Where Are All The Crusading Newspaper Editors?

I haven’t blogged since Saturday for a reason. I wanted to track both sides of the story (“What Well-Fed Bulls Are Full Of“) as we watch a brand spanking new, bouncing baby astroturf organization being formed to launder campaign money. Note to lawyers: I do not use “money laundering” in the legal sense, nor the IRS code sense, but in the actual, LITERAL sense:

• Money is given by shadowy backers with a completely mysterious agenda.
• A front group with a front man is created, usually as a 501(c)4 or a 527 (or whatever allows complete opacity as to WHERE that money came from), so that when the front group (in this case, the soothingly-Orwellian-named “Concerned Taxpayers of America”) is investigated, the front man is available for interviews that either:

1. 1. Pooh-pooh any questions raised and push the Vital Reason for this Cash Campaigning talking points, or
   2. Snidely and sarcastically attack the “other side” and generally end with “well George Soros does it TOO!” or,
   3. usually both. OK: Almost invariably.

• The press reports a sort of “he said/she said” article about the front group, and they fade into the political background noise, even though the sheer AMOUNT of cash they are pouring into campaigns — literally being laundered to remove all traces of its origin — fundamentally warps the campaign by its sheer volume.
• The press completely forgets about the shadowy cash, except this year, when a reporter for the New York Times will write a “think piece” in December or January about how much shadowy cash had been dumped into the “local” campaigns across the nation, and how it had changed the face of congress MORE than all the Tea Parties in the Land, and how odd it was that virtually no attention had been paid to it, and how the Mighty Media had fallen down on the job.

THAT kind of money-laundering. Perfectly legal, after the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court of the United States of America, saying that corporations’ “First Amendment” rights were infringed on by not allowing them to flush ALL THE CASH THEY WANT into any campaign they want (although federal contribution limits must still be observed).

Which is why those “Concerned Taxpayers of America” dumped $86,000 into the Oregon House District 4 congressional campaign, OUTSIDE of the campaign of “Art Robinson” — who claims (credibly, I think)  to have no knowledge of who “Concerned Taxpayers of America” is, nor why they support him, but certainly isn’t going to eschew the support. On Thursday, September 23rd, this story appeared on page A-1 of the New York Times [emphasis added]:

With every election cycle comes a shadow army of benignly titled nonprofit groups like Americans for Job Security, devoted to politically charged “issue advocacy,” much of it negative. But they are now being heard as never before — in this year of midterm discontent, Tea Party ferment and the first test of the Supreme Court decision allowing unlimited, and often anonymous, corporate political spending.

Already they have spent more than $100 million — mostly for Republicans and more than twice as much as at this point four years ago.

None have been more active than Americans for Job Security, which spent $6 million on ads during the primary season. This week, emboldened by the court ruling, the group paid close to $4 million more for ads directly attacking nine Democratic candidates for Congress. That made it among the first to abandon the old approach of running ads that stopped just short of explicitly urging voters to elect or reject individual candidates.

[...] An examination of Americans for Job Security — based on a review of its recent activities, as well as on interviews and previously unreleased documents from the Alaska case — provides a rare look inside the opaque world of these ascendant advocacy organizations. Its deep ties to a Republican consulting operation raise questions about whether, under cover of its tax-exempt mission “to promote a strong, job-creating economy,” the group is largely a funnel for anonymous donations.

“A lot of nonprofits game the system, but A.J.S. is unusual in that they so blatantly try to influence elections and evade disclosure,” said Taylor Lincoln, a research director at the watchdog group Public Citizen, which has filed complaints against the group in recent years. “By any common-sense, reasonable interpretation of what they do, they are in violation of the rules.”

On Thursday, September 23rd an editorial appeared in the largest newspaper in DeFazio’s district, the Eugene Register-Guard, reading in part:

… It’s standard fare in political advertising: hyperbolic, oversimplified and treading on the edge of distortion.What’s new is that Oregonians don’t know, and may never know, who is paying for the ads.

In January, the Supreme Court overturned a ban on campaign spending by corporations and unions. Based on that precedent, a federal appeals court struck down limits on individual contributions to political action committees, ruling that such groups could raise unlimited amounts for campaigns as long as they did not coordinate their activities with candidates’ campaigns. The Federal Elections Commission responded to the decision with new rules saying that the only requirement is that groups file a form declaring their intent to exercise their rights to raise and spend unlimited funds.

The anti-DeFazio ads were placed by a Washington, D.C., organization called Concerned Taxpayers of America. The group’s FEC filing lists its treasurer as Jason Miller, and it states that it intends to “make independent expenditures” and “raise funds in unlimited amounts.” That’s it. No list of donors, no disclosure of dollar amounts.

[...] Voters are accustomed to manipulative political advertising, but it used to be possible to find out who was behind it, ensuring some degree of accountability. Sniping from the bushes is allowed now in American politics, with no disclosure of who’s pulling the trigger, how much ammo they have or where it came from….

(Bravo, JW).

Peter Defazio, (D), the incumbent, decided to take the bull by the horns, and walked, with a Huffington Post reporter and a Washington Post reporter and a cameraperson to the legal address of “Concerned Taxpayers of America” where, as was shown, the “Concerned Taxpayers of America” staffer (“junior staffer” although I can’t for the life of me understand how an organization that is 28 days old today, and celebrating its FIRST contribution on the 21st, and its first report on the 23rd, inst. can call ANYbody a “junior” staffer) baldfacedly lied to the congressman and the reporters that he knew NOTHING of “Concerned Taxpayers of America” (who sign his paycheck) or “Jason Miller” (who signs it) and there the story ENDED for the dead tree media. That happened on Thursday, the 24th at 5:15 PM Eastern Daylight Time.

Rep. Peter DeFazio Turns The Tables, Confronts Shadowy Conservative Group Running Attack Ads Against Him (VIDEO) By Amanda Terkel First Posted: 09-24-10 05:15 PM   |   Updated: 09-25-10 11:46 AM

Oh, there’s a video of the whole thing at the link. The mighty (Portland) Oregonian links to it in its sole story, that was a mere regurgitation in brief of the Post stories, with a link to said video. This appeared on Sunday, the 26th.

Rep. Peter DeFazio tries to suss out source of mysterious attack ad Published: Sunday, September 26, 2010, 9:24 PM Updated: Sunday, September 26, 2010, 9:33 PM

Jeff Mapes, The Oregonian

The Washington Post has a pretty intriguing story and video looking at an attack ad against Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., that was launched by a mysterious group known as Concerned Taxpayers of America.

Given how the U.S. Supreme Court opened the door to allowing corporations and other well-heeled donors to launch such secretive efforts, you can expect a lot of this kind of thing this fall. DeFazio isn’t the likeliest of targets, given that he’s a well-entrenched 12-term incumbent. But his district can have a conservative streak – the Democrats just barely held the district in the 2004 presidential race – and the Republican candidate this year, Art Robinson, has a following as a global warming skeptic and the developer of curriculum materials for home schoolers.

The video shows how DeFazio, accompanied by reporters, visited a townhouse on Capitol Hill to try to track down who is financing the ad campaign against him. He didn’t get very far, but it produced some entertaining video (and Robinson, by the way, tells the Post he doesn’t know anything about the ad, although he appreciates the help).

DeFazio says that while his own sources of funding are clear, he’d like to know who is paying for the attack ads against him. From the Post: “Is this a corporation? Is it one very wealthy, right-wing individual? Is it a foreign interest? Is it a drug gang?” DeFazio said. “We don’t know.” Here’s the Post’s video:

And Mapes pastes the embedded video code from the Washington Post server. That’s it. Push-button journalism.

The Washington Post story notes:

“I’m delighted to have their help, but the truth is, I have no idea who is doing this,” said [GOP nominee Art] Robinson, a chemist who is popular on the conservative circuit for his work casting doubt that global warming is manmade.

Robinson’s benefactor has spent more on advertising on his behalf than his own campaign has. But there seems to be no record of an organization called Concerned Taxpayers of America, outside a few filings at the Federal Election Commission. The filings list a Capitol Hill address and the name of a treasurer, Republican political consultant Jason Miller.

So, who is Jason Williams?

