It's so depressing. When I read stuff like that, it makes me lose all hope. There's just no way for us to compete against that. Can you imagine if these super pacs actually donated their money to good causes?
That a handful of people are able to buy our government is not what the founders had in mind and the fact that ALL people don't agree with that premise is really discouraging.
In this Friday, March 23, 2012 photo, Bill Stephney talks to his son Trevor, 13, as they sit outside their home in Randolph Township, N.J. Stephney, a media executive who lives in a New Jersey suburb that is mostly white and Asian, has two sons, ages 18 and 13. The killing of Trayvon Martin was an opportunity for him to repeat a longtime lesson: black men can get singled out, "so please conduct yourself accordingly." (AP Photo/Mel Evans) [ http://www.bet.com/news/national/2012/03/26/trayvon-martin-my-son-and-the-black-male-code.html ]
In this undated file photo provided by the Martin family, Trayvon Martin holds an unidentified baby. Martin was slain in the town of Sanford, Fla., on Feb. 26 in a shooting that has set off a nationwide furor over race and justice. Neighborhood crime-watch captain George Zimmerman claimed self-defense and has not been arrested, though state and federal authorities are still investigating. Since the slaying, a portrait has emerged of Martin as a laid-back young man who loved sports, was extremely close to his father, liked to crack jokes with friends and, according to a lawyer for his family, had never been in trouble with the law. (AP Photo/Martin Family, File) [via http://www.fresnobee.com/2012/03/24/2773574/trayvon-martin-my-son-and-the.html ]
By JESSE WASHINGTON, AP National Writer March 24, 2012
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — I thought my son would be much older before I had to tell him about the Black Male Code. He's only 12, still sleeping with stuffed animals, still afraid of the dark. But after the Trayvon Martin tragedy, I needed to explain to my child that soon people might be afraid of him.
We were in the car on the way to school when a story about Martin came on the radio. "The guy who killed him should get arrested. The dead guy was unarmed!" my son said after hearing that neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman had claimed self-defense in the shooting in Sanford, Fla.
We listened to the rest of the story, describing how Zimmerman had spotted Martin, who was 17, walking home from the store on a rainy night, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled over his head. When it was over, I turned off the radio and told my son about the rules he needs to follow to avoid becoming another Trayvon Martin — a black male who Zimmerman assumed was "suspicious" and "up to no good."
As I explained it, the Code goes like this:
Always pay close attention to your surroundings, son, especially if you are in an affluent neighborhood where black folks are few. Understand that even though you are not a criminal, some people might assume you are, especially if you are wearing certain clothes.
Never argue with police, but protect your dignity and take pride in humility. When confronted by someone with a badge or a gun, do not flee, fight, or put your hands anywhere other than up.
Please don't assume, son, that all white people view you as a threat. America is better than that. Suspicion and bitterness can imprison you. But as a black male, you must go above and beyond to show strangers what type of person you really are.
I was far from alone in laying out these instructions. Across the country this week, parents were talking to their children, especially their black sons, about the Code. It's a talk the black community has passed down for generations, an evolving oral tradition from the days when an errant remark could easily cost black people their job, their freedom, or sometimes their life.
After Trayvon Martin was killed, Al Dotson Jr., a lawyer in Miami and chairman of the 100 Black Men of America organization, told his 14-year-old son that he should always be aware of his surroundings, and of the fact that people might view him differently "because he's blessed to be an African-American."
"It requires a sixth sense that not everyone needs to have," Dotson said.
Dotson, 51, remembers receiving his own instructions as a youth, and hearing those instructions evolve over time.
His grandparents told Dotson that when dealing with authority figures, make it clear you are no threat at all — an attitude verging on submissive. Later, Dotson's parents told him to respond with respect and not be combative.
Today, Dotson tells his children that they should always be respectful, but should not tolerate being disrespected — which would have been recklessly bold in his grandparents' era.
Yet Dotson still has fears about the safety of his children, "about them understanding who they are and where they are, and how to respond to the environment they are in."
Bill Stephney, a media executive who lives in a New Jersey suburb that is mostly white and Asian, has two sons, ages 18 and 13. The Martin killing was an opportunity for him to repeat a longtime lesson: Black men can get singled out, "so please conduct yourself accordingly."
