"the Ministry of Propaganda has, in effect, seized control of the Politburo"

Fun fact, from Paul Krugman's latest column on the billionaire-financed wingnut welfare program we still, for reasons of tradition, call the GOP:

As Politico recently pointed out, every major contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination who isn’t currently holding office and isn’t named Mitt Romney is now a paid contributor to Fox News.

Ah, well. This democracy and free press thing was fun while it lasted, wasn't it?

From that rePubOLITICO link, there's also this bit of inadvertent comedy toward the end, where they've got Pat Buchanan as their go-to guy to ask about whether the above might be a problem.

No, wait, that's not the really funny part. This is:

Buchanan said the Fox reporters had no choice but treating those on the payroll as if they weren’t. “If you’re an objective journalist, you bring [the candidates] on and ask them tough questions.”

Hmmm! Tough Questions™! Yes, please tell us more.

While the commentators who have their own Fox programs have largely offered friendly forums for the four contributors, some of the reporters who have covered the group have not. When Palin appeared in Iowa recently, for example, political correspondent Carl Cameron reported that she had failed to meet with local officials and didn’t solicit any advice from Republicans in the state — basic steps traditionally taken by presidential candidates.

As you'll note, that's not asking a question. And no, there are no other "examples."

More Teabagger Astroturfing Documented

Frank Rich's latest column is mostly about his worries concerning one Republican running for office: "The Very Useful Idiocy of Christine O’Donnell." But in the middle, there are some useful links concerning something that I see as a worse problem, longer-lasting by far than however this next election turns out.

In a typical example just three weeks ago, the influential publication National Journal delivered a breathless report on how the Tea Party functions as a “headless” movement where “no one gives orders.” To prove the point, a head of the headless Tea Party Patriots vouched that “75 percent of the group’s funding comes from small donations, $20 or less.”

In fact, local chapters of Tea Party Patriots routinely received early training and support from FreedomWorks, the moneyed libertarian outfit run by the former Republican House majority leader and corporate lobbyist Dick Armey. FreedomWorks is itself a spinoff from Citizens for a Sound Economy, a pseudo-grassroots group whose links to the billionaire Koch brothers were traced by Jane Mayer in her blockbuster August exposé in The New Yorker. Last week the same Tea Party Patriots leader who bragged to the National Journal about all those small donations announced a $1 million gift from a man she would identify only as an entrepreneur. The donor’s hidden identity speaks even louder than the size of the check. As long as we don’t know who he is, we won’t know what orders he’s giving either.

Such deep-pocketed mystery benefactors — not O’Donnell, whose reported income for this year and last is $5,800 — are the real indicators of what’s going on under the broad Tea Party rubric. Big money rains down on the “bottom up” Tea Party insurgency through phantom front organizations (Americans for Prosperity, Americans for Job Security) that exploit legal loopholes to keep their sugar daddies’ names secret. Reporters at The Times and The Washington Post, among others, have lately made real strides in explaining how the game works. But we still don’t know the identities of most of those anonymous donors.

From what we do know, it’s clear that some Tea Party groups and candidates like Sharron Angle, Paul and O’Donnell are being financed directly or indirectly not just by the Kochs (who share the No. 5 spot on the new Forbes 400) but by a remarkable coterie of fellow billionaires, led by oil barons like Robert Rowling (Forbes No. 69) and Trevor Rees-Jones (No. 110). Even their largess may be dwarfed by Rupert Murdoch (No. 38) and his News Corporation, whose known cash contributions ($2 million to Republican and Republican-tilting campaign groups) are dwarfed by the avalanche of free promotion they provide Tea Party causes and personalities daily at Fox and The Wall Street Journal.

I think it's worth clicking some of those.

A message from Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD)

Email beginning:

In the face of fierce opposition from the special interests, the House of Representatives passed the DISCLOSE Act earlier this year. This act will shine a light on political expenditures and ensure that shadowy special interests, sham organizations, and dummy corporations cannot mislead voters. I was proud to be the lead sponsor of this important legislation.

