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CMR Twists on Net Neutrality

Dear Group,

McMorris Rodgers is running scared on the issue of Net Neutrality. She should be. She speaks incessantly about repealing regulation. For years she has been unable to say the word “regulation” without appending “job killing” as a prefix. She has reveled in her Party’s use of the Congressional Review Act (CRA) early in the Trump presidency to repeal every regulation of the Obama administration the CRA could reach.

So imagine my surprise when I called McMorris Rodgers office to exhort her to vote for a bill that would reinstate the Net Neutrality rules and the staff person announced that “Congresswoman McMorris Rodgers supports a free and open internet.” What a change of heart, I thought. Well…no.

Then I received an email from “Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers” on May 16 with the subject line, “I support an open Internet.” Imagine that! She must be going to vote in favor of Net Neutrality, right? Not so fast. In case you didn’t get the email memo from her, the whole argument is also posted on her official “Congresswoman” website. You can read it here.

McMorris Rodgers is on the wrong side of this issue and she must know it. If she were actually in favor of a free and open internet she would already have drafted legislation to insure that it remains open and free. Instead, she claims devotion “free and open,” and breathlessly claims the Net Neutrality rules of the Obama administration were unnecessarily burdensome, wrong-headed, and stifling of investment. I can read those statements, congresswoman, but you offer nothing to back them up, nor do you offer your own legislation to assure the internet remains free and open.

Well, that’s not quite true. She does offer a link: “according to a recent economic analysis” in Forbes magazine she claims as proof that Net Neutrality regulation suppressed expansion of the internet. I tried to visit the link several times. It goes to gibberish. When I search Forbes (a publication of “Center Right” bias) for articles on Net Neutrality I come up only with articles in favor of the Net Neutrality regulations.

It seems she has been sipping the Kool-Aid of her corporate backers. Perhaps she believes her own rhetoric. Perhaps she believes she “support(s) an open internet.” But we ought not to believe her until she either submits or supports a viable bill in the House that actually keeps the internet open and free. Until then, and until we get to examine it, her “support” is nothing more than hot air from the Mistress of Messaging.

Keep to the high ground,
Jerry

P.S. Background: On May 16 the Senate passed S.J.Res. 52 “disapproving” Ajit Pai’s Federal Election Commission’s ruling dismantling the Obama era Net Neutrality regulations. It now goes to the House, where Republicans need to feel the heat. S.J.Res. 52 passed the Senate without facing a filibuster because those are the rules of the Congressional Review Act (CRA) under which S.J.Res. 52 was passed. It also bypassed the old bullfrog’s, Mitch McConnell’s, stranglehold on what comes to the floor of the Senate. The procedures are a bit complicated. You can read them here on page 14. I think a separate “discharge petition” (i.e. one in the House) would be required for McMorris Rodgers to actually face a vote on the House version of S.J.Res. 52. Without a discharge petition the Republican chair will “sit on” the legislation until it dies, and even if the bill escaped the committee Paul Ryan (Speaker of the House) would refuse to bring it to the floor of the House. Hence, it is an uphill battle in the House. If it did somehow miraculously pass the House it would then go to Trump–and he is likely to veto, but, who knows what he might do on any given day?? Regardless of all that, this is an excellent opportunity to highlight McMorris Rodgers’ and her Republican colleagues’ sellout on this issue. Repealing Net Neutrality is deeply unpopular with voters. Don’t let her get away with the obfuscation she offers in her “I support an open internet.” It is BS.

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Welcome

If you’ve just signed up for the MWF 5AM Indivisible email written by Jerry LeClaire, you’ve arrived at the right place.

This website is a work in progress. It serves as an archive of my writing. I send an email between 4:45 and 5:15AM each MWF. Depend on it. If you’re signed up to receive it and it doesn’t appear in your inbox check your Spam folder and your Promotions folder. If you still cannot find it please let me know at jerry@jxindivisible.com.  I’ve learned that email is not the sure thing I once thought it was.

I hope you find what I write useful.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

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Citizens United–Part I

Dear Group,

“Citizen’s United” is the short form of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Citizen’s United prevailed in a  5-4 Supreme Court decision handed down January 21st, 2010. Fix that date in your mind. When most Americans hear “Citizens United” they  think about money in politics. Some others might think of free speech and the First Amendment, others of corporate personhood.

So what is “Citizens United?” You might think of upright average Americans united against some perceived injustice, a grassroots sort of organization with lofty, high-minded goals. Well, not quite. As a 501(c)(4) non-profit Citizens United does not disclose its donors, so its claim of “grassroots” is unverifiable. Its current webpage reads like the Trump platform. David Bossie has been president of Citizen’s United since 2000, except for a stint as deputy manager of the Trump campaign. Bossie is a longtime friend of Trump, Steve Bannon, and Kellyanne Conway. Bossie introduced Bannon to Trump.

David Bossie also heads Citizens United Productions (organized as a corporation?). Citizens United Productions has made twenty-five anti-liberal, anti-Democrat political documentaries. One of these, Hillary: The Movie, Citizens United purposefully proposed to air immediately before the Democratic Primary in 2008 (Clinton/Obama) in violation of the McCain-Feingold Act of 2002, the last legislative effort to try to curb the influence of big money in politics. The timing of this proposed movie airing was no accident. The possibility of a 5-4 decision at the Supreme Court reversing an essential part of McCain-Feingold was a tantalizing goal. The setup succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of the folks who set it up. More on that in Part II.

The next time you hear “Citizens United,” do not succumb to the image of a mass of common citizens seeking to assert their First Amendment rights. The name was no doubt chosen to obscure the agenda of its backers and hangers-on. Think David Bossie, Steve Bannon, and big money seeking control of the system, think of the culmination of a long running war between Republican/Libertarian money and Democratic efforts reduce the effect of that money.

McMorris Rodgers must approve of efforts to keep corporate money flowing into politics and to obscure the origin of the cash. Yesterday I detailed her vote for H.R.5053 – “Preventing IRS Abuse and Protecting Free Speech Act of 2016.” It passed the House but stalled in the Senate. It would have forbidden the IRS to require names of substantial donors to non-profits, reducing IRS effectiveness and darkening non-profit money even further. In 2010 McMorris Rodgers voted no with her Party on the DISCLOSE ACT, a detailed attempt to close the floodgates Citizens United had just opened. Surely if asked whether she supports the Citizens United decision she would utter her nervous laugh and pivot, but she and her comrades speak volumes with their votes.

Keep to the high ground,
Jerry

P.S. Researching the money behind Citizens United is challenging. It appears that one man, David Bossie, heads several different entities. For example, Citizens United is identified as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit. Citizens United Productions, I suspect (but have been unable to confirm), may be organized as a corporation. Then there is CITIZENS UNITED SUPER PAC LLC and CITIZENS UNITED POLITICAL VICTORY FUND. The latter is a traditional “qualified” political action committee, the former is obviously a superPAC. You can explore their donors at those links (FEC.gov), but that tells you nothing about the financial backing of Citizens United the nonprofit or Citizens United Productions, the suspected corporation. I recommend Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right” (2016) for a background exploration of the money and personalities of the backers. Warning: Don’t read Dark Money at bedtime. You won’t sleep well.

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The Big Money Twenty–CMR on the Roster

Dear Group,

McMorris Rodgers just received a new distinction: End Citizens United just added her to their Big Money 20, the Congresspeople most owned by corporate and mega-wealthy interests. Click the link, scroll to McMorris Rodgers photo at the bottom of the list. Click the photo there and you will find a trove of very specific information with solid links to texts of bills and voting records. 

Having just concluded a three part examination of McMorris Rodgers campaign committees called “Cathy’s Coffers,” the End Citizens United Big Money 20 designation couldn’t have been more timely. 

Today I want to look at just one of McMorris Rodgers’ votes brought up by End Citizens United,

H.R.5053 – Preventing IRS Abuse and Protecting Free Speech Act of 2016. In my view there is no better example of her commitment to big money.

Jane Mayer’s Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (2016) lays out in excruciating, densely referenced detail the forty year effort of the Charles and David Koch to bend the Republican party to their Libertarian, Ayn Rand-ian view of the world and how it should operate. They and their donor group systematically established a network of non-profit “think” tanks aimed and steering the political mindset of the electorate toward their own. 

The use of non-profit organizations was, of course, the stuff of evil genius. Non-profits in general don’t have to disclose their donors publicly, hence the designation “dark money,” [Take note we are now talking about the “Non-profits” circle in the Roadmap below. We are STILL not discussing SuperPACs.] 

However, and this is key, although not necessarily publicly available, since 1988 the IRS has required non-profits to disclose donors of more than $5000 to the IRS. It should be no surprise that the Koch brothers and their donor group are anxious to rid themselves of this encumbrance to their efforts fund their “think” tanks with untraceable dollars. 

So what better method than a bill named H.R.5053 – Preventing IRS Abuse and Protecting Free Speech Act of 2016? What would better protect “Free Speech” than the ability to disguise your contribution to, for example, Americans For Prosperity. If you cannot anonymously contribute mega-dollars to an organization that advocates free market economics then you’re not free, right? Poor dears, I guess their “free speech” requires them to be able to operate in the dark. Will their next effort be to take down the Federal Elections Commission website?

