VC and private equity, leveraging their connections with current officials or members of Congress to advance beneficial legislation for defense tech firms in their firms' investment portfolios."
"The implications are significant: The new 'revolving door' will accelerate military and intelligence agency funding for early-stage defense tech startups," the report states.
González details how "overblown, inaccurate, ideological talking points are driving defense funding for Big Tech," including "grandiose claims about the effectiveness of artificial intelligence; the overestimation of China's military and technological capabilities; the idea that America has the ability and duty to protect the world's democratic societies; and a steadfast belief that the best way to preserve U.S. dominance is through a free market that prioritizes corporate needs."
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"Looking back, you could see this being the first domino in something that changes the entire South," said one labor journalist.
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The election kicked off a month after workers at the Chattanooga plant filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) formally requesting an election to join the UAW, which secured record-breaking contracts at the Big Three U.S. automakers last year after a historic six-week strike.
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The Chattanooga election marks the third time in a decade that the UAW has tried to organize the Volkswagen plant, which currently has around 4,300 workers. Voting concludes on Friday.
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About 4,000 Volkswagen workers in Tennessee are voting on whether to unionize with the United Auto Workers. Labor journalist @hamiltonnolan says it's the most important union vote in years and could be the "first domino" in a wider push to organize the auto industry in the South. pic.twitter.com/RWFnO5KznI
— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) April 17, 2024
Chattanooga workers voiced confidence that this election will be different than 2014 and 2019, when Volkswagen employees voted against joining the UAW by narrow margins.
"We're going to win," Lisa Elliott, a quality control worker at Volkswagen, toldThe Guardian's Steven Greenhouse. "We have the momentum. I know this will be a historic event."
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Joseph McCartin, a labor historian at Georgetown University, told Greenhouse that "a victory at Volkswagen would make a victory at Mercedes much more likely."
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University of California, Berkeley professor Harley Shaiken echoed that assessment in an interview with The New York Times.
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