According to The Washington Post, he’s a “Republican political consultant.” It took me about forty-five minutes to figure out who Miller was, which I posted on Saturday, 25 SEPTEMBER 2010…9:00 PM Pacific Daylight Time (12 AM 26 Sept. EDT).

No need to rehash it here. Under that modern journalistic rubric called “The Weekend” the story all but vanished down the memory hole by Monday.

The R-G published a story on Monday that was, like the Oregonian piece, a rehash of the Huffington Post and Washington Post articles, with the added fillip of interviewing  a polysci professor in Forest Grove, Oregon:

Cash source for ads a mystery Rep. Peter DeFazio calls foul over commercials airing in support of his opponent, Art Robinson

BY SUSAN PALMER
The Register-Guard
Appeared in print: Tuesday, Sep 28, 2010

[...]

The January decision by the high court overturned several previous election campaign regulations, said Jim Moore, political science professor at Pacific University in Forest Grove…

Which seems kind of weird, frankly, given that we have the University of Oregon and Lane Community College right here in town. What? There wasn’t ONE political expert in the Fourth District that the reporter could interview? Worse, there seems to be a long “interview” with Art Robinson interspersed in the piece, as Robinson gets to elucidate his cluelessness as to who his “benefactors” are.

When you don’t know anything, it would seem, a simple statement to that effect would suffice.

Alan Pittman of the Eugene Weekly posts the same two links on his blog, minus any additional information, yesterday, and today, the Oregonian posts a LONGER story that is, again, a rehash of the original two Post stories: HuffPo and WaPo.

In other words, NO local media outlet has added ANYthing to the reporting, but, rather, have engaged in that “blogging” hash that “legitimate” newspapers love to decry when whining about the blogosphere. Fine, guys: so where’s the “REAL” reporting? Where’s the non-lazy, actual-research journalism we hear so much tell about?

The Oregonian piece contains the following item (though I must confess that I sent them a copy of the Saturday posting with this information, so they HAD to have known) that sort of advances the story beyond the Meals-Ready-to-Eat status of our freeze-dried “reportage”:

Court ruling means voters can’t know who is paying for political ad attacking Peter DeFazio until too late in the process
Published: Tuesday, September 28, 2010, 5:28 PM Updated: Tuesday, September 28, 2010, 6:06 PM
Anna Griffin, The Oregonian

[Note: Links are THEIRS.]

… DeFazio’s campaign staff discovered that a group called Concerned Taxpayers of America had produced the ads and bought the TV time — almost $200,000 worth at the Democrat’s last count. A quick check of Federal Election Commission filings shows Concerned Taxpayers operates out of a Capitol Hill townhouse and is run by Jason Miller, a longtime Republican consultant whose previous employers include Rudy Giuliani, in his failed presidential campaign, and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.

When The Washington Post called, Miller would not say who paid for the ads. Robinson said he does not know: “I’d like to thank them, but all I have are suspicions.” Under federal election law, Concerned Taxpayers will report its donations, but not until Oct. 15, the FEC’s quarterly filing deadline and the day ballots go out.

And then this:

… DeFazio, who staged a bold little photo op last week, marching with reporters to Concerned Taxpayers’ D.C. address. A man who answered the door — after DeFazio yelled through the mail slot — claimed to know nothing about Concerned Taxpayers or Jason Miller. Miller later told the Post that the man did work for him and had lied under pressure.

This government-endorsed anonymity bothers Robinson, too, but in principle more than practice.

“You can’t point at this situation and demonize it when most voters don’t know where the money comes from on either side,” he said. “Peter DeFazio isn’t telling them about the $400,000 or more he took from the transportation industry, is he?”

No, but anyone can go to the Federal Election Commission website and see where DeFazio’s contributions originated.

“They won’t,” Robinson said. “You and I both know that not one voter in 1,000 is going to go to the FEC website and poke around.” [...]

Which completely skews the story. Art Robinson gets to make his snarky know-nothings, and the actual problem is dismissed in the opening headline. Just because the Supreme Court has “legitimized” this stealth campaigning doesn’t mean that we CAN’T know who the agents of plutocracy are working for, we CAN shine a light on these bilge-rats.

Where are the Crusading Editors of Yore?

