Signed Into Law

The Hawaii bill which would strip corporations of the power to make corporate donations is now law.

I do expect that the Supreme Court will overrule this, probably in a shadow docket decision, before the ink on the Governor's signature is dry, but it is a good thing. 

On Thursday, Gov. Josh Green formally enacted Senate Bill 2471, now Act 11, which establishes new restrictions on political spending by corporations and other “artificial persons” established under Hawaii law.

The measure has received widespread national attention as the first major state-level challenge to the unchecked spending by Super PACs ushered in by the U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision, which established corporate spending on political advertisements as protected free speech.

“The foundation of our democracy is that political power belongs to the people,” said state Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole, who co-introduced the measure. “Corporations and other artificial entities exist because the state grants them legal privileges, including limited liability and lucrative tax benefits that individuals cannot claim. Act 011 clarifies that those privileges do not include the power to spend corporate money to influence our elections.”

The new law will almost certainly be challenged in court as a direct violation of the Supreme Court ruling but supporters contend it will withstand judicial scrutiny because its scope is limited to the terms set forth by the Hawaii State Constitution regarding the powers granted by the state to the entities it creates and their limitations.

In essence, Act 011 clarifies that artificial entities created under state law possess only those powers necessary or convenient to carry out their lawful business or organizational purposes. The law specifies that those powers do not include spending money or contributing anything of value to influence elections or ballot measures.

Act 011 applies to a range of entities organized or authorized to do business under Hawaii law, including corporations, nonprofit corporations, limited liability companies, limited partnerships, limited liability partnerships, and certain associations. It also authorizes the attorney general and the director of Commerce and Consumer Affairs to impose penalties or bring enforcement actions for violations.

Hopefully, this scares the hell out of the Snollygoster Six on the Supreme Court.

More is coming. 

I Like It

Hawaii has an interesting approach to dealing with corporate money following the Supreme Courts infamous Citizens United decision.

Rather than attempting to regulate corporate money, Hawaii is on track legislation to redefine corporate power in the state as a way of preventing corporate campaign donations.

Sweet idea, but I am pretty sure that the Supreme Court will overturn this in a 6-3 vote before the ink is dry. 

The corrupt 6 want corporate money distorting democracy, and Citizens United was always a corrupt partisan ruling. 

When Hawaii drafted its constitution for eventual statehood in 1950, the delegates made very explicit the principle that runs through the laws of the 49 states that preceded it into the Union. “The power of the State to act in the general welfare shall never be impaired by the making of any irrevocable grant of special privileges or immunities,” reads Article I, Section 21 of the Hawaii Constitution.

Sixteen years after Citizens United started laying waste to America’s elections, the Hawaii legislature is poised to put that tool to unusually good use. S.B. 2471—a bill under which Hawaii would no longer grant artificial entities, including corporations, the power to spend in Hawaii’s politics—has passed both chambers with overwhelming bipartisan support. It is in conference committee now, one step away from Gov. Josh Green’s (D) desk.

Gov. Green has said he will sign a good bill that meets constitutional muster. That is the right test. S.B. 2471 meets it.

The bill, which is based upon the Center for American Progress’ “Corporate Power Reset,” is not a regulation of speech. It is a redefinition of corporate power. Aviam Soifer, former dean of the University of Hawaii’s law school, has studied the measure closely and concluded that it is squarely constitutional.

………

While this state authority is not new or novel, it is dusty; no state legislature has redefined corporate powers this directly in roughly a century. It is natural that questions have arisen, including from Gov. Green, Hawaii Attorney General Anne E. Lopez, and some legislators. 

………

The bill redefines the powers Hawaii grants to the corporations that operate within the state. It does not regulate what corporations say. It does not regulate what they spend. It defines what powers they have in the first place—and the powers Hawaii grants would no longer include the power to spend in Hawaii’s politics.

Natural persons like you and me keep every political right they have today.

Political committees remain governed by existing campaign finance law. This bill applies to corporations, LLCs, partnerships, and similar artificial persons—entities that operate in Hawaii only because Hawaii law creates them or empowers them to do so.

A note here, the registration of corporations and the powers that they have have always been left to the states, and in order for the Supreme Court to overrule this, they would reverse this, which would mean that Congress has this power.  (It also means that corporate shell company states like Delaware and Wyoming would likely be much more tightly regulated)

My guess is that SCOTUS will use some sort of hypocritical slight of hand to strike this down. 

Our Lady of the Geriatric Insider Trader is Retiring

I am referring, of course, to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has announced that she will not be seeking reelection in 2026.

While a frequent target of Republicans for her alleged radical left wing view, by the political standards of the Bay Area, the only space to her political right was perhaps Dan White. ⃰

She got her political start funs raising from from big money political donors, was consistantly on the side of real estate developers, and she assiduously cleared the field for right wing corporate Democratic candidates in even the safest blue districts. 

She is the very apotheosis of the feckless, timid, corrupt, and geriatric leadership of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment).

As to the insider trading, one does have to wonder what sort of ethical lapses led to her ending up with a ¼ billion stock portfolio today.

It's all probably legal, but the ethics here are problematic. 

^*He's the right wing politician who shot George Moscone and Harvey Milk in 1978.

Headline of the Day

Democrats Assemble A New Band of Centrist Dimwits to Help Them Lose Elections and Insult Harry Reid's Legacy

—Splinter, discussing the creation of yet another group within the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) to fight their real enemy, the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.

The New York Times makes much hay over the fact that the founder of The Searchlight Institute, former chief of staff for chief of staff for Harry Reid and [sotto voce] John Fetterman. Adam Jentleson.

The problem according to him is that Democrats are not hating enough on the ghey or the transgender. 

