Crossroads GPS And Americans For Prosperity Outspend All Super PACs Combined

Think Progress Justice

By Rebecca Leber  on Aug 14, 2012 at 3:50 pm

Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS (an affiliate of the super PAC American Crossroads) and the Koch brothers’ Americans For Prosperity have spent more on TV ads than every super PAC combined, according to a ProPublica analysis of CMAG data. Unlike super PACs, these groups do not have to disclose donors. That has allowed a handful of unknown billionaires  — like Sheldon Adelson and the Kochs — to funnel millions into attack ads through outside groups.

SOURCE

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Sheldon Adelson To Lavish $71 Million In Casino Money On GOP Super PACS, Nonprofits

Las Vegas Sands Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson speaks at a news conference for the Sands Cotai Central in Macau Wednesday, April 12, 2012. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

HuffPost

Peter H. Stone

Posted: 06/16/2012 12:24 am Updated: 06/16/2012  2:06 am

WASHINGTON — Casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, whose net worth makes him one of the world’s richest men, is on a check-writing spree that will soon bring his total political contributions in this election cycle to at least $71 million, according to sources familiar with his spending. That money is spread across the spectrum of GOP super PACs, which are required to disclose donors, and nonprofits, which are not.

Adelson and his wife, Miriam, along with other family donations, have already reached $36 million, including $10 million to the Romney-backing super PAC Restore Our Future that was reported this week. But two GOP fundraisers familiar with his plans say that Adelson has given or pledged at least $35 million more to three conservative nonprofit groups: the Karl Rove-linked Crossroads GPS, another with ties to billionaires Charles and David Koch and a third with links to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.).

Adelson, 78, is a staunch supporter of the Israeli right and a strong foe of American unions. In recent years, Adelson has been a major financier of GOP-allied groups, but has emerged this year as the consummate super donor in the wake of 2010 court rulings that permitted corporations, unions and individuals to supply unlimited amounts of money, sometimes anonymously, to independent groups that can advocate directly for candidates.

Adelson has told friends that he might give as much as $100 million in donations this year in support of GOP candidates and conservative issues. That target now seems easily within reach and could be surpassed, say the two GOP fundraisers with ties to the casino magnate.

Crossroads GPS — founded by GOP consultants Rove and Ed Gillespie in 2010 alongside the super PAC American Crossroads — could wind up as the major recipient of the casino titan’s largess, due to Adelson’s longstanding and close ties to Rove. Crossroads GPS has already received one $10 million cash infusion this cycle from Adelson, who, according to the two GOP fundraisers, recently committed to another donation of the same amount.

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GOP Groups Plan $1 Billion Blitz

By: Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei

May 30, 2012 04:34 AM EDT

Republican super PACs and other outside groups shaped by a loose network of prominent conservatives – including Karl Rove, the Koch brothers and Tom Donohue of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – plan to spend roughly $1 billion on November’s elections for the White House and control of Congress, according to officials familiar with the groups’ internal operations.

That total includes previously undisclosed plans for newly aggressive spending by the Koch brothers, who are steering funding to build sophisticated, county-by-county operations in key states. POLITICO has learned that Koch-related organizations plan to spend about $400 million ahead of the 2012 elections – twice what they had been expected to commit.

Just the spending linked to the Koch network is more than the $370 million that John McCain raised for his entire presidential campaign four years ago. And the $1 billion total surpasses the $750 million that Barack Obama, one of the most prolific fundraisers ever, collected for his 2008 campaign.

(PHOTOS: Republican money men)

Restore Our Future, the super PAC supporting Mitt Romney, proved its potency by spending nearly $50 million in the primaries. Now able to entice big donors with a neck-and-neck general election, the group is likely to meet its new goal of spending $100 million more.

And American Crossroads and the affiliated Crossroads GPS, the groups that Rove and Ed Gillespie helped conceive and raise cash for, are expected to ante up $300 million, giving the two-year-old organization one of the election’s loudest voices.

“The intensity on the right is white-hot,” said Steven Law, president of American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS. “We just can’t leave anything in the locker room. And there is a greater willingness to cooperate and share information among outside groups on the center-right.”

In targeted states, the groups’ activities will include TV, radio and digital advertising; voter-turnout work; mail and phone appeals; and absentee- and early-ballot drives.

The $1 billion in outside money is in addition to the traditional party apparatus – the Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee – which together intend to raise at least $800 million.
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‘Super PAC,’ Eyeing General Election, Aims Blitz at Obama

New York Times

By JIM RUTENBERG and JEFF ZELENY Published: April 8, 2012

American Crossroads, the biggest of the Republican “super PACs,” is planning to begin its first major anti-Obama advertising blitz of the year, a moment the Obama re-election campaign has been girding for and another sign that the general election is starting in earnest.

With an anticipated bank account of more than $200 million, officials at American Crossroads said they would probably begin their campaign this month. But they said they would focus the bulk of the first phase from May through July, which they believe is a critical period for making an impression on voters, before summer vacations and the party conventions take place.

Steven J. Law, the group’s leader, said the ads would address the challenge of unseating a president who polls show is viewed favorably even though many people disapprove of his handling of the economy. Basically, Mr. Law said, “how to dislodge voters from him.”

The ultimate goal of the Crossroads campaign, Mr. Law said, would be to better connect Americans’ disappointment with the economy to their views of the president, especially among crucial swing voters.

The Crossroads advertising push — the timing of which has been the subject of avid speculation at the Obama campaign headquarters in Chicago — would give the campaign of Mitt Romney, the Republican front-runner, the time and cover to map out its national organization, replenish its bank account and put the finishing touches on its own long-discussed advertising plan, which is expected to highlight the economic pain of ordinary Americans.

Crossroads was founded with help from the Republican strategists Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie — the latter just signed on as an adviser to Mr. Romney — and so far it has largely been sitting on the sidelines, studying the electorate and planning for the fall as the Republican nominating contest continued.

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Rove-Linked Crossroads GPS Launches $650,000 False Ad Campaign On Gas Prices (VIDEO)

Think Progress

By Josh Israel  on Mar 23, 2012 at 4:00 pm

This week, Crossroads GPS announced a $650,000 nationwide television adcampaign called “Deflect.”  The 30-second spot falsely blames Obama administration actions for the rise in gasoline prices since 2009.

Crossroads GPS is a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) group, affiliated with the American Crossroads super PAC. Karl Rove has been linked to both groups.

The spot begins by noting gas prices “then and now” — going up from the unusually low prices of January 2009 to the higher prices of today.  A narrator asks what has made the difference.

The narrator then claims the reasons for higher gas prices are:

– “President Obama’s administration restricted oil production in the Gulf”

– Limited development of American oil shale

– Obama personally lobbied to kill a pipeline bringing oil from Canada

VIDEO AND MORE HERE

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Shocker! Karl Rove Endorses Obama in WSJ Op-Ed. (Though Not Really)

Forbes

Jeff Bercovici, Forbes Staff

3/22/2012 @ 2:49PM

In his fight for re-election this fall, President Barack Obama will have support from the unlikeliest of quarters: Karl Rove, former top aide to George W. Bush.

Writing on the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal today, Rove, normally a staunch partisan and Republican loyalist, declared, “Mr. Obama deserves re-election for restoring America to prosperity after a recession.” Further enumerating his accomplishments, Rove added, “Mr. Obama ended the Iraq War and…Osama bin Laden was killed on his watch.”

It was the surprise of the political season, but maybe it shouldn’t have been. While it took until now for him to issue a full endorsement, Rove has for months been using the Journal’s op-ed page to signal his approval for the president. Just last week, in fact, he praised Obama’s work ethic, writing, “He is working a lot harder than he thought he would.”

In February, he lauded the president’s motives in establishing a new agency, saying, “Mr. Obama set up a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2010 to make sure people are treated fairly.”

And last September, Rove explicitly accused his own political allies of doing voters a disservice by opposing Obama, writing, “[H]is Republican opposition puts party ahead of country.”

MORE HERE

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SuperPAC Super Payday: How Rich Donors Could Get Billions from Taxpayers

Crooks and Liars

February 05, 2012 07:00 AM

By-  Jon Perr

Federal Election Commission filings released this week showed that conservatives groups are amassing an ocean of cash for the 2012 presidential campaign.  Thanks to the likes of the Koch brothers, the Walton clan and other of the usual suspects on the right, in 2011 conservative SuperPAC’s outraised their liberal counterparts by more than seven to one.  But if they win, rich Republican donors could more than get back the millions they invested.  As it turns, just one law they are trying to buy – the elimination of the estate tax – could put billions of dollars back into their families’ bank accounts.  Of course, that gaping hole would have to be filled by all other American taxpayers.

As Mother Jones reported, as of December 31, 2011 conservative SuperPAC’s reaped $60 million of now-unlimited contributions, compared to just $8 million for liberal groups.  That tidal wave of corporate cash and play money from the wealthy has filled the coffers of Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, Mitt Romney’s Restore the Future, Newt Gingrich’s Winning the Future and a litany of other right-wing SuperPACs.  And as Amanda Terkel detailed, at a secret conclave last week, the Koch brothers pledged to raise much more to defeat President Obama:

At a private three-day retreat in California last weekend, conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch and about 250 to 300 other individuals pledged approximately $100 million to defeat President Obama in the 2012 elections.