Like Dotson, Stephney mentioned an ultra-awareness — "a racial Spidey sense, a tingling" — that his sons should heed when stereotyping might place them in danger.
One night in the early 1980s, while a student at Adelphi University on Long Island, Stephney and about a dozen other hip-hop aficionados went to White Castle after their late-night DJ gig. They were gathered in the parking lot, eating and talking, when a squadron of police cars swooped in and a helicopter rumbled overhead.
"We got a report that a riot was going on," police told them.
Stephney and his crew used to talk late into the night about how black men in New York were besieged by violence — graffiti artist Michael Stewart's death after a rough arrest in 1983; Bernhard Goetz shooting four young black men who allegedly tried to mug him on the subway in 1984; Michael Griffith killed by a car while being chased by a white mob in 1986; the crack epidemic that rained black-on-black violence on the city. They felt under attack, as if society considered them the enemy.
This is how the legendary rap group Public Enemy was born. Their logo: A young black man in the crosshairs of a gun sight.
"Fast forward 25 years later," Stephney said. "We've come a long way to get nowhere."
But what about that long road traveled, which took a black man all the way to the White House? I can hear some of my white friends now: What evidence is there that Trayvon Martin caught George Zimmerman's attention — and his bullet — because of his race? Lynching is a relic of the past, so why are you teaching your son to be so paranoid?
There is a difference between paranoia and protection. Much evidence shows that black males face unique risks: Psychological studies indicate they are often perceived as threatening; here in Philadelphia, police stop-and-frisk tactics overwhelmingly target African-Americans, according to a lawsuit settled by the city; research suggests that people are more likely to believe a poorly seen object is a gun if it's held by a black person.
Yes, it was way back in 1955 when 14-year-old Emmitt Till [(via) (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=27840102 and following] was murdered in Mississippi for flirting with a white woman. But it was last Wednesday when a white Mississippi teenager pleaded guilty to murder for seeking out a black victim, coming across a man named James Craig Anderson, and running him over with his pickup truck.
Faced with this information, I'm doing what any responsible parent would do: Teaching my son how to protect himself.
Still, it requires a delicate balance. Steve Bumbaugh, a foundation director in Los Angeles, encourages his 8- and 5-year-old sons to talk to police officers, "and to otherwise develop a good relationship with the people and institutions that have the potential to give them trouble. I think this is the best defense."
"I don't want them to actually think that they are viewed suspiciously or treated differently," Bumbaugh said. "I think that realization breeds resentment and anger. And that can contribute to dangerous situations."
His sons are large for their age, however.
"I'm probably naive to think that they won't realize they're viewed differently when they're 6-4 and 200 pounds," Bumbaugh said, "but I'm going to try anyway."
I am 6-4 and more than 200 pounds, son. You probably will be too. Depending on how we dress, act and speak, people might make negative assumptions about us. That doesn't mean they must be racist; it means they must be human.
Let me tell you a story, son, about a time when I forgot about the Black Male Code.
One morning I left our car at the shop for repairs. I was walking home through our quiet suburban neighborhood, in a cold drizzle, wearing an all-black sweatsuit with the hood pulled over my head.
From two blocks away, I saw your mother pull out of our driveway and roll towards me. When she stopped next to me and rolled down the window, her brown face was full of laughter.
"When I saw you from up the street," your mother told me, "I said to myself, what is that guy doing in our neighborhood?"
Jesse Washington covers race and ethnicity for The Associated Press. He is reachable at twitter.com/jessewashington or jwashington(at)ap.org
White Teenager Who Drove Over and Killed Black Man Is Sentenced to Life
Deryl Dedmon, 19, was convicted in [sic - pled guilty to] the June 2011 killing. Rogelio V. Solis/Associated Press
By KIM SEVERSON Published: March 22, 2012
ATLANTA — Deryl Dedmon, a white teenager who drove a pickup truck over a black man in the parking lot of a Jackson, Miss., motel, pleaded guilty to murder on Wednesday and was sent to prison for life.
