Tag: campaign finance laws
A Political Party Worth Joining

A Political Party Worth Joining

The best political party in America is not the Dems nor the Repubs. By far, the best political party is a real party named “Fighting Bob Fest.”

It’s a daylong, outdoor political festival run by a coalition of Wisconsin progressives who believe in “putting the party back in politics.” Held in Madison every September, Bob Fest is like a “state fair” of politics, not only featuring give-’em-hell speechifying and hot populist issues — but also terrific edibles from a dozen food trucks, bottomless kegs of great local beers, lively music, dozens of activist booths, games, political humor, a farmers market and… well, fun!

The idea behind Bob Fest is to have a political event that people actually want to come to. Plus, not only is admission free, but Bob Fest is also proud to be corporate-free, rejecting any funding or ads by corporate interests. It’s a volunteer-run festival of, by and for regular people, and it pays for itself each year by passing the bucket and getting staff support from The Progressive, the feisty, populist-spirited magazine founded 107 years ago by Sen. Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette.

Yes, Fighting Bob Fest is named for La Follette, a truly great U.S. Senator who was renowned for battling the corruption of American politics by corporate money. In fact, when he was Wisconsin’s governor a century ago, La Follette passed a law banning corporations from making donations to political candidates — a law that is still in effect.

However, corporate interests today use front groups in a political ploy to bypass such bans and dump millions of dollars into their chosen candidates — including Wisconsin’s current governor.

Some magicians perform mind boggling magic tricks, such as levitating themselves, apparently with no hidden force lifting them up. But remember, the key word in “magic trick” — is trick. Scott Walker, for example, is quite the political trickster. This right-wing extremist became so unpopular in his first term as Wisconsin’s governor that he faced a recall election in 2012. Yet he seemed to rise in front of our very eyes, magically lifting himself above the public’s anger to avoid defeat. How’d he do that?

As reported by The Guardian newspaper, some 1,500 secret emails, court testimonies, and financial records were uncovered, revealing that Walker had a hidden lifeline of corporate cash hoisting him up. Despite a Wisconsin law specifically prohibiting corporations from funding political candidates, millions of those banned dollars were pumped into Walker’s campaign.

The trick is that the corporate checks were sent to supposedly-independent political outfits that, thanks to the Supreme Court’s ridiculous Citizens United decree, are allowed to take unlimited campaign funds without disclosing the names of the corporate donors — provided that the independent groups do not in any way coordinate their electoral efforts with the campaign of the candidates they want to elect.

Even if obeyed, this farcical rule essentially sanctions organized corporate corruption, but Walker & Company didn’t even try to obey it. Rather the governor asked everyone from the Koch brothers to Home Depot to Donnie Trump to funnel checks to the “independent” political groups backing him. He wrote personal thank-you notes to the donors, and even had his media strategist handle the ads for both his campaign and the groups.

Scott Walker, his front groups, and his corporate donors aren’t a magic act – they’re debouched thieves, stealing our democracy to impose their plutocracy over us. They’re mocking the law and the people. That’s the importance of bringing us mockees together in big events like Bob Fest — where 10,000 Wisconsinites gathered last year in the fighting spirit of La Follette, determined to stop the corporate governor’s cynical end run.

To learn more about Fighting Bob Fest, go to www.FightingBobFest.org.

To find out more about Jim Hightower, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

The Continuing Financial Muddle At A Pro-Trump Political Committee

The Continuing Financial Muddle At A Pro-Trump Political Committee

Reprinted with permission from ProPublica.

A political action committee that backed Donald Trump’s bid for the presidency is continuing to flout campaign finance laws.

Earlier this month, ProPublica reported that the America Comes First PAC had violated the rules by not disclosing the source of its funding before Election Day and by exceeding caps on contribution amounts.

America Comes First gave $115,000 to Trump Victory, a group that raised money for the Trump campaign and for national and state-level Republican groups. It now ranks as the second-biggest PAC contributor to Trump Victory, according to a list compiled by the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics — behind GEO Group, a private prison company.

After the ProPublica article was published, the treasurer of the PAC, David Schamens, said the group’s filings with the Federal Election Commission were inaccurate, and that they would be amended. Last week they were — but the amended filing includes new irregularities.

For example, the original filing lists Schamens as the top donor to the PAC. The new documents show the top donor as Tradedesk Financial, a firm that lists an address on Wall Street. (Schamens didn’t respond to questions about Tradedesk Financial or other information in the new filings. One online record indicates that a woman named Piliana Schamens was linked to Tradedesk in 2010.) However, a PAC is not permitted to receive direct corporate support. Perhaps recognizing that restriction, America Comes First’s new filings now identify the group as a super PAC, meaning that moving forward, it can receive unlimited corporate money.

Yet declaring itself a super PAC created a new problem for America Comes First, because super PACs can’t donate directly to a political campaign such as Trump Victory. A super PAC can make independent expenditures, such as on advertisements that support a candidate, but those can’t be made in coordination with the campaign. To reconcile this problem in its new filings, America Comes First reclassified the $115,000 it gave as independent expenditures. Yet the payee is still Trump Victory, meaning the expense went to a campaign — in violation of the rules for super PACs.

Schamens, who attended an October fundraiser with Trump as federal regulators waited for any disclosure from his PAC, was accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of securities fraud in the early 1990s. In a settlement, he did not admit to the allegations but agreed to be barred from associating with investment companies or securities brokers. Schamens currently is director of a New Jersey technology company that optimizes and expedites securities trading for financial institutions and traders.

