Month: September 2018

Outlaw Dirty Money Creates Posse to Report Dark Money Ads

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In an effort to restore fairness and transparency in Arizona elections, the Outlaw Dirty Money campaign has created a Posse to identify dark money political ads and report them on the ODM website, where people will be able to look them up by race or by sponsor.

“We will maintain a list of dark money sources that are already registered with the Secretary of State so people can look at a mailed piece, see who paid for it, and determine if it is a dark money group or not,” says organizer Merrill Eisenberg.

The group is working toward three goals:

  • Evaluate the sources of state and local political ads to decide if they are paid for with dirty money,
  • Provide information about the sources of state and local political ads to the voters, and
  • Educate voters and raise awareness about the dirty money issue.

“We need Posse members to help identify political advertising in any format and report suspected “dirty” money ads to ODM. We will research the ad and classify it as 1) not dirty money, 2) dirty money but the organization supports disclosure, or 3) dirty money intended to anonymously impact our election,” Eisenberg says.

At the recent showing of the film “Dark Money” at the Loft, the campaign set up a table and signed up 49 new posse members in one night.

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An amoral indefinite detention policy for immigrant children (Updated)

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The New York Times summarizes how we got here:

In May, Attorney General Jeff Sessions installed a “zero tolerance” immigration policy, in which the government sought to jail and prosecute every adult who crossed the border illegally.

For months, migrant families were separated as adults were placed in detention, and their children were sent to shelters across the country. Widespread outrage led the Trump administration to end the practice.

In July, the Trump administration lost its bid to persuade a federal court to allow long-term detention of migrant families.

If you can’t win in court, get a feckless GOP Congress to change the rules for you — if you can.

Two weeks ago the Trump administration proposed a new regulation to allow the government to sidestep the 1997 consent decree known as the Flores agreement and detain children with their parents while their cases are being considered by immigration courts.

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A rare victory over ‘dark money’ in a divided Supreme Court

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Chief Justice John Roberts has dedicated his professional career to destroying the Voting Rights Act and destroying any and all campaign finance laws. He represents the millionaires and billionaires who want a corporatocracy to replace our democracy in a new Gilded Age. What a swell guy.

Last week, the Chief Justice granted an emergency application from Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategy, a nonprofit linked to American Crossroads, a “super PAC” started by Karl Rove, to stay the order of U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell which rejected a long-standing FEC regulation regarding disclosure, concluding that nonprofits like Crossroads Grassroots should be required to disclose any donors who give at least $200 toward any independent expenditures. See, Amy Howe at SCOTUSblog, Chief justice puts donor-disclosure ruling on hold. If allowed to stand, the ruling would be significant: Political nonprofits have spent over $700 million on “independent expenditures” since 2010.

Robert’s referred his temporary order to the full court, and the evenly divided Supreme Court denied the group’s application without comment or published dissent. The ruling means that the district court’s order invalidating the FEC’s regulation will go into effect for now.

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Dirty Money, Dirty Tricks, Dirty Judges

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Arizona Supreme Court Justice Clint Bolick

The Outlaw Dirty Money constitutional amendment won’t be on the ballot this November, but the judges who rubber-stamped the dirty tricks against it will be. Clint Bolick and John Pelander are up for confirmation as Arizona Supreme Court justices this November, and here’s why we should spread the word to kick them off the court.

ODM circulators worked their tails off to gather over 285,000 signatures from Arizona voters, a fair margin of safety over the 225,963 required to get on the ballot. So when the dark money interests saw that this was likely to become law and shine some light on their real names, they pulled out all the stops. Americans for Prosperity, the front group for the Koch brothers, filed a lawsuit. They exploited a law passed by the Republican-controlled legislature that invalidates all the signatures gathered by a petition circulator if that circulator fails to show up when subpoenaed for questioning.

Arizona Supreme Court Justice John Pelander
Arizona Supreme Court Justice John Pelander

But what about the voters who signed the petition in good faith and wanted their signatures to count? The constitution of Arizona guarantees the right of citizens to petition the government. ODM argued that our Republican legislature “has passed rules that have created unnecessary and insurmountable barriers into the petition process that clearly infringe on that right.”

The justices rejected this argument with not even a nod to the constitutional rights of the voters.

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