The link to concerned taxpayers is simply a link to Jason Miller’s “About” page with Jamestown Associates.

That’s it? Too bad. The Oregonian might have noticed that some other prominent names include George Allen (the “macaca” Senator from Virginia, who lost his ‘safe’ seat in 2006), Tom Coburn (creepy Republican Senator from Oklahoma),  and Florida’s congressman Ric Keller.

Worse, they MIGHT have taken a smidgen of a moment to look at the REST of the Jamestown Associates website to see WHO THE HELL the money launderers (to themselves, conveniently) in this stealth campaign actually are.

The coverage of l’Affaire DeFazio is lazy, shiftless and an active blot on the term “journalistic integrity.”

From Thursday to Wednesday, the story has advanced not a whit in the Never Mind Media (as in, what about the part of it we DO know about? Never mind) beyond finding Jason Miller’s self-written biography.

Unbelievable.

• The Seattle Post Intelligencer reports, using a hash of the same old leftovers of somebody else’s reporting.
• The Washington Monthly’s ‘Political Animal’ blog mentions it in an omnibus posting. (hooray! but nothing new.)
• The Washington Independent makes a swift leftover hash of the aforementioned.
• BlueOregon‘s Carla Axtman raves about how great DeFazio’s photo-op was, but uses the Usual Suspects. No advance of the story.
• The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Wash.) reprints the Washington Post piece.
• Daily Kos “rescues” a diary entry that rehashes the Posts’ postings.

The original sketchy stories have been masticated so thoroughly that they look like the end of the service life of a dog’s chew toy. But ZERO attempt to go any further. No asking the next question: Who is Jason Miller? Who are Jamestown Associates.

All we’ve got of this story is some kid lying to a United States Congressman and two reporters that he has no idea who Jason Miller is. Jason Miller, when contacted, says he shouldn’t have done that, and then says that he isn’t going to say a word about who gave him the money to start an organization that he, as treasurer of  ”Concerned Taxpayers of America” pays the company in which he is a partner, “Jamestown Associates” EIGHTY SIX THOUSAND DOLLARS to author, produce and launch anonymous attack ads against a congressman on the other side of the continent from Washington D.C.

That’s it.

The story stops here, still.

OK: So who asks, “Gee, what DO we know?” rather than merely whining that “WE CANNOT KNOW, gosh darn it”?

Seriously: with our very democracy on the auction block, with the zeitgeist screaming for this story (remember the New York Times story cited above) NOBODY could take half an hour to Google this stuff? How about FIVE minutes?

All right. Let me toss a new chew toy to the Never Mind Media. Maybe they’ll get off their catatonic asses and DO THEIR GODDAMNED JOBS.

Our democracy is for sale to shadowy gazillionaires and any newspaperman worth his or her salt would immediately understand the “Malefactors of Great Wealth” versus the people: the shopkeeper, the truckdriver, the office worker, the janitor, the vast majority of any newspaper’s readership. Joseph Pulitzer would have had a field day with this stuff.

[Hint to would-be crusading editors: read some of that old Progressive Era editorializing and writing. Lots of it is online. Some of it's as pungent and trenchant as the day it was set in cold type and printed in the wee hours of the morning.]

Here. Let me make a little observation, and then some Red Meat about “Jamestown Associates.”

I have fought for the six years of this blog to keep our politics local. I have fought against the nationalization of political campaigns and the growth of stealth operations. I have fought against out-of-state zillionaires using my state as a laboratory for their Frankenstein legislation.

I have “outed” the amoral horror that political consultants represent — the selfsame bastardization of truth and reason that Aristophanes parodied in The Clouds some 2500 years ago.

Aristophanes and Menander
masters of comedy old and new

I don’t agree with (former Reagan speechwriter and current Wall Street Journal columnist/talking head on those Sunday politics shows nobody watches) Peggy Noonan much. In fact, I rarely ever agree with Peggy Noonan, but I am in adamant and emphatic agreement with her that the rise of the professional political consultants has destroyed a great part of American politics.

I “outed” one such operative whose tentacles still enwrap Democratic legislative campaigns from Seattle to the Willamette Valley from Portland to Eugene, to Arizona and California. I am not a partisan here for anything but democracy.

