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MIKE PAPANTONIO: Welcome back to Ring of Fire. I'm Mike Papantonio. Citizens United opened
the doors for unlimited corporate money in elections. Because of that, we're left with
elected officials that are completely obedient to a few billionaire donors. I have attorneys
Howard Nations and Dave TeSelle with me now to talk about the billionaires' takeover of
our democracy. Howard, you have now Sheldon Adelson that says, "You know, yeah, I gave
a ton of money, multimillions of dollars in the last election" -- some people think it's
as high as actually over$25 million when you put everything together -- but when you come
right down to it, Adelson says, "You know what? It doesn't faze me, because I'm worth
$30-plus billion, and I'm going to continue buying elections." Isn't that kind of the
way of the future right now in politics? HOWARD NATIONS: It's the way of the president,
Mike. What's happened right now, Adelson that you're talking about, he put $16.5 million
into Gingrich's campaign against Romney for the nomination. When he lost that, then he
put $30 million into Romney's campaign against Obama. Then he lost that. He put all kinds
of money into the GOP Congress. He gave to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He spent $94
million alone in the 2012 cycle that we know about, plus with what he did with the dark
money, which we're going to talk about in a minute, he's got a total of probably $150
million in this cycle, as a result of which they lost -- Romney lost, they lost the Senate
for what he was trying to do, they lost most of the races that he put money in, and he
says, "No big deal, I'm a poker player, I'll just double down." I just hope he's a better
poker player than he is a political prognosticator. MIKE: David, let me ask you this. If you really
take a look at all of the numbers, what it came to is you had -- I think the number,
it was something startling -- was 0.0011 percent of the U.S. population that really controlled
the election cycle because they're the ones that put in the huge amounts of money, 0.0011
percent. That is startling. Never in the history of this country --
DAVID TESELLE: This is -- it's absolutely staggering. I mean, what we are seeing is
the return of the robber barons of yesteryear, where some elite few billionaires are basically
making the decisions and changing elections through the use of influx of money, much of
which is money that we can't even trace because it's anonymously given.
MIKE: Yeah, well now, of course, with the 501(c)(4) that we've talked about on this
program so many times, they give the money. We never know who gave it or what they're
political agenda was until way after the fact, but let me ask you, we focus on Citizens United,
Howard. This is -- there's more than citizens united involved here, isn't there? I mean,
what we missed is, we let the federal government with the Speech Now case that actually expanded
this. They could've stopped this. You could've had the FEC that could've said, "You know,
even with Citizens United, we need limitations," but we didn't even see the federal government
on their own do anything to stop this, did we?
HOWARD: Well, what happened was the Citizen United opinion came out and set that table.
And then it was followed by Speech Now v, the Federal Election Commission. They went
into that opinion, into that case in the D.C. Court of Appeals, and they really just gave
it away, and the result of it was that the D.C. Court of Appeals held that limits on
spending unrelated to candidates violates the First Amendment. What that did was that
said these super PACs can raise unlimited funds, and the only restrictions they have
on the super PACs are that they can't coordinate with the candidates or wit the campaigns.
So, the federal government rolled over on that. They didn't fight that. They allowed
that decision to come in basically uncontested and created -- the result was they created
the super PACs. MIKE: David, we saw -- I mean, the best story
here -- there's so many great stories that really tell us how bastardized the election
process has become -- but I love the story about CHGO, the Commission on Hope, Growth,
and Opportunity. On day one, David, they were out doing business, spent almost $3 million
in political campaigns. They said that they were a social welfare group, that they were
doing something to help on social welfare issues, they've put the money in completely
political money. The day after the campaign, they disappear, can't be traced. We know no
idea where the money came from, and it was yesterday's news, and the media's not even
talking about it. DAVID: This is unbelievable. It is a group,
the Hope Growth. It's a group that was opened up in the summer before the election for the
sole purpose of raising money and influencing the election. They put -- I believe that almost
the entire amount that it raised was raised by one unknown anonymous donor. They then
spent that money in the elections to influence the elections and closed up shop the next
day. I mean, we're talking about super PACs that spent over half a billion dollars, $567
million in the 2012 election cycle. This is staggering, and it's only going to increase,
and this is not what was intended. MIKE: Howard, the 501(c)(4) -- I mean, isn't
the real question here -- of course, now we have the Democrats apologizing for the IRS
doing their job, which is outlandish, because the IRS was doing their job, but this dark
money that we see coming in, isn't there a way for the Department of Justice to say,
listen, on a 501(c)(4), you have signed off that you are a social welfare organization
that does some political work, but when you have an organization that's spending 80 percent
of their money in politics -- we see it's clearly politics, they're not doing anything
for social welfare -- I mean, somebody had to sign that document that certainly should
subject them to perjury or fraud kind of prosecution. Howard, what do you think?