I guess he knows what to do to rake in Democratic billionaire money: 

“A new Democratic think tank wants to curb the influence of liberal groups” reads a headline in the New York Times today. This is led by one of the Democratic Party’s premiere peacockers for billionaires, Adam Jentleson, the former Chief of Staff to Senator John Fetterman who would very much like you to only remember him as a Deputy Chief of Staff to the late great Senator Harry Reid, and the Times acquiesced. There are three references to Jentleson’s time with Reid that ended in 2015 in this writeup, versus just one of the last job he held as a much more powerful figure in John Fetterman’s orbit. This article is another profile as stenography, a specialty of political media, where they frame an entire story about someone through the lens that person would want it shot through.

Jentleson wants you to think that Democrats are under threat from the dreaded “groups,” just not his group. The other groups. You know. Those ones. Those lefty loony tunes who lost Democrats the 2024 elections and…uh…also helped drive perhaps the largest youth voter turnout ever in 2020 that Democrats like Jentleson never ever want to talk about. The story this wing of the party tells itself is that Democrats went woke in early 2020, lost in 2024, and we’re not going to talk about anything that happened in between. I am so sick of having this same nonsensical debate with a group of powerful people with far more control over the party than like, Sunrise Movement. The belief is that somehow small organizations like that are more responsible for why Kamala Harris lost Michigan than Kamala Harris or the Democratic Party is, who supposedly had no choice but to adopt these supposed narrow issues the “groups” like that lost Democrats the election.

………

This is a grift the same way that all Democratic consulting is a grift. It’s a bunch of (white) people like Adam Jentleson and Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias with a very narrow and extremely superficial vision of politics only shared by the rich people whose funding they covet. All that places like Searchlight Institute do is sell liberal out of touch rich people’s ideology back to them as wise and brilliant. The story this kind of politics tells is completely incoherent, because Democrats won an election doing the woke stuff they hate and lost the one where they backed a genocide to the dismay of all the woke folks who voted for them in 2020. Democrats even unexpectedly held on to the Senate in 2020, which enabled them to pass half of Biden’s key domestic agenda, something so impressive it makes Barack Obama jealous.

 You know, people like Mr. Jentleson make me think more faborably on the idea of party purges.

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

I am, of course, referring to the  Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment)

Once again the Very Serious People™ in the party have looked at possible challengers to Susan Collins in Maine, after completely screwing the pooch the last time, and are trying to nominate the worst possible candidate.

The story is nominally about a Maine oysterman who has decided to run against Collins, but it buries the lede.

The important part of the story is that Schumer and the DSCC are pushing another candidate, current Maine Governor Janet Mills, age 77.

She would be the oldest freshman Senator in history. 

But that's OK, 77 is the new 76!  AmIright?

The DC Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) are the biggest losers to come out of Washington, DC since the Washington Generals, who were paid to lose to the Harlem Globetrotters.

At 8 a.m., Taunton Bay is glassy—the air cool but salty enough to make your nose wrinkle. A man in rubber boots, canvas pants, and a black t-shirt worn to gray, carrying a large cooler on his shoulder passes me on the beach. “Ya here for Graham?” he says, his Maine accent looping the first two words together. 

“Yup,” I reply. 

“Good man,” he says, continuing on his way.

I flew here to profile Graham Platner because his announcement video for his Senate campaign (produced by the same company that’s done work for Zohran Mamdani) struck the same deep chord in me as it did in the millions of others who watched it. His plainspoken fury at the billionaire economy broke through the noise of the Trump presidency to capture extravagant donations of voters (the campaign says they’re closing in on $1 million) and the attention of media outlets across the country.

That he’s been added as speaker at Bernie Sanders’s anti-oligarchy rally on Labor Day is unsurprising. That Sanders has had to move the rally to a bigger venue since Platner got on the bill is telling.

Merciful heavens.  A candidate who excites the party base!

I have the vapors.  This cannot be allowed.

………

Someone asks Platner why bother running as a Democrat. He says the infrastructure for fundraising would not be as robust if he ran as an independent and, besides, running as a Democrat in Maine isn’t the campaign-killer it would be elsewhere. “Also,” he says, “At my core, I’m a Democrat. I grew up as a Democrat, I voted Democratic, my whole life.”

He cautions: “I want to make it clear, I’m not running as a reform candidate here. We need to take the party back. We need to build power and leverage power, both in the party and the institutions of power to get what we need.”

There are a lot of do nothing Democrats, both among elected officials and the consultants who don't want that.  

They are too timid, and selecting for nothing beyond fund-raising prowess is easy and it makes them money.

Thus we have:

………

Reportedly, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is wooing Maine Governor Janet Mills to run for the nomination. At 77, a win against Collins would make her the oldest senate freshman in history. (Platner is 40.) Platner’s campaign only becomes an insurgency against Susan Collins if he first survives the Democratic establishment. His pointed critiques of party inaction have already set the tone. His candidacy isn’t just about beating Republicans, it’s about forcing Democrats to do more than fundraise off of their failures.

And this is why you want your name removed from the DCCC, DSCC, DNC, Mothership Strategies, etc. lists.

I don't know if he can beat Collins, but Mills certainly won't, but she'll raise a f%$# tonne of money to pay the consultants with, so Schumer et. al want her. 

Parasites

I have noted on a few occasions that the consultant wing of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is more interested in getting their cut of campaign spending than they are in actually winning elections.

The case of Mothership Strategies, whose email spam machine keeps 98.4% of all money they raise for themselves.

And no, that number is not a typo:

The digital deluge is a familiar annoyance for anyone on a Democratic fundraising list. It's a relentless cacophony of bizarre texts and emails, each one more urgent than the last, promising that your immediate $15 donation is the only thing standing between democracy and the abyss.

The main rationale offered for this fundraising frenzy is that it's a necessary evil—that the tactics, while unpleasant, are brutally effective at raising the money needed to win. But an analysis of the official FEC filings tells a very different story. The fundraising model is not a brutally effective tool for the party; it is a financial vortex that consumes the vast majority of every dollar it raises.

