57 percent of all Super PAC donations in this election has come from a small circle of just 47 donors, says a new report by Demos. Those are the donors who have given over $1 million each; those who have given over $10,000 account for 94 percent of all Super PAC fundraising.
A new study by several public policy groups indicates that half of outside spending is from groups that don't reveal their donors. According to the data, the top five "dark money" groups spent just over $53 million on TV ads for the presidential race. But because of specific tax codes related to nonprofits, these groups do not necessarily have to disclose their donors or the amount they spend to the FEC.
A top concern raised by critics of the Supreme Court's 2010Citizens United decision was that it would unleash a torrent of poorly disclosed, if disclosed at all, spending by the superwealthy. Evidence continues to mount that's precisely what's happening.
A few people with a lot of money are responsible for the majority of contributions to superPACs, according to a new analysis by two watchdog groups.
It’s no secret that some very rich people support the super PACs and other groups that have inundated the 2012 campaign with unlimited sums of cash. But a study to be released Thursday details the extent to which this kind of donating is the sport of the One Percent.
WASHINGTON – Unlimited outside spending fueled by a small number of wealthy donors is poised to have an outsized impact on the 2012 elections, according to the latest campaign filings.
This Thursday August 2nd at 11am, national public policy organizations Demos and U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) will hold a press call to announce the major findings from the new report “Million-Dollar Megaphones: Super PACs and Unlimited Outside Spending in the 2012 Elections.”
For all the talk about the need for voter-identification laws, you’d think millions of Americans were impersonating dead people to get their candidates elected, or casting multiple ballots after breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
WASHINGTON, DC – Last night, the DISCLOSE Act which would shine a light on the dark money dominating our democracy was defeated on the Senate floor. Although it received a majority of votes it failed to overcome a filibuster from Senator McConnell.
The Supreme Court issued a little-noticed decision in a Maryland case that gave the green light to states to eliminate the repugnant practice of “prison-based gerrymandering.”
Since 2008, working families have done everything they can to get by – changing spending habits, paying down debt, taking on 2nd (or 3rd jobs), digging into savings and retirement funds, and even cutting back on medical care – but they’re still falling behind.
Are big corporations taking over American elections? It depends whether you ask liberals or conservatives, who can’t even agree on the basic facts.
In the liberal universe, big corporations have swallowed politics. Common Cause President Bob Edgar summed up this version of reality at a press conference in March, declaring: “We, the people, will not stand idly by while the country’s major corporations use their massive wealth to buy our democracy.”
Philadelphia, PA – Today, the Black Political Empowerment Project (B-PEP) and ACTION United filed suit against Secretary of the Commonwealth Carol Aichele, Secretary of Public Welfare, Gary D. Alexander and Secretary of Health, Dr. Eli N. Avila in the U.S.
Though it fell in a rather busy week and didn't grab much attention, another Supreme Court decision last week should have ramifications for Connecticut. The ruling affirmed the constitutionality of a Maryland law that counts incarcerated persons as residents of their last legal home addresses, not the prisons, for redistricting purposes.
On Monday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling which upholds a lower court ruling, and area returning citizens are pleased by the court's ruling.
Supreme Court Justices agreed with Maryland's “No Representation Without Population Act” in a summary disposition which means meaning the Justices based their ruling on existing briefs and did not engage in oral arguments. A lower court ruled that in the case of Fletcher v. Lamone, Maryland officials cannot count a prisoner's incarceration address, and must count their last known home of residence.
The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed Monday a lower court's ruling upholding Maryland's new congressional redistricting plan, which counts inmates as living at their last-known addresses instead of in their prison cells. But it may not be the last word on the matter.
Some Republican lawmakers opposed to the map, drawn once each decade based on U.S.
Washington, D.C. – Today, the United States Supreme Court summarily reversed the Montana Supreme Court decision to uphold a state law restricting corporate spending in elections, squandering a chance to review the disastrous consequences of Citizens United.
Washington, DC – The U.S. Supreme Court today upheld the constitutionality of Maryland’s groundbreaking “No Representation Without Population Act,” which counts incarcerated people as residents of their legal home addresses for redistricting purposes. The 2010 law was a major civil rights victory that ended the distortions in fair representation caused by using incarcerated persons to pad the population counts of districts containing prisons.
In its May 2012 Plastic Safety Net survey, research and advocacy company Demos surveyed 997 low- and middle-income American households that carried credit card debt for three months or more — and looked at how the recession and the Credit CARD Act of 2009 have affected American households.
NEW YORK – Almost two out of five American Indians and Alaska Natives eligible to vote are not registered, but according to a new report by national policy center Demos, designating Indian Health Service (IHS) facilities as official voter registration agencies under the National Voting Rights Act (NVRA) would go a long way toward addressing this civic crisis.
“Our democracy is stronger when all of our citizens participate, and this is all the more true in the case of American Indians and Alaska Natives.”
As we all sit around waiting for the Supreme Court to hand down decisions on a whole handful of whoppers — the Affordable Care Act, the Arizona "Papers, Please" law — it was something the Court didn't do this week that may be the most overlooked matter of all. It has before it a case from Montana whereby that state's supreme court upheld Montana's 100-year-old ban on corporate campaign contributions in the face of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case.