He is expected to answer federal charges in the case on Thursday.
"This craven act isn’t who we are,” said Judge Jeff Weill of Hinds County as he sentenced Mr. Dedmon, 19, to two concurrent life terms.
Under the state’s guidelines for capital murder, Mr. Dedmon could have faced the death penalty, but the victim’s family urged state and federal prosecutors to spare his life, saying they opposed it on religious grounds.
"I do not ask y’all to forget, but I do ask y’all to forgive," Mr. Dedmon said to the family of James C. Anderson, 47, who was killed last June, according to pool reporters in the courtroom.
"I wish I could take it all back," said Mr. Dedmon, who admitted to heading into Jackson at other times to harass and assault blacks.
"I was young and dumb, ignorant and full of hatred,” he said. “I chose to go down the wrong path."
The killing, which was caught by a surveillance camera and widely distributed,
Marches were held and some Jackson residents and civil rights leaders complained that the local police and prosecutors did not act quickly enough to arrest the seven white teenagers from a neighboring county who drove to Jackson in two vehicles on a hot June night with the intention of finding an African-American to harass.
What will happen to those other teenagers is likely to be revealed on Thursday when the results of a Justice Department hate crime investigation are aired in court, according to two people with detailed knowledge of the case.
As he has promised for months, Robert S. Smith, the Hinds County district attorney, said other charges in the case would be coming.
Federal officials and a grand jury have investigated the role various teenagers played, including John A. Rice, 19, who investigators said punched Mr. Anderson.
He has been charged with simple assault, pleaded not guilty and is free on bond.
The teenagers, who had spent the night at a birthday party bonfire, originally told the police they had driven about 16 miles from the largely white suburb of Brandon to buy beer in Jackson.
In later interviews, according to prosecutors at the hearing [ http://www.wlbt.com/story/17212548/deryl-dedmon-pleads-guilty ] Wednesday, some of the teenagers said they were in fact looking for a black person to harass who was either drunk or homeless and thus less likely to report the crime.
They found Mr. Anderson standing near his car in a parking lot of a motel off the freeway just before 5 a.m. Some of the teenagers punched Mr. Anderson. Then, as he stumbled along the side of the road, Mr. Dedmon accelerated his truck and ran over him.
The teenagers yelled “white power” during the assault, prosecutors said Thursday, and some of the teenagers told investigators that Mr. Dedmon used a racial slur when he was bragging about the matter in a cellphone conversation minutes later.
Mr. Anderson’s family and his life partner, James Bradfield, described him as a generous family man who was helping to raise a young relative of Mr. Bradfield’s, sang in the First Hyde Park Missionary Baptist Church choir and worked at a nearby Nissan plant.
They said they had not been able to piece together why he was at the motel that morning.
The family has filed a wrongful death suit in the case against all seven teenagers who the police say were involved, including two girls.
Morris Dees, a founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, is working with the family and their lawyer, Winston J. Thompson III. He said the family would continue to push for a civil trial so that more about the case could be revealed.
“You continue to see this around the country, the systematic targeting of black people. That’s what happened here and that’s what happened in Florida,” he said, referring to the case in Sanford, Fla., in which an unarmed black teenager was shot and killed almost four weeks ago by a white Hispanic crime watch volunteer. No charges have been filed in that case.
Civil Rights Division Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez announces three defendants pleaded guilty to hate crime charges Thursday in Jackson. Vickie D. King/The Clarion-Ledger
Video [embedded] 3 plead guilty to federal hate crime charges: Three white men, including a teenager who pleaded guilty to murder and hate crime charges in Mississippi state court for running over a black man with his truck, entered guilty pleas after being charged with federal hate crimes.
'Case about racist thugs'
Written by Jimmie E. Gates 3:23 PM, Mar. 23, 2012
Deryl Dedmon and two other Rankin County men pleading guilty Thursday to federal hate crime charges had been coming to Jackson to harass African Americans long before the June hit-and-run death of a black man.
And Dedmon, Dylan Wade Butler and John Aaron Rice weren't alone. They were part of a group of young white Rankin Countians, federal authorities said.