We all have that one obscure skill we’ve inadvertently maxed out. Mine happens to be navigating the labyrinth of campaign finance data. So, after documenting the spam tactics in a previous article, I told myself I’d just take a quick look to see who was behind them and where the money was going.

That "quick look" immediately pulled me in. The illusion of a sprawling grassroots movement, with its dozens of different PAC names, quickly gave way to a much simpler and more alarming reality. It only required pulling on a single thread—tracing who a few of the most aggressive PACs were paying—to watch their entire manufactured world unravel. What emerged was not a diverse network of activists, but a concentrated ecosystem built to serve the firm at its center: Mothership Strategies.

………

To understand the scale of this operation, consider the total amount raised. Since 2018, this core network of Mothership-linked PACs has raised approximately $678 million from individual donors. (This number excludes money raised by the firm's other clients, like candidate campaigns, focusing specifically on the interconnected PACs at the heart of this system.) Of that total fundraising haul, $159 million was paid directly to Mothership Strategies for consulting fees, accounting for the majority of the $282 million Mothership has been paid by all its clients combined.

But the firm's direct cut is only part of the story. The "churn and burn" fundraising model is immensely expensive to operate. Sending millions of texts and emails requires massive spending on digital infrastructure. For instance, FEC filings show this network paid $22.5 million to a single vendor, Message Digital LLC, a firm that specializes in text message delivery.

The remaining hundreds of millions disappeared into a maze of self-reported categories: $150 million to consulting/fundraising, $70 million to salaries and payroll. There are some disbursements to what seem to be legitimate advocacy and organizing–for instance Progressive Turnout Project reports paying Shawmut Services $19 million for canvassing. However, most of the unclassifiable expenditures appear to be administrative costs or media buys that feed back into the fundraising machine itself.

………

To understand the scale of this operation, consider the total amount raised. Since 2018, this core network of Mothership-linked PACs has raised approximately $678 million from individual donors. (This number excludes money raised by the firm's other clients, like candidate campaigns, focusing specifically on the interconnected PACs at the heart of this system.) Of that total fundraising haul, $159 million was paid directly to Mothership Strategies for consulting fees, accounting for the majority of the $282 million Mothership has been paid by all its clients combined.

But the firm's direct cut is only part of the story. The "churn and burn" fundraising model is immensely expensive to operate. Sending millions of texts and emails requires massive spending on digital infrastructure. For instance, FEC filings show this network paid $22.5 million to a single vendor, Message Digital LLC, a firm that specializes in text message delivery.

The remaining hundreds of millions disappeared into a maze of self-reported categories: $150 million to consulting/fundraising, $70 million to salaries and payroll. There are some disbursements to what seem to be legitimate advocacy and organizing–for instance Progressive Turnout Project reports paying Shawmut Services $19 million for canvassing. However, most of the unclassifiable expenditures appear to be administrative costs or media buys that feed back into the fundraising machine itself. 

Those frantic fundraising emails?  They are a fraud.

Unsubscribe, because losing a name and an email address has business consequences for these mother-f%$#ers. 

If you are running a campaign, fire these leeches ……… Out of a cannon ……… And into the sun.

Bummer of a Birthmark, Eric

Soon to be former New York Mayor Eric Adams has had public financing for his campaign denied because he failed to meet reporting requirements.

What, you mean that the guy who was indicted for taking and then covering up illegal campaign contributions is being held accountable for this crap?

Yippee:

A federal judge Friday upheld a decision to deny Mayor Eric Adams roughly $3.4 million in public money for his 2025 re-election campaign.

New York City's publicly funded campaign finance program offers candidates an eight-to-one match of tax dollars for every dollar raised by small local donors. But the system requires extensive disclosures to make sure candidates are following the law.

………

A federal judge in the Eastern District of New York said the indictment wasn’t the only issue holding up the money.

“The CFB provided two independent valid reasons for its decision to deny the Adams Campaign public matching funds,” U.S. District Court Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis wrote in a 61-page ruling, citing the mayor’s “failure to timely respond to the CFB's request for information” as well as a blown deadline to file a conflict of interest disclosure to the city.

Mess with the bull, you get the horns. 

Andrew Mark Cuomo, Would You Please Go Now?

Andrew Cuomo has relaunched his campaign for New York City Mayor as an independent.

Andrew, how can we miss you if you never leave?

For what it's worth, it the rich f%$#s are funding the f%$# out of Eric Adams, deciding that the corrupt and bat-sh%$ insane incumbent mayor is preferable to someone who would make them pay their fair share in taxes.

A poem about "Rat Faced Andy" follows the break, with apolicies to Dr. Seuss and Art Buchwald:

F%$# No

It appears that the usual suspects in the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) are determined to make a play for Elon Musk's approval and money.

The man is a narcissist racist, as sexist, a junkie, a pathological liar, a ferociously virulent anti-labor union employer, and f%$#ing insane, at least in the eyes of this non-psychologist.

Attempting to rehabilitate him is nuts.  Attempting to do so without any indication that he has made even a perfunctory effort to change borders on criminal incompetence.

Add to that the fact that this guy is more widely loathed than Ted "I like Ted Cruz more than most of my other colleagues like Ted Cruz. And I hate Ted Cruz" Cruz, and this becomes what Tallyrand did not say, "Worse than a crime, it is a mistake."

Elon Musk has been the Democratic Party’s boogeyman since shortly after President Donald Trump deputized him as a top adviser. Their bitter breakup could complicate that.

After Musk called the GOP’s “big beautiful bill” a “disgusting abomination” and threatened to “fire all politicians” who backed it, the president mused on Thursday that he didn’t know if the two would still have a “great relationship.” Musk responded on his powerful platform X, “Without me, Trump would have lost,” adding “Such ingratitude.”

