Thanks for the Plutocracy!

“Corporations are people, my friend.”

—Mitt Romney, Aug. 11, 2011.

Here's the way federal elections are regulated in the United States:

• $5,000 limit on donations to any particular candidate
• $30,800 limit on donations to any national political party
• NO limit on donations to Super PACs like American Crossroads, although donors must disclose their identities.
• NO limit on donations to "social welfare groups"—and donors remain anonymous!

This is because in 2010, in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that ANY group could make any "independent expenditure" of any amount for any political cause, campaign, or election.

This decision equated money with "political speech."

A subsequent lower court ruling (Speechnow.org. v. Federal Election Commission) found that corporations and people could pool and spend unlimited money in elections, so long as they didn't coordinate with the "official" campaigns.

As Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart amply demonstrated, this, of course, was a joke. And so today, the gigantic political action committees known as Super PACs (like Crossroads GPS) roam the country, spending millions—no, billions of dollars to ensure that moneyed interests reign supreme. But at least donors to Super Pacs have to identify themselves.

Contrast this with the "social welfare groups." Also known as "dark money nonprofits," they're in the same tax code as groups that perform some kind of public or community benefit, like local volunteer fire departments. So Americans For Prosperity (run by David and Charles Koch) and American Crossroads (by Karl Rove) do not have to disclose their donors at all—leaving it a great mystery who might be funding them—other than the fact that they're billionaires. (In 2012, American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS spent more than $200 million on the elections but backed no winning candidates.)

Hence the term "dark money." But is their approach so different from that of traditional campaigns? From Politico:

Ads purchased with untraceable money tend to be among the most vicious. Nearly 9 in 10 dark-money spots are negative, and an analysis by the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that 26 percent of the ads are deceptive, a slightly higher rate than that for ads by groups that disclose their donors' identities.

Oh, and BTW, Politico estimates that Americans for Prosperity and American Crossroads account for 80% of spending by social welfare groups in 2012.

At the moment, about 35 billionaires have given $250,000 or more (a LOT more) in 2012 to defeat Democratic candidates. A Politico report has found that the top .07 percent of donors are exerting more influence on elections than the bottom 86 percent—and that's only the publicly disclosed donations.

Factor in secret gifts to "social welfare groups" and who knows what the disparity would be?

As to big Democratic donors, they're much rarer. Take Warren Buffet, for example. Sure, the second-richest man in America is a friend of Barack Obama's. But Buffet has said of Super PACs, "I don't want to see democracy go in that direction."

Neither, do I, Warren, neither do I!

[Statistics from Jane Mayer's article "Schmooze or Lose" in the August 27, 2012 issue of The New Yorker.]