The FBI and federal prosecutors said the young people made a sport of attacking African Americans and laughed about it, especially those they believed were homeless or under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
"This is a case about a group of racist thugs who made a sport of targeting vulnerable African Americans in Jackson, and attacking them without provocation, simply because of the color of their skin," said Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division.
"On a number of occasions, they drove around Jackson looking for African Americans to assault. Jackson is a venerable community. However, for these defendants, Jackson was 'Jafrica'; African Americans were subhuman, and their mission was to drive around Jackson looking for African Americans to attack."
Perez said the group used many different weapons, but beer bottles and fists were their typical tools.
"They took great pleasure one evening in watching one victim plead for his life after they had brutally assaulted him," Perez said.
The FBI conducted more than 200 interviews that could lead to more people facing federal charges as the investigation is ongoing.
The actions of Dedmon,19, Butler, 20, and Rice, 19, culminated in the early morning of June 26 when James Craig Anderson, 47, was attacked and then run over by Dedmon.
A hotel video surveillance camera captured the image of Dedmon in his pickup running over Anderson after driving out of the parking lot area of the Metro Inn on Ellis Avenue in Jackson.
On Thursday, one day after Dedmon was sentenced to two life terms in prison after pleading guilty to murder under a state hate crime law, he, Rice and Butler were charged and pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to one count of conspiracy and one count of violating the federal hate crime law.
None of the three gave statements but admitted they targeted African Americans. They gave brief answers to U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves' standard questions for a guilty plea.
Reeves set the sentencings for June 8.
The case is the first time the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crime Prevention Act has been used in which defendants' actions resulted in a victim's death.
The Shepard-Byrd Act, signed into law in 2009, was named in memory of James Byrd Jr., who was killed in Jasper, Texas, in 1998 after being dragged behind a pickup on an asphalt road with his ankles bound by a chain. Shepard, a student, was tortured and murdered in 1998 in Wyoming because of a perception that he was homosexual.
Violation of the federal hate crime law carries a maximum penalty of life in prison. Conspiracy to commit a hate crime carries a maximum five years.
Reeves said all three would be held in detention until sentencing. Some family members of Dedmon, Butler and Rice cried in the courtroom.
One of Anderson's family members left the courtroom in tears when a prosecutor described how Anderson was attacked and killed because of his race.
Justice Department attorney Sheldon Beer said Butler, Rice and two others came to west Jackson on the morning Anderson was killed in a white Jeep with the understanding Dedmon and two others would join them shortly.
The group in the Jeep drove around throwing beer bottles from their moving vehicle at African-American pedestrians they encountered.
They then spotted Anderson in the Metro Inn parking lot and decided he would be a good target because he appeared to be intoxicated, Beer said.
Anderson was physically assaulted and then Dedmon deliberately used his Ford F-250 truck to run over Anderson, the prosecutor said.
On Wednesday, when Dedmon pleaded guilty to murder in Hinds County, he said he was "young, dumb and full of hatred."
Hinds County Circuit Judge Jeff Weill Sr. told Dedmon there was no excuse for his actions, and those actions have stained the racial progress made in a state known more for its racial intolerance.
In addition to Dedmon, Rice also was charged in state court, though local officials said they suspected others involved in Anderson's death.
Both Dedmon and Rice initially were charged with capital murder. Rice's charge, however, was reduced to simple assault by a county judge after a preliminary hearing last year.
When Dedmon pleaded guilty, his charge also had been reduced because Hinds County District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith said the state investigation showed that none of those involved had taken Anderson's wallet.
*
Whom to call
Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, and U.S. Attorney John Dowdy urge those who believe they may have been a victim of a racially motivate attack by a group of Rankin County teens to call the FBI at (601) 948-5000.
Officer in Bell Killing Is Fired; 3 Others to Be Forced Out
Detective Gescard Isnora, above, has been fired for his role in the 2006 shooting death of Sean Bell. Kirsten Luce for The New York Times
Mr. Bell with his fiancée, Nicole Paultre.
By MATT FLEGENHEIMER and AL BAKER Published: March 23, 2012
The New York City police detective who fired the first shots in the 50-bullet barrage that killed Sean Bell [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/sean_bell/index.html ] in 2006 has been fired, and three others involved in the shooting are being forced to resign, law enforcement officials said on Friday.