A source who was in the room when the pledges were made told The Huffington Post that, specifically, Charles Koch pledged $40 million and David pledged $20 million.

But that figure is chump change compared to the eye-popping return on investment the Kochs can expect if their side wins in November.  Ending the estate tax, a policy endorsed by Mitt Romney and every other Republican presidential candidate, would literally be worth billions of dollars to the heirs of Charles and David Koch.  As ThinkProgress explained last year:

According to a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation, the Koch brothers’ heirs’ would save a combined $17.4 billion in estate taxes thanks to Romney’s plan.

Each of the Koch brothers — Charles and David — is worth about $25 billion. They are each married, so they would receive an exemption on the first $10 million that they pass down, and then theirs heirs would pay a 35 percent tax, or $8.7 billion, on the rest of their vast fortunes.

Now, this is an exceedingly rough calculation, as it’s almost certain that the Koch’s have engaged in extensive estate planning and would pay nowhere near that amount. But 35 percent is the rate on the books, and Romney’s plan to eliminate the estate tax entirely would undeniably save the Kochs a boatload of money.

Here’s why.  Despite Republican mythology about family farms and businesses being lost to the so-called “death tax,” by 2009 only 0.24 percent of estates even paid the levy. And that was before the December 2010 compromise President Obama inked with Congressional Republicans extending the Bush tax cuts further slashed the estate tax. The reduced 35 percent tax is now applied only to couples with estates greater than $10 million, a change which will cost Uncle Sam roughly $15 billion a year. Now, the Tax Policy Center calculated, only 0.1 percent of estates are impacted. Only 50 family farms and small businesses will be affected, and they contribute “less than one tenth of 1 percent point of the total revenue the tax will collect.” Who pays the estate tax?

TPC estimates that 8,600 individuals dying in 2011 will leave estates large enough to require filing an estate tax return (estates with a gross value under $5 million need not file a return in 2011). After allowing for deductions and credits, an estimated 3,270 estates will owe tax. Roughly 90 percent of these taxable estates will come from the top ten percent of income earners and nearly half will come from the top one percent alone./em>

Estate tax liability will total an estimated $10.6 billion in 2011. The top ten percent of income earners will pay 98 percent of this total. The richest 1 in 1,000 will pay $5.4 billion or 51 percent of the total.

Among that richest 1 in 1,000 are the Koch brothers and the family behind Walmart, the Walton clan.

MORE HERE

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The Daily Show: Bush Administration Officials Come Out of Their Hidey-Holes to Take Credit for Bin Laden’s Death

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Crooks and Liars- By Heather

May 11, 2011 07:00 PM

Looks like Jon Stewart was just as frustrated as the rest of us here at C&L were when we saw the Sunday show lineup this past weekend and the Bushies running as Stewart put it, “out of their hidey-holes to take credit for killing bin Laden and at the hapless Democrats for reinforcing their talking points for them.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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Is Rahm Emanuel Providing Cover for Karl Rove and GOP Thugs?

For OpEdNews: Roger Shuler
March 24, 2010

Cross Posted at Legal Schnauzer
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has led efforts to prevent investigations of political prosecutions during the George W. Bush administration, according to a recent Web report.

Brendan DeMelle, at Huffington Post, writes that the Obama administration’s decision to turn a blind eye to politicization of the U.S. Justice Department has profound implications for the country–not to mention the victims of political prosecutions, such as Don Siegelman in Alabama, Paul Minor in Mississippi, and Charles Walker in Georgia.

Read more…

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Rove Is ‘Proud’ Of Waterboarding

Rove Is ‘Proud’ Of Waterboarding, But Falsely Claims It Was More ‘Constrained’ Than SERE Training

Think Progress- By Matt Corley at 10:45 am

In an interview with the BBC yesterday, former Bush adviser Karl Rove defended the administration’s use of waterboarding, saying that he was “proud” that Bush “used techniques that broke the will of these terrorists and gave us valuable information.” “Yes, I’m proud that we kept the world safer than it was, by the use of these techniques,” said Rove. “They’re appropriate, they’re in conformity with our international requirements and with US law.” Watch it:

In a separate part of Rove’s interview with the BBC, he invoked a familiar and misleading argument to claim that waterboarding is not torture. “U.S. military personnel go through waterboarding every year in special training courses on survival and escape,” said Rove.

MORE HERE

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