The Political Pro is only about cynical statistical manipulation to get that “Fifty plus One” that wins elections (and gathers new clients). They package our candidates like Pop Tarts and Potato Chips and Toothpaste. Most stick to one side of the street or the other. Clearly Jason Miller sticks to the Republican Establishment. Too bad the Oregonian writer wasn’t more concerned that Miller was Rudy Giuliani’s “Rapid Response” attack dog, rather than that Rudy lost the presidential stakes.

It is their need to be constantly employed that has created the current culture of The Endless Campaign. We need more and more money to oil the gears of the political machine, and those with more and more (and now unlimited) money to grease the skids have an almost insurmountable advantage in elections.

And now, we have a New Thing in American Politics:

The Über-rich can give the political professionals all the cash they can choke down to launch endless campaigns to, say kill climate change agreements (as I have chronicled here and here and in teensy words and weensy wordage, HERE), or take down the benchmate of an unfriendly judge (as I chronicled here).

It is a marriage made in Hell. And, we may well be watching the death of local politics. Decisions and even LAWS (made through Initiative Machines) all made at the top, by our Plutocratic Shadow Masters.

And our politics becomes propaganda, pure and simple. The vote grows ever more vestigial, and the various plutarchs revert to the status of mafiosi, playing the old Roman Emperor musical chairs schtick.

Hey, this election may well determine whether or not “Net Neutrality” remains the rule, or whether those who already own the traditional media can simply slow down the traffic of the new media they don’t like or agree with. There’s a lot at stake here.

Now, where are those inheritors of Joseph Pulitzer who can bravely take a stand against plutocracy: to afflict the comfortable and to comfort the afflicted?

Where the hell are you?

Here’s a jump start:

So, Wikipedia says:

Jamestown Associates
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jamestown Associates is a Republican political consulting firm based in Princeton, NJ. It provides full-service political consulting and works with clients throughout the United States to develop mailings, commercials, and campaign strategies. Jamestown associates has approximately 20 years of experience in the consulting field and has worked with hundreds of clients in everything from Township Committee races to gubernatorial campaigns. The firm also produces corporate mailings.

Ads produced by Jamestown have been cited in various media sources. The firm has won Pollie Awards for a number of its advertisements and its ads have been mentioned on Foxnews and other media sources.

Larry Weitzner is the CEO of Jamestown Associates and one of the founders of the company. Jamestown has three in-house production suites.

Notable Clients
New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie
Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell
Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack (CA)
Congressman Connie Mack (FL)
Congressman Leonard Lance (NJ)
Former Congressman Rick Renzi (AZ)
Former Congressman Mike Ferguson (NJ)
Former Congresswoman Nancy Johnson (CT)
Former Congressman Chris Shays (CT)
New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Doug Forrester

Gee. None of these “journalists” took the 30 seconds that it would have taken to find THAT out?

Come ON.

We know who the whores are.

Decency and democracy, determinism, destiny  and duty demand that we find out who the whoremasters are, and that we expose their political pornography to the light of day.

Sunlight is a great disinfectant. This DeFazio dustup is just the poster child for a jillion of these phony political money laundering schemes.

It is like the legendary Hydra: for every head you lop off, two more take its place. But it can be defeated with principled, dogged, determined REPORTING. Sitting on your ass and equivocating over the entire election cycle is NOT an option this year.

And don’t believe that BS about “disclosure.” There’s always sort of some disclosure AFTER the election of all the cash that they dump in AFTER the last pre-election reporting period. And the 501(c)4 “civic league” organizations virtually ALWAYS get extensions to their Federal 990 tax return, so that, say, their 2006 tax return is not filed until November of 2007, and then not available online until early 2008.

I listened to NPR’s “OnPoint” today, and I was astonished at the level of outright lying that was being accepted by the guests, as the hidden money weasel explained that it was all completely transparent and not a problem, and gee, wasn’t that an F-111A that just crashed across the street behind you? (For those that remember National Lampoon‘s “How To Cheat At Monopoly“)

[Or, maybe it was To The Point.... hard to keep 'em straight.]

