Comedian Bill Maher: Now a major pro-Obama Super PAC donor

» But wait … isn’t that a conflict of interest? Granted, Maher, who leans on the liberal side but has called himself libertarian in the past, doesn’t exactly hide his political views, but considering he’s a commentator who regularly questions both sides of the aisle, you wonder if that crosses an ethical line. Then again, will his audience care? On the other hand, as the Christian Science Monitor points out, Maher tends to do better, comedy-wise, when there’s a Republican in office, so this might hurt him a little. By the way, Maher’s announcement, which came during a Yahoo webcast, was a bit of a shock to those in the audience, though Maher had fun with the announcement, mocking the name of the Super PAC he’s donating to.

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

five donors find themselves in the spotlight: Texas billionaire Harold Simmons, casino moguls Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, Paypal co-founder (and Facebook investor) Peter Thiel, and Houston home-builder Bob Perry
$30.4 million donated by the five people, the largest donations going to the Super PACs Winning Our Future and Endorse Liberty; however, American Crossroads leads the pack with $15 million collected source

» A massive financial mind share: That’s almost $1 out of every $4 collected by all super PACs this election cycle, and certainly seems to explain exactly how we ended up with the remaining crop of Republican candidates that we have. Bob Perry is a former Tim Pawlenty supporter who switched to Team Romney with a $1 million dollar donation, while the Adelsons — who are ready to boost their support for Winning The Future from $10 million to $20 million — have provided the lifeblood of the Gingrich campaign. Of the remaining four candidates, only Rick Santorum finds himself without support, via Super PAC donations, from one of these five wealthy conservatives.

Posted by Scott Craft • 0 Comments • Permalink

$11M the amount the main pro-Newt Gingrich Super PAC, Winning Our Future, raised in January
$5M of that total came from Sheldon Adelson, a casino magnate with deep pockets
$5M of that total came from Adelson’s wife, Miriam; they know a thing or two about gambling source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

Occupying from within the system: Today, OWS created a super PAC called the “The Occupy Wall Street Political Action Committee.” John Paul Thornton is the treasurer of the committee. “It’s going to be fairly democratic. We’ll take opinions on how much candidates need and in what areas,” Thornton said. The point of this super PAC is to raise money … to stop politicians from raising too much money. “I am out to get the bloated amounts of money out of politics but to do that, we need to support candidates looking to do that,” Thornton said. source

Posted by samimain • 0 Comments • Permalink

The President opposed the Citizens United decision. … He continues to support a law to force full disclosure of all funding intended to influence our elections, a reform that was blocked in 2010 by a unanimous Republican filibuster in the U.S. Senate. And the President favors action—by constitutional amendment, if necessary—to place reasonable limits on all such spending. But this cycle, our campaign has to face the reality of the law as it currently stands.
Obama campaign manager Jim Messina • From a blog post on BarackObama.com, titled “We Will Not Play by Two Sets of Rules.” In it, Messina attempts to explain why the Obama campaign, despite stated opposition to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling (and ostensibly Super PACs themselves), will be playing the same Super PAC game as the GOP candidate this year. This strikes us as a hard sell, especially to independents — saying President Obama needs to use a corrupted system in the hopes of ending said system doesn’t seem like an argument that would have much appeal to those not already extremely trusting of his administration. source

Posted by Chris Tognotti • 0 Comments • Permalink

24 Feb 2012 14:48