In an interview with ProPublica before the amended filing, Schamens said that among the concerns he related to the Trump camp was the over-enforcement of securities regulations since 2008.

Pro-Trump Group Blew By Basic Campaign Finance Laws

Pro-Trump Group Blew By Basic Campaign Finance Laws

Reprinted with permission from ProPublica.

A group that gave more money to one of President-elect Trump’s fundraising efforts than any other political action committee failed to disclose its donors before Election Day and exceeded caps on contribution amounts.

America Comes First PAC was created in early August. But for the next three months, it disclosed nothing about how much it raised, who its donors were or how it was spending its money.

That eventually prompted a warning from federal regulators.

“It is important that you file this report immediately,” read an October 31 letter from the Federal Election Commission.

But Election Day came and went — and still nothing.

As federal regulators continued to wait for the required disclosures, the group posted a photo two days after the election showing Trump meeting with America Comes First secretary David Schamens.

It wasn’t until this week that the group finally began filing the disclosure forms. The filings show that the bulk of individual donations to the group came from Schamens.

In the early 1990s, Schamens was accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of securities fraud. In a settlement, he did not admit to the allegations but agreed to be barred from associating with investment companies or securities brokers. Schamens currently is director of a New Jersey technology company that caters to financial institutions and securities traders.

The money raised by America Comes First — $315,601 total — is a tiny fraction of what Trump and his supporters raised overall. But Daniel Weiner, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, called the group’s actions “tremendously concerning.”

“Basically they’re not obeying any campaign finance law whatsoever,” Weiner said. “That’s why we have disclosure requirements, because we want to see who is influencing the election and we want that disclosed in a timely manner so voters can make an informed choice.”

Weiner said it’s hard to predict how much the group could be fined by the FEC. He urged Trump’s fundraising committee to return the contributions given the apparent problems, but said it’s not clear the law requires them to.

Schamens told ProPublica that waiting until after the election to disclose the source of the group’s funding was unintentional and caused by poor bookkeeping. (The PAC also had not filed another required report that was due midnight Thursday.)

“It’s not a big deal,” he said.

Schamens contributed at least $202,000 of the PAC’s total fundraising haul, according to FEC reports, although $45,000 of that appeared to be refunded to him.

Another $45,000 came from Sokal Media Group, an automotive advertising agency. The group’s filing attributed another $55,000 to “Kinderton Banjing Transfer” — with an address that corresponds to a Bank of America branch in North Carolina. Schamens could not explain what Kinderton Banjing Transfer was.

All those contributions exceed the $5,000 legal limit on donations to groups such as America Comes First PAC.

The group in turn donated to Trump Victory, a joint committee that raised money for the campaign, the national party, and state-level party groups. The America Comes First PAC donated $115,000 to Trump Victory, putting it ahead of the second largest PAC donor, Ohio mining corporation Murray Energy, at $100,000. (Here’s a helpful Wall Street Journal video explaining how the Trump Victory committee worked.)

Trump, like Hillary Clinton, also had a second joint committee that partnered solely with the national party, and not any state parties.

Trump’s transition team did not respond to a request for comment.

Along with donating to Trump’s joint committee, Schamens said the PAC produced ads targeting the Facebook pages and email inboxes of voters in the battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Thirty-second spots the group produced paint Hillary Clinton as insensitive about the Americans killed during the embassy attack in Benghazi and careless with sensitive emails.

“National security is not a joke,” stated one. “Trump takes it seriously.”

The filings also show a payment to the Lexington Dispatch, a daily newspaper in North Carolina, for “media expenses.”

None of those advertisements boosting Trump appear to have been reported as required. When committees spend at least $200 for independent advertisements intended to elect or defeat a candidate, FEC rules require disclosure of that specific spending within 24 to 48 hours of the ads running. America Comes First PAC has filed no independent expenditure reports with the FEC.

Any disclosures that come now, Weiner said, have little use.

“We want voters to be able to make the decision when they vote,” he said. “The damage is done and you can’t unring the bell.”

Schamens described his current company, TradeStream Analytics, as a technology company that optimizes and expedites securities trading. He said since 2008, his customers have been beleaguered by stricter regulatory enforcement, including on high-frequency trading.

“It’s incredibly unfair to our customers,” he said. “Our customers have been absolutely harassed to no end.”

Schamens said he has expressed those concerns — along with his frustrations about his company’s intellectual property not being protected — to the Trump camp in “just general conversations here and there.” When doing so, he said he was only representing himself, not the PAC. The PAC’s agenda, he said, focuses on curbing foreign aid, illegal immigration and wasteful military spending.

He said the photo of his meeting with Trump, posted two days after the election, was actually taken sometime in October, at a fundraiser he attended not representing the PAC, but as an individual donor. Schamens gave $27,000 to Trump Victory on Oct. 18, 2016.

The photo shows Trump seated at the center of a boardroom table, surrounded by 10 other men, all with bottles of water and leather portfolios.

“President-elect Donald Trump met with ACF’s Dave Schamens,” the caption reads, “to get insight on what he thinks will help make this country greater.”

Update, Dec. 10, 2016: David Schamens said Friday evening the PAC’s filings with the FEC were inaccurate, and that most of the donations did not come from him personally. As the group’s treasurer, he is responsible for accurately filing to the FEC. He said he would amend the filings next week.

IMAGE: Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks during the third and final 2016 presidential campaign debate at UNLV in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., October 19, 2016.  REUTERS/Mike Blake