The split is giving some Democrats pause in their portrayal of Musk as a chainsaw-wielding, bureaucracy-breaking villain — with some saying they should give him another chance. After all, the billionaire tech mogul said he voted for former President Joe Biden in 2020 and gave a tour of SpaceX to then-President Barack Obama.

The Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ has shown us who he is, and it is that he is a miserable and pathetic excuse as a human being.  (This was obvious for years before his turn on Ecch [Twitter], but his cunning as a sales weasel seemed to confuse a lot of people)

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who represents Silicon Valley and has known Musk for over a decade, said Democrats should “be in a dialogue” with Musk, given their shared opposition to the GOP’s megabill.

………

Other Democrats are warming back up to Musk as he leaves the White House and starts to break with his former boss in ways that could benefit the opposition.

“I’m a believer in redemption, and he is telling the truth about the legislation,” said Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.). But, he added, Musk has “done an enormous amount of damage” and “there are Democrats who see his decimation of the federal workforce and the federal government as an unforgivable sin.”

Liam Kerr, co-founder of the group behind the centrist Democrats’ WelcomeFest meeting this week in Washington, said “of course” Democrats should open the door if Musk wants back into the party.

Yeah, WelcomeFest, where "Democrats" were on stage complaining that labor unions are just so inconvenient.

“You don’t want anyone wildly distorting your politics, which he has a unique capability to do. But it’s a zero-sum game,” Kerr said. “Anything that he does that moves more toward Democrats hurts Republicans.”

Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), the chair of the New Democrat Coalition who earlier this year supported the party’s targeting of Musk as the Department of Government Efficiency slashed through federal agencies, said that with his departure from Washington, Democrats shouldn’t make Musk their focus. “We should be talking about what we’re doing for the American people,” he said.

What you should be doing for the American people is fighting against people like Elon Musk.

It's only amoral careerists, like, for example, the chair of the New Democrat Coalition, who only care about their careers and where they are getting their next campaign donation from, who think that this is a good idea.

To quote Robert Graves on Germanic tribes, Elon Musk, "Must be struck into the dust, struck down again as they rise. Struck again while they lie groaning, while their wounds still pain them; they will respect the hand that dealt them."

He is not just a cancer on society, he is the avatar of what is wrong with our society. 

Finally

It appears that some members of the  Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) are beginning to realize that the consultants who have been running the party's political operations are not working for the party, they are working for themselves.

Well, knock me over with a  GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb.

After spending well over a billion dollars, and a significant chunk of that change ending up in consultants pockets, you are just now noticing?

Candidates vying to lead the Democratic National Committee have found a common enemy: the D.C. consultant.

In the first DNC-sanctioned forum in the body’s low-profile race for chair on Saturday, DNC candidates channeled their frustration at the “D.C. insiders,” whom New York state Sen. James Skoufis vowed to “kick to the curb.” Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Chair Ken Martin pledged the “D.C. consultants” will “be gone when I’m there.” And Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler promised he’d go into 2025 “with no commitments to anyone who’s been on a campaign payroll before.”

It’s a sign of the times for a party that burned through some $1.5 billion in the final months of the campaign, only to come up short against President-elect Donald Trump. As the party still searches for answers to its devastating losses in 2024, consultants became the punching bag while the DNC candidates largely avoided sparring with one another. They all agreed that the party needed to reground its identity with the working class and commit to a permanent campaign infrastructure across the country. But any light attacks — of which there were a few — came without names attached.

That $1.5 billion was spent in about 15 weeks, and as near as I can figure (unsurprisingly the numbers are incomplete and confusing) a least ⅕ of that went to various consulting firms.

This happens again, and again, and again, and nothing seems to be done about it.

One does hope that the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) will finally do something about fixing this problem.

Let Me Translate This

The New Work Campaign Finance Board just said, "You are a corrupt mother f%$#er," in response to reports of the Eric Adams mayoral campaign having defrauded them in the last cycle.

There is a good chance that they will be denying him matching funds this cycle:

Mayor Eric Adams will know as soon as Dec. 16 if his reelection bid will qualify for millions of dollars in public matching funds as the Campaign Finance Board votes on the first tranche of payments for the 2025 contest.

At a City Council hearing on Wednesday, CFB executive director Paul Ryan testified that a candidate could be denied funding overall months ahead of the election, depending on questions about that particular campaign.

“There will be some judgment calls made by the board when making public funding determinations,” Ryan told Council members on the governmental operations committee — declining to mention Adams specifically.

The CFB will approve the first of eight payouts of matching funds for the 2025 elections by Dec. 16, he noted.

Since 1989, the nonpartisan city agency has administered taxpayer money to candidates running for municipal office (mayor, comptroller, public advocate, borough president and City Council) who qualify. The CFB upped the matching funds from $6-to-$1 to $8-to-$1 for the 2021 campaign on the first $250 of each donation from New York City residents, following a 2018 ballot referendum.

………

But Councilmember Lincoln Restler, a Democrat from Brooklyn, still pushed on why the board would give Adams more money when so many questions linger about his past campaign — and a federal indictment that alleges he obtained $10 million in 2021 matching funds fraudulently.

………

The Adams campaign repeatedly ignored red flags raised by the CFB during the 2021 campaign about suspicious donations — and secured the record haul of public funding, THE CITY has reported.

Adams’ indictment in September, following the prosecution of former Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin in connection with his 2021 comptroller bid, put the CFB on notice about accusations candidates gamed the public financing system and placed the board under heightened scrutiny when it comes to payouts for the 2025 election cycle.

………

Had the Campaign Finance Board known about the allegedly illegal contributions, the Adams campaign could have been found ineligible to receive portions of the $10 million — or removed from the program entirely. 

Adams is very much a "Law and order" candidate, so his corruption comes as no surprise.