You only need to get past the title of the Act to read what it intends to do. It is written in plain, bald-faced english:

To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to prohibit the Secretary of the Treasury from requiring that the identity of contributors to 501(c) organizations be included in annual returns.

On June 14, 2016, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, 238 other Republicans and 1 Democrat voted in favor of this travesty and passed it out of the House. I guess they assumed that voters would only read the Title H.R. 5053 and not make to the first sentence and understand the meaning. How do they justify this? It made no news I was aware of at the time. Was it marketed as part of their “roll back regulation” agenda?

I have thought for some time that the history of campaign finance in the last hundred years has been by and large the history of Democrats and some old-school Republicans puts sensible rules in place and more recent Republican/Libertarian efforts to tear down or circumvent those rules. This is a good example. 

If I didn’t already believe that McMorris Rodgers is in the pocket of the Koch brothers and the mega-wealthy, her vote on  H.R.5053 – Preventing IRS Abuse and Protecting Free Speech Act of 2016 would be incontrovertible proof.

(That said, I doubt she admits this truth even to herself.)

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

A Roadmap for understanding campaign finance

This diagram is from a 2014 interactive article in the NYTimes. It is a great place to start understanding the effect of money in our politics. The limits on contributions are indexed to inflation, so the illustrated limits are now higher, e.g. $5400 can be given directly to a Candidate’s election committee ($2700 for the Primary and $2700 for the General election), and a conventional political action committee (PAC) can receive $5000 from an individual donor. 

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Cathy’s Coffers Part I, CMR For Congress

A Roadmap for understanding campaign finance

This diagram is from a 2014 interactive article in the NYTimes. It is a great place to start understanding the effect of money in our politics. The limits on contributions are indexed to inflation, so the illustrated limits are now higher, e.g. $5400 can be given directly to a Candidate’s election committee ($2700 for the Primary and $2700 for the General election), and a conventional political action committee (PAC) can receive $5000 from an individual donor. 

Cathy McMorris Rodgers for Congress campaign fund receipts for January 1,2017 to March 31, 2018

Dear Group,

When the Spokesman periodically reports campaign contributions to McMorris Rodgers and Lisa Brown the numbers come from the Federal Election Commission (fec.gov). Donations and expenditures are supposed to be transparent. I suppose they actually are, but transparency is only useful if you look…and trying to understand the data at fec.gov is a time consuming and bewildering task. 

The balance sheet for CMR for Congress displayed above says volumes. Who does McMorris Rodgers serve? If you click “Itemized individual contributions” you’ll find that 1368 unique individual contributions make up that 877K. For reference, Lisa Brown, in six months less time (just since July 1, 2017) has 1864 individual contributions totaling about the same amount of money, 834K. Clearly, Lisa has many more contributors but on average they contribute smaller sums.

Then look at “Other committee contributions” for McMorris Rodgers. That $1,081,720 consists of 517 contributions from Political Action Committees. Click on the number on the page Cathy McMorris Rodgers for Congress and you can browse them. They are almost all corporate PACs. Names like BNSF, Comcast, AT&T, ConocoPhillips, and Halliburton are among those that pop out. Take note that Lisa Brown has announced she will decline money from corporate PACs.

Then look at “TRANSFERS FROM OTHER AUTHORIZED COMMITTEES.” There, properly filtered, you find 333 unique individual contributions, only 38 of which come from the whole of Washington State. 286 of the 333 are for more than $500. Hmmm. The highest number you see in the list is $2700. That’s the legal maximum for a single election.  It’s hard to buy a lot of influence with $2700 in a field where there is so much money. We’ll address that issue tomorrow when we look at the PAC through which these 333 contributions are funneled.

The Cathy McMorris Rodgers for Congress campaign summary sheet above shows, with a bit of dissection, something around a million dollars in corporate PAC contributions and another nearly a half million in contributions that are mostly from folks outside of Washington State. That is more than half of the total balance sheet of $2.7 million. It will buy quite a lot. Remember, though, these are just the funds under McMorris Rodgers’ direct control. This is the money she can deploy directly as the incumbent to pursue re-election. It is only a fraction of the money that will slosh around eastern Washington in the next six months on her behalf.

How, if you have the extra money, do you manage to buy more influence? More tomorrow.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry
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Cathy’s Coffers Part II, The “Dream” Project

A Roadmap for understanding campaign finance

This diagram is from a 2014 interactive article in the NYTimes. It is a great place to start understanding the effect of money in our politics. The limits on contributions are indexed to inflation, so the illustrated limits are now higher, e.g. $5400 can be given directly to a Candidate’s election committee ($2700 for the Primary and $2700 for the General election), and a conventional political action committee (PAC) can receive $5000 from an individual donor. 