“There was nothing in the record to warrant overturning the decision of the department’s trial judge,” Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne said on Friday night.
Law enforcement officials said word of Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly’s decision came late Friday. Detective Isnora, an 11-year veteran, will not collect a pension, one official said. “He loses everything,” the official said.
Detectives Isnora, Cooper and Oliver were acquitted in a criminal trial in 2008 on charges of manslaughter, assault and reckless endangerment.
A fourth officer who fired his gun during the episode, Detective Paul Headley, has already left the department, and a fifth, Officer Michael Carey, was exonerated in the department’s administrative trial.
Detective Cooper and Lieutenant Napoli, who worked in the department for more than 20 years, will receive their pensions, a law enforcement official said. Detective Oliver, who has served for 18 years, may collect on a pension on the 20th anniversary of his start date, the official said.
The shooting of Mr. Bell, 23, who did not have a gun, occurred in the early morning on Nov. 25, 2006, as Mr. Bell and two friends were leaving a strip club in Jamaica, Queens, where they had been celebrating. The case drew widespread scrutiny of undercover police tactics.
Prosecutors questioned the judgment of the officers, with one arguing in the department’s trial that Detective Isnora overreacted, leading to “contagious firing” from those who followed his cue.
Detective Isnora testified that he thought Mr. Bell and a friend were about to take part in a drive-by shooting. He has said he believed, after overhearing a heated argument in front of the strip club, that the friend had a gun.
In July 2010, the city agreed to pay more than $7 million to settle a federal lawsuit filed by Mr. Bell’s family and two of his friends.
Sanford A. Rubenstein, a lawyer who has represented the Bell estate and the two men wounded along with Mr. Bell, said, regarding Detective Isnora, “The police commissioner followed the trial judge’s ruling, which was clearly appropriate based on the evidence.” Of the other disciplined officers, Mr. Rubenstein said, “I think the fact that they’re no longer on the police force is appropriate.”
Michael J. Palladino, the president of the Detectives’ Endowment Association, called Detective Isnora’s firing “disgraceful, excessive, and unprecedented.”
He continued: “Stripping a police officer of his livelihood and his opportunity for retirement is a punishment reserved for a cop who has turned to a life of crime and disgraces the shield. It is not for someone who has acted within the law and was justified in a court of law and exonerated by the U.S. Department of Justice.”
Many detectives were bracing for the decision after Deputy Commissioner Martin G. Karopkin, acting as the trial judge, recommended the punishment in November.
One law enforcement official said that, as the reality of the decisions sink in, they could have a drastic impact on how detectives view their work, particularly in the department’s undercover programs.
Florida’s now-infamous Stand Your Ground law, which lets you shoot someone you consider threatening without facing arrest, let alone prosecution, sounds crazy — and it is. And it’s tempting to dismiss this law as the work of ignorant yahoos. But similar laws have been pushed across the nation, not by ignorant yahoos but by big corporations.
Specifically, language virtually identical to Florida’s law is featured in a template supplied to legislators in other states by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-backed organization that has managed to keep a low profile even as it exerts vast influence (only recently, thanks to yeoman work by the Center for Media and Democracy, has a clear picture of ALEC’s activities emerged). And if there is any silver lining to Trayvon Martin’s killing, it is that it might finally place a spotlight on what ALEC is doing to our society — and our democracy.
What is ALEC? Despite claims that it’s nonpartisan, it’s very much a movement-conservative organization, funded by the usual suspects: the Kochs, Exxon Mobil, and so on. Unlike other such groups, however, it doesn’t just influence laws, it literally writes them, supplying fully drafted bills to state legislators. In Virginia, for example, more than 50 ALEC-written bills [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/opinion/the-big-money-behind-state-laws.html ] have been introduced, many almost word for word. And these bills often become law.
Many ALEC-drafted bills pursue standard conservative goals: union-busting, undermining environmental protection, tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy. ALEC seems, however, to have a special interest in privatization — that is, on turning the provision of public services, from schools to prisons, over to for-profit corporations. And some of the most prominent beneficiaries of privatization, such as the online education company K12 Inc. and the prison operator Corrections Corporation of America, are, not surprisingly, very much involved with the organization.