HOWARD: Well, the distinction here is an important one, that the super PACs, we know who the
money comes from, and they're out there doing political work. The idea of the 501(c)(4),
which is 501(c)(4) of the tax code -- this is a tax issue -- and the majority of their
work can't be political. It is the duty of the Internal Revenue Service to investigate
501(c)(4)s to see if they're complying with the tax code to see, if in fact, what percentage
of their money and what percentage of their activities are political. However, they never
define politics. There's no clear guidelines on what constitutes it. NRA is a 501(c)(4),
and what has happened is that the only thing in the 501(c)(4) -- they've become so popular
because that's where the dark money is. In the 501(c)(4), they do not have to reveal
the identity of the donors, and the result of that -- in the last 2 years, the applications
for 501(c)(4)s rose from 1500 to 3400, and the 501(c)(4)s have outspent the super PACs
by 3 to 2, so the issue of whether -- they are absolutely right to be investigating the
501(c)(4)s, the right wing, the Tea Party. The mistake they made is they can't target
them. They should be investigating the Democratic liberal 501(c)(4)s also. Now, the result of
this, the result of this whole mess in Washington right now, the outcry over the investigation
is you're going to see more 501(c)(4)s with absolutely no restrictions because everybody's
afraid to touch them. MIKE: Yeah, I mean, David, isn't that where
this goes right now? First of all, you have a media that won't report the stories because
this has been a boon to them. I mean, you have the media with all these PACs rising
up. Didn't the number of PACs double? I mean, just almost overnight, they doubled or almost
tripled overnight. With the 501(c)(4)s, you had them go from about 1,300 of those 501(c)(4)s
to over 3,000, okay? So, the media is making a ton of money on advertising dollars. Why
would they ever say this is bad? And Howard adds to it, and says, "Look, now the IRS is
going to be chilled on even doing anything here."
DAVID: Absolutely. I mean, that's one of the biggest tragedies of the IRS scandal in Washington
right now. It's the IRS who is tasked with the job of overseeing these 501(c)(4)s and
ensuring that these are done properly. Now, it won't be protected by the IRS, the Department
of Justice has done nothing to step in, and as you said, Pap, this is very important.
It's the mainstream media that is benefiting some of the most from this, from the large
amounts of money they're making from this. These things are booming. The applications
are doubling and tripling overnight. The idea that in three years super PACs have grown
to control the money that's infused into elections and that are paid for ads and that build the
coffers of these news organizations and networks cannot be ignored.
MIKE: Howard, in order to even change this, in order to actually do anything that saves
democracy to where we're not bought up by a billionaire club of billionaire inheritance
babies, in order to get there -- obviously, the federal government can't defend themselves,
the media is not going to do anything about it. I mean, you have been involved in constitutional
amendment fights. Tell me what the prospects are of that? How do you see that, especially
where you have a media that's not going to help you?
HOWARD: There's not much that can be done because the Democrats and Republicans are
in this equally. You've got the Karl Rove and Crossroads GPS on one side. You've got
the big donors that have always been there for the Democrats on the other side. The politicians
are thriving on this. When you want to run for office now, the first thing you do when
you run for office is you contact -- you form a super PAC. Even Obama, who was totally against
super PACs, after he got beaten so badly in 2010 in the mid term elections by super PAC
money, formed a super PAC, a really super PAC. So now, everybody's in it. The president's
in it, the Congress is in it, they're all in it, and this is not going to go away. Now,
you're getting the final thing on it, it's not just elections. Now you're getting single
issue donors. MIKE: Yeah, yeah, that is very scary, because
whatever the issues of the day, the PAC rises up and puts a bunch of money into it. David,
let me real quickly -- we've got about 40 seconds -- isn't part of the problem here
with these super PACs, they're controlling the elections now? You have super PACs controlling
elections, not parties. You don't have political parties making decisions.
DAVID: Yeah, you cannot get elected without these super PACs backing you and putting money
into the election. This is what's happening with the Tea Party taking over a lot of the
Republican establishments. The parties can't keep up. The amount of money that's being
put into these campaigns by a few elite billionaires is changing the entire dynamic.
MIKE: So, ultimately, what you have here is the parties are no longer making policy decisions
about what advertising should look like. The PACs are taking it wholly negative, and it
is absolutely distorting the political process. DAVID: Absolutely.
MIKE: Without a constitutional amendment, gentlemen, I don't see how anything is really
accomplished. David, Howard, thank you for joining me.
HOWARD: Thank you. DAVID: Thank you.