Gavin Aronsen

Reporter

Gavin is a Mother Jones reporter in the DC bureau.

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Gavin is an Iowa native, and covered the 2008 first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses for the Ames Tribune. He has also contributed to the Agence France-Presse, Daily Beast, Iowa Independent, Manhattan Media, and Village Voice.

This Week in Dark Money

—By Gavin Aronsen

| Fri Apr. 6, 2012 12:24 PM PDT

For the first installment of a new weekly feature, here's a quick look at the week that was in the world of political dark money:

Dudes dominate super-PAC giving: No surprise here: Super-PAC contributions, like certain magazine award nominations, are dominated by men. The Houston Chronicle reported that women account for just 14 percent of super-PAC donors, citing it as an example of the "link between the underrepresentation of women in the political money chase and the underrepresentation of women in U.S. elected office."

Colbert wins award for dark-money mockery: On Wednesday's Colbert Report, Stephen announced that his show had won a Peabody award for it satirization of super-PACs. To poke fun at the runaway campaign spending following the Citizens United ruling, the Colbert Report founded its own super-PAC, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, which ran bizarro political ads in early primary states.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Romney hires GOP guru: As MoJo's Andy Kroll reported, Ed Gillespie, the man who created the powerhouse American Crossroads super-PAC with Karl Rove, has hopped aboard Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. The move calls into question the supposed ban on coordination between super-PACs and candidates' campaign operations.

"Take the Money and Run for Office": Last week's episode of This American Life explored the world of campaign finance. Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) and former Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) discussed the campaign reform bill they championed, which the Supreme Court ultimately ruled unconstitutional. NPR's Planet Money blog published a companion piece charting the delicious ways politicians woo megadonors.

Congressional fundraisers: NPR Appetite for seduction: Congressional fundraisers, by meal NPR

Romney's radioactive supporter: Texas billionaire Harold Simmons, who has pumped at least $700,000 into the pro-Romney Restore Our Future super-PAC, is pressuring the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to allow him to dump radioactive materials including depleted uranium into his giant West Texas landfill. The "King of Superfund Sites" is hoping for Republican victories in November, having invested $16 million in the 2012 elections, including $12 million in American Crossroads.

Small banks launch super-PAC: Friends of Traditional Banking, a new super-PAC representing the interests of "traditional banks," says it plans to raise money through small contributions. "Everyone knows that traditional banks didn't cause the economic crisis, but that didn't stop Congress from heaping massive new regulations on them and their customers," the group, which like most banks opposes Dodd-Frank's "massive new regulations," said in a mission statement.

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Feds Raid Oaksterdam University

—By Gavin Aronsen

| Mon Apr. 2, 2012 12:15 PM PDT

Higher education: Oaksterdam

This morning, agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency, US Marshals Service, and Internal Revenue Service served a warrant on Oaksterdam University, a trade school in Oakland, California, for medical marijuana growers. Local pot activist Richard Lee, the founder of "America's first cannabis college," was reportedly detained briefly at his home as the feds began to confiscate documents and pot from the school and a dispensary affiliated with him.

The raid is the latest setback for local "hempreneurs" who'd planned to make Oakland into a mecca for above-ground pot cultivation and commerce. Last year, after the city council voted to approve four industrial-scale grow operations projected to net up to $7.7 million in yearly tax revenue, the Justice Department warned the city attorney that they would be considered "illegal, large-scale pot growing operations, with Oakland planning to get a cut of the illicit profits." The city council gave in, voting 7-1 to put the plans on hold. (For more on the city's pot-induced dreams, check out Josh Harkinson's profile of the guys behind the would-be grower superstore Weedmart.)

The Oaksterdam raid isn't a surprise considering the Obama administration's about-face on medical marijuana. The president campaigned on the promise that he'd stop federal raids on medical marijuana operations that were in compliance with state laws, a vow that Attorney General Eric Holder repeated after the election. But then the Obama administration raided more than 100 dispensaries in its first three years and is now poised to outpace the Bush administration's crackdown record.

The precise cause of the Oaksterdam raid is not immediately clear. Also unclear is whether any charges against Lee would extend beyond medical marijuana production to drug selling or tax issues. (Back taxes are dogging Oakland's Harborside Health Center, the West Coast's largest dispensary.) Yet targeting someone as high profile as Lee sends a strong signal that the feds don't think California's medical marijuana laws shield the state's growers.

"Medicine is not a crime! DEA, go away!" protesters chanted outside Oaksterdam as they passed around a "protest doobie" earlier today. Later, city Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan told reporters that law enforcement should focus its resources on violent crime. "We have not had crime or violence associated with our dispensaries, and that's because they've been tightly regulated," she said. At least one protester was reportedly arrested after a clash with police, and riot police are now on the scene.

Occupy Oakland livestreamer @OaktownPirate has been reporting from Oaksterdam with the citizen journalism outfit Team Oaktown Live:

Live streaming by Ustream

My Tussle With Breitbart, the Genius of Agitprop

—By Gavin Aronsen

| Fri Mar. 2, 2012 4:00 AM PST

Andrew Breitbart

I'm hardly the person to properly eulogize Andrew Breitbart, the right-wing provocateur who died unexpectedly yesterday at the age of 43. My only contact with him was brief, but revealing. Like so many others who found themselves in Breitbart's crosshairs, my interaction with him was through Twitter, where he hounded me to admit that the media had applied a double standard in its coverage of the tea party and the budding Occupy protest movement I'd been following in Oakland last fall. Insisting I was willfully ignoring the ugly reality of Oakland's tent camp, Breitbart sneered, "#OccupyOakland has so much promise beyond the violence, threats, misogyny & racism!"

I didn't take the bait, and our exchange turned into a light-hearted back-and-forth in which he declined my invitation to play soccer in San Francisco. "More of a baseball and football guy!" he tweeted back. "Moving. Fast. Or. Even. Slow. Not. My. Strong. Suit."

Offsides: Breitbart demurs to a invitation to a friendly soccer match. Offsides: Breitbart turns down an invitation to a friendly soccer match.Our brief correspondence angered at least one Occupier, who demanded to know why I had given Breitbart the time of day, or at least hadn't tried to savage him. Her reaction was indicative of Breitbart's simple genius, upon which his shock-jock journalism shop successfully, relentlessly trolls its political foes, who then unwittingly play into its hands. My first story on Occupy Oakland touched on this: By taking easy jabs at the left, Breitbart and his co-conspirators elicit hysterical reactions that reinforce whatever perceived hypocrisy they're assaulting.

Such a tactic isn't particularly novel, but it was the extent to which Breitbart flaunted boundaries—hijacking former Rep. Anthony Weiner's resignation press conference, screaming at Occupy CPAC protesters to "stop raping people!" (see video below)—that defied the tediousness of a Hannity or an O'Reilly. His outbursts were so outrageous that he often seemed unhinged. But he acted with purpose, reckless though it could be, and he was surprisingly effective. I wasn't the only one to suspect that the early reports of his death were another ploy until a coroner's report confirmed them.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

The "People" Behind the Super-PAC Explosion

No, not that kind of people. The Citizens United-approved corporate kind.

—By Gavin Aronsen and Dave Gilson

| Tue Feb. 7, 2012 4:00 AM PST

Since last January, super-PACs have raised nearly $93 million in preparation for the 2012 election. Of that, more than 35 percent was donated by corporations, unions, and nonprofits—or, as we've come to know them in the post-Citizens United era, people. Though non-people people have not dominated super-PAC giving (for now), their strong showing in the recent round of financial disclosures lends credence to campaign finance reformers' concerns that super-PACs enable cash-flush organizations to buy outsized influence over elections and candidates. The average corporate or union super-PAC donation was more than $62,000; in contrast, the average individual donation was around $23,500.

Of the $22.4 million collectively raised by the biggest 20 corporate and union super-PAC donors, 37 percent was from labor groups, which contributed to both liberal super-PACs and their own super-PACs. The rest was largely corporate donations to conservative super-PACs and groups supporting (but officially unconnected to) Republican presidential candidates. See the next page for a list of the biggest human donors to super-PACs—some of whose companies also appear on the list below.

Top 20 "People"* Giving to PACs

*As defined by Citizens United

1. Contran Corporation: A Dallas-based holding company owned by Harold Simmons. Owns Waste Control Specialists, which operates radioactive and hazardous waste disposal sites.
Donations: $3,000,000
Recipients: American Crossroads (Karl Rove's super-PAC), Make Us Great Again (pro-Perry super-PAC)

[Read the full article]

Koch Brothers Meet Again to Prep for "Mother of All Wars"

—By Gavin Aronsen

| Fri Feb. 3, 2012 4:00 PM PST

Last week, the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers held their latest get-together with wealthy conservative political donors. At these meetings, held twice a year under a veil of secrecy, Republican all-stars discuss election strategy and vet potential presidential candidates like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Last September, Mother Jones obtained exclusive audio recordings from a Koch seminar held outside Vail, Colorado, where Charles Koch had declared that the 2012 election would be "the mother of all wars" and thanked dozens of million-dollar donors who'd pledged to the cause.

According to a Huffington Post source, 250 to 300 guests attended the most recent event, which was held in Palm Springs, California. They included Citadel CEO Ken Griffin and casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who along with his wife has given a staggering $10 million to a pro-Newt Gingrich super-PAC. Guests reportedly pledged a total of $40 million to the effort to oust Obama, with Charles and David Koch promising an additional $60 million. But it wasn't all fun and games, the source said, as guests complained that recent meetings had focused more on "alpha male" anti-Obama chest-pounding than the strategy sessions for which they'd been known.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]