The Arizona audit fought tooth and nail in court to hide it's funding and lost. Turns out Overstock ex-CEO contributed $3.25 million.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2021/07/29/thes...
It is also bizarre that the GOP would choose a no-reputation firm without any prior experience in elections to administer the process.
Not really. Nobody with any experience would touch the job and risk their reputation. The GOP had to go with what they could get.
While it certainly remains to be seen, my (conspiracy?) theory is that a percentage of the payment to Cyber Ninjas will make it's way back to the GOP in the form of campaign contributions.
The (apparently) recent drift of the executive into selective enforcement has been most worrisome.
Perhaps 'twas ever thus, and there is just more information about this passive tyranny in circulation now.
* donors are not anonymous but pacs aren't required to reveal them until the quarter after their donation, often after the end of the campaign. Even then a donor can create an anonymous llc and funnel the money through it to hide their identity.
* "Super PACs" are meant to be issue based. But your "issue" can simply be "elect candidate X".
* Super PACs can't coordinate with candidates. Unless they do it through the media. And SPAC staff can and do routinely meet with candidates to... Not coordinate. The SPAC to elect Mitt Romney was controlled by his family lawyer for instance. They mett regularly to... Not coordinate.
This is the system Citizens United and a few other cases give us.
I'm far from an expert. Maybe I've listen to too many conspiracy theories? I'd be happy to be corrected. But right now it seems pretty easy to anonymously drive a campaign and spend as much money as you like doing it. Ironically not even the candidate you support NEEDS to know who you are. Maybe Congress can find ways to make some of this work in practice without a major change to the 1st? I don't know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee#Sup...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/01/mitt-romney-su...
Why?
Politically targeted violence in America is now a reality and police and prosecutors look the other way depending on the politics of their masters.
https://www.npr.org/2021/07/01/1004062322/the-supreme-court-...
So did Ruth Bader Ginsburg:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-ginsburg-and-the-value-...
The Proud Boys and 3%ers and Oath Keepers that try to remain anonymous are following the KKK playbook.
Elect Biden and the street violence would end. Reelect Trump and it would intensify.
Biden was declared the winner. Big business and labour ordered the "sometimes destructive" protestors to stand down. And they, for the most part, did exactly that.
>The nation was braced for chaos. Liberal groups had vowed to take to the streets, planning hundreds of protests across the country. Right-wing militias were girding for battle. In a poll before Election Day, 75% of Americans voiced concern about violence.
>There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain–inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy.