Andy Kroll

Reporter

Andy Kroll is Mother Jones' Dark Money reporter. He is based in the DC bureau. His work has also appeared at the Wall Street Journal, the Detroit News, Salon, and TomDispatch.com, where he's an associate editor. He can be reached at akroll (at) motherjones (dot) com. He tweets at @AndrewKroll.

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The New Bipartisan Plan to Drag Dark Money Into the Daylight

—By Andy Kroll

| Fri Dec. 28, 2012 9:31 AM PST

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).

In July, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) did something unexpected. Democrats and Republicans were taking turns on the Senate floor debating the DISCLOSE Act, a bill written by Democrats that would drag anonymous political donors into the daylight. Republicans stood in firm opposition to the bill, leaving it short of the necessary 60 votes and so condemning it to a swift death. The floor debate, then, was academic. When Murkowski took the floor, she nitpicked the version of the DISCLOSE Act before her, but broke with her GOP colleagues by hammering the secret money sloshing around our politics. She later voted no on the bill, but her pledge to battle dark money left Democrats with a shred of hope for future reform efforts.

On Friday, Murkowski joined Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) in offering for new plan to unmask secretive political groups and their dark-money donors. In a Washington Post op-ed, Murkowski and Wyden write, "At minimum, the American people deserve to know before they cast their ballots who is behind massive spending, who is funding people and organizations, and what their agendas are." More than $400 million in dark money was spent during the 2012 elections, mostly by conservative organizations—a fourfold increase from 2008. Leading dark-money groups included Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS, the US Chamber of Commerce, Americans for Prosperity, and Americans for Tax Reform, the anti-tax outfit run by Grover Norquist.

The Murkowski-Wyden plan—you can read a wonky outline of it here (PDF)—would try to force politically-active nonprofits, big business trade groups, labor unions, and shell corporations to reveal the true source of their funds. In spirit, it's not all that different from the DISCLOSE Act of 2012.

Today, if a donor gives $10,000 or a $1 million to Rove's Crossroads GPS, a nonprofit, to spend on political activities, that donor stays secret. Murkowski and Wyden's plan would make Crossroads disclose that donor. To use a real example, a board member for the tea party-affiliated group FreedomWorks reportedly funneled more than $12 million in donations from him and his family through a pair of Tennessee corporations and then to FreedomWorks' super-PAC. The donor's identity was one of the biggest mysteries of the 2012 campaign, and it remained unsolved until the Washington Post reported on Tuesday—six weeks after Election Day—that FreedomWorks board member Richard Stephenson and his family were behind the big donations. Under Murkowski-Wyden, Stephenson's name would have come out right away.

The two senators, in their outline for new disclosure legislation, try to anticipate the landmines on the road to 60 votes. They suggest raising the limit for donor disclosure from more than $200 to more than $500 to focus on larger donors. They also carve out an exemption so that dues-paying members of, say, the NRA or the Sierra Club who aren't giving money for political activities aren't disclosed like donors giving strictly to influence elections are.

Even then, the Murkowski-Wyden plan faces long odds. A leader of the anti-regulation movement when it comes to money in politics happens to be the top Republican in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). McConnell claims such disclosure legislation is merely an attempt to intimidate donors, and he convinced his fellow Republicans to defeat similar legislation in 2010 and 2012. This latest plan may begin with bipartisan cred, a breakthrough of sorts for disclosure supporters, but the road to 60 votes means Republicans must break with McConnell—something no GOPer has been willing to do.

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Fiscal Cliff Deal "Virtually Impossible" by New Year's Deadline

—By Andy Kroll

| Thu Dec. 27, 2012 10:08 AM PST

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Brace yourselves, nation: It looks as if we're headed off the so-called "fiscal cliff."

After House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) failed last week to corral enough Republican votes on a bill to let the Bush tax cuts expire for the wealthiest Americans, the spotlight moved to the Democratic-controlled US Senate. It is now up to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), working with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and President Obama, to forge a deal to avert the slew of tax increases and spending cuts, hitting domestic programs and the defense budget alike, that begin to go into effect on January 1, 2013. And of course any deal passed out of the Senate must also be approved by the House. Yet the prospects of a timely agreement in the Senate look grim, too.