McMorris Rodgers American Dream Project  campaign fund receipts for January 1,2017 to March 31, 2018

Dear Group,

Orientation: Yesterday in Part I, we looked at McMorris Rodgers individual campaign coffer, Cathy McMorris Rodgers for Congress. The take home message is 1) a lot of her money comes from corporate PACs, 2) she has fewer donors than Lisa Brown who give larger amounts of money, 3) on account of well-meaning campaign finance laws limiting the size of the donations, what you see in Cathy McMorris Rodgers for Congress does not necessary represent the full financial clout wielded by the donors. Seeing that requires more sleuthing.

Look at above diagram. In today’s post we are still just looking at those three categories in the upper left part of the diagram, Candidate, Party, and PAC political committees. We haven’t even had a whiff of the money unleashed by Citizens United. What we are looking at so far is only the money sloshing in the traditional, pre-Citizens United efforts to get around campaign finance law.

While combing through Cathy McMorris Rodgers for Congress, I ran onto MCMORRIS RODGERS AMERICAN DREAM PROJECT; THE (C00543199). This is a traditional Political Action Committee. It is sub-classified as “NonQualified – Joint Fundraising Committee.” It is non-qualified because being “qualified” requires that the PAC contribute to at least five federal candidates. The American Dream Project contributes to only three: Cathy McMorris Rodgers for Congress, the NRCC (National Republican Congressional Committee), and yet another McMorris Rodgers PAC, “CMR POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE (C00469429)“

Do you get a sense of the complexity…and the intertwining…of all these PACs wielded by McMorris Rodgers?

I encourage you to visit the American Dream Project website. In light of what is going on in the federal government today the rhetoric on this website made my skin crawl. Here’s an example: “It is the Cathy McMorris Rodgers joint fundraising committee to help recruit and fund candidates who believe in the American Dream and want to make America a land of opportunity, again.” So the “American Dream,” is, I guess, code for repealing the Affordable Care Act, passing a tax bill that rewards corporations and the rich, exploiting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), and dismantling the social safety net using the excuse that, now that we’ve rewarded the rich, well, now we’re broke.

The MR American Dream Project PAC accepts large donations and makes them legal by breaking them up and passing them through to the three recipients listed in the third paragraph above. I guess if you are a major business owner in the 5th Congressional Distrcit, you happen to have $300,000 you wish to contribute to this “Dream,” and you don’t mind having your name on the FEC website, this is really convenient. You and your wife just write a couple of checks for 150K and let the American Dream Project parcel the money out and keep it all legal. Under FAQs on the American Dream Project website you can see how it’s done, although their posted contribution limits are outdated.

The updated limits would send $5400 ($2700 X2) to CMR’s individual coffer, CMR for Congress. The next $5000 goes to the CMR PAC, then $33,800 to the National Republican Congressional Committee. For a $150,000 personal donation I haven’t yet worked out where the Dream sends the excess $105,800 dollars and keeps it legal, but I’m sure there’s a way.

I encourage you to visit the list of donors to the Dream, Click the “Amount” column heading on the right to sort the 265 unique contributions by size. There will be names you’ll recognize. Click the names to learn the contributor’s employment details, presumably an indicator of the business that made the contributor wealthy enough to contribute this money. Ask yourself what they hope to get in return. 

PAY ATTENTION: We’re still only talking about that part of the campaign finance picture represented by the circles in the crescent in the diagram above. We haven’t even glimpsed superPAC and Dark Money.

Here’s a really sobering fact: in the midterm election cycle (2 years) only 0.33 percent (1 of 300) U.S.adults makes a contribution of $200 or greater to ANY political candidate, party, or Political Action Committee. (I believe this is federal only, not state or local.) These >$200 donors provide 2/3 of all campaign funding (1/3 comes in smaller amounts). Ask yourself what a $300,000 donation must buy. Finally, recognize that these unimaginably wealthy mega-donors are just the ones willing to be publicly identified on the FEC website. We haven’t glanced at SuperPACs or at the dark money.wielded in the non-profit sector. 

More in Part III. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry
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Cathy’s Coffers Part III, The CMR PAC

A Roadmap for understanding campaign finance

This diagram is from a 2014 interactive article in the NYTimes. It is a great place to start understanding the effect of money in our politics. The limits on contributions are indexed to inflation, so the illustrated limits are now higher, e.g. $5400 can be given directly to a Candidate’s election committee ($2700 for the Primary and $2700 for the General election), and a conventional political action committee (PAC) can receive $5000 from an individual donor. 