And the people, and the commenters “get” that folks like the Kochs are gaming us. But, even as the Great Rolling Stone Reporter Matt Taibi “discovers” that the whole Tea Party sham has been carefully funded by these shadow groups he hasn’t even figured out that FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity were formerly known as “Citizens for a Sound Economy” and “Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation,” as was reported here (and a zillion other places) back in early spring.

Why, jeepers. This story is too big for even Matt Taibi to fully cover. Maybe the remnants of “the crusading newspaper” community might want to pick up some of the slack.

Good ghod, newspaper editors: hundreds of millions of dollars are slushing into this from ghod knows where. We know that Karl Rove raised $52 million at one point, and the Republican Governors’ Association has $40 million in its warchest. That’s almost a hundred million on one side from just TWO organizations. “Hundreds of millions” is no exaggeration or literary trope. It is the literal truth.

If what they represent is good and decent and honest, why hide in the shadows?

(And what no one seems to ask is this: How LUCRATIVE is this professional campaigning business for the pros? I used to see the books in Hollywood, and the amount that was leached out of the budget and into the pockets of sharp operators was outrageous. When some angry ideologue is handing you a couple million dollars to campaign with, what’s the temptation to campaign, but also cut yourself in for a lion’s share of all that cash lying around? I promise you, there are too many pictures of Ben Franklin floating around and too many opportunities to pocket them.)

And if they hide in the shadows, don’t we have an obligation — as citizens, if not journalists — to ferret out WHAT it is that they’re hiding?

And you know WHY the IRS isn’t riding shotgun on all these 501(c)3s (who can strategize) and 501(c)4s (likes, say Citizens for a Sound Economy, now FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity) — groups that take millions of dollars of cash, some charitable writeoffs and some guaranteed anonymous political money? How come?

The IRS only has SEVEN full-time employees overseeing the investigation of ALL charitable entities. Fraud is rampant,and has been out of control for years, because NEITHER party wants this cesspool of American politics cleaned up. Otherwise, where could we park our cabinet-level operatives during times that we are out of power. Ever notice how many turned-out-of-office politicians spend “away” time for a year or so at the Kennedy School of Government?

Or tucked away into the American Enterprise Institute or the Brookings Institute?

And THAT’S a story, too.  A big one.

The public has a right to know, and the funny thing is that when the public knows the facts, they actually make pretty good practical decisions.

Besides, we conceived this form of government with a healthy respect and a healthy wariness for the collective ability of the demos — the people — to decide the course of the Republic. Let’s give them the facts that they need to know (rather than rhetorically masturbating for over a year about who and what the “Tea Party” is).

Just a hunch, but I think that agit-prop cash sluicing into the Off-Year election like the shock wave from a dam break is going to play a bigger role than any Party, Tea or No.

It’s a goddamned news story and the goddamned news media need to goddamned COVER it.

Dammit.

If a guy paying political money from a slush fund that he controls to the company that he’s a partner in isn’t a “news story,” then I guess we need to focus on yesterday’s “REAL” news story of the day, instead (from Google):

Dancing with the Stars »
Was Sarah Palin booed on DWTS?
Chicago Tribune (blog) – 21 hours ago – all 732 articles »

I know: I didn’t link the story.

I guess you’ll have to Google it.

(Although not this one:

FOX NATION: WATCH: Media Falsely Claim Palin Booed on ‘Dancing’

Left-wing reporters and so-called “mainstream” media publications, are falsely reporting that Governor Palin was “booed” by the audience Monday night when she attended the taping of Dancing With the Stars to watch her daughter Bristol … )

Ooooh. Scary.

Courage.

======================

UPDATE: The Mercer-DeFazio blog series now runs long enough for a Table of  Contents:

• Where Are All The Crusading Newspaper Editors? (29 September)
• DeFazio’s Tormentors Canned by Republican Senatorial Campaign (17 October)
• Peter DeFazio and the Daughters of Mercer (22 October)
• A Mercer-fully Short Investigative Report (31 October)
• DeFazio: La Belle Dame Plus Mercer, Merci! (9 December)
• Because “Cudgel For Growth” Wouldn’t Sound as Warm and Fuzzy (14 December)