Rupert Murdoch jumped right on that SC ruling that corporations could donate freely to political ad campaigns.
In June, Fox News’ parent company News Corporation gave a $1 million donation to the Republican Governors Association. This evening, IRS disclosures reveal that News Corporation gave another check, time for $250,000, bringing his total donation amount to $1,250,000.
Richard Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods, kept a secret list of illegal corporate donations, which was known as Rose Mary's baby, in her desk drawer. After it became public in the Watergate scandal, Congress passed a law requiring donors to at least be publicly listed. Poor Rupert. Wait. Law?
Since Watergate, the names of political donors have largely been disclosed, even by so-called independent groups. In 2004 and 2006, nearly all independent groups involved in politics revealed their donors, according to a report by Public Citizen, a group that has long supported campaign finance reform. In 2008, fewer than half of these groups disclosed donors, and so far this year, fewer than one-third.[...]
[Fred Wertheimer, the lawyer who got the Nixon donor list revealed] predicts that the groups will, one day, have to disclose their contributors. “I don’t believe secretly funding our elections can be sustained,” said Mr. Wertheimer, who now runs Democracy 21, which pushes for campaign finance reform. “It won’t hold up. The public won’t stand for it. This is guaranteed corruption.”
With so many different Republican groups spending so much, he said, no desk drawer is big enough to hold the 2010 list of secret donors, like the one that held his hard-fought-for Rose Mary’s Baby.
Yes, the public will indeed stand for it. The public secretly loves corruption.
And who is the big money donor for the Democrats? George Soros.
George Soros, the billionaire financier who was an energetic Democratic donor in the last several election cycles [...] is sitting this one out.[...]
”I’m basically not a party man. I’d just been forced into that situation by what I considered the excesses of the Bush administration.”
[...]
Asked if the prospect of Republican control of one or both houses of Congress concerned him, he said: “It does, because I think they are pushing the wrong policies, but I’m not in a position to stop it. I don’t believe in standing in the way of an avalanche.”
Smart man.
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