The more that a candidate pontificates about law and order the more corrupt they tend to be.

Quote of the Day

So the Harris Campaign Was the Producers IRL. They Knew They Were Blowing Through $1.5 Billion in 15 Weeks with No Chance of Winning, and to Make Sure They Lost They Brought the Cheneys and Richie Torres on Stage. The Point Was to Wash as Much Stupid Money as Fast as Possible.

—Mark Ames

As I have occasionally (OK, constantly) noted, the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is deeply and profoundly corrupt.

Unless and until the looting is stopped, we will see this again, and again, and again, and again.

File Under, "Well Duh"

Well, knock me over with a sledgehammer,it appears that Kamala Harris' Presidential campaign was an orgy of looting by consultants and campaign members.

This sort of behavior has been one of my primary complaints about the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is the extreme corruption of its professional political apparatus.

After Harris's catastrophic flame-out, other people are noticing:

In the wake of Vice President Kamala Harris’ defeat, recriminations have flourished inside the Democratic Party with different factions blaming different policies or groups to explain the loss. Critics, however, describe a deeper structural problem with how the modern Democratic Party runs campaigns, which lines the pockets of party insiders, bloats campaign budgets and boxes out influences from outside party elites.

The Harris campaign broke campaign finance records, raising nearly a billion dollars, but ending the race $20 million in debt, spending millions on consultants and hundreds of millions of dollars on paid media.

While most political strategists agree that some spending on paid media is necessary to win a campaign in 2024, Faiz Shakir, a senior advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., told Salon that the Harris campaign's spending profile is indicative of a structural issue with how the Democratic Party approaches paid media and political strategy.

Snipping the bit where Mr. Shakir talks about how political consultants see the 30 second ad as the Alpha and Omega for campaign communications, because that is what the consultants themselves say, and because it's really not the core problem.

Consultants get a percentage of media buys, and so extract a personal financial benefit from this strategy.

………

Shakir summed up the issue saying that “there is often a product problem and not a sales problem” with Democratic campaigns. However, there is another side to the problem with paid media, in Shakir’s view. At every step in the process of making an ad, everyone is taking their cut.

“The opportunity to make money off of the firm that has created 30-second ads and the person who has placed the ads is ripe for abuse because there are hundreds of millions of dollars going into it and everyone is taking their skim,” Shakir said. “There’s a huge escalation every step of the way because of a skim at every level.” 

According to Shakir, it doesn’t have to work this way but media firms and campaigns often push for more expensive production strategies like more shoots, or oversaturating airwaves, because it’s an opportunity for everyone to get paid. In some cases, Shakir said, even senior campaign staff will get a cut of ad spending.

(emphasis mine)

Yeah, that's a level of self dealing that surprises me, 

Once again, reality trumps (pun not intended) my worst imaginings.

………

Reviewing the ad spending from the Harris campaign, it’s clear that the bulk of the money was funneled through firms run or owned by Democratic Party insiders. For example, Media Buying and Analytics LLC, received upwards of $281 million for media production and ad buys from the Harris campaign in the 2024 cycle and is owned by Canal Media Partners, according to Business Insider, a firm that has worked with hundreds of Democratic campaigns and was founded by Bobby Khan, who has been in and out of Democratic politics since the early 1990s. 

………

According to Shakir, however, the problems with the Democratic Party’s structure and the way it runs campaigns go beyond just media consultants and the party’s love of paid ads. The core issue, as Shakir puts it, is that the party political operations are a closed loop with well-off consultants, politicians and donors all taking advice from each other with little outside input.

So the problem with the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is a pervasive culture of corruption among the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment)?  Say it isn't so!

This is a feature, not a bug.

This is a racket, and it is a well functioning racket whose goal is to separate political donors from their money.

Winning or losing is irrelevant to this.

This is just a fact of Iron Law of Institutions which is, as I have noted many times, "The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution "fail" while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to "succeed" if that requires them to lose power within the institution." (Not my idea or term, this term was coined by Jon Schwarz)

 

Quote of the Day

The Consultants Don’t Care. They Made a Bundle. They Do All This Advertising — Social Media, Direct Mail, and TV Spots. They Get Kickbacks on the Ads That They Place.

—James Zogby in a Rolling Stone interview

He's right.

The consultant's perfect candidate is someone rich and stupid who spends like a drunken sailor, because it makes them money.

I Believe that the Term for this is, "Illegal In-Kind Donation"

On Ecch (ex-Twitter) an account called, White Dudes for Harris raised more than $4,000,000.00 for the Kamala Harris Presidential campaign.

Ecch promptly shut down their account.

Once the inevitable sh%$ storm blew up, they backtracked.

It took about 4 hours.

Ecch management is claiming that it was an error.

Yeah, right:

Elon Musk’s social media platform X suspended “White Dudes for Harris” Monday night, shortly after a massive fundraising call where almost 200,000 people helped raise more than $4 million for the vice president and presumptive Democratic nominee.

The account, @dudes4harris, was reinstated Tuesday morning after it was blocked hours before because of “a user report” for “violating our rules against evading suspension,” according to a screenshot shared with The Washington Post. Organizer Ross Morales Rocketto said the group submitted a complaint to X, but had no other direct communication from the platform.

“We hosted the event, and it was wholesome and a bunch of dudes being earnest, getting inspired and excited,” Morales Rocketto said in an interview with The Post. “And suddenly we realized the [X] account had been suspended and we had no idea why.”

Of course you have no reason why. That's what happens with Ecch, or the criminal enterprise formerly known as Facebook™, or Google, or Amazon.

Of course, none of the other three are this f%$#ing stupid, but, you know, Elon.

………

The suspension on X occurred as the group and its allies were posting heavily about the event after it ended. While the exact reasons behind it are unclear, it reignited broader concerns among Democrats that the platform, which Musk bought in 2022, could be used to influence the online discourse in the months leading to the presidential election.