What this tells us, in turn, is that ALEC’s claim to stand for limited government and free markets is deeply misleading. To a large extent the organization seeks not limited government but privatized government, in which corporations get their profits from taxpayer dollars, dollars steered their way by friendly politicians. In short, ALEC isn’t so much about promoting free markets as it is about expanding crony capitalism.
And in case you were wondering, no, the kind of privatization ALEC promotes isn’t in the public interest; instead of success stories, what we’re getting is a series of scandals. Private charter schools, for example, appear to deliver a lot of profits but little in the way of educational achievement.
But where does the encouragement of vigilante (in)justice fit into this picture? In part it’s the same old story — the long-standing exploitation of public fears, especially those associated with racial tension, to promote a pro-corporate, pro-wealthy agenda. It’s neither an accident nor a surprise that the National Rifle Association and ALEC have been close allies all along.
And ALEC, even more than other movement-conservative organizations, is clearly playing a long game. Its legislative templates aren’t just about generating immediate benefits to the organization’s corporate sponsors; they’re about creating a political climate that will favor even more corporation-friendly legislation in the future.
Did I mention that ALEC has played a key role in promoting bills that make it hard for the poor and ethnic minorities to vote?
Yet that’s not all; you have to think about the interests of the penal-industrial complex — prison operators, bail-bond companies and more. (The American Bail Coalition has publicly described ALEC as its “life preserver.”) This complex has a financial stake in anything that sends more people into the courts and the prisons, whether it’s exaggerated fear of racial minorities or Arizona’s draconian immigration law, a law that followed an ALEC template almost verbatim.
Think about that: we seem to be turning into a country where crony capitalism doesn’t just waste taxpayer money but warps criminal justice, in which growing incarceration reflects not the need to protect law-abiding citizens but the profits corporations can reap from a larger prison population.
Now, ALEC isn’t single-handedly responsible for the corporatization of our political life; its influence is as much a symptom as a cause. But shining a light on ALEC and its supporters — a roster that includes many companies, from AT&T and Coca-Cola to UPS [ http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/09/alec-corporations-are-big-spenders.html ], that have so far managed to avoid being publicly associated with the hard-right agenda — is one good way to highlight what’s going on. And that kind of knowledge is what we need to start taking our country back.
By JIM ARKEDIS and LINDSAY MARK LEWIS March 29, 2012, 11:56 pm
The grip of the super PAC on the Republican primary season has been well-documented. They are wrecking balls operating outside the candidates’ direct control, fueled by massive influxes of cash from a handful of wealthy patrons. The millions spent by the pro-Santorum Red, White and Blue Fund and the pro-Gingrich super PAC, Winning Our Future, have prolonged their respective candidates’ rivalry with the front-runner, Mitt Romney, whose own Restore Our Future has bludgeoned the competition from Iowa to Florida to Michigan.
And that’s just the start. In the general election, super PACs will evolve into full-blown shadow campaigns. This transition is already underway, with the super PACs supporting Republican candidates beginning to take on voter persuasion operations — like sending direct mail [ http://images.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/fecimg/?_12950063615+0 ] and making phone calls [ http://images.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/fecimg/?_12970161114+0 ] — that have traditionally been reserved for a campaign operation or party committee.
In the general election, right wing groups may try to use super PACs to affect the vote in this fall’s election. And if we fail to recognize super PACs’ enormous potential to suppress voting before it happens — and don’t regulate them appropriately — millions of Americans could be disenfranchised on Nov. 6, 2012.
Super PACs are the perfect vehicle for voter suppression, thanks to two crucial advantages they have over traditional campaigns. First, they operate in a legal black hole of opaque disclosure requirements that allows them to disguise their activities. Second, a candidate’s campaign is shielded from a super PACs’ duplicitous actions by a legal firewall that prevents coordination between the two entities. These features afford a super PAC plausible deniability: they can suppress the vote while claiming to have done something else, and the candidate can easily disavow a super PAC’s actions.
