Free Republic

House Democrats held a panicked hearing this month about how to respond to the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which upheld the right of corporations to spend in elections. Their concern was the undue influence corporate spending might have on the coming elections. In the entire 2016 campaign cycle, corporations spent less than $300 million on federal races, less than 5% of total spending. Meanwhile, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has already spent more than $360 million on cable, broadcast and radio advertisements since declaring his candidacy in mid-November. That doesn’t include Mr....

"Services are valued at prevailing commercial rate" Sanders packs venues because he has major corporate entertainers play for free. See for example: "Move Over Coachella, Bernie Sanders' Caucus Rally Is The Hottest Line Up This Season" https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2020/01/9261165/bernie-sanders-concert-bon-iver-vampire-weekend-iowa-rally

A record-shattering tab for TV ads, $12 million for a self-created tech firm to rival Donald Trump’s digital operation and nearly $250,000 on swank office furniture for his sprawling Manhattan headquarters — that was just a fraction of Mike Bloomberg’s budget for the first five weeks of his young, self-funded presidential campaign. Bloomberg’s top two campaign lieutenants, chair Patti Harris and manager Kevin Sheekey, are on track to earn annual salaries of $375,000, according to a campaign aide. And that doesn’t account for the vintage Bloomberg staff bonuses, which totaled $1.5 million the year of his 2005 mayoral race alone....

The staff, the ad spending, the campaigning -- Michael Bloomberg was going to do all of this to defeat President Donald Trump already. Doing it as a 'candidate' excempts him from limits on PACs and political donations. There is very good reason to believe Michael Bloomberg isn’t actually running for president.Of course, there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. For one, he declared he is. He’s also hired more than 1,000 staff and is still expanding, offering salaries far above campaign averages. This week, he became the first of the declared candidates to have campaigned in all 14 states...

Senate Democrats introduced a constitutional amendment on Tuesday to undo the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision. A group of Democrats, led by Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), and progressive activists rallied outside the Supreme Court to unveil the amendment, which faces an unlikely path to being ratified. "Few decisions in the 200 and some odd years of this republic have threatened our democracy like Citizens United. People say they want to get rid of the swamp. Citizens United is the embodiment of the swamp," Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said at the rally. Schumer added that "overturning Citizens United...

Ten years ago, the Supreme Court overturned portions of a federal law that empowered government to dictate how Americans who were not connected to any candidates and political parties could practice their inherent right of free expression. It was one of the greatest free speech decisions in American history. The case of Citizens United revolved around state efforts to ban a conservative nonprofit group from showing a critical documentary it produced of then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton right before the 2008 Democratic primary elections. At the time, the McCain-Feingold Act made it illegal for corporations and labor unions to engage in...

SAN MARCOS, Texas — Michael R. Bloomberg on Saturday did not rule out spending a billion dollars of his own money on the 2020 presidential race, even if he does not win the Democratic nomination, and said he would mobilize his well-financed political operation to help Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren win in November if either is the party nominee, despite their sharp policy differences. Mr. Bloomberg’s plans would effectively create a shadow campaign operation for the general election, complete with hundreds of organizers in key battleground states and a robust digital operation, ready to be inherited by the party...

WASHINGTON -- Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro announced Thursday that he was bowing out of the 2020 Democratic primary. The only reason to notice or care is that Castro was one of the more shrill candidates, so it's good that he never found purchase in the crowded field and hence had to "suspend" his campaign. Like Kamala Harris, the California Democratic senator who dropped out in December, Castro has been part of the left's "cancel culture" that seeks to silence those with differing views rather than to debate in the marketplace of ideas. Harris tried to stand...

Michael R. Bloomberg is trying — his way — spending millions each week in an online advertising onslaught that is guided by polling and data that he and his advisers believe provide unique insight into the president’s vulnerabilities. The effort, which is targeting seven battleground states where polls show Mr. Trump is likely to be competitive in November, is just one piece of an advertising campaign that is unrivaled in scope and scale. On Facebook and Google alone, where Mr. Bloomberg is most focused on attacking the president, he has spent $18 million on ads over the last month, according...

Former Vice President Joe Biden released a list of donors who have raised at least $25,000 for his 2020 presidential campaign, including eight former U.S. ambassadors that served either under the Obama or Clinton administration. The long list of donors includes former U.S. Ambassadors to Belgium Denise Bauer and Alan Blinken, former U.S. Ambassador to Portugal Elizabeth Frawley Bagley, former U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Anthony Gardner, former U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa Mark Gilbert, former U.S. Ambassador to Romania Mark Gitenstein, former U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Kevin O’Malley, and former Ambassador to Spain and Andorra James...