Musk endorsed former president Donald Trump on the platform this month and has been using it to stump for the GOP candidate. The billionaire has 192 million followers on the platform, giving him a far larger social media megaphone than most any other individual — even Biden, Harris or Trump.

Gee, you think?

Assuming that Elon did this on purpose, or let it happen on purpose, and my guess is that he did, this could be considered an illegal in-kind political donation.

Of course, it's unlikely to happen, campaign finance laws are not often enforced, but it's Elon, so I will assume malice.

Time to Sister Souljah a Fat-Ass White Billionaire

Here’s why we have to overturn Citizens United & end Big Money in politics:

Billionaire Reid Hoffman donated $7 million to the Harris campaign.

Now, he wants her, as president, to fire an outstanding members of the Biden Administration, FTC Chair Lina Khan. Not acceptable.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) July 25, 2024

Bernie wants a word

OK, I am making a culture reference that is 32 f%$#ing years  old, so for any reader(s) who are too young to remember, I am referring to a, "Sister Souljah moment," which was Bill Clinton attacked  at a speech that he delivered at a Rainbow Coalition which attacked her when she made some rather inflammatory comments in the context of the Rodney King riots.

This was a conscious decision by the Bill Clinton campaign, which had decided to pick a fight with some (ANY!) African American figure in an appeal to centrists.  (Actually an appeal to racists)

Sister Souljah is an African American rapper, Author, activist, producer and poet.

So, on to the fat-ass white billionaire, Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, who has donated $10 million to the Harris campaign and then demanded that Lina Khan be fired.

So, what can be done about this nakedly corrupt self-absorbed mother f%$#er beyond calling him a self-absorbed mother f%$#er?

Well, I'm kind of a glass half full guy on this, and I would say that were Harris and surrogates to condemn him by name, this would be a good thing.

If they were to do so, they would be signaling to their base that they are not beholden to the Silly Con Valley tech bros, whose reputation has lost much of its luster lately. 

One of the concerns about Harris is that she is too deferential to the Tech Bros, and going after one of them by name would both good policy and good politics for Harris.

By way context, Reid Hoffman, while arguably the least awful human being in the PayPal Mafia, (Low f%$#ing bar) is a contemptible human being.

Among other things he has extolled monopoly power, he calls it, "Dominance," because once they have crushed all the competition by hook and crook, they can do good things.

Here's a clue for everyone, if a company breaks the law and discriminates as a start up, they will do so as a unicorn, and as a monopoly.  Evil gets baked in, and the formation of a monopoly or an oligopoly demands evil people with contempt for the law.

Matt Stoller has his number.  (At link above)

As I’ve written, for the last few weeks, there has been a campaign among big business advocates to eliminate the new trade, antitrust, and labor policies put in place over the last five years or so. When Kamala Harris took over the Democratic nomination from Joe Biden, that campaign ramped up.

A few days ago, billionaire LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman gave $10 million to the Kamala Harris effort, and promised a lot more. Hoffman is a Silicon Valley titan, part of the “PayPal mafia” that includes Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, though Hoffman sits on the Democratic side of the aisle. This morning, Hoffman went on CNN and issued demands. Harris must end Biden’s tariff and antitrust regimes, he said, and fire Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan.………

The FTC is investigating Microsoft.  Hoffman is a member of Microsoft's board of directors.

Hmmm.

………

🚨BREAKING: Microsoft's billionaire Dem donor @ReidHoffman is pressing @KamalaHarris to fire FTC chair @LinaKhan - as Microsoft faces FTC scrutiny.

Hoffman is on Microsoft's board. The FTC is probing Microsoft's merger with Hoffman's other company. https://t.co/5iq74qKLnV

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) July 25, 2024

………

Very few people in official Washington have even noticed, beyond the usual suspects of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren:

………

So far, Hoffman’s demand has been met with disinterest from the political press and a muted response from labor and progressive groups, who have mostly endorsed Harris and are enthusiastically celebrating her candidacy. There are a few exceptions. Senator Bernie Sanders chimed in angrily about Hoffman’s demand, and Senator Elizabeth Warren offered an endorsement of Khan. A pharmacist group also weighed in, and there will likely be more statements as the news filters through a very confused media environment, as Khan has a lot of fans (including in tech, she’s speaking at YCombinator today to a packed room).

Also, Hoffman has written about the juxtaposition of business and politics, where he shows himself to be the glioblastoma of the body politic:

………

Hoffman laid out his political philosophy in 2018 in what seems like a business book, one titled Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies. In it, Hoffman analyzed the rise of companies like Uber, Google, Microsoft, AirBNB, Amazon, Apple, and so forth, argued that monopolization through cheap capital and lawbreaking is socially beneficial, and that such firms should be admired for their mergers and acquisitions strategies and network effects that thwart rivals. When looking at which firms to laud, Hoffman knew to avoid using the term ‘monopoly,’ substituting the word ‘dominant,’ which he puts in his book 29 times as a positive affirmation.

Hoffman might seem to be simply expounding about commerce, but in fact he is oriented around politics. Hoffman believes the goal of any entrepreneur is to ignore everything except growing so quickly that a business elevates itself to sovereign levels of global power. He even uses the terms “Nation” and “City” to describe such a corporation. Once there, they must become good corporate citizens. “If you previously ignored issues such as diversity, legal compliance, or social justice,” he writes, “you need to understand that all eyes are now on you, and you'll be expected to behave as a responsible citizen and role model.”

Such a statement is a rebuke of some basic elements of our social order. After all, what does it mean to ignore issues such as “legal compliance” until you’ve built dominant market power? Well, that’s as close as you can get to saying that breaking the law to form a dominant corporation is virtuous. There’s an expression that behind every great fortune is a crime and Hoffman is basically saying that yes, that’s true, except such crimes are good if they are paired with diversity mandates, statements about social justice, and legal compliance regimes.

