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Tight governors' races loosen political purse strings

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Voters in Vermont pride themselves on the positive tone in even their most bitterly fought elections. But the governor’s race is bucking that trend this year thanks to out-of-state political juggernauts that are transforming the typically low-key contest into a record-breaking brawl.

“It’s not our way,” said Tom Aloisi, a 51-year-old Vermont native, who said voters are used to seeing such antics in neighboring New Hampshire, a battleground state that attracts all presidential contenders.

This year, normally quiet Vermont has had more than twice as much spent on TV advertising for the governor’s race between Republican Lt. Gov. Phil Scott and Democrat Sue Minter than it had for the entire election cycles in 2012 and 2014. Much of that is driven by the Republican Governors Association and its Democratic counterpart, who are operating under the innocuous names A Stronger Vermont and Our Vermont, respectively, to tear down their opponents with TV ads.

The dynamic in tiny Vermont echoes what’s occurring around the nation, where tight gubernatorial races and outside groups are fueling increased spending on state political ads.

This year, as states elect 12 governors, fill scores of other offices and several thousand legislative seats, television ad spending on state races has outpaced the last comparable election at this point, even when adjusted for inflation. The more than $148 million spent so far this year dwarfs the $83 million spent in the same period in 2012, according to data from media tracker Kantar Media/CMAG.

The heated governors’ races account for more than half of all state political advertising this year. And independent groups are playing a larger role, sponsoring 23 percent of all ads in 2016, compared with 18 percent in 2012.

The Center for Public Integrity analyzed data about political advertising on broadcast television from Kantar Media/CMAG, a media tracking firm that monitors 211 media markets around the country and offers a widely accepted estimate of the money spent to air each spot.

These figures cover ads aired between Jan. 1, 2015, and Oct. 3, 2016, yet represent only part of the money spent on political races. They do not include ads for radio, online, direct mail or TV ads that aired on local cable systems. The estimates also do not include the cost of making the ads.

In Vermont, this means that voters have already seen an estimated $3.2 million worth of political television ads about the governor’s race alone. That works out to more than $6.60 already spent for each of the roughly 480,000 eligible voters in the New England state, which elects a governor every two years.

“It’s a great time to own a TV station,” said Eric Davis, an emeritus political science professor at Middlebury College. “This is going to be by far the most spending we’ve seen in a governor’s race in Vermont.”

Competition at the top

Seven of the 12 gubernatorial races this year are open races with no incumbent candidates, and the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics has classified five of those as toss-ups: Indiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, Vermont and West Virginia. That’s in contrast to 2012, when the center classified only three states as a toss-up at this point.

“The map is more competitive this time,” said Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the center.

That’s certainly the case in Missouri where Democrats are trying to maintain control of the governor’s mansion, currently occupied by Gov. Jay Nixon. The Show Me state has seen more political advertising this year than anywhere else in the country, an estimated $43 million. The governor’s race alone, at $27 million, is higher than the total spent in any other state for all statewide and legislative political ads this year.

Those eye-popping totals are fueled by Missouri’s campaign finance laws: It is one of a dozen states with no contribution limits.

“It’s like the wild, wild west out here,” said Jeremy Walling, a political science professor at Southeast Missouri State University.

Former Navy SEAL Eric Greitens emerged from a crowded Republican primary field by painting himself as a political outsider and defender of the Second Amendment. He’s raised more than $13 million so far in 2016, according to state records, and has already spent an estimated $8 million on political ads, more than any other candidate for state office in the country.

His opponent in the November election is current Attorney General Chris Koster, a Democrat who used to be a Republican. Koster has raised more than $18.8 million so far and has already spent an estimated $6 million on television ads, despite not facing a serious challenge in the primary.

In North Carolina, the race has also been expensive, as Democrats try to win back the governor’s seat from first-term Republican Pat McCrory.

He and Democratic challenger Roy Cooper, the current attorney general, have spent more than $12 million combined on political ads, nearly all of it in the past two months. Earlier in the race, independent groups mainly backing Cooper dominated the airwaves.

Bigger role for outsiders

That dynamic of outside groups joining the fight has played out in West Virginia’s attorney general race, in which ads from Democratic challenger Doug Reynolds duel for airtime with those from independent groups backing Republican incumbent Patrick Morrisey.

A political committee called Mountaineers are Always Free has spent more than an estimated $1.5 million on ads, many attacking Reynolds. Like the governors’ associations using local-sounding names, the group is funded entirely by the national Republican Attorneys General Association, which seeks to elect Republicans to the top law enforcement position in each state.

Reynolds, the president of an energy pipeline company who has already pumped more than $600,000 of his own money into the campaign, has sponsored $1.8 million worth of ads so far, outspending and airing more ads than the independent group. But he anticipates that it will be a challenge to keep pace now that Morrisey’s campaign has just started to air its own ads.

“It’ll be two on one,” Reynolds said.

The Democratic Governors Association and its Republican counterpart are typically the largest national drivers of spending in state races, and that’s no different this year.

The groups can accept unlimited donations and annually count numerous pharmaceutical companies, insurers and major corporations among their top donors. The biggest contributors to the Republican group this year also include Koch Industries Inc. and hedge fund managers Paul Singer and Ken Griffin, while labor groups are among other top donors to the Democratic group.

Because the groups are regulated by the IRS and don’t typically file state-specific reports, it’s difficult to tie donations the groups receive to ads in specific states.

“You can never tell from the outside whether in conversations from donors this money is being earmarked or directed,” said Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a Stetson University associate professor of law who has studied the activities of the two groups.

And sometimes they don’t include their national names in their campaigns, instead using state-specific ones that obscure their national and partisan ties, such as in Vermont. In total, the associations and the groups that they’ve backed have spent more than $8 million already just on TV ads.

Typically, they don’t enter races until after the primaries, so that total is likely to soar in the coming weeks.

Ads paid for by independent groups don’t merely amplify the message of candidates, they often are far more negative — attacking one candidate, while allowing the candidate they support to use their precious campaign funds for ads that are more positive.

That’s certainly the case in Vermont, where A Stronger Vermont ad uses bobblehead dolls of Minter and Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin to attack Minter’s candidacy as a continuation of Shumlin’s “failed” policies. A recent Our Vermont ad likens Republican candidate Scott to a box of cereal that’s unhealthy when you examine the ingredients.

Meanwhile, ads aired by Minter, the Democratic candidate, have focused on painting her in a positive light, focusing heavily on her work leading the state’s recovery from Hurricane Irene in 2011. And Scott’s ads have touted the race-car driver’s ability to work with both parties.

That’s by design, said Davis, the Middlebury political scientist.

“What’s going on in the gubernatorial race,” he said, “is the old good cop, bad cop routine.”

Under the name A Stronger Vermont, the Republican Governors Association aired this ad in the Vermont governor's race about Demcratic candidate Sue Minter, likening her to current Gov. Peter Shumlin.Ben Wiederhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/ben-wiederhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/10/06/20297/tight-governors-races-loosen-political-purse-strings

Reclusive mega-donor fueling Donald Trump's White House hopes

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In March, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was vehement: Super PACs are a “disaster” and “very corrupt.”

With his opponent, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, gazing expressionlessly at him from the next podium during a Republican primary debate, Trump added, “Ted has super PACs, and you have to look at the people that are giving to those super PACs, number one. It's very important to do that.”

“There is total control of the candidates,” Trump continued. “I know it better than anybody that probably ever lived.”

If he’s right, New York investor Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, the very same mega-donors who propped up Cruz’s bid, are due for some scrutiny.

In June, the Mercers threw their support — and super PAC— behind Trump’s bid, at a time few other mega-donors were doing so. And in August, reportedly acting on Rebekah Mercer’s suggestion, Trump hired and promoted a cadre of operatives closely connected to the Mercers, including two who had run the Mercers’ super PAC, to his campaign leadership team.

Mercer, reclusive by nature, isn’t inclined to speak publicly about his giving, making it a challenge to determine much about either his reasons for promoting a Trump administration or what he stands to gain. Robert and Rebekah Mercer both declined to be interviewed for this story.

But a Center for Public Integrity review of Mercer’s political and philanthropic spending found clues.

Mercer’s largesse has largely gone to anti-establishment groups and insurgent candidates working to pull the Republican Party further to the right, rather than the business-backed organizations closely associated with the Republican establishment, adding to his reputation as an ideologically motivated giver.

He has heavily funded ultra-conservative media outlets, like Breitbart News and Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center.

His foundation gives to groups that question human involvement in climate change, such as the Heartland Institute think tank and others. He’s also backed the Citizens United Foundation and the Government Accountability Institute, organizations that have ardently pursued an anti-Hillary Clinton agenda.

There are signs, however, that Mercer is also motivated by issues that affect him personally. At least twice, he has unleashed gushers of outside spending to derail the re-election of a lawmaker — one who backed a tax on hedge fund transactions, another who investigated his company’s tax strategies.

Major player

Robert Mercer, 70, co-chief executive officer of hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, has emerged as the single most influential donor to Trump, the brash businessman whose political rise was propelled by his personal fortune.

Mercer grew up in New Mexico, participated in the band and the chess club in high school, and attended the University of New Mexico. He has said he didn’t use a computer until he attended a youth science camp after high school, though he was fascinated by them. He got a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Illinois and joined a team at IBM that used statistical techniques to enable computers to understand speech and translate languages, work widely hailed as groundbreaking.

In 1993, Renaissance recruited Mercer and his longtime colleague, Peter Brown, and the two took the leap into investing. In 2010, they became co-CEOs of Renaissance. The two are a study in contrasts. Brown is known as a voluble Democrat, and Mercer as his calmer, conservative foil; the book More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of the New Elite reported his boss at IBM jokingly referred to him as an “automaton.”

"I'm happy going through my life without saying anything to anybody," Mercer toldTheWall Street Journal in 2010, in a rare interview given when he and Brown took over as co-CEOs of Renaissance Technologies.

Since then, he has become one of the highest-paid hedge fund managers in the business.

Influence beyond money

But Mercer’s greatest influence on Trump may not be via his cash but, rather, through key operatives who have leaped from the Mercers’ organization to lead Trump’s: campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, campaign CEO Steve Bannon and deputy campaign manager David Bossie.

“What [Rebekah] and her dad did was go sit down with the Donald and talk to him about his team. His team was failing him. They weren’t controlling the message and all that,” said Toby Neugebauer, a donor who worked in conjunction with the Mercers when they were supporting Cruz.

Neugebauer, speaking on a panel of large political donors at the Texas Tribune Festival in September, said Conway has “really gotten the message there, she’s gotten him under control. He’s not as bombastic, obviously. So I give her — Rebekah Mercer — a lot a lot of credit for talking some sense into Donald Trump to bring [Conway] on board and get her there, and we’ll see if it pays off in the end.”

Conway is a Republican pollster who oversaw day-to-day operations of the Mercers’ super PAC through early June, while it backed Cruz and had a different name, Keep the Promise I. In late June, after Cruz’s withdrawal, the Mercers repurposed the group as an anti-Clinton PAC, changing the name to Make America Number 1. Conway departed to join the Trump campaign, a move announced on July 1.

Conway’s association with Mercer and Trump has been profitable.

The Mercer super PAC, Make America Number 1, reported paying Conway’s firm, the Polling Company, more than $950,000 during this election cycle, including roughly $247,000 in August, after she had left to work directly for the Trump campaign.

Trump’s campaign, for its part, reported paying the Polling Company roughly $128,500 in August.

Campaigns and the super PACs supporting them are legally prohibited from “coordinating,” though the laws are complicated. They are permitted to have common vendors if appropriate steps are taken to avoid illegal sharing of information.

Public filings do not make it clear when the work was performed.

Conway said in an e-mailed response to questions from the Center for Public Integrity that she has “never worked for Make America I PAC,” and “been inside the campaign firewall from the beginning.” 

She did not respond to follow-up questions.

In comments to Politico on the same subject, she said the company has separate staffs working on the two accounts and there is a “firewall” between them. She initially told Politico that her firm “performed survey research and messaging work for this PAC in late June and early July” but subsequently said the payment pertained to "surveys in late June."

In addition, she said “no further work is planned” for the super PAC.

Bossie took over briefly until he, too, joined the Trump campaign at the beginning of September. Bossie was head of Citizens United, the organization that made the anti-Clinton documentary that led to the landmark 2010 Supreme Court campaign finance ruling Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

Bossie is taking a leave from Citizens United while working with the campaign. The Citizens United Foundation received about $3.6 million in grants from the Mercer Family Foundation between 2012 and 2014, tax filings show.

Bannon’s relationship with the Mercers has long been chalked up to Robert Mercer’s reported investment in Breitbart News, the conservative news site Bannon headed before taking a leave of absence to join the Trump campaign. The Mercers declined to comment on the reports of the Breitbart investment but Breitbart has disclosed a debt to a limited liability company with the same address as Renaissance Technologies, Gravitas Maximus LLC, according to corporate filings.

Breitbart News, however, is not the only joint endeavor involving the Mercers and Bannon. Rebekah Mercer and Bannon have also worked together on the boards of two nonprofits, the Government Accountability Institute, a conservative investigative research group, and Reclaim New York, a watchdog and advocacy group, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of taxfilings on the Citizen Audit website.

Bannon and Bossie have long collaborated on projects. Bannon has directed some film projects for Citizens United, and the Citizens United Foundation paid Bannon’s company $150,000 for “film consulting” in 2013, according to its tax return.

Web of connections

Bossie has taken credit for introducing Bannon to Trump in 2011, when Trump was considering running for president during the 2012 election cycle and sought advice.

And in a previously unreported transaction, Bannon Strategic Advisors received $300,000 from Bossie’s Citizens United Foundation in 2012, a fundraising fee apparently in exchange for bringing in a $2 million grant from the Mercers’ foundation.

Mercer has provided more than advisers and cash. He’s reportedly a significant investor in Cambridge Analytica, an offshoot of British company SCL that recently opened offices in New York, which claims to help clients target voters or donors by using a personality model to determine the type of appeal that will be most effective.

The company has been a vendor for the Mercer super PAC, currently known as Make America Number 1, and now, the Trump campaign, which paid it a total of $350,000 this summer.

Direct investments

Mercer has made more direct investments in politics.

Together with his wife, Diana, Robert Mercer directly contributed roughly $23 million to federal candidates and political committees during the 2016 election cycle through the end of August. That made the couple the top individual donors on the Republican side, according to federal campaign contribution data tracked by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Of that, Robert Mercer gave $15.5 million to Make America Number 1 and $2.5 million to the John Bolton super PAC. Robert and Diana Mercer together gave about $1.3 million to the Republican National Committee.

There’s potential for millions more: Robert Mercer earned $150 million last year, according to Forbes.

Rebekah Mercer has given roughly $510,000 this election cycle, including nearly $450,000 to the joint fundraising committee established by Trump and the RNC, a Center for Public Integrity review of campaign finance filings found.

Most of those who have received funding from the Mercers did not respond to repeated requests for comment or declined to speak on the record.

But the Mercers have clearly built one of the most significant independent political infrastructures of the moment.

Early in the 2016 election cycle, the Mercer operation emerged as a key backer of Cruz’s presidential bid, and the operatives running it hit Trump hard. The Mercer-backed super PAC even gave $200,000 to an anti-Trump group, Our Principles PAC, in March.

When Cruz withdrew, the Mercer family nonetheless threw their backing to Trump — a striking show of support for the then-almost certain nominee at a time when many major GOP donors hung back.

The Mercers issued a rare public statement to TheNew York Times reprimanding Cruz when he declined to endorse Trump at the Republican convention in July, and now are being publicly credited with convincing the Texas senator to make the public endorsement he issued in late September.

In another statement, this one given to TheWashington Post applauding Cruz’s endorsement, the Mercers made their feelings about the election — and the establishment — clear.

“For the first time in many decades, American voters have the chance to turn their backs on the political elite, an elite both Democrat and Republican, that has chosen as its leader Hillary Clinton, a dedicated foe of both the First and Second Amendments and the most dishonest, corrupt and incompetent politician ever to seek the American presidency,” the statement said.

“Even such great Americans as Mitt Romney and George Bush have stooped to endorse Mrs. Clinton rather than risk electing a president who follows the will of the people. We have long supported Senator Ted Cruz. He has waged a fearless battle against the elite throughout his career. We are delighted that he is joining us and a growing army of Americans in support of Donald J. Trump's candidacy for the presidency of the United States of America.”

Position tough to track

Rebekah Mercer, 42, an active philanthropist who lives in a Trump building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, is the middle of three daughters and the director of the Mercer Family Foundation. The foundation reported giving $18.3 million in contributions and grants according to its 2014 tax filing, the most recent available.

Like her father, she rarely gives interviews or comments publicly about her philanthropy. The Stanford University-educated mother of four is nonetheless more visible and hands on. She is frequently photographed attending charityevents, and reportedly consistently participates in conference calls about the super PAC’s day to day operations.

Because of the family’s reticence to speak publicly, it’s difficult to determine the motives behind their giving. Stories about Robert Mercer tend to highlight the same few publicly known details: his poker playing, the $2.7 million model train in his basement that became the subject of litigation, his advocacy on behalf of the gold standard, the high-end bakery, now online only, owned by the three Mercer daughters that was featured in Vogue.

Doug Deason, a major political donor who described Rebekah Mercer as a “close friend” while speaking on the panel of major donors at the Texas Tribune Festival, said Robert Mercer is “a very smart, thoughtful person.”

Conservative lawyer Jim Bopp, the general counsel of the James Madison Center for Free Speech, which received a 2011 grant from the Mercer Family Foundation, said he heard from Robert Mercer directly only once, when he called to inquire about a nonpolitical case Bopp was involved in. (Bopp is credited with first bringing the Citizens United case, and is the lead lawyer in other efforts to overturn limits on money in politics.)

Bopp said he’s also spoken to Mercer’s lawyer in the past about cases in which the Mercers are interested. The conversations “are always just about cases, what’s this case about, what are the issues, why is it important,” he said.

Katie Packer, a Republican consultant, described them as “philosophical givers … the Mercers are donors who give because of very specific conservative philosophies.”

Packer is a former Romney deputy campaign manager who founded Our Principles PAC, the group that received $200,000 from the Mercers’ super PAC last March. She said they were brought in by other donors and she doesn’t know them personally.

Right-wing media empire

Their philosophy has led them to invest heavily in conservative media outlets.

In addition to the reported private investment in Breitbart News, the conservative Media Research Center, a media watchdog run by longtime conservative activist Brent Bozell, received about $13.5 million in grants from the Mercer Family Foundation between 2008 and 2014, and Rebekah Mercer is a member of the group’s board, tax filings and annual reports show.

According to its website, “MRC’s sole mission is to expose and neutralize the propaganda arm of the Left: the national news media.”

The Media Research Center also runs a news service whose mission is to cover news “that’s ignored or under-reported as a result of media bias by omission.”

Recent highlighted stories included a story on Trump’s child care proposals, another on Ford’s decision to move small car production from the United States to Mexico and a piece on studies that found “no observable sea-level effect” from “man-made global warming.”

In 2014, the Mercer Family Foundation gave the Media Research Center $3 million, which made up nearly $1 of every $4 the group received in contributions that year.

Bozell leads a related nonprofit, ForAmerica, which describes its mission as “For freedom. For prosperity. For virtue.”

In addition to fighting the left, ForAmerica also asserts conservatives are “under attack from the moderate wing of the Republican party” and “must be creative, better organized and better funded.”

The group says its videos were viewed more than 21 million times in 2015. Its campaigns include advocating for new GOP leadership and criticizing President Barack Obama’s response to ISIS.

The group reported on its 2014 tax filing spending more than $1.1 million on Cambridge Analytica’s services for “analytics and marketing.”