This Christmas season, decorate your trees and hang your stockings, and know that three kings come again, bearing gifts. But this time, 2,020 years later, these three kings bear gifts not for the baby Jesus, but for the Democratic Party. The biggest lie in American politics today is that Republicans are the party of the wealthy elite, and the Democrats are fighting for the little guy. While corporate political spending is split roughly down the middle between Democrats and Republicans, in all other categories the Democrats are way in front. Labor unions, which collect and spend at least $14 billion...

September 24, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — A former member of Congress is calling on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to audit several left-wing activist groups over their charity arms’ association with a progressive organization he claims is “weaponizing” charitable giving for political purposes. This week, former rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) spoke to Bill Bennett, former education secretary and Fox Nation host, about concerns he detailed earlier this month in a Fox News op-ed about Grassroots Campaigns, a for-profit “progressive” voter canvassing organization that has worked with Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)....

MINNEAPOLIS — Rep. Ilhan Omar’s soap-opera love life threatened to become more of a political thriller Wednesday as watchdog groups questioned whether her alleged affair with a married member of her paid political-consulting team constituted an ethics violation. “It looks like on the surface that she used campaign finance funds to benefit her paramour,” said Tom Fitton, head of conservative oversight group Judicial Watch, which last month asked the House Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate unsubstantiated claims that Omar (D – Minn.) married her brother to get him a green card. “The new reporting is additional reason for an...

In the shameless shambles that is Morning Joe, they can report on Ilhan Omar -- but only the parts where they think Republicans look ridiculous. On today's show, Joe Scarborough, with an assist from Eugene Scott of the Washington Post, whom the paper's official bio describes as a "reporter covering identity politics," criticized the Alabama Republican Party for adopting a resolution calling for the expulsion of Omar from Congress. Scarborough approvingly cited Omar's tweet in response to the resolution, in which she mockingly noted the 2016 Senate nomination of Roy Moore. Scarborough also quoted Scott to the effect that the...

A federal investigation into whether Trump Organization executives violated campaign-finance laws appears to be wrapping up without charges being filed, according to people familiar with the matter. For months, federal prosecutors in New York have examined whether company officials broke the law, including in their effort to reimburse Michael Cohen for hush-money payments he made to women alleging affairs with his former boss, President Donald Trump. In recent weeks, however, their investigation has quieted, the people familiar with the inquiry said, and prosecutors now don't appear poised to charge any Trump Organization executives in the probe that stemmed from the...

President Trump was “thrilled” that his campaign acquired Northern Virginia office space at “bargain basement” rates, a campaign official told the Washington Examiner in an interview in the plush 14th floor offices overlooking the Potomac River from Arlington, Va. But campaign finance specialists say the "steal" could violate election law, which views below-market rates for rent as an illegal in-kind campaign donation. The deal was presented as a story of real estate prowess that was a fitting reflection of the man who authored The Art of the Deal. Campaign manager Brad Parscale took advantage of a long-term lease inked in...

Rep. Maxine Waters (D., Calif.) paid $50,000 from her campaign's coffers to her daughter in recent months to chip away at six figures of accrued debt for an operation that pulls in large sums of money for the congresswoman's campaign committee, Federal Election Commission filings show. Rep. Waters's committee disbursed two payments to her daughter, Karen, in the amounts of $42,000 and $8,000 during the first quarter, which runs from Jan. 1 to March 31. The $50,000 in payments were made to Karen for running a slate mailer, or endorsement mailer, operation from the campaign and were the most paid...

When the “Russia collusion” scam failed so miserably as a means to take down this administration, liberal politicians and their media cronies got creative, coming up with ever more strained legal theories to justify their harassment of President Trump. The latest iteration is their effort to twist campaign finance laws to fit new, imagined crimes.A prime example of this wishful thinking is the attack on Donald Trump, Jr. over the infamous “Trump Tower Meeting.” Recall that a British publicist emailed Don Jr. in 2016, saying he would be meeting with some Russian citizens, and that Russian prosecutors possibly had “information...

Sometimes people just think themselves cleverer than they are. Twitchy highlights this leftover from yesterday involving the most prominent House Democrat grandstander in a House Oversight Committee hearing. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez played a “corruption game” with a panel of ethics experts that ignores basic civics and, as one witness later noted, the actual facts of campaign finance.But AOC’s supporters were certainly stoked about the first “lightning round” of game: Oh my god. This is just sensational. Please watch and retweet. pic.twitter.com/ackPHwAUce— James Corden (@JKCorden) February 7, 2019 “Let’s play a lightning round game,” Ocasio-Cortez began. “I’m gonna be the...

Donald Trump’s not the only one asking this question, although he has the most self-interest in asking it. “I never directed Michael Cohen to break the law,” Trump started in laying out his case on Twitter, and then argued that not all the acts to which Cohen pled guilty should have been crimes in the first place. Trump took aim at his biggest legal liability so far — the payoffs that kept his former paramours from talking publicly about his infidelities. How could those possibly be campaign-finance violations, especially in a criminal context? I never directed Michael Cohen to...