Today’s badly broken campaign finance system benefits wealthy interests, and leaves hundreds of millions of ordinary Americans on the outside looking in at Washington’s rigged system.
In August, 2015, Charles and David Koch gathered their fellow billionaires and multimillionaires at a semi-annual meeting of the Koch network “to save” the country, in the words of Charles Koch. It was not exactly the same kind of meeting that occurred in July 1776 when the Founding Fathers gathered in Philadelphia to create a […]
Reform groups today wrote to President Obama strongly urging him to reject all riders in appropriations bills, including four damaging campaign finance riders, and to insist that clean FY 2016 appropriations legislation is sent to him for his signature. The reform groups include: Campaign Legal Center, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Common Cause, Democracy 21, Demos, […]
In a letter sent today to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, reform groups called on the IRS to end the misuse use of nonprofit groups to launder secret contributions into federal elections. The reform groups included the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, Demand Progress, Democracy 21, League of Women Voters, People For the American Way, […]
Democracy 21 applauds the very important and valuable campaign finance reform policy plan former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued today. The plan contains essential elements to repair our corrupt campaign finance system and to restore the integrity of our elections. On July 23, 2015, Democracy 21 and eleven other reform organizations sent a […]
Some have recently commented that Donald Trump is the best thing that has happened to the campaign finance reform movement in years. I disagree. Donald Trump has made clear he has been a heavy user and beneficiary of the currently broken campaign finance system. During the August 6th Republican debate, Trump correctly described the problems […]
The FEC reports filed by individual-candidate Super PACs confirm that billionaires and millionaires have become the dominant players in financing the 2016 presidential campaigns. The FEC reports also reveal that individual-candidate Super PACs are in the process of replacing candidate committees in the financing of the 2016 presidential campaigns. As of June 30, individual-candidate Super […]
The Huffington Post The Perversion of the American Presidency By: Fred Wertheimer July 28, 2015 Children long have been taught by their parents that anyone in America can grow up to be president. Today that message needs to be revised: anyone can grow up to be president if they are willing to circumvent and break […]
In a letter sent today, reform groups strongly urged members of the Senate Appropriations Committee to oppose a McConnell rider inserted into the Senate Financial Services Appropriations bill. The McConnell rider would seriously undermine longstanding campaign finance provisions that limit spending by parties coordinated with candidates. The groups included the Brennan Center for Justice, Campaign Legal […]
In a letter sent today to Senators, reform groups strongly urged members of the Senate to support AND CO-SPONSOR the Stop Super PAC-Candidate Coordination Act introduced today by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), which would essentially shut down individual-candidate Super PACs. Similar legislation (H.R. 425) has been introduced in the House by Representatives David Price (D-NC) and […]
In a letter sent today to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Democracy 21, joined by the Campaign Legal Center, cited the recent formal appointment of Mike Murphy to head the Rise to Rise Super PAC as further evidence of the need for a Justice Department investigation into the Bush Super PAC scheme. The two groups previously […]
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