Check out Restore Our Future’s filings [ http://images.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/fecimg/?C00490045 ] with the Federal Election Commission, and it’s easy to see how vague terms could mask reality. While a super PAC must fill out a form for every expenditure, each can be classified as “voter communication,” “media production,” or “direct mail.”
The devil is in what those terms might be hiding. “Voter communication” could actually be a robocall that targets African Americans, reassuring them that Obama has the election in the bag. A “direct mail” piece sent to senior citizens’ homes might encourage them to vote on Wednesday, Nov. 7, just 24 hours too late.
This isn’t just something we dreamed up. For decades conservative groups have proven that voter suppression is cheap and effective: It cost just a few thousand dollars for Allen Raymond, a Republican operative, to make harrassing calls, jamming New Hampshire Democratic Party phone lines during the 2002 Congressional campaigns, for which he spent three months in prison; in 2006, the Republican National Committee paid for fliers [ http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/16105 ] in Virginia that told African Americans to “skip this vote;” Paul Schurick, an aide to former Republican Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich was convicted [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/06/robert-ehrlich-paul-schurick-voter-suppression_n_1131852.html ] of using robocalls that told African Americans not to vote in 2010.
Should a super PAC get caught doing something like this, its legal separation from a campaign means the crime could never drag down a candidate or party. “Yes, I’m aware of the allegations against Cornering Our Future,” a candidate might explain, “but as you know, my campaign cannot coordinate its activities with a super PAC, so I consider the matter closed.”
And the candidate would be legally correct.
These are also key differences in accountability. When a candidate or national party runs an ad, sends mail or makes a phone call, those responsible for the activity are relatively easy to find and investigate. Even in that context, hundreds of irregularities take place every election cycle.
More importantly, parties and candidates have reputations to protect, and want to live on to fight another day. Not so for a super PAC. Terminating one is easy: its officers file a notice with the F.E.C., which then certifies that it has ceased operation. The super PAC’s only requirement is to maintain copies of its records for three years.
That’s why most super PACs will disappear on the morning after the votes are counted. There is little incentive to observe election laws if you can just close up shop.
At a news conference in Trenton in November 1993, New Jersey Governor-elect Christie Whitman defended her campaign against accusations of voter suppression. Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press
But in the days following the election, long-time Republican operative and Whitman campaign manager Ed Rollins did something truly bizarre: he started bragging about his secret weapon, suppressing the (presumably Democratic) vote.
With just $500,000 in hand, Rollins — who worked for Michele Bachmann in this year’s Republican primary — was shockingly frank in a 1993 Times article [ http://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/10/nyregion/whitman-funds-went-to-curtail-black-turnout.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm ] about how he instructed grassroots organizers to approach ministers at African American churches, then as now centers of political gravity for black get-out-the-vote efforts. In return for sizable contributions to a minister’s favorite project, all church leaders had to do was not mention the election from the pulpit.
New Jersey and other states have a long-standing practice of handing out “walking around money,” a few bucks to cover transportation and lunch for campaign workers on election day. Rollins contacted a key few Florio get-out-the-vote workers and offered to match it, provided they just sit home and watch TV.
How many votes did Rollins suppress? We’ll never truly know of course, but Florio lost the election by just 26,000, a pittance in an election in which almost 2.5 million votes were cast. That’s 1.05 percent.
Chertoff did acknowledge that some money had been paid to Democrats, but cast the issue as one of free speech, pointing out that members of a political party shouldn’t be required to support only its candidates.
More telling is Chertoff’s opinion of the spirit of Rollins’ wrongdoing. Chertoff cautioned aspiring political consultants who “play tricks and cut corners” that “that’s a very sad outcome, and if they take that message to heart they will eventually get in trouble.”
Operating under the opaque protection of a super PAC’s plausible deniability, today’s political consultants probably won’t get in trouble, no matter what they do. As long as super PACs remain legal, they should be governed, at a minimum, by strict disclosure rules that allow the F.E.C. to follow the outflow from their accounts, not just the inflow. The dangers of super PACs and voter suppression need to be addressed today, not when its beneficiaries are running the government.
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