We need more people in Congress who are willing to stand up to the special interests rather than with them, and that's why I'm also proud to support Tarryl Clark.

I hope I can count on you to do whatever you can to help her win in November.

Tarryl's opponent took big money from Wall Street then voted against financial reform that will hold the industry accountable; she took hundreds of thousands from big insurance companies and then voted to let them continue to discriminate against those with pre-existing conditions.

And when it came to the DISCLOSE Act, Tarryl's opponent once again sided with the special interests who seek to influence our elections.

And ending:

P.S. - As you know, Tarryl has raised more money than virtually any other Congressional challenger in the country, but her opponent continues to rake in the cash from her special interest allies and ultra right-wing national base. Help Tarryl grow her grassroots support with a donation today!

Tarryl Clark's opponent, as you may or may not already know, pictured to the right:

We almost got her out last time. Let's do it this time.

"Who are you, and why are you so afraid to disclose where your money came from?"

Do you know who's behind "Concerned Taxpayers of America?" No. And neither does Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon). Even though they are paying for TV ads that attack him. So he tried to find out by going, in person, to their listed headquarters in Washington, D.C.

You will be shocked, shocked to find out that the guy there, Michael Omegna, first wouldn't answer the door, and then lied about being connected with this shadowy group. Or, in Republican terms, "misspoke."

Amanda Terkel has the story, plus video.

(h/t: @siouxeeq)

__________

[Added] In looking for more info about "Concerned Taxpayers of America," which I didn't find, I came across a closely related story about another group with the same modi operandi: a bland name ("Americans for Job Security"), a mail drop somewhere, a "sole employee," and a whole lot of money sloshing to Republicans and their causes, from who knows where.

(h/t: Joan McCarter)

__________

(previously)

"The Secret Election"

I keep meaning to spend some time gathering up the articles I've been seeing about what we can call, without fear of being hyperbolic, a true threat to our democracy. For the moment, and as a reminder to self, let me just post the beginning of a fine editorial in today's NYT.

But first: For the record, I am strongly sympathetic to the notion that people should be allowed to spend their money, and lots of it, if they wish, to influence the political process. I am also highly dubious about the likelihood that we could design good laws to restrict money flows, even leaving aside the impossibility of getting them passed in the current climate. While in the ideal I'd like nothing finer than 100% publicly-financed campaigns, I think we have to accept that it is a fact of life in America that we will for the foreseeable future spend an insane amount of money on campaigns and issue-mongering.

Therefore, I say, let's concentrate our energy on pushing for complete transparency on who is buying who.

Here is the beginning of the this NYT editorial.

The Secret Election

For all the headlines about the Tea Party and blind voter anger, the most disturbing story of this year’s election is embodied in an odd combination of numbers and letters: 501(c)(4). That is the legal designation for the advocacy committees that are sucking in many millions of anonymous corporate dollars, making this the most secretive election cycle since the Watergate years.

As Michael Luo reported in The Times last week, the battle for Congress is largely being financed by a small corps of wealthy individuals and corporations whose names may never be known to the public. And the full brunt of that spending — most of it going to Republican candidates — has yet to be felt in this campaign.

Corporations got the power to pour anonymous money into elections from Supreme Court and Federal Election Commission decisions in the last two years, culminating in the Citizens United opinion earlier this year. The effect is drastic: In 2004 and 2006, virtually all independent groups receiving electioneering donations revealed their donors. In 2008, less than half of the groups reported their donors, according to a study issued last week by the watchdog group Public Citizen. So far this year, only 32 percent of the groups have done so.

Most of the cash has gone to Republican operatives like Karl Rove who have set up tax-exempt 501(c)(4) organizations. In theory, these groups, with disingenuously innocuous names like American Crossroads and the American Action Network, are meant to promote social welfare. The value to the political operatives is that they are a funnel for anonymous campaign donations.

Read the rest.

Here's a sidebar graphic from the Michael Luo article linked to above: