Sad, but undeniably true.

We now have some of the best legislators that corporate money can buy, and we as voters allowed it to happen.

Remember folks, you don't get the America you want, you get the America you deserve.

Dark money in politics and the honesty of Senator Mark Begich.

Courtesy of TPM:

Republican dark money groups are outspending their Democratic counterparts by an incredible margin, according to data from the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation. 

During this cycle, conservative groups that do not disclose their donors have spent more than $94 million, while liberal dark money groups have spent more than $28 million.

The data this cycle confirms Republican dominance of dark money spending. In the 2012 election cycle, about 80 percent of dark money spending backed Republican candidates.

Of course as we know there has been untold millions spent up here in Alaska in support of Dan Sullivan, hell anybody trying to watch a You Tube video, listen to the radio, or watch television can tell you that. 

And when asked about that Dan Sullivan ran away like somebody was trying to take his lunch money.

Now undoubtedly Mark Begich has received some money from outside groups, and some of those are certainly from shady PACs that don't want to disclose their donor list.

However Begich is not one to shy away from scrutiny as evidenced by the fact that he has voluntarily provided documentation as to how his campaign money is spent.

This from ABC News:  

Senate campaigns aren't required to tell us by Election Day--they submit spending reports to the Federal Election Commission on paper, a seemingly antiquated system that prevents reporters and the public from being able to dig effectively through their latest receipts and expenses. For most campaigns, sortable expense data is only available through June. Weeks or months later, we'll get a fuller picture. 

But Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, apparently out of the goodness of his heart, has been filing his disclosures electronically since October 2013, giving us a window into how Senate campaigns are spending their millions of dollars these days. 

Since Oct. 1, 2013, Begich has spent $7.3 million, a middling total for campaigns. Alaska isn't the most expensive state in which a candidate can run, and it's outside the top 10 this election cycle for candidate spending, although, including outside money, it's the sixth most expensive of all 2014 Senate races, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Can anybody imagine Dan Sullivan being this transparent? Nope me either.

As if we needed another reason to support the only REAL Alaskan running for the Senate in 2014.

The recent Right Wing attempts to undo Roe vs Wade leads back to, no surprise here, the Koch brothers.

Courtesy of Raw Story:

 “There is little doubt that the rash of anti-choice measures that flooded the legislative dockets in state capitols in 2013 was a coordinated effort by anti-choice groups and major right-wing donors lurking anonymously behind the facades of the non-profit “social welfare” organizations unleashed to tear up the political landscape, thanks to the high court’s decision in Citizens United,” Stan wrote. 

“Helping to drive the right-wing offensive in the states and in Congress is a network of deep-pocketed business titans convened by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, principals in Koch Industries, the second-largest privately held corporation in the United States,” she continued. 

While the Kochs and their satellite groups profess to be interested more in business policy and deregulation than social issues, their true agenda is an all-out “war on women,” said RH Reality Check. 

Politico detailed how the Koch network uses the shell company Freedom Partners as a clearinghouse. A bloc of around 200 donors give an average of $100,000 per year to Freedom Partners. 

Freedom Partners awarded more than $236 million in grants to anti-choice groups and other far-right causes since its inception in November of 2011. The group’s outlay is second only to Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, which has awarded more than $300 million to conservative causes and politicians. 

Among the groups who have been on the receiving end of Freedom Partners’ largess include the Center to Protect Patient Rights, a virulently anti-abortion and anti-Obamacare group; the Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee, a right-wing social pressure group; Generation Opportunity, a group that targets “Liberty-loving” young people and Americans for Prosperity, a think-tank and policy group that works closely with the Republican Party on the presidential nominating process.

Keep this in mind the next time you hear how "the majority of the country is against women having access to abortions." No it is NOT the majority of the country, it just a handful of wealthy patriarchal assholes who believe that they have the right to tell women what they can do with their own bodies.

And they are supported by various religious leaders whose very faith is based on keeping women in their place and convincing them to subjugate themselves to men.

Palin adviser, and SarahPAC treasurer, used "dark money" group to fund attack ads against Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown. Color me unsurprised.

Courtesy of The Nation:

Last year, a “mysterious non-profit” called the Government Integrity Fund appeared in the midst of the campaign season and began airing campaign commercials in support of Republican Josh Mandel’s bid to unseat Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH). 

Although the Government Integrity Fund does not disclose its donors, a recently released tax form shows that a group run by Tim Crawford—a Republican known for his work as a close adviser to Sarah Palin, who also serves a a spokesman and treasurer of SarahPAC, Palin’s official campaign committee—provided $627,000 to the pro-Mandel mystery fund. 

Crawford used an entity called “New Models,” itself another undisclosed political fund that raised over $4.4 million last year, and dispensed that money to Republican polling operations, Super PACs and undisclosed attack-ad organizations like the Government Integrity Fund. Crawford is the only board member of New Models, which he used to provide himself with a $265,000 salary. Where did Crawford find the cash for these undisclosed political endeavors? Crawford did not respond to a request for comment, but a tax form from the Business Roundtable, a trade association for large corporations, shows that the group gave Crawford’s New Models $600,000 the previous year. 

The Business Roundtable represents companies including J.P. Morgan Chase, GE, Wal-Mart, Honeywell, MasterCard Worldwide, AT&T, ExxonMobil and General Electric. 

This isn’t the first time Crawford has been connected to a mysterious campaign effort. As the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported, New Models was “behind controversial automated calls to Pennsylvania voters made during the 2008 presidential election. The calls told voters that Barack Obama’s aunt was living in America illegally and that he accepted campaign contributions from his ‘illegal alien aunt.’” 

So Palin's crappy treasurer has a side job does he?

Can't say I'm surprised that it involves shady monetary dealings and underhanded political attacks. After all what would you expect from somebody associated with Sarah Palin?  

According to SarahPAC's recent financial report Crawford was paid $138,000. Since that was for half of the year it is safe to assume that Timmy rakes in a cool $276,000 annually from the paint chip eaters who still throw their hard earned money at Granny Grifter.

The fact that he also pays himself a $265.000 dollar salary from this other group means that he is getting over half a million dollars a year.

And they say crime doesn't pay!

So it seems safe to assume that, like Palin, this "New Models" group is undoubtedly funded by the Heritage Foundation and Koch brothers.

As Alice would say "Curiouser and curiouser."

From Friday night's Real Time, Bill Maher goes after rich assholes for buying influence for GOP.

This from Mediaite:  

Bill Maher ended his show Friday night with a plea to rich liberals to even out the playing field so it’s not just “rich assholes” supporting the GOP pushing the policies they want all over the country. In particular, Maher singled out how one North Carolina businessman has been able to push his agenda through the state legislature, and with just a hint of subtlety, Maher used the segment as a direct appeal to the artist Jay Z, who, as luck would have it, was sitting right next to him.

As muhc as I hate to admit it Maher may have a point.

We would all like to believe that voters cannot be bought, or influenced by loads of money used in advertising to sway our opinions, but the reality before us often shreds that faith in humanity.

Often people only hear the loudest, and most persistent, voice. And the richer you are, the bigger your megaphone.

Private school lobbyists buying state elections all over the country. The attack on public education is in full swing.

Courtesy of Common Dreams: 

A fundamental struggle for democracy is going on behind the scenes in statehouses around the country, as a handful of wealthy individuals and foundations pour money into efforts to privatize the public schools. 

The implications are huge. But the school privatizers, and their lobbyists in the states, have so muddied the waters that the public does not get a clear picture of what is at stake. 

So it was fascinating when investigative reporter Dan Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ripped the veil off a secretive organization and its hidden political activities by publishing a copy of the American Federation for Children's "2012 Election Impact Report." Billing itself as "the nation's voice for educational choice," the American Federation for Children pushes forward students of color as the beneficiaries of its lobbying work, but the politicians they support are not exactly heroes of the civil-rights movement. 

The report, which was clearly meant only for members and donors, outlines how the American Federation of Children pours millions of dollars into state races around the country to back candidates who support school vouchers and other measures that siphon public money private schools. 

AFC and its affiliates "spent more than $7 million in 2012 to elect candidates in states across the country," the report declares. 

"We engage in elections," the group explains, "because the political process is the first step to enacting meaningful education reform." 

In Wisconsin, the state where AFC spent the most money in 2012, the "first step to enacting meaningful educational reform" meant defending Governor Scott Walker in a recall election after his attacks on teacher's unions and his historic $1 billion in cuts to Wisconsin's public schools divided the state. It also meant ensuring Republican control of both houses of the Wisconsin legislature, so that a controversial plan to expand private-school vouchers could go forward around the state. 

Among the victories AFC lists in its report is the defeat of Democratic state senator Jessica King, who won a recall election against a state senator who supported Walker. AFC spent $325,000 to replace King with pro-voucher freshman Senator Rick Gudex, helping to return the state senate to Republican hands. Gudex, who barely won, by a margin of 590 votes, has pledged not to vote for any budget that doesn't expand school vouchers. 

Wisconsin ranked #1 in the AFC report, which tallied its political spending here at a grand total of $2,392,000. 

Dark money for TV and radio ads further obscures the school-choice issue. Often, these are ads about taxes or crime, and have nothing to do with their sponsors' actual agenda. 

Rules requiring disclose for spending on issue ads "aren't worth the paper they're written on," McCabe says, because they aren't enforced. 

"So this group can tell its members it spent all this money to support candidates and influence elections, and turn around and tell the elections board that it wasn't political spending at all." 

That's too bad, because what the American Federation for Children calls education "reform" looks, to a lot of people, like the dismantling of a state's great public school system.

This is part of the great undermining of the public school system that has been implemented by the conservatives and which includes attacks on teacher's unions, advocating home schooling, and of course the for profit schools that would turn our children's education into a capitalistic enterprise where the focus is on the profit margin rather than on the student's success.

Personally I have never as under assault as I do right now.

And the problem is that so many people are simply unaware of the concerted effort to undermine education and turn children into obedient little cogs in a machine that mass produces apathy and unimaginative pod people.

Oh, and they will be future Republican voters as well.  The worst thing for the Republican party is a nation full of intelligent, well educated, voters.

Does not exactly assure the survival of Christianity either by the way. So is it any wonder that many of these private schools are religiously themed?