The consensus on the Hill, Politico reports, is that a fiscal cliff deal by New Year's Eve is "virtually impossible":

With the country teetering on this fiscal cliff of deep spending cuts and sharp tax hikes, the philosophical differences, the shortened timetable and the political dynamics appear to be insurmountable hurdles for a bipartisan deal by New Year’s Day.
Hopes of a grand-bargain—to shave trillions of dollars off the deficit by cutting entitlement programs and raising revenue—are shattered. House Republicans already failed to pass their “Plan B” proposal. And now aides and senators say the White House’s smaller, fall-back plan floated last week is a non-starter among Republicans in Senate—much less the House.
On top of that, the Treasury Department announced Wednesday that the nation would hit the debt limit on Dec. 31, and would then have to take “extraordinary measures” to avoid exhausting the government’s borrowing limit in the New Year.
Senate Democrats are considering fallback options to resolve the crisis, but they appear unlikely to push forward if Republicans decide to mount a serious opposition. The White House, a senior administration official said, is in close coordination with Senate Democrats. Late Wednesday, Reid’s office pushed Republicans to pass a bill to extend tax rates for income below $250,000.

The fiscal cliff, to be clear, isn't really a cliff. As Kevin Drum pointed out, it's more of a staircase or a slope. We're in for roughly $400 billion in tax increases and $200 billion in spending cuts, but that pain will be spread out over many months. If Congress were to cut a deal soon after January 1, the fiscal pain would be minimized; let it drag on for months and then the pain really hurts.

How much hurt? Those tax hikes and spending cuts would suck almost 3 percentage points out of the US' gross domestic product in 2013 and nudge the unemployment rate up by a disastrous 3.4 points, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

That's recession territory. And for the moment, that appears to be where we're headed with Congress locked in a stalemate.

After Newtown, Will NRA Still Demand a Ban on Docs Asking Kids about Guns?

—By Andy Kroll

| Thu Dec. 20, 2012 11:10 AM PST

For years, the National Rifle Association, the nation's mighty gun lobby, has pushed legislation that would ban doctors from asking their patients about guns in the home. Just as a pediatrician might ask a young patient about how much he or she exercises or what's going on in school or in his or her social life, that doctor might also ask about a patient's home life and if there are guns in the home. The NRA's "Firearms Owners' Privacy Act" would block that, despite the obvious First Amendment problems such a bill raises. Critics of the NRA-authored ban have dubbed the fight "Docs vs. Glocks."

The killing of 26 people, including 20 first graders, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., by 20-year-old Adam Lanza has reinvigorated the debate about the presence of guns in American life. Who should be allowed to own guns? How should guns be stored? What types should be available to the average consumer? How many guns should one person be able to own? You've heard these question before: They were raised after the Columbine killings in 1999, the Virginia Tech killings in 2007, the Aurora, Colo., movie theater killings in July, and on and on.

Here's another question worth asking: In the wake of the Newtown killings, as advocates and lawmakers search for ways to stop future gun violence, will the NRA keep up its fight to block doctors from asking about guns? The NRA broke its silence after the Newtown killings with a statement saying it was "prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again." The group did not offer specifics, and NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam did not immediately respond to a request for comment. (We'll update this post if he does.)

There is a real health issue here: As Mother Jones' Adam Weinstein points out, research shows that even law-abiding citizens and their families who keep guns in the home are at a greater risk for getting killed by gunshot. And according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, in 2009, one in five deaths among people under the age of 20 was caused by a firearm-related injury.

With the NRA's help, six states—Alabama, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia—have tried to pass the Firearms Owners' Privacy Act. None have succeeded. Florida's GOP Gov. Rick Scott and Republican-controlled legislature have brought the NRA the closest to victory in the Docs vs. Glocks fight.

The NRA launched Docs vs. Glocks in Florida after hearing of an Ocala resident had asked a young patient's mother whether she owned any guns; the mother wouldn't answer, and so the doctor declined to treat her kid. The NRA and its Florida-based super-lobbyist, Marion Hammer, then crafted the Firearms Owners' Privacy Act, allowing doctors to ask about guns in the home only when they deeply believe such questions matter to "the patient's medical care or safety, or the safety of others."

Scott signed the bill in early June 2011, on one of the first days of National Home Safety Month.

The state's pediatricians soon sued to stop the law, which a Miami circuit judge did months later, saying the law violated doctors' First Amendment rights. The state of Florida has appealed the decision.

The NRA also features the Docs vs. Glocks fight in its political candidate questionnaires. A July 2011 NRA questionnaire for Virginia candidates for office includes this question:

The American Academy of Pediatrics encourages its members to ask many intrusive questions of their patients under the ruse of preventing "gun violence." In doing so, doctors—particularly pediatricians—have been questioning patients about the presence of firearms in one's home. Do you believe firearm ownership is your personal matter and doctors should stop questioning patients about firearm ownership?"

Thomas Julin, a South Florida attorney who represented several doctors' associations in fighting the Firearms Owners' Privacy Act, wrote in a July op-ed that the law's real intent was to "censor doctors who might advocate gun control legislation the NRA opposes." But the NRA's politically motivated attack on doctors' free speech rights, Julin writes, misses the benefit of a simple question or two. "Doctors who see children bearing bullet holes on a regular basis," he writes, "can be very powerful advocates."

NRA Darling Sen. Joe Manchin: "Everything Has to Be on the Table" in Gun-Control Debate

—By Andy Kroll

| Mon Dec. 17, 2012 8:29 AM PST

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a gun rights stalwart with an "A" rating from the National Rifle Association, joined the growing chorus of lawmakers and advocates in calling for new gun regulations. On MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Monday, Manchin said "it's time to move beyond rhetoric. We need to sit down and have a common-sense discussion and move in a reasonable way."

He went on to say, "Everything has to be on the table."

Manchin's unexpected statements came a day after President Obama addressed the nation from Newtown, Conn., the site of a gruesome mass killing at an elementary school. The shooter, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, killed 27 people, including 20 children who went to Sandy Hook Elementary. Lanza also killed himself. Obama said during a nationally televised address that "in the coming weeks I'll use whatever power this office holds" in a move "aimed at preventing more tragedies like this."

The list of elected officials calling for a renewed gun control debate, if not new regulations, grows longer by the day in the wake of the Newtown killings. On Friday, New York Michael Bloomberg, the co-chair of Mayor's Against Illegal Guns, said that new legislation is needed to prevent more mass killings like those in Newtown, and Aurora, Colo., and on the campus of Virginia Tech. "Calling for 'meaningful action' is not enough," Bloomberg said in a statement. "We need immediate action." Joining Bloomberg is calling for new gun laws is Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and a slew of Democratic lawmakers in Congress. "If now is not the time to have a serious discussion about gun control and the epidemic of gun violence plaguing our society, I don’t know when is," Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said in a statement.

The NRA has yet to comment on the Newtown killings.

Americans for Prosperity Lures Michigan Right-to-Work Fans With Gas Cards, Free Food

—By Andy Kroll

| Tue Dec. 11, 2012 11:50 AM PST

Many right-to-work protest signs wait for protesters to take them before the march to the state capitol in Lansing, Michigan.

The conservative group Americans for Prosperity is enticing supporters to rally at the Michigan state capitol in support of right-to-work legislation with $25 gas cards and free food and drinks, according to a staffer for the organization's Michigan chapter.

AFP's Michigan chapter also used gas cards and free lunches to lure supporters to a lobby day on December 6, the day GOP Gov. Rick Snyder and Republican lawmakers abruptly unveiled their right-to-work bills. Greg George, a government affairs associate with AFP-Michigan, says no one has taken the group up on its most recent gas card offer, but that the offer remains. "We've offered to gladly give them out," he says. (Because it is a nonprofit organization, Americans for Prosperity, which is partially backed by the Koch brothers, does not publicly disclose its donors.)

Despite what its supporters claim, right-to-work legislation does not prevent so-called "forced unionization." That's because forced unionization is a myth: No worker can be forced to become a full-fledged union member. What right-to-work would do is ban unions from collecting dues from nonunion members for representing them with management. After all, nonunion members can benefit from contracts negotiated by unions. Right-to-work allows those nonmembers to receive union representation without paying for it—unions deride those folks "free-riders." The result of right-to-work laws is that unions see their treasuries diminish and membership take a hit.

Michigan's Republican-controlled legislature fast-tracked three pieces of right-to-work legislation last week that would allow nonunion members in workplaces in the public and private sectors to receive representation without paying any dues. The bills would likely deal a killer blow to the state's unions. (Police and firefighters are exempt from the proposals.) Snyder's public support for the legislation signaled a whiplash-worthy turnaround for the governor—he previously said right-to-work was not a priority, and tried to stand apart from the rest of the union-blasting class of 2010 governors like Wisconsin's Scott Walker and Ohio's John Kasich. Snyder is expected to sign the right-to-work legislation as early as Tuesday.

Just as AFP lured supporters to Lansing, unions bussed in members and supporters to protest the right-to-work bills, according to Chris Fleming, a spokesman for the American Federation for State, County, and Municipal Employees. A We Are Michigan spokesman adds that union allies are paying for their own lunches. Thousands of union members and supporters packed into the Michigan state capitol and the surrounding grounds to demand that Snyder veto the right-to-work bills.

AFP wanted the right-to-work fight. The group played a visible role in supporting other GOP governors pushing anti-union agendas in Wisconsin, Ohio, and elsewhere. Now AFP stands on the cusp of a major win in a cradle of organized labor. AFP-Michigan director Scott Hagerstrom said last week that passing right-to-work in the state would be "the shot heard round the world" in the battle against unions. "A victory over forced unionization in a union stronghold like Michigan," Hagerstrom said, "would be an unprecedented win on par with Wisconsin that would pave the way for right to work in states across our nation."