According to audited financial statements ForAmerica filed with New York state regulators, more than 90 percent of the $5.3 million the organization received in contributions in 2014 came from a single donor, but Bozell did not respond to questions about the donor’s identity.

Climate change denier

The Mercer Family Foundation has also backed multiple organizations that aggressively question whether humans contribute substantially to climate change.

“Most scientists do not believe human greenhouse gas emissions are a proven threat to the environment or to human well-being, despite a barrage of propaganda insisting otherwise coming from the environmental movement and echoed by its sycophants in the mainstream media,” reads the website of the Heartland Institute.

The Mercer Family Foundation’s contributions have repeatedly made up a major percentage of Heartland’s total contributions. In 2014, the Mercers gave the think tank $885,000, which amounted to 13 percent of the total amount it raised in contributions that year. Altogether, the Heartland Institute received nearly $5 million from the foundation between 2008 and 2014.

A spokesman for the Heartland Institute did not respond to a request for comment on the Heartland Institute’s relationship with the Mercer family.

Another group, the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, received a total of $800,000 in 2013 and 2014 grants from the Mercer foundation. Ron Arnold, the executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, is also a policy advisor to the Heartland Institute. He has been quoted as saying his goal is “to eradicate the environmental movement.”

The money from the Mercer Family Foundation was nearly all of the money the group received in 2013, according to its tax filing — the group only reported receiving another $27,235 in contributions and grants that year.

The Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise 2014 tax filing does not reflect the $250,000 grant the Mercer Family Foundation reported giving it that year; the reason is unclear. It otherwise reported receiving a mere $28,512.96 in contributions.

The group’s website appears to be currently offline. Arnold did not respond to a request for comment.

Another Mercer Family Foundation grantee, the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, is headed by a scientist who spearheaded a petition opposed “to the hypothesis of ‘human-caused global warming,’” according to its website.

That scientist, Art Robinson, is currently making his fourth bid as the Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives seat from Oregon currently occupied by Rep. Peter DeFazio, a Democrat. In 2010, the first time Robinson ran against DeFazio, Robert Mercer spent roughly $600,000 via a super PAC to boost Robinson, catching DeFazio by surprise.

“Sometime in October, they had to file a disclosure, and that’s when it came out that it was Mercer,” DeFazio said.

Self-interest

To this day, DeFazio isn’t sure whether to chalk Mercer’s opposition up to the wealthy donor’s preexisting relationship with Robinson’s institute or to DeFazio’s own promotion of a so-called transaction tax, a proposal that has the potential to cut into Renaissance Technologies’ earnings.

Either way, he said, Mercer’s continued backing of Robinson — though he has yet to spend any money on the race this cycle — has distorted the normal course of events in the district.

The district is a swing district, DeFazio said, and “a more credible, less extremist Republican opponent could be a real problem.” Mercer’s backing, though, gave Robinson an edge over other Republican contenders, he said.

Robinson did not respond to requests for comment.

During the 2012 election cycle, Mercer contributedabout $440,000 to a super PAC that spent roughly the same amount boosting Robinson. In 2014, he gave $1.75 million to the Ending Spending Action Fund, which spent about $733,000 in the DeFazio/Robinson race.

A review of campaign finance filings shows no contributions by Mercer targeting the Oregon race so far this cycle, though in past years, he’s contributed large sums as late as the end of October.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have any grudge matches going this year.

In July, Robert and Diana Mercer contributed $200,000 to KelliPAC, a super PAC backing Arizona state Sen. Kelli Ward’s Republican primary challenge to U.S. Sen. John McCain. In August, the couple dropped in another $500,000, making them, by far, the biggest contributors. Nonetheless, McCain easily beat Ward in the August primary.

In 2014, McCain helped oversee a Senate committee’s investigation into Renaissance Technologies’ tax strategies, especially one known as “basket options.” The committee held a hearing and issued a report, eventually concluding “specific data supplied by the banks with respect to RenTec, the largest basket option user, suggests that the basket options may have been used to treat short-term capital gains as long-term capital gains, resulting in estimated tax avoidance of more than $6 billion.”

The firm denied it, but the Internal Revenue Service subsequently took steps to limit the use of the strategy employed by Renaissance.

McCain himself has openly said the Mercers’ contributions to his opponent were revenge for the tax investigation.

“We issued a scathing report about this guy evading taxes, his firm. I’m sure there’s no connection of a $600,000 injection into the Kelli Ward campaign,” he told Politico.

A side note: In August, Cambridge Analytica popped up for the first time as a vendor to KelliPAC, which paid it $450,000.

Anti-Hillary

In June, when Mercer repurposed his super PAC, it was billed as a vehicle for donors who wanted to oppose Clinton but weren’t ready to back Trump.

It would informally be known as the “Defeat Crooked Hillary PAC,” Bloomberg reported.

It has been slow to attract other donors, though it did in August pull in a $1 million contribution from philanthropist Cherna Moskowitz and $50,000 from Erik Prince, the former head of private security firm Blackwater.

It certainly won’t be the only Mercer-backed organization to focus on anti-Clinton efforts.

Among the Mercer Family Foundation’s grantees: Bossie’s Citizens United and the Government Accountability Institute, both of which have steadfastly opposed her.

Peter Schweizer — the author of the book Clinton Cash, which examines the sources of the Clintons’ wealth — is president of the Government Accountability Institute, which has received at least $2 million from the foundation. Rebekah Mercer and Bannon were both members of the board as of 2014, according to tax filings, though a board listing on the group’s website doesn’t currently include Rebekah Mercer.

The film version of Schweizer’s work, also titled Clinton Cash, was in part financed by the Mercers.

It was made by a video company that uses a California address also used by other Mercer-linked companies, including Breitbart News and Cambridge Analytica, as well as by Bannon’s company.

“Defeat Crooked Hillary,” of course, sounds a lot like what Trump says, so it’s clear the Mercers have been listening to the candidate — and the other way around, too.

The candidate who spent the primaries tweeting that big donors “cannot influence Trump!” appears, at least for now, to be listening pretty closely to the biggest mega-donor to line up behind him so far.

Chris Zubak-Skees and Will Fitzgibbon contributed to this story.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump pauses while speaking at a campaign rally Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2016, in Prescott Valley, Ariz.Carrie Levinehttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/carrie-levinehttps://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/10/07/20307/reclusive-mega-donor-fueling-donald-trumps-white-house-hopes

Federal Election Commission moving to new headquarters building

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The Federal Election Commission is officially vacating its longtime headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C., and moving across town to a smaller, but more modern facility.

"We are still in the early stages of planning for this transition, and may not have all of the answers to your questions at this time, Edward W. Holder, the FEC's acting deputy staff director for management and administration, wrote in an email this morning to agency staffers. "Stay tuned as we will be working on implementing a communication plan to keep you informed throughout this process."

The Center for Public Integrity first reported the move on Tuesday.

The new FEC headquarters will be located at 1050 1st St. NE in Washington, D.C. — walking distance to the NoMa and Union Station Metro stops.

An exact move date is unclear, although the FEC's current lease at 999 E St. NW, in the heart of downtown D.C. across from the FBI's headquarters, expires in September 2017. The FEC has occupied its current headquarters since 1985.

The agency sent an email to staff this morning detailing the new headquarters. Among the new headquarters' notable features:

  • The building is newly constructed
     
  • The FEC will occupy the top three floors of the 12-story building
     
  • The 87,000 square feet the FEC will occupy is significantly less than the nearly 137,000 square feet it now leases at 999 E St. NW. That will likely translate into a long-term cost savings for the FEC, which is now paying $5.35 million per year in rent. The agency's annual budget is a shade above $70 million.
     
  • Among the FEC's new neighbors: the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Homeland Security Acquisition Institute; the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; CNN's Washington bureau and the Internal Revenue Service Taxpayer’s Assistance Center.

Commissioners at the FEC, which exists to enforce and regulate federal election laws and employs more than 350 people, have long sought a more modern workspace— one not designed for a bygone age of paper stacks, microfiche and physical record-keeping.

Earlier this year, Republican Commissioner Lee Goodman called the FEC's current headquarters “dingy,” even “junky” in places, with “needlessly wide hallways and large offices."

Democratic Commissioner Ann Ravel, who often disagrees with Goodman on regulatory matters, concurred at the time: “In many ways, our building doesn’t serve our purposes."

Commissioners also expressed hope that better workspace would help improve notoriously low staff morale that the agency's own internal watchdog has in part blamed on poor agency leadership and management.

Earlier this week, FEC commissioners and the General Services Administration, which oversees federal property, refused to comment on the headquarters move.

Republican Commissioner Caroline Hunter called the information "confidential," while the office of Democratic Commissioner Ellen Weintraub said commissioners had signed non-disclosure agreements and couldn't discuss the move publicly.

Dave Levinthalhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/dave-levinthalhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/10/07/20321/federal-election-commission-moving-new-headquarters-building

State cutbacks, recalcitrance hinder Clean Air Act enforcement

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ALBANY, N.Y. — When Deneen Carter-El moved to the Ezra Prentice Homes in Albany’s South End two decades ago, she thought the beige-colored townhouses and trimmed lawns would be a welcome change from high-rise public housing.

But appearances were deceiving.

The 16-building complex borders the Port of Albany— a 200-acre shipping hub that’s home to landfills, bus depots, a cement plant and a large terminal where crude oil is transferred from railcars to barges and tankers. Only a chain-link fence separates the housing project and its playground from the railyard. Today, Carter-El is convinced that Ezra Prentice is “a toxic dump.”

“Not a day goes by when we go out of the apartment and don’t smell stuff,” said the single mother and cancer survivor who walks her 8-year-old daughter to the bus on school days. “You're almost scared to come outside.”

The mostly African-American tenants of Ezra Prentice complain of recurring headaches and nosebleeds and keep their windows shut, even on muggy July days like this one, to avoid gas-like odors they suspect come from idling trains and trucks. Across the tracks, volatile, explosive crude oil from North Dakota is offloaded at Global Partners’ Albany Terminal, a distributor to East Coast refineries and one of the largest sources of local air pollution.

The South End is less than a five-minute drive from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and the chateau-style state Capitol, but people here say the proximity hasn’t helped them. “Weeks go by, and months go by, and it’s pushed under the rug again,” said Carter-El, who’s attended numerous meetings with regulators and politicians over the past three years.

With the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970, Congress pledged to protect public health with the guarantee of safe air. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that reduced emissions associated with the law prevented 160,000 deaths in 2010 alone.

The act relies on cooperation between federal and state regulators. But experts, including some at the EPA, say its benefits aren’t being fully realized because enforcement remains wildly inconsistent.

The EPA has had trouble coordinating with recalcitrant states and territories, which are responsible for day-to-day policing despite significant federal and state cutbacks. Incomplete and inaccurate data supplied by states to the EPA, along with a patchy air-monitoring system, complicate attempts to identify problem areas.

The scarcity of data prompted the Center for Public Integrity to file public-records requests with all 50 states, as well as the EPA and the U.S. Census Bureau, to try to assess Clean Air Act enforcement nationwide. Among the Center’s findings:

  • Forty state environmental agencies have reduced regulator head counts in recent years, even as federal and state responsibilities have proliferated and the country has largely recovered from the recession.
  • North Carolina — which the EPA criticized earlier this year for coddling polluters — has suffered some of the deepest cuts, its agency’s 2014 workforce cut by a third from 2008 levels. In Illinois and Arizona, staffing has fallen by more than a third since 2007. Over the same period, New York’s workforce has been cut by nearly a quarter and Michigan's by a fifth.
  • Florida has filed only one Clean Air Act case involving asbestos — a deadly mineral long used in building materials — in the past three years. Georgia has handed over asbestos enforcement to the EPA, and Connecticut is considering doing so.

 

Researchers, former EPA officials, state regulators and others interviewed by the Center said it’s impossible for states to maintain vigorous enforcement amid significant cutbacks. Joel Mintz, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University and a member of the left-leaning Center for Progressive Reform, said states are in a “squeeze.”  Understaffed agencies are unable to revise weak, outdated permits, which cap facilities’ emissions. As a result, he said, “there’s no progress made in the control of pollution.”

The Clean Air Act itself remains contentious. A 2015 federal report found that nearly 60 percent of all lawsuits against the EPA from 1995 to 2010 were filed under the act — far more than under any other program. In fact, 27 states are suing the EPA to block the Clean Power Plan, a cornerstone of President Obama’s climate policy that would use the act to curb emissions at coal-fired power plants. Other state-led litigation claims that recently tightened ozone limits are too costly for industry.

South End residents watched with skepticism as New York officials suddenly sprang into action late this summer. Along with local activists and environmental groups, the residents had filed a lawsuit against Global in February, alleging the company mischaracterized its emissions when it applied for state approval in 2012 to increase fivefold the amount of petroleum products it handles — from 450 million to 2.3 billion gallons a year. (In a court filing, Global called the lawsuit “nothing more than an improper collateral attack on a permit that [the plaintiffs] do not like.”)

Residents also began gathering their own data — donning face masks to count diesel truck traffic and knocking on dozens of tenants’ doors to survey for chronic conditions like emphysema and asthma. Their efforts caught the attention of Judith Enck, the EPA’s top regional official, who met with members of the community in August. The month before, her office had filed a Clean Air Act violation notice against Global dating to the 2012 expansion. Activists had long argued that the terminal was releasing excessive amounts of volatile organic compounds, such as cancer-causing benzene.

The state has yet to allege a comparable violation but made news of its own. On the same day as Enck’s visit in August, the DEC announced plans to increase air monitoring in the South End, marking a departure from two years earlier, when it rebuffed residents’ concerns. The day before, DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos urged the EPA to make“a stronger federal response to the concerns of the residents of South Albany.” A few days later, Seggos denounced EPA’s oversight of longstanding efforts to remove polychlorinated biphenyls— man-made chemicals linked to neurological and other health problems — released into the Hudson River by General Electric Co.   

Some chalked up the DEC’s string of announcements as petty attempts to divert attention from unwelcome federal intervention. “Instead of buckling down and saying ‘Oops, looks like we made a mistake,’ they turn it into a retribution war,” said Chris Amato, an attorney with the public-interest law firm Earthjustice, who is litigating the case against Global.  “The only time you see [the DEC] doing something is when a lawsuit is filed or they get embarrassed because EPA came in and took the lead.”

State officials maintain that the DEC “has been actively engaged” with the community from the start. In a statement to the Center in early September, the agency wrote that it understood the community’s concerns, but said testing showed the air was improving and meets federal standards.

However, a week later, the DEC notified Global it would face stricter oversight in light of “higher-than-expected benzene levels.” DEC air-sampling results released in late September showed the South End’s average benzene levels for the past year were comparable to those of the Buffalo-area neighborhood near Tonawanda Coke, which is shelling out a combined $36 million in criminal and civil lawsuits stemming from years of Clean Air Act violations for uncontrolled benzene emissions.

Global declined an interview request, but wrote in a statement that it plans “to prove to the EPA, the DEC and our neighbors that our Albany facility remains in compliance with federal and state emission standards.”

Cleaner air can’t come soon enough for Carter-El, who was recently diagnosed with asthma and spends her days juggling medical appointments.  “I want to be able to grow old and see them,” she said of her four children, who appear to be in good health. “I don’t want them to come over here and be planning my funeral.” She turns 50 this year.

‘Stripped from the bones’

After decades as an assemblyman from Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Pete Grannis was ready to trade in politics for what he called his “dream job.” In 2007, he was sworn in as DEC commissioner, putting him in charge of the same agency that had hired him as a young lawyer in the 1970s.

But his triumphant return was cut short by the financial crash. In his first three years on the job, the DEC lost more than 300 staffers — a nearly 9 percent cut. In 2010, another 135 positions were eliminated. “I pushed back and I pushed back as hard as I could,” Grannis said of the reductions, which he felt singled out the department.

He sent memos to then-Gov. David Paterson warning that further cuts to the DEC’s air division could have lasting effects since enforcement relies on a “cops-on-the-road” presence. “All the meat has been stripped from the bones, and some of the bones have disappeared,” Grannis wrote.

Soon after the memos were leaked to the press, Paterson’s secretary gave Grannis two options: submit a letter of resignation or be fired immediately. He chose the latter; news of his dismissal caused an uproar among environmentalists who saw him as an ally struck down by pro-business politics.

Grannis now works as a top administrator for the New York State Comptroller, whose office criticized the DEC’s flat-lining budget and inadequate staffing despite expanding responsibilities in a 2014 report. The report warned that unchecked air emissions would put state residents at greater risk of death and illnesses such as cancer and asthma.

The DEC has fewer than 2,900 full-time employees, down from 3,775 in 2007. Over the past decade, air-enforcement positions have also been cut by nearly a quarter. Last year, the agency referred just 85 air-related cases for civil enforcement, compared to 467 in 2007.

“It’s pretty clear they're doing less with less,” said Peter Iwanowicz, a former DEC acting commissioner who now heads Albany-based Environmental Advocates of New York.

Iwanowicz said overburdened regulators often lose sight of communities like the South End. He said he wasn’t aware of the severity of the area’s air-quality problems until oil-train traffic began spiking in 2013 — three years after he left the DEC.

Carter-El said the neighborhood has long been overlooked. It wasn’t until after the death of a second-grader in 2013 that officials outfitted South Pearl Street, the main road leading to Interstate 787, with proper traffic signals and signs, even though at least 10 children had been struck in previous accidents there. Earlier this year, South End residents celebrated the opening of a Family Dollar, the only convenience store nearby besides a small corner bodega.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, has embraced climate-change initiatives but also supports expanding the Port of Albany— straining relations with activists who question his commitment to the environment.  “The governor wants to view New York as open for business, even if it’s dirty business,” Iwanowicz said.

Known for his micro-management, Cuomo has clashed repeatedly with the EPA. The agency quashed his attempts in 2014 to use $511 million in federal water funds for bridge reconstruction. In August, Cuomo threatened to sue the EPA if plans to allow the dumping of dredged sediment from harbors and rivers into the Long Island Sound are approved.

Over the past year, Cuomo’s administration also has taken heat for allegedly ignoring EPA warnings about drinking water tainted with perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), a suspected carcinogen, in the upstate community of Hoosick Falls. In early September, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy urged the state to “move beyond accusatory letters and, rather, work cooperatively” with EPA regional officials.

Cuomo’s office declined to respond to questions from the Center, referring it to the DEC. The agency reiterated its commitment to the South End and wrote that “like any other industrial area that is in the vicinity of residences, utilization of the Port [of Albany] can be done in a manner that is consistent with the Governor’s climate and environmental priorities.”

Deep cuts in Pennsylvania, Florida

Heads of state agencies are typically nominated by governors, while budgets are subject to gubernatorial approval throwing regulators into the political fray. John Quigley was forced out as chief of Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) in May after a profanity-filled email he sent to activists raised questions about his objectivity in a big oil and gas state. Though handpicked for the position by Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, Quigley barely lasted a year and a half on the job.

Like Grannis, Quigley was vocal about deep cutbacks at his agency. Last year, the EPA flagged the DEP for inadequate air-enforcement staffing.

Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection has faced a slide nearly identical to New York’s, even as the state’s economy has grown. The agency employs just over 2,900 people, compared to 3,600 in 2007. Republican Governor Rick Scott — who reportedly prohibited state workers from using the terms “climate change” or “global warming”— has touted reduced processing times for permits as a sign of greater efficiency.

But Florida’s chapter of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which advocates for stronger enforcement, blamed Scott’s business-friendly politics for a “severely crippled” department that allows polluters to skirt citations. The group’s annual report found that 18 air enforcement cases were opened in 2015, compared to an annual average of 93 in previous decades. The state has filed only one asbestos case since 2013 — compared to a past annual average of 13.

Bill Becker, director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, testified before Congress in March that states have borne the brunt of an annual $550 million federal funding shortfall. The Clean Air Act calls for federal grants to cover up to 60 percent of state air enforcement programs. In fact, states today are shouldering 75 percent of costs. The gap has caused “agencies to reduce or eliminate important air pollution programs, postpone necessary air monitoring expenditures and even reduce their workforces,” Becker said.

The Center surveyed all 50 states and the District of Columbia, seeking a decade of agency staffing data. Forty-one provided those numbers; for the remaining 10, the Center used six years of data obtained from the Census Bureau. From 2009 to 2014, agencies that shed employees reported a typical decline of nearly 7 percent, though some took far bigger hits.

Shari Wilson, deputy assistant administrator in the EPA’s enforcement division, said in an interview that the impacts of state budget shortfalls are magnified by increasing numbers of facilities and regulations. “The system gets stretched thinner and thinner and thinner,” she said.

The EPA itself has been pared down. Its full-time workforce is under 14,400 employees, down from 16,600 a decade ago. Staffing across all 10 regional EPA offices — which work directly with states — has also declined.

The cutbacks are especially severe since the agency has been inadequately funded from the start, said Mintz, the law professor. In a paper this year, he pointed out that EPA funding in 2014, when adjusted for inflation, was the lowest since 1977.

A level playing field

It’s hard to know, by any objective measure, which states are doing a good job of enforcing the Clean Air Act. Of the dozens of people interviewed for this story, no two could agree on which states or EPA regions were excelling or failing.

Annual enforcement metrics provided by states — such as inspections, violations, penalties — are riddled with “widespread and persistent data inaccuracy and incompleteness … which make it hard to identify when serious problems exist or to track state actions,” the EPA wrote in a 2013 memo.

The EPA’s Office of Inspector General has repeatedly raised concerns over uneven enforcement. In a 2011 audit, the office found that even top-performing state agencies failed to meet national goals for basic duties like inspections and wrote that the EPA “cannot assure that Americans in all states are equally protected from the health effects of pollution.”

Auditor Kathlene Butler said in an interview that the differences among the states were stark. “It seemed some states were very clear on what was expected of them in terms of performance from the [EPA] region,” she said. “Other states knew there was an ability to negotiate.”

Wilson said the EPA has a better understanding now of how states are faring than it did at the time of the audit. In a statement to the Center, the agency wrote that its “relationship with the states is strong,” and called building state partnerships a priority under McCarthy. But the EPA has resisted calls by the inspector general for enforcement reform.

Eddie Terrill, air director at Oklahoma’s Department of Environmental Quality, said he and other members of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies are eager for stronger EPA guidance but don’t always get it. As a result, he said, “Every state has a different perspective on how things ought to be done.”

Mintz said tension between states and the EPA goes back to the agency’s creation in 1970. Before that, states were responsible for their own environmental programs. Today’s imperfect system reflects a compromise between those who wanted nationwide pollution standards and those who wanted states to retain individual control, he said.

The EPA provided few internal records on state performance requested by the Center. Most forthcoming was the Southeast regional office in Atlanta, which has ramped up oversight of North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) after years of significantly fewer state-issued violations, paltry fines and failure to go after repeat offenders.

From 2011 to 2014, air-related penalties in North Carolina dropped by 93 percent while overall enforcement actions decreased by 51 percent. “This raises concerns about effective deterrence and providing a ‘level playing field,’” the EPA wrote to DEQ Secretary Donald van der Vaart in a May letter obtained by the Center under the Freedom of Information Act. It was the latest attempt to get the DEQ to correct problems federal officials attribute to 2011 policies that made it easier for polluters to resolve violations informally and resulted in fewer penalties.

The Domtar pulp and paper mill in Plymouth, North Carolina, was among more than a dozen facilities flagged by the EPA for “chronic noncompliance.” Company officials claimed the addition of a new biofuel plant in early 2013 wouldn’t significantly increase air pollution, but waited until mid-2014 to notify regulators that emissions of hydrogen sulfide— a gas that can cause instant death in high concentrations and loss of smell and memory problems at lower levels — were heavier than projected.

The state fined Domtar $100,000 in June 2015 but allowed the company to continue operating its new plant without the proper permit. A Domtar spokesman said the company is “working diligently with the state” on a new permit and installing a monitoring system.

The DEQ’s Stephanie Hawco declined to respond to questions from the Center and said the agency will reply to the EPA’s May letter later this fall. Hawco also declined to answer questions about Domtar, saying only that “DEQ has protected public health by … ensuring [Domtar is] on a path toward getting into compliance.”

The DEQ’s 2014 environmental staffing levels were down by a third of what they were in 2008, according to state officials who provided the Center with detailed figures. Over the same period, the air-enforcement staff was reduced by nearly a quarter.

North Carolina is among the states suing the EPA to try to block the Clean Power Plan. Secretary van der Vaart has been vocal about his opposition to the plan, calling it a federal “takeover.” Three of the state’s coal-fired power plants were among the nation’s top 100 emitters of greenhouse gases in 2014, a Center analysis found.

It’s not uncommon for enforcement inadequacies to go unresolved long after they’ve been identified. Since 2009, the EPA has carried out enforcement of federal asbestos regulations on Georgia’s behalf because of state budget reductions. In May, the EPA wrote in a separate internal review that Georgia officials had also blocked the agency from reviewing state air penalty records — an allegation a spokesperson for Georgia’s Department of Natural Resources denied.

A 2013 EPA review of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency found state regulators improperly modified permits after pollution incidents instead of issuing violations. They also failed to report critical violations to the EPA as required — so “it appears to EPA and the public that these things are not being done.” No updates were provided in subsequent annual reports.

The EPA’s New England office flagged “the loss of key enforcement staff in recent years” among the six states in its region as a major concern in March. The agency has shouldered enforcement duties on Rhode Island’s behalf, records show.  Similar to its counterpart in Georgia, Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection notified the EPA it may no longer carry out asbestos enforcement.

Empty threat

When enforcement falls short of the EPA’s expectations, the agency often resorts to cajoling states into improving, former EPA officials said. Phone calls or sternly worded letters are preferred over formal intervention, which requires the EPA to take on added responsibilities.

Mounting pressure from the public and the EPA persuaded New York regulators to rethink Global’s 2013 plans to install seven natural-gas fired boilers at its Albany Terminal. The DEC originally concluded that the proposal, which would allow Global to handle thicker fuels like tar sands, wouldn’t have “significant adverse impacts on the environment,” only to backtrack two years later.

A big factor in the reversal was a 12-page letter the EPA sent to the state in April 2014, pointing out several missteps by the DEC. A week after the EPA sent a follow-up letter in May 2015, the DEC conceded that it hadn’t considered whether Global's proposal would increase unintended releases known as fugitive emissions, worsen Albany’s persistent ozone problem or raise levels of hydrogen sulfide.

The state also failed to catch an error. While Global estimated its plan would increase emissions of volatile organic compounds by 39.5 tons per year — just shy of a 40-ton threshold that triggers additional review and pollution controls — the EPA found the figure was closer to 44 tons.

“For whatever reason, DEC seems intent on giving this company the benefit of every doubt and overlook what we believe are clear red flags about how they’re calculating their emissions,” Earthjustice’s Amato said.

Regional EPA officials played down their involvement in the Global case, denying that the violation notice they filed against the company in July reflected unhappiness with the DEC’s performance. The officials declined to be interviewed, writing in an email to the Center that they were in discussions with their state counterparts and that such discussions were “not unusual.”

Experts say the EPA must tread carefully when it comes to intervening in state matters or risk worsening tensions. Outside of persuasion, the EPA has few methods to spur improvement.

The harshest is withdrawal, or taking back a program, which strips enforcement authority from the state and puts it in federal hands. Because of the drain it puts on the EPA, some call the option an empty threat — likely to cause more problems than it would solve.

“You're basically undermining and weakening the system rather than strengthening it,” the EPA’s Wilson said.  “The way the system is set up and the way it functions most effectively is to have the strongest state program possible.”

The EPA did not respond to a Center request to provide records or figures on how many state programs the agency has withdrawn. Similarly, it did not provide statistics on how many withdrawal requests it had received from outside environmental groups like the Sierra Club, or how many times it had withheld federal grant money from state agencies — one of the more forceful oversight options.

The EPA’s inspector general recommended that the agency withdraw the Virgin Islands’ authority for several environmental programs in 2015, citing a plethora of problems, but the EPA refused to do so. Officials had taken the unusual step of temporarily blocking the U.S. territory from accessing $37 million in federal funds, citing concerns over poor financial oversight.

An audit the same year said inspectors in the Virgin Islands lacked certification to conduct air-quality tests and failed to report air-monitoring data, as required. In March, the EPA wrote that the territory was still “not taking adequate enforcement action when non-compliance is found” or “issuing penalties as appropriate.”

Butler, of the inspector general’s office, said the EPA’s inability or unwillingness to withdraw enforcement authority has hurt its leverage with states and territories. “EPA has had a big tool removed from its toolbox,” she said. “It becomes this back-and-forth game.”

A new paradigm

When the EPA urged New York regulators in 2014 to reconsider Global’s expansion, it also encouraged the DEC to start advanced air monitoring at the Albany terminal — installing sensors, for example, that detect volatile organic compounds like benzene.

The suggestion was part of the EPA’s nascent Next Generation Compliance strategy, aimed at boosting enforcement with “closer to real-time” monitoring. The enhanced tracking will enable facilities to “identify and fix pollution problems before they become violations,” the EPA says.

The EPA has visited 20 states to promote “Next Gen” and has given 11 money for infrared cameras that detect otherwise invisible pollution. Efforts to beef up monitoring are crucial, says the American Lung Association, because less than a third of U.S. counties have ozone or particle-pollution monitors, leaving many communities in the dark about basic air quality.

Next Gen “makes data more transparent and puts it in the hands of the public — we’re all for that,” said Eric Schaeffer, a former EPA enforcement director who now heads the Environmental Integrity Project, a research and advocacy group. But he said transparency means little if the public can’t easily distinguish significant pollution events from run-of-the-mill ones.

In 2014, the EPA narrowed its definition of “high priority” air violations, which trigger greater oversight. States can petition to remove the designation entirely if the EPA agrees a violation can’t be sufficiently proven or is no longer worth the extra effort.

Under the new policy, Schaeffer said, a major release of a carcinogen isn’t a high-priority violation unless it lasts at least a week or longer. “You got a definition that basically muffles a lot of violations.”

Since the revision, 51 violations nationwide have been dropped from the high-priority list. The EPA determined that in 70 percent of these cases, extra oversight was “not in the public interest,” records show. For the rest, states were “unlikely to prevail” if legally challenged.

The EPA refused to provide information about the violations — names of companies, even names of states — to the Center, citing unspecified privacy concerns. States still must resolve all violations regardless of priority, the EPA told the Center, adding that it is working to make it easier for the public to “see pollutant discharges, environmental conditions, and noncompliance.”

For people in the South End, things are still too opaque. Aside from glimpses of Global’s hulking blue and white tanks, few seem to know much about the crude oil terminal. Instead, they focus on the near-constant parade of screeching railcars and rumbling trucks that muffle the sounds of children playing basketball on a concrete court.

B.B. White’s 7-year-old son was among the neighborhood kids out on the playground on a hot July afternoon, riding a scooter as railcars passed by. The two live so close to the railyard that White, 60, sees trains parked feet away when he draws back his kitchen curtains to check on his vegetable garden. His son often wakes up at night, startled by the wall-rattling tremors.

They’ve lived at Ezra Prentice for about a decade and would relocate if they could afford to move. “I can hardly breathe,” White said. “A lot of people around here, you can tell they look sick. Something's wrong with the air. I don't know what it is.”

Residents in Albany's South End have complained of noise and fumes from constant diesel truck traffic. The neighborhood borders the Port of Albany.Jie Jenny Zouhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jie-jenny-zouhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/10/11/20303/state-cutbacks-recalcitrance-hinder-clean-air-act-enforcement

U.S. officials repeatedly failed to heed warnings about the crooks in Afghanistan’s government

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American officials received persistent, stark warnings that Afghanistan’s entrenched culture of official corruption would undermine their efforts to rebuild that country after the West’s military invasion fifteen years ago, according to recently declassified diplomatic cables and internal government reports.

The diversion of Afghan resources and Western aid for private gain would drain vitally-needed funds from the country’s reconstruction and alienate its citizenry, the public and private reports all said. That would in turn fuel renewed public support for the West’s enemy — the Taliban, whose social brutality notoriously included draconian punishments for official corruption.

But the U.S. officials in charge of rebuilding the country largely failed to heed these alarms, according to their own assessments. Afghanistan's corruption, said Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador from 2011 to 2012, in a newly-released interview with a team of official auditors, was “the ultimate point of failure for our efforts.”

Washington has paid a steep price for its mistakes — it has invested more than $800 billion in Afghanistan, including about $100 billion in direct payments, and lost more than 2,300 American lives over the past fifteen years (the anniversary of the U.S. invasion was last Friday). At least a tenth of the country’s population is still under the Taliban’s control, with another 25 percent now being contested, and these numbers have lately been rising, not falling. Nearly 40 percent of the population subsists on less than $1.35 a day.

In fact, Washington has so little to show for its efforts that a group of ten former U.S. ambassadors and military commanders in Afghanistan declared in a joint statement this month, published by The National Interest magazine on Sept. 14, that stabilizing the country and ending its continued incubation of terrorism will require at least another generation of U.S. effort. Meanwhile, the U.S. costs alone are now running roughly $1 billion a year for reconstruction, plus another $4 billion a year in direct payments meant to continue to prop up Afghanistan’s persistently weak (and partly imaginary) security forces.

Efforts to uncover all that what went wrong may yet take a while (the Pentagon Papers analyzing American mistakes in Vietnam were leaked to the public two years after they were completed in 1969 and 21 years after America undertook its disastrous military meddling there). But the Joint Chiefs of Staff concluded in a 2014 report that military and civilian leaders alike grievously underestimated the gravity and impact of Afghanistan’s corruption. More “Lessons Learned” analyses are now emerging from within the government, and the most recent one points some sharp fingers of blame at the Obama administration — including the State Department while Hillary Clinton was at the helm, and at the CIA, during the entire period of the Bush and Obama administrations.

While trying to stabilize the country, these two organizations undertook two actions that made its problems worse, the latest study says: The CIA partnered over a long period with politically-connected warlords that engaged in “rampantly corrupt activities,” largely out of political expediency; meanwhile, U.S. aid organizations helped stoke the country’s historic corruption by pouring in more funds than the country could responsibly absorb, all the while measuring their achievements by how much, rather than how well, it was spent. With short military deployment stints and high turnover in civilian oversight roles, no one in Washington or in Afghanistan took effective responsibility for fixing these problems.

These are the unvarnished critiques in a Lessons Learned report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, John Sopko, who has been studying the Afghan effort for four years and whose team interviewed 80 participants and solicited comments from five of the key agencies or departments in charge. “We must recognize the danger,” Sopko said at the Carnegie Endowment’s Washington offices while presenting the report on Sept. 14, “of dealing with characters or networks of unsavory repute, tolerating contracting abuses, accepting shoddy performance, and delivering unsustainable projects.”

But we didn’t, his study shows, and so the desultory results of the U.S. intervention shouldn’t have been a surprise.

Afghanistan was at the bottom of annual corruption rankings by the World Bank at the outset of the U.S-led occupation, and beginning in 2005, near the bottom of an annual corruption list published by Transparency International. A cable sent to Washington by the U.S. embassy, entitled “Confronting Afghanistan’s Corruption Crisis” and newly declassified for Sopko’s study, warned that corruption was “the hallmark of daily life” in Afghanistan and “a major threat to its future.” Conquering it, the cable said, “is fundamental to the success of U.S. policy.” The U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), which dispensed most of Washington’s nation-building funds, also remarked in an internal strategic plan that year that government institutions at all levels are “tainted by high levels of corruption.”

An internal Pentagon review in 2006 bluntly warned that “enormous popular discontent is building against corrupt and ineffective governance.” That was the year that then-president Hamid Karzai appointed as the head of his chief anticorruption agency a man who had been convicted in the United States on drug charges, Sopko’s report points out. It was also when Karzai notably accepted the appointments of 14 senior police officials “who have links to criminal networks,” according to a secret memo (since declassified) written by a senior advisor to the Secretary of Defense.

A study by an Afghan integrity group in 2007 warned that “a strong and interwoven spider web of illicit networks” controlled power at all levels. Two years later, at the outset of the Obama administration, the U.S. embassy in Kabul warned in another cable, also recently declassified, that official corruption — including Afghan officials’ protection for the narcotics trafficking that produced around a half of the country’s GDP – was “as likely as is the insurgency to undo our efforts in Afghanistan.” British diplomats were no less aware of the risks: Their chief foreign aid agency warned in a 2009 report that corruption was then “a major reason for supporting the Taliban.” In 2010, at a meeting with U.S. diplomats, Afghanistan’s national security advisor acknowledged that “corruption…is the system of governance.”

Washington’s response during the first seven years after the invasion, according to Sopko’s report, was to prioritize its counterterrorism and development aims, not fully understanding how dependent these ambitions were on thwarting the impulse and ability of Afghan officials to steal their public resources. The creation in 2008 of a special U.S. military intelligence unit devoted to the topic produced shock in Washington at “how bad this situation was and who was involved in it,” according to Kirk Meyer, the unit’s leader from 2008 to 2011.

Polling data during Karzai’s tenure bore out how poorly illicit funds transfers outside the country were being controlled. A comprehensive annual survey in Afghanistan by the Asia Foundation found that the number of respondents who experienced corruption at the customs office rose from roughly 40 percent in 2006 to 61 percent in 2015 – even though U.S. diplomats, in a rosy 2013 cable, hailed Afghan reforms there. The average value of a bribe increased by a fifth from 2010 to 2014, and the number of respondents who said they experienced corruption in the court system rose from 42 percent to 61 percent. The public’s sense of corruption within the national police – a major recipient of Western funds – remained largely unchanged through the occupation (half of the respondents experienced it).

Even after Washington finally grasped the centrality of the corruption problem in 2009 and President Obama publicly called for a crackdown on such behavior, top officials essentially blinked: A comprehensive anticorruption strategy drawn up by the embassy in Kabul and sent to Washington in 2010 never won Secretary Clinton’s (or anyone else’s official) endorsement. When a key advocate -- Richard Holbrooke, a top adviser to Clinton and veteran diplomat who had seen the debilitating effects of corruption up close during a previous assignment in the Balkans – died in December 2010, no one else seized the plan and compelled its formal approval.

At another key moment the following year, Washington blinked again. That’s when the International Monetary Fund was negotiating a new $133 million 3-year loan to Kabul, and various foreign donors – including the Obama administration – initially withheld their funds to force Karzai to implement financial reforms and aggressively reclaim nearly a billion dollars that politically-connected Afghans had looted from the national bank. (The scale of this theft there was comparable, Sopko’s report notes, to the looting of a trillion dollars from the U.S. economy.)

After some back-and-forth with the donors produced Afghan promises to crack down, Washington and its allies eventually agreed to endorse the loan. Clinton, speaking to a donors conference in Bonn that December, said while hailing the resumption of U.S. and allied aid that economic reforms Karzai “has outlined are promising.”

But Sopko’s reading of the moment – a time of high leverage for the West -- was different: “The Afghan government suffered no major consequences…for its failure to hold accountable and recover significant assets from the politically connected individuals who had defrauded the Afghan people.” Washington could have demanded measurable progress, but did not, he said. At that moment, or at other periods during the long occupation, “State, in consultation with other agencies, might have pursued revocation of visas against corrupt Afghan officials and their families, and more robust law enforcement actions against corrupt Afghans with dual U.S. citizenship.”

An international group that included Treasury Department officials concluded in November of that year that those finally indicted by the Afghan government in 2012 for the bank’s looting did not include “officials from accounting firms that created false documents for Kabul Bank, airline employees that smuggled money out of Afghanistan, or shareholders who received funds from loans at zero-interest, apparently without the intention of repayment,” many of them politically-connected. The final decision about who to indict, the group’s report said, “was made at the political level.”

Asked for comment on these events, including Clinton’s failure to approve the embassy’s anticorruption plan, presidential campaign spokesperson Jesse Lehrich said that Clinton had helped ensure “that U.S. resources in Afghanistan were responsibly utilized…[and] made it clear each step of the way that the US was not offering a blank check.” Lehrich said that as a result of her efforts, civilian and military contracts, purchasing operations, and vetting procedures were all improved.

But Gen. John Allen, the former commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan from 2011 to 2013, memorably told the Sen. Foreign Relations Committee in 2014 that “for too long, we focused our attention solely on the Taliban. They are an annoyance compared to the scope and the magnitude of corruption.”

Moreover, diplomats and experts from key donor countries who gathered in April at the U.S. Institute of Peace to discuss what went wrong during the West’s intervention noted that the Afghans early on figured out how to play one country against another whenever they were pressed to institute anticorruption reforms. “Conditionality,” meaning the threatened withholding of grants to compel action, was “undermined by the presence of multiple donors that could provide alternative sources of aid,” the conferees concluded.

There was also an added wrinkle in the West’s policymaking challenges: Throughout this period, key Afghan officials – including those in Karzai’s office -- were on the CIA’s payroll, according to multiple media reports and Karzai’s own admissions. “There has been a consistent pattern by the CIA…to focus its energy on targeting [terrorists], and therefore to be at the head of colluding and collaborating with corrupt and abusive officials” said Sarah Chayes, a former reporter who lived in Kandahar from 2002 to 2009 and became an adviser on Afghanistan to several U.S. military commanders there, plus the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “I experienced it on the ground in Kandahar [where I often saw] CIA station chiefs getting in the way of corruption investigations that were under way.”

She said Washington needs “to take a good look at how the agency performs its functions.” Many Afghans wanted Western powers to do more to stem local corruption, she said. “People detested it…[and] our complicity was driving people into the arms of the Taliban. So, while working with the military, “we built a very detailed campaign-wide anticorruption program.” But she said it had to be abandoned “once it became obvious there was not political will in Washington.”

Asked for comment, CIA spokesperson Heather F. Horniak said that “while we will not comment on any specific claims, our goal is always to improve the capabilities and professionalism of foreign allies. We have taken significant steps to help Afghan partners address areas of concern.”

Recent trends in the country are not good. The Taliban has recently taken control of some additional Afghan districts and made gains in Helmand and four other provinces, many of them past battlegrounds for U.S. forces. Civilian deaths are presently running around 3,000 a year, with nonlethal casualties more than twice that number. The Congressional Research Service, in a Sept. 26 report, said the government’s leadership arrangement is “troubled, by many accounts.”

The National Interest experts’ group, which included all the key U.S. military commanders in the country from 2009 to 2014, rated only two to four of the country’s six army corps commanders as effective – after the expenditure of roughly $40 billion from the U.S. treasury on the Afghan Army so far (another $28 billion went to other security forces, including the perennially ineffective police). Only a little more than a third of the population there is optimistic about the future, while two-thirds say the security situation is poor.

Officials in the National Interest group, which was pulled together by Michael O’Hanlon at the Brookings Institution, are nonetheless having a hard time giving up. They urged a “quiet and more patient approach” and warned that “predatory corruption in particular needs to be targeted.” They said Washington needs to apply serious pressure on neighboring Pakistan, where key Taliban leaders and soldiers have long had a refuge – an idea that key Obama administration officials have repeatedly opposed. They also wistfully noted that in 2013, the U.S. military “developed an option” for dispatching 5,000 more foreign troops to the country, and blamed the plan’s rejection in both capitals for some of the “deterioration in the Afghan security environment” going on now.

Sopko’s report notes, however, that even though Karzai has left office and his replacement in 2014, Ashraf Ghani, vowed a genuine crackdown on corruption, its achievement is now “a generational goal” – an estimate that mirrors the length of time that former U.S. diplomats and generals say is needed for Western success there. He notes that no significant recovery of National Bank assets has occurred under Ghani and the country’s judiciary remains under substantial political pressure. Transparency International, in a September report, similarly said Afghanistan still lacks a “comprehensive legal framework for preventing, detecting, and prosecuting corruption,” which it noted remains rife in public institutions. The country’s anti-corruption agencies, the group said, have had “little evidence of success in fulfilling their mandates.”

Last week, Western officials at a donors conference in Brussels pledged another $15 billion in aid to the country over the next four years, on top of the more than $125 billion in aid that it’s received from all donors since the September 2001 attacks on the United States were hatched on Afghan soil. A joint communique by the donors noted that corruption “remains a major obstacle to development and stability” but welcomed “the steps taken so far.”

“They find themselves stuck, unable to extricate themselves, because of guilt, pressure, and the fear of what a collapsed Afghanistan would mean for their own security,” said Heather Barr, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, who decried the donors' failure to hold Afghan officials accountable for their many promises of reform.

Whether U.S. lawmakers will have an appetite for again spending the lion's share of this pledged amount won’t be clear until after the November elections.

An Army carry team, carries the transfer case containing the remains of Army Staff Sgt. Matthew Q. McClintock of Bernalillo, N.M. as from left, U.S. congresmen Jim McDermott, D-Wash, Derek Kilmer, D-Wash. and Army Under Secretary Patrick Murphy salute, upon arrival at Dover Air Force Base, Del. on Friday, Jan. 8, 2016. The Department of Defense announced the death of McClintock who was supporting Operation Freedom’s Sentinel in Afghanistan. R. Jeffrey Smithhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/r-jeffrey-smithhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/10/12/20324/us-officials-repeatedly-failed-heed-warnings-about-crooks-afghanistan-s-government

National groups spar over South Dakota ballot measure

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SIOUX FALLS, S.D. Ground zero in the ideological war over money in politics and ethics for lawmakers isn’t Washington, D.C., this year.

Instead it’s the windblown plains of this state of just 858,000 people, where a big money brawl over a ballot measure has emerged as a sign of the divisive times.

Come Nov. 8, South Dakotans will be asked to vote on a measure that would reshape all things political by initiating public financing of campaigns, expanding disclosure of political donors and creating an ethics commission to police legislators’ behavior.

Both sides in the debate — the one pushing the initiative and one fighting against it — are planning to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get what they want. But neither side hails from South Dakota.

In this corner: a progressive group out of Massachusetts, Represent.Us, which steered Measure 22 onto the ballot. Its top funders are mostly wealthy individuals who struck it rich with West Coast tech companies.

And in the other corner: Americans for Prosperity, a Virginia-based group bankrolled by wealthy industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch and other conservative heavyweights.

What’s happening here is a twist on that old bromide about all politics being local. When it comes to statewide ballot measures, actually most politics is national. And though this battle of the Plains is certainly entertaining to pundits and political junkies, the denizens of the Mount Rushmore State are not especially amused.

“As South Dakotans we like to think of ourselves as really pretty independent,” said Sioux Falls pediatrician Jerry Blake, whose wife is a former legislator. “When there’s people that buy votes or people that buy influence that are not even having anything to do with our state, it’s just not fair. My vote means less, you know, because of that.”

This is not the first time a national group has sponsored a state ballot initiative in South Dakota, which in 1898 became the first state in the union to allow this form of direct democracy. And it’s far from the only one this time around.

California billionaire Henry T. Nicholas III has brought his crusade for crime victims' rights to the state's November ballot as well. And a Georgia payday lending company is financing support for one measure and opposition for another, both of which concern caps for loan interest rates. At least five of the 10 measures on South Dakota's ballot this year are mostly backed by out-of-state money.

“These are national conversations that are happening so it’s not surprising that we’re seeing these issues pop up in South Dakota — and also seeing more outside money pop up on behalf of these initiatives,” said Julia Hellwege, assistant professor of political science at the University of South Dakota.

Beyond South Dakota, this year's election alone has numerous examples of out-of-state cash calling the tune: the Humane Society is leading an effort to outlaw close confinement for chickens and other animals in Massachusetts; Everytown for Gun Safety is sponsoring gun control measures in Nevada and Maine; and a drug reform group is pushing for marijuana legalization in Arizona, California, Nevada, Maine and Massachusetts.

But South Dakota can seem uniquely attractive to outsiders. For one, it’s an economical place to push a ballot measure. Campaigns often have to pay professionals to gather enough signatures to make the ballot, as Represent.Us did here. The fewer signatures required, the smaller the tab. South Dakota requires relatively few signatures — only 27,741 for a constitutional amendment this year, versus the 98,492 required in Colorado, for example. And TV ads are also relatively inexpensive, though both sides on Measure 22 have stuck to radio and internet messages so far.

“We’re cheap," said David Owen, president and chief lobbyist for the South Dakota Chamber of Commerce & Industry. “Two million dollars is a ton of money in this state. $1 million is a lot. So in that sense if you want to dabble in public policy and see how your reception’s going to be, we’re not a high-cost state.”

From outside in

Measure 22 is long — 34 pages. “It’s not got much of a plot,” Owen joked.

Among its many provisions, it would create an independent ethics commission with subpoena power to watch over the statehouse, limit gifts from lobbyists to lawmakers, cap the size of political contributions and require greater disclosure from those who give them. And it would institute a system of public financing for elections: Each registered voter would have access to two $50 "democracy credits" to donate to candidates, with no more than $12 million for the entire fund.

Supporters say the measure is inspired by a 2012 State Integrity report card from the Center for Public Integrity and Global Integrity that gave the state an “F” overall for a lack of transparency. Some of the provisions come from Represent.Us’ model anti-corruption act.

Represent.Us is also sponsoring similar anti-corruption measures in the state of Washington, San Francisco and five other localities this year. Dan Krassner, political director for Represent.Us, said his group came to South Dakota, a state with more cattle than people, because locals asked for help and the state needed reform.

Here the group is allied with a cadre of former lawmakers (Democrats and at least one Republican) who are touring the state to spread its message that South Dakota needs to pass the measure to ward off corruption.

“In South Dakota and Washington, both states have bipartisan local coalitions that wanted to work on anti-corruption measures,” Krassner, said. “They needed support to get on the ballot. So it was an obvious choice for us to help them out.”

Represent.Us hired Minnesotan Richard Carlbom to manage the South Dakota campaign. The political consultant has done everything from winning an election a decade ago at age 23 to become mayor of St. Joseph, Minnesota, to leading the coalition that worked to legalize same-sex marriage in that state in 2013.

Though the Washington measure is similar to the one in South Dakota, Americans for Prosperity is not fighting it, national spokesman Levi Russell said, because the group does not have a state chapter there.

In South Dakota, it assembled a coalition of 14 local groups to oppose the measure, including South Dakota Retailers and the South Dakota Farm Bureau.

The group also says it has local roots because of its permanent South Dakota branch, established in 2014. Americans for Prosperity’s South Dakota Director Ben Lee moved to the state from Nebraska 23 years ago to attend a small Christian college. He most recently worked in the local office of U.S. Sen. John Thune, a Republican.

“We do think this would be wrong for South Dakota,” Lee said. “We’ve been here long before Measure 22 came around …. If the folks that were pushing this measure wanted to sit down and have a conversation, we certainly would have been part of having a conversation about what might be best for the state. But that’s not what they did. They brought in the out-of-state solution right from the beginning.”

The initiative’s disclosure provision is a major sticking point for Americans for Prosperity. It requires any group that pays for an ad advocating for a candidate or ballot question to disclose its most recent top donors. That’s a key dividing line in the debate over the role of money in American politics.

Americans for Prosperity won a federal lawsuit earlier this year after California tried to force the group to disclose its donors. (The state has appealed). Other Koch-backed groups have long argued against such disclosure measures as violations of free speech and free association. Those on the other side, such as Measure 22’s supporters, argue voters should know who is trying to influence the political process.

Money from afar

Through speeches at clubs and local forums, with mailers and door knocking, both sides are making their case. Last week in the back room of the Royal Fork Buffet restaurant, Americans for Prosperity’s Lee attempted to persuade a room full of South Dakotans to vote against the ballot initiative during a meeting of a local Sertoma chapter, an international service group.

“I heard that 75 percent of the money to support this is coming from out of state,” one man said during the time for questions.

"There are no local organizations supporting it," Lee answered. "Their money comes from a group in Massachusetts."

Lee did not get into the details that his own national organization raises millions from around the country.

South Dakotans differ on whether such outside money in the ballot measure contests this year bothers them.

As Sioux Falls resident Bryan Dahl emerged from the Minnehaha County Auditor’s office last week where he’d voted “No” on Measure 22, he said that out-of-state money for ballot measures bothered him. But he reconsidered when thinking about the crime victims' rights measure, which he favored and which has been adopted in multiple states thanks to billionaire Nicholas' backing.

"If it's out of state and it works maybe it's a good idea," he said. "We're just a small spot in the country."

But other voters said the out-of-state money was problematic.

"We don’t really need money from Massachusetts to run our state government," said Norm Dittman, a retired investment banker who was persuaded to vote against the measure by Lee’s presentation at the buffet restaurant.

“We embrace the irony that it takes the money to fight corruption,” said Krassner. “But there’s only gains for the public interest if this passes.”

Some Measure 22 supporters say they hope that South Dakota can lead other states to pass similar measures.

"We get it done at the state level and another state and another state and another state and eventually maybe the folks in Washington might start paying a little bit of attention to the folks out here," said Rick Weiland, a former Democratic U.S. Senate candidate who supports the measure.

He makes no apologies for using out-of-state money to push the campaigns. Represent.Us' top donors this year include a Google engineer, two venture capitalists and Connie Ballmer, wife of Microsoft executive Steve Ballmer, who each gave at least $100,000, according to the group.

"States can be an incubator for ideas," Weiland said. "These are national issues."

A focus on public financing

Americans for Prosperity has a warning for voters: Measure 22 will mean their tax dollars will pay for politicians' campaigns, negative ads and all.

"We know that South Dakotans care about how their tax dollars are used," Lee said. "We wanted to focus on that, because it's easy to understand."

He and other opponents think the “democracy credits” could be the measure's downfall.

"What they have written is so nonsensical and flawed. It's worse than trying to watch a penguin fly," Owen said. "Look, if this thing passes … I'm going to have 100 friends that are going to give me their democracy credits, and we're going to have a public rally in the park. And there's going to be a lot of beer."

The public financing proposal has already soured some voters who might have otherwise voted for the measure.

Beth Buehler, a retired Sioux Falls resident, came to cast her absentee ballot last week with a small folded paper she called her "cheat sheet" — containing how she planned to vote after reading through the sample ballot at home. Though she considers herself liberal and had heard the state had ranked high on corruption rankings, she voted against Measure 22.

"It's almost like funding it for them," she said. "They need to do their own work."

Corrupt South Dakota?

Just how bad things are in South Dakota politics is a question that divides state residents — and could be the deciding factor for whether Measure 22 passes. Lourn Lysne doesn't consider state lawmakers corrupt.

"We're too Midwestern," the retired electrical lineman said while waiting for his food at an Applebee's in Watertown, about 100 miles north of Sioux Falls.

Outside evaluations have given the state poor marks on whether it has the type of laws that prevent corruption. In addition to the Center’s State Integrity Investigation, a 2014 study by the University of Hong Kong and Indiana University ranked South Dakota as the eighth-most corrupt state in the union.

And the measure's supporters are quick to point to two recent scandals involving state employees misusing federal funds meant to spur investment and improve Native American education. Supporters of Measure 22 blame such scandals on the ruling Republican Party's unwillingness to probe too deeply into the inner workings of state government.

But Rep. Jim Stalzer, a Republican who is running for the state Senate this year, has a much more sanguine view of local politics and is skeptical that the new measure would improve anything.

Lobbyists don't dole out lavish gifts to South Dakota lawmakers, he said. Most of the gifts are what he called "trinkets." The most expensive thing he remembers receiving is a backpack that can hold a laptop.

"They don't give us enough money to buy us," he said.

Yet his Democratic colleague Rep. Patrick Kirschman already voted “Yes” for Measure 22, mostly because he wants the state to have an ethics commission — a fight that Democrats have already tried to win in the Legislature and lost.

"It just needs more oversight," he said. "Nobody's paying attention to all these little pots of money."

Minnehaha County Auditor Bob Litz holds up this year’s sample ballot. This fall, South Dakotans have the chance to vote on 10 ballot measures, half of which are backed mainly by out-of-state money.Liz Essley Whytehttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/liz-essley-whytehttps://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/10/13/20332/national-groups-spar-over-south-dakota-ballot-measure

'Carbon Wars' two weeks in: front-page stories, editorials, reader feedback

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The Center for Public Integrity’s new series on pollution, climate change and the industries fueling them is spawning reaction across the country, from editorials to emotional comments from readers.

Carbon Wars launched Sept. 29  with a collaboration between the Center, USA TODAY and The Weather Channel that identified America’s “super polluters” — the industrial sites emitting the most toxic air pollution, greenhouse gases or both. The story was accompanied by a data visualization that enables users to locate the biggest polluters within 30 miles of a particular location, or find details — including demographic data — on individual facilities.

Dozens of USA TODAY Network newspapers ran the Center’s story or produced  their own versions, including localized pieces from The Arizona Republic, The Des Moines Register and the York Daily Record. Several newspapers wrote editorials:

The Indianapolis Star: “The health consequences for Hoosiers, and for our neighbors in other states, are serious. Air pollution significantly increases the risk of cancer, heart attacks and respiratory illnesses, such as asthma. So yes, the average cost for electricity is a bit cheaper in Indiana than in Ohio — 11.33 cents per kilowatt hour versus 12.47 cents. But how much do we lose from higher health care costs and insurance rates? How many years of productivity are lost because workers are burdened by chronic illnesses? Even more important, how many lives have been cut short because our state has been slow to further reduce air pollution?”

The Times Herald (Port Huron, Michigan): “A USA Today Network-Center for Public Integrity investigation released this week has some DTE coal plants listed among the largest sources of toxic-air and greenhouse-gas pollution. … Replacing coal-fired plants with cleaner, more efficient natural gas turbines will make the air we all have to breathe cleaner. Doing it here will help local workers and the region’s economy breathe easier.”

The Evening Sun (Hanover, Pennsylvania): “You know what they used to say about the Spring Grove odor: ‘It’s the smell of money.’ Right. And money is what corporations respond to. If we want cleaner, healthier air here, we must make sure that fines for environmental violations truly hit the bottom line.”

Other reactions included an op-ed from a former environmental regulator in Delaware and a letter to the editor from Mallory Rodenberg of Evansville, Indiana. "Before I read ... [the] piece on the horrific pollution problem in Southern Indiana, I listened to my three year old daughter coughing herself awake in her bedroom," Rodenberg wrote to the Evansville Courier & Press. "This is a habit she has developed over the course of this summer — sudden, uncontrollable coughing — and it happens every time we go outside to play and at night while she's trying to sleep." Rodenberg, who said she hadn't realized the extent to which coal-fired power plants in her area were "poisoning our community," concluded that "we need to be enraged."

The second installment of Carbon Wars, published Oct. 11, looked at how enforcement of the Clean Air Act is hampered by federal and state cutbacks as well as political recalcitrance. The Huffington Post co-published the story, which featured a video from Albany, New York. McClatchy's The Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer ran a condensed version highlighting enforcement issues specific to North Carolina.

Reporter Jie Jenny Zou discussed the piece live Oct. 12 on SiriusXM's POTUS, a bipartisan political show on Channel 124.

Duke Energy’s Gibson power plant in southwest Indiana is the state’s largest and one of the biggest nationwide among the coal-fired fleet. The Center for Public Integrityhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/center-public-integrityhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/10/13/20342/carbon-wars-two-weeks-front-page-stories-editorials-reader-feedback

DSL providers save faster internet for wealthier communities

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When noncable internet providers — outlets like AT&T or Verizon — choose which communities to offer the fastest connections, they don’t juice up their networks so everyone in their service areas has the option of buying quicker speeds. Instead, they tend to favor the wealthy over the poor, according to an investigation by the Center of Public Integrity.

The Center’s data analysis found that the largest noncable internet providers collectively offer faster speeds to about 40 percent of the population they serve nationwide in wealthy areas compared with just 22 percent of the population in poor areas. That leaves tens of millions of Americans with the choice of either purchasing an expensive connection from the only provider in their area, typically a cable company, or just doing the best they can with slower speeds. Middle-income areas don’t fare much better, with a bit more than 27 percent of the population having access to a DSL provider’s fastest speeds. The Center reached its conclusions by merging the latest Federal Communications Commission data with income information from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The FCC, which regulates the industry, defines broadband as a download speed of at least 25 megabits per second. Those speeds are mostly only available through wired connections to the home. It’s the speed that the agency believes is needed to support multiple devices on a single connection, stream uninterrupted movies and educational videos, upload photos, and allow for future applications such as in-home health services and networked homes.

The noncable internet providers — the four largest are AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc., CenturyLink Inc. and Frontier Communications Corp. — hook up customers over telephone wires that are Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL), or use hybrid networks that include some fiber connections near, or sometimes directly to, homes. The Center included all types of connection in its analysis. These companies account for nearly 40 percent of the 92 million internet connections nationwide.

Cable companies, such as Comcast Corp. and Charter Communications Inc., operate under a different set of conditions.  These providers offer the same fast speeds to almost every community they serve, in part because of franchise agreements with local governments. But a previous Center investigation and other reports have shown that cable firms sometimes avoid lower-income or hard-to-reach areas based on how franchise agreements are written. Poor areas not served by the cable companies are not included in the Center’s analysis, which results in what seems like an equitable distribution of speeds across income levels.

In addition, internet speeds sent over coaxial cable used by the cable firms don’t degrade over long distances as they do over copper telephone lines. That means that in order to keep speeds from slowing, DSL carriers must make costly investments in equipment, including fiber cable in some places.

It would seem DSL providers’ coverage decisions are simply smart business. After all, the companies and economists say, providers must invest millions of dollars in equipment to boost speeds over relatively short distances in their service areas. The best way to get a substantive return on investment is to provide the service in wealthier areas. Besides, fewer lower income households purchase a home internet connection than do their higher income neighbors.

But broadband advocates, economists — those in the United States, Europe and the White House— as well as the FCC argue that a fast internet connection is now so crucial to managing daily life and seizing opportunities for advancement that it’s an economic necessity for households and communities. And they further argue that having a choice between two providers is essential to keeping prices down.

“Society said it did not matter if you could pay for electricity — we wanted everyone to have it. Society said we would not limit dial tone to those who could pay the most, we gave it to all,” said telecommunications lawyer Gerard Lederer of Best Best & Krieger LLC in Washington, D.C., in an email. “Broadband is quickly becoming that utility, and if applications only work at high speeds, then the universal availability of that speed must be the goal, otherwise you are providing everyone with water, just some of the water is not drinkable.”

Where the high speeds are

High-speed connections will only become more important for Americans. As families simultaneously use more than one connected device at home, and tools like health-care apps become more prevalent, and cars and household appliances become networked, broadband demand is forecast to more than double in just the next four years. The increased internet traffic will require ever faster speeds to allow applications to work.

That’s why the FCC voted last year to increase the definition of broadband from a download speed of 4 Mbps and 1 Mbps upload to 25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up. The Center’s analysis looked at the availability of just download speeds, using the FCC’s 25 Mbps definition for broadband.

But the opportunity to purchase the higher speeds or choose between two high-speed providers is unequal, determined in large part by a family’s earnings, the Center’s analysis shows. Without exception, the nation’s four-largest noncable internet providers offer their highest speeds to more wealthy communities than lower-income ones.

An earlier Center investigation found that people living in the poorest areas nationwide — where median household incomes are less than $34,800 — are five times more likely not to have access to broadband than households in the wealthiest areas — where the median income is more than $80,700. Many times, the Center found, high-speed internet service stops at the edge of low-income communities.

In this analysis, the Center drilled down into the data to learn how providers manage speeds within their service areas and which carriers offer service equally across income. The findings: DSL providers in particular favor the wealthy over lower-income communities in providing their fastest speeds.

Frontier Communications, the nation’s fourth-largest DSL internet provider, favors its wealthy communities more than most. The Norwalk, Connecticut-based firm offers high-speed broadband to 38 percent of the population in the wealthiest communities, those with the median household incomes of more than $80,700, according to the Center’s analysis. But Frontier only offers its fastest speeds to 11 percent of the people living in areas where the median household income is less than $34,800.

AT&T, the nation’s largest DSL provider, offers speeds at 25 Mbps and higher to about the same proportion of wealthy, middle- and low-income areas. But those speeds are available to just a little more than 5 percent of the population its national service area, which covers about 6.6 million people out of a total of 123 million people AT&T’s service area covers, according to the Center’s analysis. The vast majority of the population in the communities AT&T serves — 72 percent — have access to sub-broadband speeds, between 10 and 24 Mbps. Who has access to those speeds varies greatly by income. More than 82 percent of the people living in the wealthiest areas can buy those speeds, while 66 percent of the people in the poorest communities can, the Center’s investigation found.

Low-income regions are not the only ones that have less chance to buy fast download speeds. Some DSL providers ignore middle-income areas at nearly the same rates. Verizon provides broadband speeds to 64 percent of the population in wealthy communities where it has service, but only to 49 percent of the population in the middle-income areas, those with a household median income between $46,900 and $60,200.

AT&T, Verizon and Frontier did not reply to requests for comment.

CenturyLink’s track record is similar. The Monroe, Louisiana-based company, which has almost 6 million subscribers nationwide, offers broadband to 72 percent of people living in wealthy areas in which it operates compared with 57 percent of the population in the middle-income communities — just 3.5 percentage points more than in the company’s poorest areas.

CenturyLink denies the unequal access is purposeful.

“CenturyLink does not engage in discriminatory practices in broadband deployment,” a CenturyLink spokeswoman said in an email. “We focus our network investments in a fiscally responsible manner by investing in areas that allow us to take advantage of current assets, such as existing conduit and fiber routes, while reaching the largest number of potential customers.”

But that is exactly the problem, said Hannah Sassaman, policy director at the Media Mobilizing Project, a community organizer and support group for low-income families in Philadelphia.

“It’s fine for an incumbent to say they want to leverage their existing assets, but we have to remember that many of these incumbents have been cherry picking what communities they serve for decades,” Sassaman said. “Of course companies that want to build where they already have conduit and fiber will be doing so in neighborhoods that already have high-speed access and competition.”

And that means in more wealthy neighborhoods, Sassaman said.

The FCC believes its Lifeline program, which provides low-cost internet access to qualifying households, will lead to faster internet speeds for lower-income families. But FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn acknowledges that more needs to be done.

“There are certainly challenges in bringing communications services to those who can least afford it," Clyburn said in an email. "Regardless, those who are less affluent should not be relegated to receiving second-class broadband.”

‘We live in an oligarchy’

The Hinebaughs, who live in Washington, Pennsylvania, about 25 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, are one of the many middle-to-lower-income families that don’t have access to a fast DSL connection. James, 27, his wife, Jennifer, and their 2- and 4-year-old children live in a 90-year-old, two-story house sitting atop a hill. They’re a couple of blocks above Jefferson Avenue, a commercial strip that’s home to local businesses like Beck’s Tobacco & Beer shop and the Alpine bowling alley.

Here, where the rumble of tractor trailers on Interstate 70 a few hundred feet away resonates through the neighborhood, the median annual income is less than $20,000 and the poverty rate exceeds 16 percent, making it one of the poorest areas in Washington County. James Hinebaugh said his income varies year to year, from the lowest to the middle-income quintiles in the Center’s analysis, depending on how much overtime he can get at his job as a machinist at Dynamet Inc., a maker of titanium alloys for aerospace and medical companies.

The only choice the Hinebaughs have for a wired broadband connection is Comcast, and they consider it a ‘must have’, Hinebaugh said. The children log on to play games, watch educational programs and stream movies. Jennifer Hinebaugh, 31, uses the internet to communicate with family and friends on Facebook, manage the bank account, search for coupons and research health websites for their son, who has special needs. James Hinebaugh goes online to read political news, watch tutorials on painting and research his passion, astronomy. “I’d love to become an astrophysicist one day,” he said.

The Hinebaughs pay Comcast $255 a month for a bundled package that provides an actual internet speed of 25 Mbps, cable TV and a networked security system that had previously been installed in the house. The bill is one of the highest they pay and it’s a struggle every month, Hinebaugh said. He would like another option, but the only one is Verizon, which offers service in his neighborhood, but at a maximum speed of 3 Mbps, according to a search of Verizon’s website. That’s on the low end for basic web surfing and email, and can’t support video streaming or managing other large files such as uploading photos.

At that speed, “you might as well not even have it,” Hinebaugh said. “It's so slow that you say, ‘I might as well go chop wood.’"

Hinebaugh’s situation is similar to nearly half of Americans, who have only one wired broadband provider to choose from, according to the FCC. Another 30 percent have no wired broadband service at all. The lack of competition keeps broadband prices higher, and it hits poorer families harder, according to the FCC.

The Hinebaughs are far from an exception. Verizon provides its fastest speeds to only 1.3 percent of people in the poorest areas where it offers service in Washington County, according to the Center’s analysis. Most the people in the poor areas, 87 percent, can hook into 10 to 25 Mbps. Verizon gives its fast broadband speeds to almost all of the population in the wealthiest areas in the county — 92 percent.

But drive about 10 miles east from the Hinebaughs — past the Lindenwood Golf Club, the BMW and Cadillac dealerships on Washington Road and the Youth Ballet School & Company on Valley Brook Road — and it’s a world apart. Here, landscaping crews tend the grounds behind large stone gates of multimillion-dollar estates. The median income is $164,000, eight times the income where the Hinebaughs live and the highest in the county.

And there’s something else here too. Along these winding tree-lined streets and rolling green pastures, Verizon offers wealthy residents some of its fastest service, up to 150 Mbps over fiber-optic cable, which first came to this part of the county in 2007. Its DSL service in the surrounding areas reaches 15 Mbps, five times the top Verizon speed that’s available in the Hinebaughs’ neighborhood.

Hinebaugh looks at the speeds Verizon offers just a few miles away and scoffs. He knows that if Verizon offered higher speeds in his neighborhood like it does in the wealthy ones east of him, the competition might push down the price of internet service and save his family some much-needed cash. But he’s not holding his breath.

“We live in an oligarchy. That's pretty much how it goes,” Hinebaugh said. “It’s hard to change something that rich people have spent a lot of money putting in place.”

‘A big social problem’

Neighborhoods such as the Hinebaughs’, where DSL providers such as Verizon and AT&T have chosen not to upgrade download speeds over 3 Mbps, represent an understandable economic decision by providers, said Nicholas Economides, an economist at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. DSL providers tend to upgrade speeds to more than 3 Mbps in areas where they believe they can sell internet TV, which means they avoid poorer areas they think can’t afford the higher speeds, he said.

“That isn’t surprising,” Economides said.

Economides is more concerned about the cost of internet connections, and the lack of competition that leads to higher prices for people like the Hinebaughs, who have just Comcast for high-speed internet because Verizon provides only that meager download speed in their neighborhood. The No. 1 reason cited for not purchasing a home internet connection is by far the high cost, according to the Pew Research Center.

“That’s a very serious issue, and a big social problem,” Economides said. “You need high-speed internet for national reasons, to get information, to get educated. That’s just not happening. We still have very high prices.”

Verizon got permission to begin building its fiber-optic cable connections in Washington County in late 2007. But the company abandoned expanding its Fios network in 2010. Cities such as New York and Philadelphia have criticized Verizon for not living up to promises to wire the entire cities. Some reports speculate that Verizon may consider expanding its fiber network in several cities, as it recently announced in Boston.

But Verizon gives no indication as to whether it will wire poorer neighborhoods. Company officials announced that it will use a free online registration process “to assess demand and help Verizon prioritize its fiber-optic network construction schedule.”

Verizon didn’t reply to questions about its plans.

AT&T is obligated to bring cheaper internet connections to low-income areas under conditions imposed by the FCC when the company purchased internet-satellite-provider DirecTV last year. The speeds are required to reach 10 Mbps, still below what the FCC defines as broadband. “Many of these communities will see a tremendous leap in terms of speed in the move from dial-up connections to Fixed Wireless Internet,” AT&T said on its website.

FCC conditions also require AT&T to deploy fiber to homes in 12.5 million locations nationwide, giving them access to high speeds. But none of the wording in the conditions require the company to connect low-income neighborhoods.

AT&T had been expanding a souped-up version of its AT&T Fiber network, which can deliver speeds up to 100 Mbps, and its gigabit service. AT&T announced last month an experimental network that it says will bring ultra-fast speeds to underserved and rural areas, presumably including low-income areas. The network won’t begin testing until next year and wouldn’t be available for years, however.

AT&T didn’t respond to requests for comment on the new network.

For Hinebaugh, he said these efforts are too little, too late, leaving him with no hope that his neighborhood will ever get a choice of another high-speed provider.

“Why are the rich entitled to a choice of fast speeds and other people aren't?” Hinebaugh asks. “It's like why even bother trying to change it? Why try to get ahead, because the system is built against you?”

The AT&T logo is seen on one of it's buildings in San Antonio, Monday, April 23, 2007.Allan Holmeshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/allan-holmesBen Wiederhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/ben-wiederhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/10/14/20341/dsl-providers-save-faster-internet-wealthier-communities

Billionaire-backed super PAC targets Hillary Clinton's trustworthiness

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In poll after poll, voters have expressed qualms over Hillary Clinton’s trustworthiness.

And a pro-Donald Trump super PAC is highlighting that trust deficit in a smattering of new television spots.

The super PAC, Make America Number 1, is backed by GOP megadonor Robert Mercer, the co-chief executive officer of hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, and his daughter, Rebekah, who currently oversees day-to-day operations. The group reports having roughly $3.2 million in cash on hand, but Robert Mercer’s pockets go deep — and last month, the super PAC reported its first seven-figure contribution from another donor.

The new ads mark the first time Make America Number 1 has ventured into TV ads since it began supporting Trump in June, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of data provided by ad tracking firm Kantar Media/CMAG, which monitors ads on broadcast television and national — but not local — cable.

The ads

An actress stands against a white backdrop, announcing her support for Hillary Clinton before, halfway through declaring her honest and trustworthy, she says, “Can we cut?”

“What’s the problem?” a man offscreen asks.

The actress tells the man she just can’t say the words. The man, still offscreen, reminds the actress that she’s … acting.

“I’m not that good of an actress,” she says. “Honest and trustworthy. Give me a break.”

At the ad’s conclusion appear the words: “Some people are better liars than others. Stop Hillary.”

The group ran a total of eight TV spots in the Philadelphia; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Cleveland markets on October 9.

The ads’ sponsor

Make America Number 1 was first formed in April 2015 with a different name, Keep the Promise I, and initially supported U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential bid.

After Cruz withdrew and Republican businessman Donald Trump effectively clinched the Republican presidential nomination, the group changed its name to Make America Number 1 and announced it would focus on anti-Clinton efforts.

Who’s behind it?

New York investor Robert Mercer has given roughly 90 percent of the group’s money since it started and his daughter, Rebekah, is now overseeing the group’s day-to-day operations.

Both Mercers rarely grant interviews and usually decline to speak publicly about their political giving. They have stood strongly behind Trump through a recent furor after a tape surfaced of crude comments he made about women a decade ago.

“America is finally fed up and disgusted with its political elite,” the Mercers said in a statement. “Trump is channeling this disgust and those among the political elite who quake before the boom-box of media blather do not appreciate the apocalyptic choice that America faces on November 8.”

They continued: “We have a country to save and there is only one person who can save it. We, and Americans across the country and around the world, stand steadfastly behind Donald J. Trump.”

Money in

The group has taken in about $17.4 million since its inception. Robert Mercer has personally contributed $15.5 million.

Out of that total, about $3 million has been raised since the super PAC’s name change and overhaul in June.

Robert Mercer contributed about two-thirds of that $3 million. Philanthropist Cherna Moskowitz, the Miami-based widow of hospital and gaming magnate Irving Moskowitz, gave $1 million in August. Erik Prince, founder of troubled security contracting firm Blackwater, contributed $50,000 in August.

Money out

Make America Number 1 has spent $1.5 million since June on “video production” and “media” in association with the presidential race, according to reports with the Federal Election Commission.

Most of the super PAC’s ads appear online only: its website includes a page with 17 videos about Clinton, featuring titles such as “corruption is a family business” and “corrupt and dangerous.” The group’s YouTube page has even more.

Why it matters

Many of the super PACs supporting Trump have had trouble raising big money.

Outside groups supporting Trump have run 22,238 TV ads since June 12 — about a third of the 65,338 ads run by groups supporting Clinton over the same period, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of data provided by ad tracking firm Kantar Media/CMAG.

But Make America Number 1 has Robert Mercer’s deep pockets to draw on — and the group could potentially provide some serious air cover for Trump.

The Republican presidential nominee continues dropping in national polls after a string of news reports concerning his lewd statements about women and accusations that he groped or sexually harassed several  — accusations Trump denies.

Carrie Levinehttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/carrie-levinehttps://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/10/17/20350/billionaire-backed-super-pac-targets-hillary-clintons-trustworthiness

Journalists shower Hillary Clinton with campaign cash

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New Yorker television critic Emily Nussbaum, a newly minted Pulitzer Prize winner, spent the Republican National Convention pen-pricking presidential nominee Donald Trump as a misogynist shyster running an “ugly and xenophobic campaign.”

What Nussbaum didn’t disclose in herdispatches: she contributed $250 to Democrat Hillary Clinton in April.

On the nation’s left coast, Les Waldron, an Emmy Award-winning assignment editor at television station KFMB, the CBS affiliate in San Diego, swung right in July, shooting $28 to Trump.

And Carole Simpson, a former ABC “World News Tonight” anchor who in 1992 became the first African-American woman to moderate a presidential debate, is not moderate about her personal politics: the current Emerson College distinguished journalist-in-residence and regularTVnewsguest has given Clinton $2,800.

Conventional journalistic wisdom holds that reporters and editors are referees on politics’ playing field — bastions of neutrality who mustn’t root for Team Red or Team Blue, either in word or deed.

But during this decidedly unconventional election season, during which “the media” has itself becomeaprominentstoryline, several hundred news professionals have aligned themselves with Clinton or Trump by personally donating money to one or the other.

In all, people identified in federal campaign finance filings as journalists, reporters, news editors or television news anchors — as well as other donors known to be working in journalism — have combined to give more than $396,000 to the presidential campaigns of Clinton and Trump, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis.

Nearly all of that money — more than 96 percent — has benefited Clinton: About 430 people who work in journalism have, through August, combined to give about $382,000 to the Democratic nominee, the Center for Public Integrity’s analysis indicates.

About 50 identifiable journalists have combined to give about $14,000 to Trump. (Talk radio ideologues, paid TV pundits and the like — think former Trump campaign manager-turned-CNN commentator Corey Lewandowski— are not included in the tally.)

Generally, the law obligates federal candidates only to disclose the names of people making contributions of more than $200 during a single election cycle, along with their addresses and employer and occupation. That means it’s likely that many more journalists have given the Clinton or Trump campaigns cash, but in amounts too small to trigger reporting requirements.

Together, these journalist-donors work for news organizations great and small, from The New York Times to sleepy, small-town dailies. While many of them don’t primarily edit or report on political news, some do.

And each news professional offers his or her own unique take on a basic question: Why risk credibility — even one’s livelihood — to help pad a presidential candidate’s campaign account?  

Simpson today describes herself as an “academic” and “former journalist.” Therefore, she says she’s “free to do many things I was prohibited from doing as a working journalist,” including giving money to Clinton.

“I have been waiting for the day our country would have a woman president,” Simpson said. “When Hillary decided to run, I was delighted because I couldn’t think of a more qualified woman to seek the high office.”

Waldron, of KFMB in San Diego, describes himself as a “lower case ‘l’ libertarian,” and believes journalists like him who both vote and make small-dollar political donations are within their rights to do so.

Why give money to Trump, a man who Forbes last month estimated is worth $3.7 billion? To fight against Clinton.

“I’m a big, big fan of the United States Constitution,” Waldron said, and Clinton “seems to care very little for the Constitution.” 

Said TheNew Yorker’s Nussbaum: “I rarely write about politics, but it's true that the RNC-on-TV posts verged on punditry, and I can understand the concern about disclosure.”

Donations often banned

Almost any U.S. citizen or foreign national with a U.S. green card may, by law, give money to a federal political candidate.

But major news organizations often restrict, if not prohibit, their journalists (and occasionally non-journalist employees) from making political campaign contributions.

The news organizations’ overriding concern: Such contributions will compromise journalists’ impartiality or seed the perception that journalists are biased toward certain politicians or political parties.

The New York Timesethics handbook declares that its staffers may not give money to, or raise money for, political candidates or election causes. “Any political giving by a Times staff member would carry a great risk of feeding a false impression that the paper is taking sides,” it reads.

The Associated Press is even more blunt with its journalists, stating that “under no circumstances should they donate money to political organizations or political campaigns.”

CNN spokeswoman Bridget Leininger said the cable network “does not allow editorial staff to contribute to candidates or political parties.”

A review of several dozen newsroom ethics policies indicates many other notable news outlets have similar no-political-donations mandates, including The Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio, ProPublica, San Antonio Express-News, The Seattle Times and Tampa Bay Times. (The Center for Public Integrity’s staff handbook states that all employees are “prohibited from engaging in political advocacy or donating to political candidates at any level of government.”)

And while some journalists do give politicians money, the vast majority do not.

“Not having that affiliation helps me feel more independent,” said Margaret Sullivan, The Washington Post’s media columnist, and a former New York Timespublic editor and Buffalo Newseditor and vice president. “I wouldn't do it, and when I was supervising a newsroom, we had rules against it. It's a good discipline, I think.”

Although journalists may have a right to give money to political candidates, the act of doing so “easily could be perceived as a conflict of interest,” said Paul Fletcher, editor-in-chief of Virginia Lawyers Weekly, who recently served as president of the Society of Professional Journalists.

So concerned about bias was former Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. that he didn’t even vote.

No restrictions

Strict political contribution policies are not, however, universal among news organizations.

What’s patently prohibited at one news organization may be perfectly permissible at another.

Some outlets also differentiate among newsroom employees: A reporter covering a governmental agency, for example, might be punished for cutting checks to a U.S. Senate or presidential candidate. But the resident arts correspondent or star sports writer? Play ball. 

Take Orange County Register restaurant critic Brad Johnson in California, who this year made dozensofsmall-dollar contributions to Clinton’s campaign that total more than $750.

Digital First Media’s Southern California News Group, of which The Orange County Register is a part, expressly prohibits news reporters from engaging in campaign activities “related to candidates, campaigns or issues which they may cover,” news group Executive Editor Frank Pine said. But while Johnson fits the broad definition of “journalist,” Pine doesn’t consider Johnson a news reporter — and therefore, he’s free to give the Clinton campaign money.

Johnson concurs: “I don't cover politics. I don't do investigative reporting. I'm just interested in finding the best pad thai and sharing what I find with our readers.”

Ryne Dittmer covers hard news as the county and education editor of the Liberty Tribune of Liberty, Missouri. He’s contributed $625 to Clinton’s presidential committee.

But Liberty Tribune Managing Editor Amy Neal said Dittmer, who declined to comment, did not violate any newsroom standards.

“We support the individual’s right to align themselves in their personal lives with the political ideologies that they choose, just as we support their right to worship — or not — in the way they choose,” Neal said. “As journalists, we expect accuracy, objectivity and fairness from our staff. Ryne Dittmer’s work certainly reflects those standards.”

Coverage area is Santa Cruz Sentinel city editor Julie Copeland’s rationale for why contributing nearly $300 to Clinton’s campaign is kosher, but campaigns closer to home are not.

"I supervise local news coverage at a small paper in California,” Copeland said. “I do not, and would never, involve myself in any city council, school board or other small municipal race we cover."

Julie Lane, a reporter at the Shelter Island Reporter on Long Island in New York, has given more than $800 to Clinton’s campaign. Lane says she covers only local political races — nothing presidential — and her “personal ethics would prohibit me from taking an open stand” in any of them.

Then there’s Ellen Ratner, who leads the Talk Media News service and reports on federal government for her company. She also serves as a Fox News commentator. Ratner has given nearly $2,800 to Clinton’s campaign, explaining she contributed the money at the request of a man who made a $100,000 contribution to help hercharitable efforts in war-ravaged South Sudan.

“I am happy to help him out … It is well known that I am a ‘wacko, liberal Democrat,’” Ratner said, adding this about her journalistic work: “I will put our news product right down the middle as opposed to just about anyone's news product.”

Longtime television host Larry King, who now hosts a program on Russian-owned TV network RT and has called Trump “a great friend,” is also a Clinton donor, having given her campaign $2,700 in May. In June, King said he intends vote for Clinton because he disagrees with Trump’s stances on such issues as immigration and abortion.

Several journalists employed by Thomson Reuters, which operates the Reuters news agency, have likewise given Clinton money — and one has given to Trump. That’s fine, said company spokeswoman Abbe Serphos, as “Reuters journalists are permitted to make charitable or political contributions as long as they don’t conflict with their reporting responsibilities.”

Fox Sports spokesman Erik Arneson, responding to questions about three current and former employees who gave Clinton money, said the network “supports employees’ personal involvement in the political process as long as it is compliant with strict federal, state and local laws governing political contributions and interactions with government officials.”

Media executives are also often free from corporate policies restricting political donations, and some prominent news publishers and newsroom leaders routinely make campaign contributions.

Damien Brouillard, the Washington Post’s director of finance and comptroller, for example, is among those helping fund Clinton’s presidential campaign.

So, too, are former New Republic Publisher Chris Hughes, Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour, Vanity Fair Features Editor Jane Sarkin, Hollywood Reporter Publisher Lynne Segall, Elle Editor-in-Chief Roberta Myers and Lesley Jane Seymour, the former editor-in-chief of More and Marie Clare. Each has given Clinton at least $2,700. Some aren’t shy about it, with Hughes, who also co-founded Facebook, conducting a fundraiser for Clinton last year at his Manhattan home.

Although Trump has often been more accessible to mainstream news reporters than Clinton, his campaign has banned certain news organizations from his rallies, and he has lambasted journalists as “dishonest,” “scum,” “horrible,” “sleazy” and “disgusting and corrupt.” He regularly complains about his coverage by the “crooked media.” 

So how do Trump campaign officials feel about journalists and media executives giving money to Clinton?

“Considering that we’re witnessing the single biggest coordinated media attack in political history, it should come as no surprise,” Trump spokesman Jason Miller told the Center for Public Integrity. “If the [Federal Election Commission] viewed their biased hit pieces against Mr. Trump as in-kind contributions, they would have exceeded their maximum allowable gift limits a long time ago."

Several news reporters or journalism professionals, including Sally York of The Argus-Press of Owosso, Michigan, refused to discuss their political giving in 2016.

York, who covers local affairs and sometimes writes about politicians and government, has made contributions to Clinton’s campaign that add up to $374

Barbara Bedell, who writes about community news for the Times Herald-Record in Middletown, New York, said she’s a “very private person” and didn’t want to discuss theseveralcontributions she’s made this election cycle to the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign.

And Cristi Hegranes, founder and executive director of the Global Press Institute, a San Francisco-based organization that trains women journalists in developing nations, gave Clinton $227 and also declined to comment.

Rick Hasen, a University of California, Irvine, law and political science professor who edits the Election Law Blog, says journalists shouldn’t abstain from making campaign contributions — big or small — just because they’re journalists.

“That is a choice for each journalist to make,” Hasen said, “and I do not see it as a problem so long as it is adequately disclosed.”

Evidence of bias?

For some journalists, campaign contributions do become problematic.

Quite problematic.

Ask MSNBC, which in 2010 suspended Keith Olbermann, who at the time hosted a news show on the network, for making contributions to Democratic political candidates.

Last year, Karen Loberg, a photojournalist at the Ventura County Star north of Los Angeles, made a $1,000 contribution to the Clinton campaign in order to attend a private fundraiser in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she was visiting a friend. Loberg said she thought the contribution would “go under the radar,” but she nevertheless defended her right to give it.

“It’s my freedom of speech — what I do on my own time is my business,” Loberg said, adding that her friend later reimbursed her for the $1,000 Clinton donation anyway.

Except such a reimbursement is troublesome: Loberg’s name — not that of her friend, who Loberg declined to identify — appears on federal financial disclosures filed by the Clinton campaign. Such a transaction is informally known as a “straw donation” and is, on its face, illegal: “No person shall make a contribution in the name of another person,” federal law states.

Michael Toner, a former Republican FEC chairman, and Scott Thomas, a former Democratic FEC chairman, both agreed that Loberg and her friend likely broke the law, although it’s unlikely the FEC or U.S. Department of Justice would pursue the matter because of the contribution’s size and scope.

Loberg said she did not know straw donations are illegal. She also said she was, at the time she donated to Clinton’s campaign, unaware that the Ventura County Star frowned on its newsroom employees making political contributions.

John Moore, editor of the Ventura County Star, said Loberg’s donation is a “personnel matter,” and referred questions about Loberg’s donation to parent company Gannett, which declined to comment on what it, too, described as a “personnel matter.”

Gannett’s statement did note that the company asks its journalists to “refrain from any activity that may compromise our goal to maintain journalistic independence,” which includes remaining “free of outside interests, investments or business relationships that may compromise the credibility of our news report” and maintaining “an impartial, arm’s length relationship with anyone seeking to influence the news.”

Loberg later expressed regret. “I’m very concerned about losing my job,” she said. (Gannett confirmed she is still employed by the Ventura County Star.)

Other journalists have this year appeared to violate their news organizations’ political activity policies, including Melia Robinson, a reporter at Business Insider who contributed $541 to Clinton’s campaign.

Business Insider spokesman Mario Ruiz declined to comment on Robinson’s donation but pointed to the online publication’s employee conflict of interest policy, which expressly prohibits several kinds of political activity, including “making any level of financial contribution to a candidate's campaign for elected office or any political action committee supporting individual candidates for elected office.”

Robinson did not reply to several requests for comment.

Jonah Kessel, a Hong Kong-based staff videographer for TheNew York Times, gave U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign several hundred dollars earlier this year while Sanders was still running against Clinton in the Democratic primary. For reasons unclear, the Sanders campaign later refunded the donations to Kessel, who did not respond to requests for comment.

“Under newsroom rules, Times journalists should not make political contributions,” New York Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy said, adding, “Jonah's editors are discussing this issue with him and reminding him of the policy.”

At ESPN, baseball news editor Claire Smith has made numeroussmall-dollarcontributions to Clinton’s campaign that add up to almost $600. Smith, who in a tweet last week described Trump as a “would-be dictator & sexual predator,” did not return requests for comment, and ESPN spokesman Ben Cafardo declined to comment.

But ESPN’s political advocacy policy states that employees such as Smith “must avoid being publicly identified with various sides of political issues” and that the sports network “discourages public participation in matters of political advocacy or controversy among editorial employees.”

Journalists’ political contributions are not, however, always what they appear to be.

Lauren Goode, an editor at tech and culture news outlet The Verge, explained that her $500 contribution in February to the Clinton campaign wasn’t about supporting Clinton’s candidacy — Goode just wanted, for background reporting purposes, to get inside a fundraising event in Silicon Valley at which Clinton was speaking.

“Prior to the event I discussed the particular circumstances of this with the editor-in-chief at The Verge,” Goode explained, “and he approved it.” 

Or consider the curious case of another New York Times journalist, Ruth La Ferla.

Federal records show the long-time fashion reporter gave Clinton’s campaign $250 in December.

Except La Ferla says she didn’t make the contribution. No way, no how.

“I don't involve myself with political campaigns of any sort, not only because I work at the Times but because I am utterly indifferent to their outcome,” La Ferla wrote in an email. “It's a mystery to me why my name is on that document … It does indeed appear that the Clinton campaign made an error.”

Clinton campaign spokesman Josh Schwerin was equally mystified: “This is the first we are hearing of this discrepancy, and so we are looking into this. If we find that an error or anything improper occurred, we will certainly take the appropriate steps to remedy it.”

The Clinton campaign — or any campaign — has several options for contributions it fears are illegal or otherwise doesn’t want: give the money back, donate the money to charity or disgorge it to the U.S. Treasury, which will add it to the federal government’s general fund

Don’t trust the liberal media?

About 28 percent of journalists say they affiliate with the Democratic Party, 7 percent the Republican Party and 14 percent an “other” party, according to a 2014 study by Indiana University-Bloomington professors Lars Willnat and David H. Weaver.

The rest of journalists — more than 50 percent — say they’re not affiliated with any political party.

Barbara Hough Roda, executive editor of LNP, the largest news organization based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, said she wants her reporters to act without favor to any political party and for the public to indeed perceive her newsroom as independent.

But LNP has no formal policy prohibiting journalists from making political contributions, freeing LNP sportswriter Paula Wolf, who did not return a request for comment, to give money to Clinton’s campaign, as she did to the tune of more than $300.

Will LNP consider revising its policy after the 2016 election?

“I believe we will,” Roda said. “My preference would be that we err on the side of caution, so it would probably behoove us to take a look at this again.”

Nussbaum, the New Yorker television critic, has already instituted a new personal policy for making political campaign contributions.

“I'm not planning to contribute money in the future,” she said.

A version of this story was published by the Columbia Journalism Review.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks to members of the media on her campaign plane in September 2016.Dave Levinthalhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/dave-levinthalMichael Beckelhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/michael-beckelhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/10/17/20330/journalists-shower-hillary-clinton-campaign-cash

Union-backed super PAC reaches out to Rust Belt voters

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A new union-backed super PAC wants to make America’s infrastructure great again and believes Democrat Hillary Clinton is the candidate to do it.

Hard Hats for America, which registered with the Federal Election Commission in August, wants to “reverse the years of neglect that have harmed our roads, bridges and other infrastructure,” according to its website.

The super PAC says it plans to“organize and speak out throughout this election to advocate the election of Hillary Clinton and other supporters of long-overdue infrastructure improvements throughout the United States.”

As comedian John Oliver, host of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight,” once quipped, “when our infrastructure is not being destroyed by robots and/or saved by Bruce Willis, we tend to find it a bit boring.”

Hard Hats for America hopes to turn infrastructure into an election issue.

Who’s behind it?

Hard Hats for America’s official registration paperwork lists two men as connected to the group.

The first is labor official Brent Booker, the secretary-treasurer of North America's Building Trades Unions. The second is a veteran Democratic strategist Craig Varoga.

For his part, Varoga also leads the pro-Democratic group Patriot Majority USA, which, during in the 2014 battle for control of the U.S. Senate, was a major “dark money” player— so-called because it does not disclose its donors.

(Varoga once told Politico that if Democrats “whine and complain” about the court cases that led to the proliferation of dark money in politics, then they’d “lose races that otherwise we should win” because they’d “be completely disadvantaged.”)

This year, Varoga and Patriot Majority USA have also been involved with a voter registration project in Indiana that was recently raided by state police amid fraud concerns. Varoga has denied any wrongdoing and accused the police and Indiana’s Republican secretary of state of “harassing” a nonpartisan voter registration drive.

As a super PAC, Hard Hats for America does disclose its donors, and its funders, so far, are strictly labor unions.

Money in

Hard Hats for America raised $580,000 through the end of September, according to a recently filed campaign finance report.

Four labor unions provided all of that money.

The International Union of Operating Engineers and the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry each contributed $250,000.

Meanwhile, the International Association of Heat and Frost Insulators and Allied Workers donated $75,000. And North America's Building Trades Unions gave $5,000.

Money out

To date, Hard Hats for America has spent about $200,000 on efforts to promote Clinton’s candidacy, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of campaign finance filings.

The super PAC has yet to air any TV or radio ads, though it has paid for digital advertising and also has an active online presence, including a Facebook page branded “Hard Hats for Hillary” — a slogan it has emblazoned on stickers, signs and t-shirts as well.

One of the super PAC’s recently produced digital advertisements features excerpts of Clinton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention touting her “bold agenda to improve the lives of people across our country,” including a major infrastructure program within the first 100 days of her administration.

“The next president could literally mean the difference between a safe America and an unsafe one,” the narrator warns.

Super PAC spokeswoman Christy Setzer told the Center for Public Integrity that Hard Hats for America is also holding a number of rallies for building trade union members in targeted battleground states, as well as at the presidential and vice presidential debates.

“Hard Hats for America is targeting voters in the Rust Belt who are particularly affected by the economy and would benefit from Hillary Clinton's infrastructure plans,” she added. “Hard Hats for America is uniquely suited to sell her plan, sell her candidacy and help get America back to work.”

Why it matters

Hard Hats for America is targeting working-class voters in several key battleground states, including Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Most of those states typically vote Democratic in presidential elections, but Trump is hoping his protectionist views on trade will win over workers there.

According to a September poll commissioned by Hard Hats for America, a bipartisan majority of voters support Increased federal spending for infrastructure.

Yet people were divided on whether Clinton or Republican Donald Trump had a better plan to tackle the issue: 44 percent said Clinton had a better plan, while 43 percent preferred Trump — a difference within the poll’s margin of error.

Hard Hats for America rallies supporters at the presidential debate in St. Louis, Missouri, on Oct. 9, 2016.Michael Beckelhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/michael-beckelhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/10/18/20355/union-backed-super-pac-reaches-out-rust-belt-voters

Donald Trump's ethics reform plan: dim prospects ahead

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The Donald Trump who raged against big money’s influence on politics is back.

Trump on Monday night released a slate of lobbying and campaign finance proposals, catching reform advocates by surprise and pressuring Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to detail her own lobbying reform positions.

Trump called for five-year bans on lobbying by executive branch officials, and a similar ban that would apply to members of Congress and congressional staff. He also proposed tightening the definition of lobbyists under the law so more people would be covered by the requirements that apply to lobbyists.

In addition, Trump said he would call on Congress to prohibit lobbyists for foreign governments from fundraising for American political candidates and seek a constitutional amendment to impose congressional term limits.

What Trump didn’t say: Most of the proposals’ prospects range from unlikely to inconceivable.

If elected, Trump could issue an executive order restricting the ability of former employees to lobby his administration, but anything permanent — or any ban that applies to the legislative branch — would have to be passed by Congress, historically a tough proposition.

Consider that the last major lobbying reform legislation passed by Congress was the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007, adopted nearly a decade ago in the wake of notorious ethics scandals and itself ridden with loopholes.

Constitutional amendments, meanwhile, are exceedingly rare and difficult to ratify. The most recent, the 27th amendment, which deals with congressional salaries, passed in 1992.

Since 1993, Congress has considered more than 1,000 constitutional amendment proposals — all have failed.

And much of Trump’s proposed lobbying reforms would hinge on exactly how Trump is proposing to define a lobbyist. The definition would determine who is subject to restrictions and disclosure requirements.

“It would be a terrific debate question if someone asked Mr. Trump, in 25 words or less, what would be your definition of a lobbyist,” said Nicholas Allard, the dean of Brooklyn Law School and a former head of the public policy practice at law firm Patton Boggs. Allard was a member of a 2011 American Bar Association task force on lobbying law that made a series of recommendations aimed at updating lobbying laws.

Some of Trump’s proposals sound good, said Robert Kelner, chairman of the election and political law practice group at law firm Covington & Burling. But, “I am very skeptical that they would actually be implemented in a robust way, especially because his proposal is very weak on details,” Kelner said.

Despite Trump’s criticism of big-moneyed interests earlier in the campaign, his plan includes little in the way of campaign finance reform proposals, suggesting only that he would move to restrict fundraising by lobbyists working on behalf of foreign nations — not lobbyists representing domestic interests.

Tangled history

Trump’s reform proposals are also saddled with his campaign’s own history.

In June 2015, Trump launched his campaign by promising he wouldn’t be in hock to lobbyists and special interests — unlike most other politicians.

“They’re controlled fully by the lobbyists, by the donors, and by the special interests, fully,” Trump said.

But as the campaign wore on, lobbyists entered the Trump inner circle. Paul Manafort, who lobbied and consulted for a wide range of foreign governments and entities, at one point ran Trump’s campaign.

And the political influence game proved Manafort’s undoing: He left the campaign in August while facing questions about whether he had fully disclosed all his lobbying work abroad, as required by law.

Trump, meanwhile, backed off his anti-big money rhetoric, even as Clinton and her primary opponent, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, pushed detailed proposals for campaign finance overhauls

His proposals follow WikiLeaks’ release of Clinton campaign emails that show Clinton staff debated whether the campaign should accept money from lobbyists working for foreign governments.

After initially hesitating, campaign manager Robby Mook wrote he was “ok just taking the money and dealing with any attacks.”

In his prepared remarks for a speech delivered Monday night in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Trump described the exchange as “top officials in the Clinton campaign scheming to take massive sums of money from foreign lobbyists.”

Clinton's lobbying ties

As for Clinton, she has voiced support for legislation that would extend the so-called “cooling off” periods that apply to some government employees from one year to two years, and would also change the definition of lobbyist so those evading restrictions on registered lobbyists would be forced to register and disclose more about their activities.

The legislation Clinton endorsed would also limit companies’ ability to pay bonuses to employees leaving to go into government.

Clinton has also reportedly restricted lobbyists from joining her transition team, according to Politico.

Neither candidate has said whether they would restrict lobbyists from joining their administrations, as President Barack Obama did, though several lobbyists received waivers from that rule. In addition, neither candidate has refused to take campaign contributions from registered lobbyists or lobbyists registered to lobby on behalf of foreign governments.

This month, Clinton’s campaign filed a report showing lobbyists raised nearly $300,000 for her campaign during the most recent quarter alone, something campaigns are required to disclose. Trump has not disclosed having any lobbyist fundraisers.

Yell 'lobbyist!'

Advocates of campaign finance and lobbying reform generally hailed Trump’s proposals as a good step, but said they were either insufficiently detailed or didn’t go far enough to address the influence of money and special interests in politics.

"We’re glad that Donald Trump is finally offering policies to address the broken system he has spent months criticizing, but this proposal is not nearly enough to address voters’ concerns about our broken campaign finance system,” said David Donnelly, president and CEO of Every Voice.

Said Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for advocacy group Public Citizen: “The fact that Trump is coming out and proposing some strict revolving door restrictions, as well as campaign finance limits on lobbyists, that’s a welcome position.”

Lawrence Noble, general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center, a group that advocates for ethics and campaign finance reform, said he didn’t see anything in Trump’s proposals that he disagrees with.

Nonetheless, he said, lobbying reform without campaign finance reform isn’t enough to solve the problem of money in politics.

“Anytime you want to distract people from issues of corruption, you yell ‘lobbyist!’ and everyone goes running off chasing the lobbyist,” he said. “Lobbyists are part of the problem, but just going after the lobbyists isn’t going to solve the problem.”

John Pudner, a former Republican political consultant who now heads a nonprofit group focused on money’s role in politics, Take Back Our Republic, said he met with representatives of the Trump campaign before the first presidential debate and provided suggestions, including some aimed at keeping foreign money out of elections.

“The theme we laid out was we have got to stop foreign money from getting in,” he said, adding that he was encouraged by the proposals.

As for the prospect of a five-year ban, Pudner said Trump probably “realizes they wouldn’t go that far, but start with that as your negotiating point.”

Meredith McGehee, another member of the American Bar Association task force on lobbying who is now chief of policy, programs and strategy for reform group Issue One, said the recommendations were put into legislative form, but despite efforts, she has been unable to find a Republican co-sponsor.

McGehee said she hoped Trump’s proposals would give the idea of reform momentum.

But Trump’s key advisers on money and politics issue haven’t tended to favor new restrictions. McGehee pointed to Trump’s deputy campaign manager, David Bossie, who is on leave from the nonprofit group Citizens United, and his campaign’s lawyer, Donald McGahn, a former Federal Election Commission chairman known for resisting restrictions on money in politics.

“I take these proposals with a grain of salt because the folks he has surrounded himself with are folks who have not been supportive of this kinds of issues in the past,” McGehee said.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally, Monday, Oct. 17, 2016, in Green Bay, Wisconsin.Carrie Levinehttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/carrie-levinehttps://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/10/18/20357/donald-trumps-ethics-reform-plan-dim-prospects-ahead

Gun-loving women should not vote for Hillary, says NRA

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“Every woman has the right to defend herself with a gun, if she chooses,” says Kristi McMains, speaking directly to the camera in a recent campaign ad. “Hillary Clinton disagrees with that. Don’t let politicians take away your right to own a gun.”

The 26-year-old Indiana woman is the star of a spot paid for by the nation’s largest gun lobby, the National Rifle Association. She describes how she fended off an attacker with the aid of a pistol.

Aware that women voters will play a pivotal role in the 2016 presidential election, the NRA has been targeting them with a deluge of political ads critical of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

The NRA — through both its lobbying arm and political action committee — has now aired more than 10,800 TV ads since late June attacking Clinton or praising Republican Donald Trump, whom the group endorsed in May.

That amounts to about 16 percent of all TV ads aired during the general election by Trump’s campaign and his allies, according to data provided to the Center for Public Integrity by ad tracking firm Kantar Media/CMAG. Trump’s own campaign has aired about 43,100 TV ads since the primaries ended in June.

In another ad the gun group has been regularly airing in battleground states, an actress awakes, runs across her bedroom and then calls the police while opening a gun safe as a thief breaks into her home. A narrator then implores: “Don’t let Hillary leave you protected with nothing but a phone.”

The bulk of the NRA’s ads have targeted voters in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

In October alone, about one of every 20 TV ads in Pennsylvania has been sponsored by the NRA, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of Kantar Media/CMAG data. Meanwhile, the NRA is behind about one of every nine ads that have aired so far this month in North Carolina. And in Ohio, the organization is responsible for about one of every eight TV ads that have aired so far in October.

The ad’s sponsor

Founded in 1871 by veterans of the Union Army, the NRA now touts itself as “America's foremost defender of Second Amendment rights.” The NRA’s lobbying arm — known as the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action— was established in 1975. The group’s PAC is called the NRA Political Victory Fund.

Who’s behind it?

The longtime head of the NRA is Wayne LaPierre, whose official title is executive vice president and CEO. The group’s president is Allan Cors, while Chris W. Cox serves as the executive director of the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action.

The men are no fans of Clinton.

According to LaPierre, “There is no greater danger to American liberty and to the security of our nation than a Hillary Clinton administration.”

And Cox, in a July speech at the Republican National Convention, warned that Americans were “on the cusp” of losing the freedom to own firearms.

Meanwhile, Cors has called Trump“a true champion” of gun rights and has said Trump would be “the most pro-Second Amendment president since Ronald Reagan.”

For her part, Clinton, if elected president, has stressed that she’s “not looking to repeal the Second Amendment” or “looking to take people's guns away.” But she has pledged to “take on the gun lobby” so that guns don’t end up in the “hands of domestic abusers, other violent criminals and the seriously mentally ill.”

Josh Schwerin, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, told the Center for Public Integrity that “too many families in America have suffered — and continue to suffer — from gun violence.”

He continued: “The gun lobby is coming to Donald Trump’s defense and spending millions of dollars to spread lies about Hillary Clinton because they know Trump will always do their bidding.”

Representatives of the Trump campaign and NRA did not respond to requests for comment.

Money in

The NRA Political Victory Fund has raised about $19 million so far this election cycle, according to the PAC’s most recent campaign finance filing with the Federal Election Commission.

More than 86 percent of that sum has come from small-dollar donors who each gave $200 or less.

During the 2011-2012 election cycle, the NRA’s PAC raised $14.4 million, spending about $9 million in the presidential race on ads that either attacked President Barack Obama or praised Republican Mitt Romney.

Meanwhile, the NRA’s budget for its Institute for Legislative Action has also increased dramatically in recent years, from about $17 million in 2012 to about $47 million in 2014, according to tax records maintained by CitizenAudit.org. (During the 2012 presidential race, the NRA’s lobbying arm spent about an additional $4 million on ads.)

A significant portion of the NRA’s revenue comes from individual membership dues, but it also counts corporations — including gun manufacturers — among its financial backers.

For instance, gunmaker Sturm, Ruger & Co. has been donating two dollars of every gun sale during 2015 and 2016 to the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action — hitting its goal of selling two million guns earlier this summer. And in August, the company announced that it would match up to $5 million in donations to the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action.

Likewise, Smith & Wesson contributed $1 million to the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action last year.

Money out

So far this year, the NRA — through both its PAC and its Institute for Legislative Action — has spent about $22.6 million on ads in the presidential race, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of federal campaign finance filings. That’s about 70 percent more than what the organization spent four years ago.

About $12.1 million has been spent on negative ads against Clinton, while about $10.5 million has been spent on ads touting Trump.

Why it matters

The NRA’s advertising blitz has been central to broadcasting pro-Trump messages.

Trump’s own campaign has been greatly outspent by Clinton and her allies. And even the handful of super PACs backing the Republican nominee have also been dwarfed by Clinton’s main super PAC.

The NRA’s ads have also brought to the forefront Second Amendment issues in a contest in which the winner is likely to appoint at least one new justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will shape gun policy for decades to come.

This article was co-published with Philly.com.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at the National Rifle Association convention in Louisville in May 2016.Michael Beckelhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/michael-beckelhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/10/19/20359/gun-loving-women-should-not-vote-hillary-says-nra

Insurers give big to races determining their regulators

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As the insurance industry seeks approval for mega-mergers and double-digit rate hikes, it is contributing millions of dollars to sway a dozen state races this year that determine who regulates the nation’s insurance companies.

Obscured by the bombastic presidential campaign, the low-profile bid by insurers has far-reaching implications for consumers and businesses alike. At stake are five elections for insurance commissioner — the little-known but powerful state officials who review insurance rates, investigate complaints and scrutinize company finances. But insurance industry cash is also flowing to campaigns for governor. In seven states holding gubernatorial elections on Nov. 8, governors have the power to appoint their state’s insurance regulator.

All told, the insurance industry has pumped more than $6 million into political efforts aimed at those dozen races, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of IRS records and data collected by the National Institute on Money in State Politics.

And the insurers aren’t shy about their involvement.

“Legislatures are considering legislation every day that affects our industry and our policyholders,” said Paul Blume, senior vice president of state government relations for the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America. “We need to be engaged not only on the legislative side but on the executive side, in governor races and commissioner races.”

His group has already given at least $200,000 to organizations seeking to elect governors this year.

The industry’s robust political giving is a critical part of a larger influence operation aimed at affecting the sleepy world of insurance regulation. A Center for Public Integrity investigation this month found a pattern of coziness between state insurance commissioners and the insurers they regulate, involving lavish dinners, corporate-backed trips to luxury resorts and the implicit promise of industry jobs once commissioners leave office.

Yet it starts with campaign contributions. Over the past decade, insurance companies and their employees were among the top political donors to commissioner candidates in at least six of the 11 states that elect regulators. And they are consistently among the top contributors to the two major political groups active in gubernatorial races.

Consumer advocates such as Bob Hunter say the campaign contributions give insurers an outsize voice in decisions that impact nearly every American. The former Texas insurance commissioner who runs the insurance program at the Consumer Federation of America said the campaign donations are geared toward winning access and ensuring business-friendly regulators.

“The first thing they want is a commissioner who’s not going to cause them any heartache,” Hunter said.

Where the money goes

This year, the two largest beneficiaries of insurers’ money are the Republican Governors Association and its Democratic counterpart, which seek to elect members of their parties to the top state office. Insurers have given a combined $5.2 million to the organizations so far this year. Those groups in turn spend heavily on TV ads and other activities.

Insurance companies and their employees have donated another $550,000 this election cycle directly to the candidates for governor who can appoint insurance commissionersin Indiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oregon, Utah, Vermont and West Virginia.

In the five states where voters will elect insurance regulators next month, the industry has donated at least $272,000 to commissioner hopefuls this cycle.

Most of that went to North Carolina, where insurance interests have contributed about 30 percent of the incumbent’s campaign funds, according to an analysis of National Institute on Money in State Politics data.

In North Dakota, the frontrunner, Jon Godfread, a Republican lobbyist for the Greater North Dakota Chamber, also has industry support: 10 percent of his $74,000 in contributions hail from the political action committees of insurance companies, employees and agents, state records show.

Godfread said insurers make up a small share of his donors. "While I appreciate their support, I have focused on a much broader base," he said. 

Democratic nominee Ruth Buffalo has raised $44,000, mostly from family and Native American tribal sources.

Montana, Delaware and Washington ban contributions from the insurance industry, and the prohibitions have largely stemmed the flow of insurance money in those commissioner races.

Industry involvement is a top campaign issue in North Carolina, where Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin is running for a third term. Insurance company PACs and employees are among the largest sources of contributions for the Democratic incumbent, a fact that his Republican opponent, Mike Causey, says represents a conflict of interest.

“Insurance companies have lots of lawyers working for them. The people do not need another lawyer funded by the insurance industry sitting in the chair of the insurance commissioner,” Causey says in an ad on his campaign website. “We need a consumer advocate.”

In an interview, Goodwin said it was “rather curious, if not ironic” that Causey, a retired insurance agent and lobbyist, would criticize him for industry ties.

The commissioner also said insurance-related donations represented just a portion of his overall campaign haul. He said he vets such contributions, rejecting or refunding checks from firms or individuals with pending business before his office. And he said although Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina’s PAC has given to his campaign, he later fined the company a record $3.6 million this year after thousands of consumers and medical providers complained of billing and enrollment problems.

Goodwin said he opted in to North Carolina’s public financing system in 2008 to avoid just these types of questions. But after the Republican-led Legislature defunded and ultimately repealed the program, he returned to the fundraising circuit.

“I’m a strong proponent of public financing and campaign finance transparency,” he said. “But as long as the rules are what they are, I can’t unilaterally disarm.”

Meanwhile, the industry has mobilized on his behalf.

A group named the North Carolina Opportunity Committee has spent an estimated $3,200 airing television ads to support Goodwin’s candidacy, according to media tracker Kantar Media/CMAG.

The committee’s treasurer is an insurance executive. He did not return calls for comment, and the newly formed group has not yet publicly disclosed its donors.

Former and current commissioners from states that elect regulators say the low-profile nature of the office often means campaigns rely on a shallow donor pool of corporate interests.

“One of the weaknesses of an elected commissioner is you have to get elected,” said George Dale, a former Mississippi insurance commissioner who won the post eight times in three decades. “The only people who care who the commissioner of insurance is are people who have dealings with the insurance department.”

To avoid potential conflicts, four of the 11 states that elect their commissioners ban contributions from the insurance industry.

Even then, there are loopholes. In Georgia, for example, insurers are prohibited from donating to commissioner candidates — but individuals can still write checks. Donations from insurance executives, agents and employees made up roughly 18 percent of all contributions to commissioner candidates in that state during the past decade.

Influencing appointments

States with gubernatorial appointments also often have a vested interest at the table.

In 2005, for example, when the Missouri insurance director’s seat became vacant, then-Gov. Matt Blunt, a Republican, convened a panel of campaign donors and insurance insiders to screen candidates. They recommended a former insurance agent, who had given to Blunt's campaign.

Blunt did not return a call for comment.

Consumer advocates point to Connecticut, as well.

Last year, Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy appointed Katharine Wade, a former Cigna Corp. lobbyist whose husband still works there, while the health insurance company was negotiating a merger agreement with Anthem — a deal that the state’s insurance commissioner could play a central role in approving.

The appointment came in a year that Anthem ramped up donations to the Democratic Governors Association, which Malloy had been elected to chair. Additional money from Anthem and Cigna flowed this year — at least $560,000 — as Malloy resisted pressure from consumer groups and lawmakers to remove Wade from the case. (She recused herself last month.)

“Commissioner Wade is a person of integrity, one who is well regarded for her deep experience and knowledge of the industry, and also for her collaborative approach with stakeholders — including insurers and consumers alike,” Malloy spokeswoman Kelly Donnelly told the Center for Public Integrity.

Democratic Governors Association spokesman Jared Leopold dismissed the timing of the insurers’ donations, saying the elevated giving was part of a larger trend among donors. “Supporters of all kinds have increasingly donated to the DGA,” he said, also noting that Anthem and Cigna contributed more this year, $570,000, to the rival Republican group.

Cigna did not return a request for comment. Anthem Inc. declined to comment on the timing of its donations but said it routinely contributes to political groups because state laws and regulations have a direct impact on its business.

“In our attempts to improve the nation’s health care delivery system, it is more important than ever for us to be involved in the dialogue taking place at both the state and federal levels,” said Anthem spokeswoman Jill Becher.

Data reporter Ben Wieder contributed to this story.

This story was co-published with TIME

Insurance interests have contributed about 30 percent of the donations to North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin's re-election campaign. “I’m a strong proponent of public financing and campaign finance transparency,” the Democrat told the Center for Public Integrity. “But as long as the rules are what they are, I can’t unilaterally disarm.” Michael J. Mishakhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/michael-j-mishakhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/10/20/20356/insurers-give-big-races-determining-their-regulators

23 numbers to know about Election 2016

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Roughly $1.8 billion has been spent in the 2016 presidential race, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of campaign finance filings through the end of September.

And as Election Day draws near, Democrat Hillary Clinton and her allies have been massively outspending Republican Donald Trump and his supporters.

Here are some key takeaways from the latest round of campaign finance reports, filed today with the Federal Election Commission:

Total amount of funds Republican Donald Trump has personally put into his 2016 presidential campaign: $56 million

Amount he’s invested since June 1, after winning the GOP nomination: $10 million

Portion of Trump’s general election war chest his own funds account for: 6 percent

Price of a “Hillary for prison” button three-pack on Trump’s campaign website: $6

Factor by which Democrat Hillary Clinton and her allies have outspent Trump and his supporters during the 2016 election cycle: More than 2-to-1

Total amount raised by pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA Action in 2016: $117 million

Portion of that haul from hedge fund manager Donald Sussman alone: 1/7

Amount Evan McMullin, a former CIA operative and U.S. House staffer now running as an independent presidential candidate, had in his campaign war chest as of Sept. 30: $4,317

Percentage of Utah residents supporting McMullin in a new poll by Emerson College: 31

Amount former Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson’s campaign pulled in from renting its donor list in September, then immediately contributed to Carson’s new nonprofit, My Faith Votes: $405,794

Number of Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency: 270

Portion of TV ads so far this month in the swing state of Florida — the winner takes 29 electoral votes — that have been sponsored by Clinton and her supporters: 2/3

How frequently a pro-Clinton or anti-Trump TV ad has, on average, aired so far this month in Florida: Every 2 minutes

Date on which Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson most recently aired a TV ad: Sept. 16

Date on which the Commission on Presidential Debates announced Johnson was not polling high enough to be included in the first debate: Sept. 16

Date on which Trump declared, “I don't believe the polls anymore”: Oct. 18

Amount the Trump campaign spent in September on polling: $1.7 million

Amount the Trump campaign spent last month on legal fees/consulting: $497,591

Amount the Clinton campaign spent on legal fees/consulting during the same period: $118,652

Amount the Clinton campaign spent in September at the Trump International Hotel in New York City for what it described as “merchandise not made in America,” which it highlighted in a campaign video: $260

Amount Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s campaign spent in September on “security consulting services”: $8,100

Estimated U.S. voting age population in November 2012: 235 million

Portion that voted in the 2012 presidential election: 54.87 percent

Chris Zubak-Skees contributed to this report

This article was co-published with The Huffington Post.

 

 

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton walks off stage as Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump puts his notes away after the third presidential debate at UNLV in Las Vegas on Oct. 19, 2016.Michael Beckelhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/michael-beckelDave Levinthalhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/dave-levinthalCarrie Levinehttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/carrie-levinehttps://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/10/20/20367/23-numbers-know-about-election-2016

Whoops: Pro-Donald Trump super PAC publishes donor credit card numbers

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A pro-Donald Trump super PAC needs to make its accounting practices great again — if they ever were in the first place.

Great America PAC on Thursday night erroneously published the credit card numbers and expiration dates belonging to 49 donors, a Center for Public Integrity review of its latest Federal Election Commission campaign finance disclosure discovered.

The screw-up comes one month after the super PAC, which aims to “help grow the burgeoning movement behind Donald Trump and merge the grassroots with the business community,” mistakenly revealed the personal cell phone numbers and/or email addresses of 336 of its donors.

Great America PAC treasurer Dan Backer, upon being informed by the Center for Public Integrity of his organization’s mistake, said the likely culprit is “an isolated software glitch in an otherwise automated process” involving data transfers between the PAC and a contractor that helps manage the group’s finances.

He vowed to immediately rectify the situation by contacting affected donors, encouraging them to cancel their credit cards and offering to pay for “long-term extended identity theft monitoring and protection.” Any Great America PAC donor who requests a refund “will of course get one,” Backer said.

“Going forward, there’s going to be some unpleasant conversations with the compliance staff about these issues,” Backer added.

Great America PAC also this morning asked the FEC to remove from the public record the September campaign finance report that contained donors’ credit card numbers. It’s a highly unusual request to make of the election agency, which usually requires groups correct filing errors by submitting amended reports to appear on the public record alongside their original reports.

But Great America PAC’s situation is itself unusual, given that political candidates and political committees almost never inadvertently release donor credit card information as part of the mandatory reports they regularly file with federal election regulators.

The FEC said in a statement today that the agency is “aware of the filing and has taken measures to safeguard personal information while upholding its disclosure obligations.”

By late morning, the FEC had removed the Great America PAC filing containing donor credit card information. Agency spokesman Christian Hilland confirmed that FEC officials are working to redact Great America PAC’s original filing so it no longer displays donor credit card numbers.

Trump himself has had a curious relationship with Great America PAC, as his campaign formally disavowed it in April in a letter to the FEC. Despite that, Trump’s son, Eric Trump, appeared at a fundraiser for the group in September.

Great America PAC reported almost $2.7 million cash on hand going into October, according to FEC records. It raised $3.1 million and spent more than $2.8 million in September.

In all, it’s raised more than $14.3 million this year, mostly from people making small, online contributions.

The group has indeed spent several million dollars on advocacy efforts overtly promoting Trump, including advertisements, calls to voters and a bus tour. That ranks it among the election cycle’s most prominent pro-Trump super PACs — political committees that may raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to advocate for and against political candidates. Bill Doddridge, chief executive of the Jewelry Exchange, is a top funder.

But it also has poured millions of dollars into expenses, such as consulting fees and fundraising expenses, that don’t directly benefit Trump in his bid to beat Democrat Hillary Clinton and win the White House.

In September alone, Great America PAC spent nearly $100,000 on staffing and consultants, including a $20,000 payment to Ed Rollins, the group’s national co-chairman, who was Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign manager in 1984. It also paid its financial and donation processing consultants nearly $78,000 last month, FEC records show.

Longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone in May accused Great America PAC of being a “scam.”

But Rollins has advertised the group as essential to Trump’s success.

“If our fundraising doesn't hit our marks — who knows what will happen to this country,” Rollins wrote in a fundraisingmessage to supporters today. “AND WE CANNOT LEAVE IT UP TO CHANCE.”

This article was co-published with NBC News.

Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures during a speech in Virginia Beach, Virginia, on July 11, 2016.Dave Levinthalhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/dave-levinthalhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/10/21/20370/whoops-pro-donald-trump-super-pac-publishes-donor-credit-card-numbers

Republican Aaron Schock fined for excessively soliciting super PAC funds

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Politicians, be warned: it’s still against the law for you to solicit big checks from donors for super PACs.

Just ask Aaron Schock— the one-time Republican rising star who resigned from Congress last year after his “Downton Abbey”-themed office makeover led to a barrage of questions about whether he was misusing public money.

New documents show that Schock recently agreed to pay a $10,000 fine for making an excessive solicitation for a super PAC that was active in his home state of Illinois four years ago.

The super PAC, known as the Campaign for Primary Accountability, had caught Schock’s eye during the heated 2012 GOP primary between Reps. Don Manzullo and Adam Kinzinger, who Schock supported and who ultimately prevailed.

At the time, Schock told Roll Callthat he wanted “to do everything I could to help the Kinzinger campaign.” That included reaching out to the Campaign for Primary Accountability and steering funds into its coffers.

All super PACs are allowed to raise unlimited amounts of money from individuals, corporations and labor unions. But federal candidates and officeholders are prohibited from soliciting more than $5,000 for these political action committees, which are also barred from coordinating their spending with candidates.

Yet Schock told Roll Call in 2012 that he had asked then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican, to “match” $25,000 that Schock would provide for the super PAC’s television assault against Manzullo.

Campaign finance filings show that Cantor used his leadership PAC — a political action committee a lawmaker often uses to aid allies — to inject $25,000 into the Campaign for Primary Accountability.

Another $25,000 came not from Schock’s own campaign committee or leadership PAC, but rather, as previously reported by the Center for Public Integrity, from the 18th District Republican Central Committee, the local political party committee in Schock’s home district.

If Schock had only asked for $5,000, he would have been fine. But his apparent five-figure solicitations drew complaints from the Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21, election watchdogs in Washington, D.C.

The Federal Election Commission agreed that Schock broke the law, according to new documents released today by the Campaign Legal Center.

The documents indicate Schock admitted to illegally soliciting an excessive amount from Cantor, though he did not admit to excessively soliciting the 18th District Republican Central Committee.

The agreement further states that the bipartisan FEC didn’t find reason to believe that Schock’s violation was “knowing or willful.”

Larry Noble, the Campaign Legal Center’s general counsel, lamented the fact that it took the agency so long to come to this conclusion.

“Here was a clear-cut case, and it’s sad that it still took them four years,” he told the Center for Public Integrity.

Noble added that the ban on politicians making large super PAC solicitations was needed to safeguard against corruption because such solicitations can create the “appearance that the candidate will be beholden to the contributor.”

“It’s a really important rule,” Noble said.

A representative for Schock could not immediately be reached for comment.

Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Ill., during a May 2013 committee hearing in Washington, D.C.Michael Beckelhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/michael-beckelhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/10/24/20374/republican-aaron-schock-fined-excessively-soliciting-super-pac-funds

AT&T and Time Warner: lower prices not part of the bargain

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AT&T Inc. executives say their purchase of Time Warner Inc. should yield a lot of “positives” for customers, including more content, better wireless access to programming and an attractive alternative to cable.

But what the deal most likely won’t bring about is a cheaper price for television — and it just may increase the price for in-home internet, according to experts who track the media industry.

AT&T wants to marry its internet and wireless operations with Time Warner’s media businesses, which include HBO, CNN, Turner Broadcasting System and movie studio Warner Bros. AT&T said in its announcement that the deal would provide “significant financial benefits,” including revenue and earnings growth, lower capital costs and savings of $1 billion within the first three years.

Nowhere in the announcement did AT&T specifically mention how the proposed transaction could lower costs for consumers.

Jeff Bewkes, Time Warner’s chief executive officer, said Monday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” program that the deal will lead to “more competition” and “therefore lower prices.” He’s counting on the new company being able to shift the costs of operating an internet and video company from paying customers to advertisers. The ability of AT&T to use information it collects on internet users and video subscribers will allow the company to compete for advertising dollars now going to Google and Facebook — theoretically.

“This is good for competition,” Bewkes said. “Therefore, it’s going to be good for consumers, because that’s what competition does.”

Companies rarely justify mergers like these as a way to lower prices for customers. In 2014, when Comcast Corp. announced it wanted to pay $45 billion for Time Warner Cable, which Time Warner spun off in 2008, Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen said, “We’re certainly not promising that customer bills are going to go down or even increase less rapidly.” The government nixed the deal.

(Ironically, Bewkes told analysts in 2008 when Time Warner rid itself of Time Warner Cable, that its cable businesses, with its high-speed internet, “don’t fit as well” with Time Warner’s media businesses.)

The reason executives don’t argue that mergers will result in lower prices is because it doesn’t happen, said Matt Wood, policy director at Free Press, an advocacy group in Washington, D.C., that lobbies on communications and media policy. In fact, prices may very well go up. Within five months of completing its $49 billion purchase of DirecTV, AT&T announced that it would increase prices for its broadband service. DirecTV also announced that month that it would hike its prices.

If this purchase is approved, AT&T in all likelihood will not lower prices, and it may hide increases, Wood said. Pricing for internet and video is notoriously difficult to track because it involves bundled packages, which not only include internet and video services, but also phone. AT&T could hold the price of its video service flat, say, but raise what it charges for internet. Because there is less competition among internet providers, it’s easier to raise prices for broadband, Wood said.

And that will hurt those that can’t afford it the most. An investigation by the Center for Public Integrity showed how internet providers avoid competition and how low-income families are more likely not to have access to broadband,  or to have access only to slower speeds and fewer choices.

It’s unclear if the deal will gain approval from the Justice Department’s antitrust division. Many telecommunications and media analysts and antitrust lawyers hem and haw when pressed on the deal’s chances. Craig Moffett, a much-quoted media analyst, gave the deal a 50-50 chance. James Stewart, a Lawyer and New York Times columnist, however, said the purchase had a 70 percent chance of being approved because the deal wouldn’t harm competition, which is what the Justice Department ultimately must build its ruling around.  

Politics will likely play a role. Democrats along with Republicans have lined up against the deal. Sen. Mike Lee, the Utah Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, and the ranking panel Democrat, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, have scheduled a hearing on the proposal next month.

It’s a different political environment than it was six years ago when Comcast bought NBCUniversal, with more bipartisan concern over mergers this big; Donald Trump is among those who opposing the deal. Besides, the $85 billion proposal, which increases to $109 billion when Time Warner’s debt is included, dwarfs the $37 billion Comcast paid.

“It’s a better political climate to try to stop these things,” Wood said, “and it’s an even bigger deal.”

A statue of Christopher Columbus stands between the towers of the Time Warner building, Monday, Oct. 24, 2016, in New York. AT&T plans to buy Time Warner for $85.4 billion.Allan Holmeshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/allan-holmeshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/10/25/20376/att-and-time-warner-lower-prices-not-part-bargain

Will mushroom clouds turn Ohio voters away from Donald Trump?

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A new TV ad evoking one of the most famous political ads in U.S. history is painting Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump as too dangerous to be commander-in-chief. And it’s not subtle about it.

The spot from the Fifty Second Street Fund, a newly formed super PAC targeting Ohio voters, features footage of an atomic bomb detonating.

“One nuclear bomb can kill a million people,” a narrator says as a mushroom cloud erupts. “That’s more than all the men, women and children living in Columbus, Ohio.”

The ad then features an exchange from a March 2016 town hall program during which MSNBC’s Chris Matthews presses Trump on why the United States shouldn’t rule out using nuclear weapons in war.

“They’re hearing a guy running for president of the United States talking, maybe, about using nuclear weapons — nobody wants to hear that,” Matthews tells Trump.

“Then, why are we making them?” Trump fires back at Matthews.

The ad ends with the words “Be careful who you vote for” on screen as another nuclear bomb explodes.

The weeklong ad campaign cost more than $820,000, according to information provided to the Center for Public Integrity by national ad buying firms.

The threat of nuclear war was also a central theme to the 1964 “Daisy” ad by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson. In that ad, Johnson says that "we must love one another or die” — a line from the same W. H. Auden poem that the Fifty Second Street Fund derives its name.

The ad’s sponsor

Fifty Second Street Fund is a new player in presidential politics — although its founder, former Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley, is not.

Bradley is a former professional basketball player who served three terms in the U.S. Senate, representing the state of New Jersey from 1979 until 1997. In 2000, he unsuccessfully ran for president, losing the Democratic Party’s nomination to then-Vice President Al Gore.

Bradley, in a statement released today by the Fifty Second Street Fund, called Trump “a danger to all Americans.”

The Fifty Second Street Fund is little more than a month old, having submitted incorporation paperwork with the state of Massachusetts on Sept. 21. About a week later, the group filed official paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to become a super PAC.

Its barebones website— which launched on Sept. 30, according to Internet domain registration records— currently features the poem “September 1, 1939,” written by Auden on the day that World War II began.

And the lone video published so far on the group’s nascent YouTube page is its new nuclear bomb-themed ad, which first aired on Monday.

Who’s behind it?

Massachusetts lawyer Matthew T. Henshon — a partner at Henshon Klein, LLP— is listed as the treasurer of the Fifty Second Street Fund on its filings with the FEC. He’s also listed as the group’s manager and registered agent on its corporate filing with the state of Massachusetts.

Henshon previously worked as Bradley’s traveling chief of staff during Bradley’s failed presidential bid, according to Henshon’s LinkedIn profile.

State and federal campaign finance records show Henshon has also made modest contributions to a smattering of Democratic candidates over the years, including $1,000 to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., in 2012; $750 to President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign; $1,000 to Obama’s 2008 presidential bid; and $27 to Bernie Sanders the day after Sanders bested Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire’s presidential primary in February.

Henshon, who did not respond to requests for comment, additionally serves as the co-chairman of the artificial intelligence and robotics committee of the American Bar Association.

Money in

Henshon is also the super PAC’s first donor — and he’s so far the only known donor, having contributed $1,000 to the group on Sept. 21.

It’s unclear who else has helped fill the group’s coffers with hundreds of thousands of dollars. The super PAC must file its next campaign finance report by midnight Thursday, which will detail its income and expenses from Oct. 1 to Oct. 19.

Mike Czin, a spokesman for the Fifty Second Street Fund, told the Center for Public Integrity that the super PAC is financially supported by “a bipartisan group of folks who are all equally horrified of Trump having his finger on the nuclear button.”

Money out

The Fifty Second Street Fund has purchased more than $820,000 of advertising in Ohio’s Columbus, Toledo and Cincinnati media markets, according to data provided to the Center for Public Integrity by The Tracking Firm, a nonpartisan ad tracking firm based in Washington, D.C.

Of that sum, about $518,000 is going toward broadcast TV ads, while about $305,000 is funding cable ads.

Tim Kay, director of political strategy at advertising firm NCC Media, told the Center for Public Integrity that Fifty Second Street Fund’s cable buy was targeting a “general audience,” purchasing spots on networks including CNN, ESPN, MSNBC, TNT and USA.

Why it matters

Ohio is one of the most important swing states of the 2016 presidential election, and polls there show a tight race between Trump and Clinton.

The Buckeye State has seen about 15,700 TV ads so far this month, according to data provided to the Center for Public Integrity by ad tracking firm Kantar Media/CMAG. That’s more than any other state except Florida— and amounts to nearly one TV ad every two minutes in Ohio.

Said Czin, the super PAC spokesman: “The goal is to make the stakes of the election crystal clear given how reckless Donald Trump has been.”

Most Democratic donors seeking to give to a pro-Clinton super PAC operation have chosen to donate directly to Priorities USA Action, which has raised about $175 million since January 2015.

Yet, as the Fifty Second Street Fund demonstrates, sometimes donors want to take matters into their own hands to implement their own creative visions, or target specific voters with a specific message.

Chris Zubak-Skees contributed to this report.

This article was co-published with TIME.

Screenshot from an October 2016 ad by a new super PAC called the Fifty Second Street Fund.Michael Beckelhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/michael-beckelhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/10/25/20379/will-mushroom-clouds-turn-ohio-voters-away-donald-trump

Center wins two EPPY Awards from Editor & Publisher

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The Center for Public Integrity was honored today with two 2016 EPPY awards from Editor & Publisher, and three other finalist designations, continuing a run of success for the Center in the prestigious journalism competition.

The awards, now in their 21st year, honor the best media-affiliated websites across 31 diverse categories.  

The winning investigations, and categories were these:

  • The Center’s International Consortium of Investigative Journalists won Best Collaborative Investigative/Enterprise Reporting on a Website with over 1 million unique monthly visitors for its landmark project, The Panama Papers.
  • Best use of Data/Infographics on a Website with under 1 million unique monthly visitors was won by the Center for a variety of data visualizations on subjects as disparate as broadband access and homicide rates.

The Panama Papers project, coordinated by ICIJ and German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung in collaboration with more than 100 media organizations around the world, was the largest investigation in journalism history. Based on a trove of 11.5 million leaked documents from inside Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, the investigation revealed how the shadowy offshore economy works in detail never seen before, exposing the hidden financial dealings of politicians, criminals and the rich and powerful.

The Data/Infographics award honors several complex data visualizations, specifically: “Where broadband access is unequal,” “Here are the interests lobbying in every statehouse,” “How does your state rank for integrity?” and “A reality check on crime.”

“Spellbinding and explanatory data journalism is at the heart of what the Center does and this is great recognition,” said CPI chief executive officer Peter Bale of the awards. 

In addition, a trio of projects garnered finalist honors in the EPPYs, including The Panama Papers, which was cited for Best Investigative/Enterprise Feature on a Website with over 1 million unique monthly visitors.

 Also a finalist: “Buying of the President 2016” for Best News/Political Blog with under 1 million unique monthly visitors. The "Buying of the President" project has included deep-dive investigations about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, as well as other presidential aspirants like Bernie Sanders and Ben Carson. Stories have highlighted the special interests bankrolling these White House hopefuls — as well as entrepreneurs profiting off of their popularity.

The third Center finalist, for Best Investigative/Enterprise Feature on a Website with under 1 million unique monthly visitors, was “Rape, murder, famine —and $2.1 million for K Street PR.” That story detailed how the government of South Sudan turned to Washington, D.C. public relations and lobbying firms to bolster its image amid widespread conflict, poverty and human rights abuses.

The new honors continue a winning streak for the Center for Public Integrity in the EPPY competition; the Center received four EPPY awards in 2014 and another four in 2015. 

The Center for Public Integrityhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/center-public-integrityhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/10/27/20388/center-wins-two-eppy-awards-editor-publisher
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