Secret G.O.P. Records Reveal Corporate Donors Paying for Access to Governors
Secret G.O.P. Records Reveal Corporate Donors Paying for Access to Governors
By JONATHAN WEISMANSEPT. 24, 2014
WASHINGTON — In politics, it is sometimes better to be lucky than good. Republicans and Democrats, and groups sympathetic to both, spend millions on sophisticated technology to gain an advantage.
They do it to exploit vulnerabilities and to make their own information secure. But sometimes a simple coding mistake can lay bare documents and data that were supposed to be concealed from the prying eyes of the public.
Such an error by the Republican Governors Association recently resulted in the disclosure of exactly the kind of information that political committees given tax-exempt status normally keep secret, namely their corporate donors and the size of their checks. That set off something of an online search war between the association and a Washington watchdog group that spilled other documents, Democratic and Republican, into the open.
The documents, many of which the Republican officials have since removed from their website, showed that an A-to-Z of America’s most prominent companies, from Aetna to Walmart, had poured millions of dollars into the campaigns of Republican governors since 2008. One document listed 17 corporate “members” of the governors association’s secretive 501(c)(4), the Republican Governors Public Policy Committee, which is allowed to shield its supporters from the public.
“This is a classic example of how corporations are trying to use secret money, hidden from the American people, to buy influence, and how the governors association is selling it,” said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a nonpartisan group that advocates more transparency and controls over political money.
The trove of documents, accessed by watchdogs at the Democratically aligned Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, sheds light on the secretive world of 501(c)(4) political groups, just as the battle over their future intensifies. Unlike the Republican Governors Association, the tax-exempt Republican Governors Public Policy Committee is not required to disclose anything, even as donors hit the links, rub shoulders and trade policy talk with governors and their top staff members.
more...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/us/republicans-corporate-donors-governors.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0
= new reply since forum marked as read
Isn't that the truth? 
since New Jersey's Chris "Governor Soprano" Christie is in charge of the RGA! Of course, he's probably as naive about this as he was about Bridge(t)-Gate!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024395877
rocktivity
See? I can quote chapter and verse as well as a fundie can.
Years ago, I defended abortion clinics in NOLA. Poppy Bush's Gulf War started on a Friday night. I just knew the anti's, er, I mean "pro-lifers" would be all rah-rah pro-war the next morning. So I hit them with "Blessed are the peacemakers." 
WTF??? Don't you think - if YOU were informed you were going to be nominated by the President of the United States to be CHIEF JUSTICE of the Supreme Court of the United States - isn't that one of the first things YOU would do? Even just in the secrecy of your own bathroom or while you were dressing in the morning or undressing for bed at night? Just start practicing the MOST publicly demonstrable perk of BEING the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States? Wouldn't you be giving yourself a moment of incredible levity, wouldn't you be tempted to start having a little fun with it, "are you ready to take the Oath of Office, Mr./Madam President-Elect? Okay - please repeat - "I - Brad Pitt - do solemnly swear, that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States..." Or WHATEVER name you wanted to plug in there, just for fun? "I, Bugs Bunny, do solemnly swear..." Hell, I'd be practicing with EVERYBODY's name I felt like using! "I, Rachel Maddow, do solemnly swear..." or "I, Catniss Everdeen, do solemnly swear..." or "I, Ina Garten, do solemnly swear..." or "I, Al Gore, do solemnly swear..." Heck, I'd be playing with that all day long if I'd just been informed that this was coming! I'd have that oath of office tattooed into my brain. And I'd probably STILL bring a 3x5 card with me, just to make sure I didn't fuck it up when it came time to swear in the next PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES forcryingoutloud!!! I mean, wouldn't YOU be playing with that all day, too?
I'm a retired broadcast journalist. So as such, I would still want to protect the soundbite for my colleagues and certainly for the historical record.
And I guess for this dingdong we've got in there now, it just wasn't all that important. I lost whatever respect I might still have had for him that very morning, January 20th, 2009.
No excuse! There is simply NO EXCUSE for a firmly-installed (and by then, experienced) Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to botch the Presidential Oath of Office. It's not as though this came up at the last minute and caught him unprepared. It's not as though this was somehow news to him that this would be one of his duties in that job. It's not as though he didn't have some TWO MONTHS of advance notice (from the Wednesday immediately following the Presidential Election on the first Tuesday in November to the morning of the Inauguration itself, on January 20th of the following year) to get the script down and rehearsed and memorized. It's a single sentence forcryingoutloud!
http://www.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_text_of_the_oath_of_office_of_the_President_of_the_United_States
STUPID JERK. (And we certainly have further proof of that considering a few of the majority rulings he's been part of, since then...) What a disgrace!!!!
I crack my self up sometimes. I could be a lightbulb. I could be a lightbulb!
I could illuminate the truth!
There are five lights. Five of them.
is a real eye-opener. The $ 100,000 entry fee, the exclusive access, the members only policy workshops, but this one excerpt seems almost comical:
During the weekend of the RGA Annual Gala, RGA hosts an exclusive Gubernatorial Dinner in
Washington, D.C. Cabinet members will receive two (2) tickets to this intimate gathering with the
Republican Governors and special Republican VIP guests. Last year’s event was held at the Willard
Inter-Continental Hotel and featured Ambassador John Bolton, Governor Rick Perry, and Governor
Sonny Perdue. This year’s dinner will be held on Saturday, February 23, 2008 at the Willard.
Bolton, Perry & Perdue, all on the same headline. I can only imagine the quality of the policy discussion at that event! I think Perry is the one on the right in this picture.