The CMR PAC receipts for January 1,2017 to March 31, 2018

Dear Group,

Orientation: We are still looking only at the political money in those three circles in the upper left of the diagram above. This is the money you can trace if you spend the time. This is the money BEFORE the Citizens United decision (i.e. SuperPACs) and it is money that is not “Dark” (i.e. money spent for political ends by non-profits with undisclosed donors–the little circle down and right).

McMorris Rodgers, like all candidates, has her “for Congress” coffer, aka “Committee.”. By law money can only enter this coffer in relatively small chunks, $2700 per Election from an individual ($5400 per two year election cycle with a Primary and General Election) and $10,000 per cycle from a PAC. If stop looking after you’ve examined CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS FOR CONGRESS (C00390476), though, you’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg.

Among these three circles in the upper left part of the diagram is MCMORRIS RODGERS AMERICAN DREAM PROJECT; THE (C00543199). Here you get at hint of the big donors that keep an incumbent like McMorris Rodgers in office. Of course, this is merely a conduit used to squeeze money through the legal knotholes into the CMR for Congress coffer and the CMR PAC. Any excess of donations given to the “Dream” passes through to the National Republican Congressional Committee. 

Finally, there is the CMR POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE (C00469429), today’s topic. So far this cycle less money has sloshed through this one than the other two entities (600K vs. 2.7M vs. 2.1M), but it is still interesting. I urge you to click the link and explore.

Contributions: Under “itemized individual contributions” of 100K we have only 36 contributors, only 16 from Washington State. (See the P.S. below for a closer look.) 

“Other committee contributions” of $369K is another laundry list of PACs, nearly all corporate PACs, 109 of them, nearly half in legal maximum per election packages of $5000 . Check it out here. 

The $148K under “Transfers from Affiliated Committees” all comes from 38 individuals (12 from WA), psss-throughs from the McMorris Rodgers American Dream Project. These must represent the ones who contributed to the “Dream” in excess of the $5400 that the “Dream” first sends to Cathy McMorris Rodgers for Congress. Is your head spinning yet?

Expenditures: Where does the money go? $398K went as 163 contributions mostly to Republican candidates “For Congress” campaign committees. A few of those, unbelievably, went to yet other PACs, thus continuing the endless sloshing of the washtub of political money.

Another $113K was spent under “Other federal operating expenditures.” The recipients: fundraising consulting firms (>$50K), legal fees (>$30K), food, hotels, and “compliance consulting.”

Closing points: 1) With a bit of digging it is clear that large amounts of money from very wealthy corporate donors have attached themselves to McMorris Rodgers, many but not all from outside of Washington State. There are a few local notables.

2) Even within the small segment of campaign finance we’ve been examining (that is, NOT Super-PACs and NOT non-profits), even within this segment money is not easy to trace. The mega-wealthy can make contributions in so many ways that after the funds are washed (laundered?) and mixed through the traditional (non-Super) PAC system the money comes out gray. Indeed, much of our politics is fueled by “gray” money. 

3) Remember that all the small contributions (<$200) make up only 1/3 of political contributions. Two thirds of political money is contributed in >$200 chunks. Those larger contributions are made by only 1 in 300 American adults in the midterm election cycle. (Only .04% of adults…1 in 2500…gives $2700 or more.) So who do we expect McMorris Rodgers to listen to?

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. Through their “Employees” (I think it is safe to say that in these cases “Employees”= substantial owners of), Inland Empire Paper Co. of Spokane and Nelson Irrigation Corp. of Walla Walla are major contributors to the CMR PAC (10K and 20K respectively, a total of 30% of the individual contributions to CMR PAC). You can explore other major monetary sprinklings of these contributors here and here. They total $60,400 and $40,800, respectively, just in this election cycle (1/1/17-present).

P.P.S. Among the interesting contributors is one “Petrizzo, Thomas J.” listed for the purposes of the CMR PAC as a resident of Seattle, WA, occupation “Government Relations”, and “employed” by The Petrizzo Group, the D.C. lobbying firm Megan Perez joined recently after leaving McMorris Rodgers. You can explore his other 64 political donations here along with several different listed addresses. One of The Petrizzo Group’s clients, of course, is Omeros, the drug company for which McMorris Rodgers slipped in a nice perk via the Appropriations Bill.

P.P.P.S. A cynical point: Is it an accident that all three of the McMorris Rodgers-linked campaign funds have different name labels: “Cathy McMorris Rodgers,” “McMorris Rodgers.” and “CMR?” Or was this intentionally done to discourage figuring it all out? There is no answer to this question, but there is reason to wonder.