………

The only upside here is that Hoffman is being very public, aggressive, and explicit about his demands. And he’s going to corner Harris until she kisses the ring, or refuses to do so. From his perspective, he’s not donating $10 million, he’s making a purchase. Or so he thinks. Now it’s up to Harris to make the choice. Does she have Silicon Valley donors, or Silicon Valley owners?

Seriously, going after Hoffman is a no lose proposition, so do it.

Cue Inspector Renault

I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell you! To find that gambling is going on this establishment
What a surprise. The US Chamber of Commerce sold an endorsement in a Congressional race for a donation. The only thing that surprises me is how small the donation was, only $800,000.00.

Truth be told, the price of corruption has always seemed shockingly low to me:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce received an $800,000 wire transfer from billionaire donor Hank Meijer days after it endorsed his son, then-Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.), in a contentious 2022 primary, according to previously unreported internal emails reviewed by The Hill.

FYI, Meijer lost the primary anyway.

Within days of the transfer, the Chamber spent $381,000 on “Media Advertisement – Energy and Taxes – Mentioning Rep. Peter Meijer,” according to a report filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). 

But because the ad — titled “Thank you, Rep. Peter Meijer” — does not explicitly advocate for his election or defeat, the pro-business lobbying giant did not have to legally disclose the donation from Hank Meijer, the co-chair and CEO of the Meijer chain of superstores. It also did not have to disclose any other potential contributions behind the $1.8 million it told the FEC it spent on “electioneering communications” that cycle.

Emails obtained by The Hill lay out the timeline of the endorsement, donation and ad buy just weeks before the Aug. 2, 2022, House GOP primary in Michigan. Campaign finance experts told The Hill that the emails pull back the curtain on a surge of “dark money” in U.S. elections, spending where the ultimate source of the money is not publicly disclosed.

“They’re exploiting a legal loophole to help them conceal the sources of election spending in this race,” said Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at the nonprofit watchdog Campaign Legal Center (CLC), which filed a complaint during the 2020 cycle alleging an individual later identified as Hank Meijer tried to obscure separate donations by using a limited liability corporation (LLC) to donate to another super PAC supporting his son.

“And they’re doing it in a very sophisticated way, but ultimately the voters suffer as a result,” Ghosh added. 

Like Meijer and his billionaire dad give a flying f%$# in a rolling doughnut about whether or not the voters suffer.

Unless and until we start criminally charging people who engage in this behavior and tossing their asses in jail, this will not stop.

Another Day, Another Eric Adams Aide Raid

So now, in addition to the FBI raid on fundraiser Brianna Suggs, and the FBI seizing the Mayor's mobile devices, the FBI has now raided the home of Adams' director of Asian affairs Winnie Greco as well as the former offices of Adams' election campaign.

It is possible that Adams might be the most corrupt New York City Mayor in recent history, and given that recent history includes Rudolph f%$#ing Giuliani, that is a pretty high bar:

FBI agents raided two Bronx homes owned by a top aide to Mayor Eric Adams early Thursday morning, along with the offices of a Queens mall that hosted Adams campaign operations.

THE CITY previously uncovered strong evidence of potentially illegal straw donations tied to the mall.

The aide, Adams’ director of Asian affairs Winnie Greco, was deeply involved in eight separate fundraising events at the New World Mall that generated tens of thousands of dollars for Adams’ 2021 mayoral campaign.

She is on sick leave from her job after having a medical episode during the FBI raid and going to the hospital, according to an Adams administration source. Once her sick leave is over, and if she does not have any unused vacation time, she will then be on unpaid leave and not conducting any governmental business.

Greco is the third person associated with Adams whose home was raided by federal officials in the past four months. In November, the FBI raided the homes of Brianna Suggs, then Adams’ chief fundraiser, and Rana Abbasova, an aide in Adams’ international affairs office.

One New World Mall worker told THE CITY that she was asked by employers to make a $249 donation — and later reimbursed. That would make it a “straw” donation, a criminal violation that has already led to the prosecution of one set of Adams fundraisers by the Manhattan District Attorney, as well as a separate investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s office into another set of donors with links to the Turkish government.

………

Greco, who is paid $100,000 a year for her City Hall job, is already being probed by the city’s Department of Investigation in the aftermath of another story by THE CITY detailing allegations of ethical improprieties against her. One business executive alleged to THE CITY that Greco solicited a $10,000 donation for a nonprofit she had founded as a condition for attending an event at Gracie Mansion with Adams honoring the Chinese community. A former Adams campaign volunteer who obtained a city government job with Greco’s help told THE CITY that Greco demanded he supervise renovations at one of her houses for no pay.

A longtime advisor to Adams dating back to his start as Brooklyn borough president a decade ago, Greco has helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for his prior and current mayoral campaigns. Adams’ chief confidant and top political advisor at City Hall, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, once called Greco her “baby sister.”

At this point, I am wondering if Adams will even make it to the next primary, where he will lose, before he is arrested.

Not only does he appear to be deeply corrupt, but it appears to be corruption of the most amazingly chicken-sh%$ sort.

Pass the Popcorn

6 days ago, NYC Mayor Eric Adams' 25 year old (!) chief fund raiser had her house raided by the FBI.

Today, the FBI seized Mayor's phones and other electronics devices.

Here's hoping that he follows the path of his predecessor Jimmy Walker.  (Corruption investigations, resignation, fleeing the country)

F.B.I. agents seized Mayor Eric Adams’s electronic devices early this week in what appeared to be a dramatic escalation of a criminal inquiry into whether his 2021 campaign conspired with the Turkish government and others to funnel money into its coffers.

The agents approached the mayor after an event in Manhattan on Monday evening and asked his security detail to step away, a person with knowledge of the matter said. They climbed into his S.U.V. with him and, pursuant to a court-authorized warrant, took his devices, the person said.

………

The surprise seizure of Mr. Adams’s devices was an extraordinary development and appeared to be the first direct instance of the campaign contribution investigation touching the mayor. Mr. Adams, a retired police captain, said on Wednesday that he is so strident in urging his staff to “follow the law” that he can be almost “annoying.” He laughed at the notion that he had any potential criminal exposure.

Well, if he says that he's law abiding, there is no need for further investigation. (Not)

………

Mr. Adams responded to news of the raid by abruptly returning from Washington, D.C., where he had only just arrived for a day of meetings with White House and congressional leaders regarding the migrant influx, an issue he has said threatens to “destroy New York City.”

On Wednesday, he said his abrupt return was driven by his desire to be present for his team, and out of concern for Ms. Suggs, who he said had gone through a “traumatic experience.”

Well that is some prime bull sh%$ there.

………

This is not the first time Mr. Adams or people in his orbit have attracted law enforcement scrutiny. In September, Eric Ulrich, Mr. Adams’s former buildings commissioner and senior adviser, was indicted by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, on 16 felony charges, including counts of bribetaking and conspiracy.

In July, Mr. Bragg indicted six people, including a retired police inspector who once worked and socialized with Mr. Adams, on charges of conspiring to funnel illegal donations to the mayor’s 2021 campaign.

Yadda, Yadda, Yadda, frog-marched out of Gracie Mansion in handcuffs.

Pass the Popcorn

It now appears that in addition to being delusional, he thinks that he was made Mayor of New York City by God, Eric Adams is a corrupt son of a bitch.

That is a reasonable implication from the news that the FBI just raided his fund-raising chief's home today.

Note that the term, "Corrupt son of a bitch," does not mean that Adams is necessarily violating anti-corruption, and probably anti-money laundering laws.

After all, former New York Senator Alphonse "Da Woim"  D'Amato spent his political career with his mentor and lackeys being jailed for some sort of corruption with a regularity that strongly implies that D'Amato knew of and tacitly approved of this corruption.

Given the nature of these allegations, alleged Turkish campaign donations and the like, it is highly unlikely that Adams was unaware of this.  More likely, he was just willfully blind, which is not a defense in such matters, just ask Sam Bankman Fried:

Federal prosecutors and the F.B.I. are conducting a broad public corruption investigation into whether Mayor Eric Adams’s 2021 election campaign conspired with the Turkish government to receive illegal foreign donations, according to a search warrant obtained by The New York Times.

The investigation burst into public view on Thursday when federal agents conducted an early-morning raid at the Brooklyn home of the mayor’s chief fund-raiser, Brianna Suggs. Ms. Suggs is a campaign consultant who is deeply entwined with efforts to advance the mayor’s agenda.

Investigators also sought to learn more about the potential involvement of a Brooklyn construction company with ties to Turkey, as well as a small university in Washington, D.C., that also has ties to the country and to Mr. Adams.

According to the search warrant, investigators were also focused on whether the mayor’s campaign kicked back benefits to the construction company’s officials and employees, and to Turkish officials.


The agents seized three iPhones and two laptop computers, along with papers and other evidence, including something agents identified as “manila folder labeled Eric Adams,” seven “contribution card binders” and other materials, according to the documents.

There was no indication that the investigation was targeting the mayor, and he is not accused of wrongdoing. Yet the raid apparently prompted him to abruptly cancel several meetings scheduled for Thursday morning in Washington, D.C., where he planned to speak with White House officials and members of Congress about the migrant crisis.

Instead, he hurriedly returned to New York “to deal with a matter,” a spokesman for the mayor said.

………

The warrant suggested that some of the foreign campaign contributions were made as part of a straw donor scheme, where donations are made in the names of people who did not actually give money. Investigators sought evidence to support potential charges that included the theft of federal funds and conspiracy to steal federal funds, wire fraud and wire fraud conspiracy, as well as campaign contributions by foreign nationals and conspiracy to make such contributions.

Mr. Adams has boasted of his ties to Turkey, most recently during a flag-raising he hosted for the country in Lower Manhattan last week. The mayor said that there were probably no other mayors in New York City history who had visited Turkey as frequently as he has.

Nothing to worry about, the reputation of the Turkish polity for probity and rectitude, nothing untoward could possibly be going on.  (Not)

………

Ms. Suggs, 25, is the latest in a series of individuals tied to Mr. Adams who have attracted interest from law enforcement, including several connected to the mayor’s fund-raising efforts.

His chief fundraiser is 25?  So she was 23 at the time of his election?  

Well, isn't that ……… something.

In September, Eric Ulrich, Mr. Adams’s former buildings commissioner and senior adviser, was indicted by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, on 16 felony charges, including counts of conspiracy and bribetaking. Mr. Ulrich, as well as three others indicted at the time, helped organize a 2021 fund-raiser for Mr. Adams.

In July, Mr. Bragg indicted six individuals, including a retired police inspector who once worked and socialized with Mr. Adams, on charges of conspiring to funnel illegal donations to the mayor’s 2021 campaign.

………

In the past two years, Mr. Adams’s re-election campaign has paid Ms. Suggs nearly $100,000 for fund-raising and campaign consulting services via her company, Suggs Solutions, according to city records.

His first mayoral campaign paid her more than $50,000.

Ms. Suggs has also registered as a lobbyist. State records indicate that the East Broadway Mall, a Chinatown real estate concern, hired Ms. Suggs, via an intermediary, to lobby the mayor’s office and the City Council on its behalf in 2022.

Yeah, someone fresh out of college got a gig as a senior fundraiser got paid 50 Grand, and over the next two years got paid over 100 Gs?

Yeah, nothing hinkey there.