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.

Are Campaign Ads Coming to PBS?

—By Gavin Aronsen

| Tue Apr. 17, 2012 3:01 AM PDT

Last Thursday, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco struck down a seven-decade-old ban on political ads on noncommercial TV and radio stations. Not surprisingly, the prospect that Elmo and the Dowager Countess now might have to share the airwaves with attack ads prompted a mild freakout.

Former PBS board member and American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Norman Ornstein told Reuters that the decision might "fundamentally change the character of public television and radio." The court's one dissenting judge similarly warned that the ruling could "jeopardize the future of public broadcasting." Craig Aaron, president and chief executive of Free Press, told the Los Angeles Times, "Viewers don't want to see Sesame Street being brought to them by shadowy Super PACs." But such concerns may be premature.

The court's decision (PDF) was in response to a $10,000 Federal Communications Commission fine levied on the Minority Television Project, a San Francisco public TV operator that had aired nonpolitical ads from Chevrolet and State Farm. That move violated an advertising ban dating back to the beginnings of noncommercial broadcasting in the 1940s. While the court upheld the ban on ads for "goods and services by for-profit entities," its two-judge majority found that banning ads that are political or "regarding issues of public importance or interest" violated the First Amendment. (The fine against Minority Television Project still stands.)

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

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This Week in Dark Money

—By Gavin Aronsen

| Fri Apr. 13, 2012 11:33 AM PDT

A quick look at the week that was in the world of political dark money...

Dark money mastermind starts most generically named super-PAC ever: James Bopp, the brains behind the Citizens United case, has created a new super-PAC called the USA Super PAC. It's not his first: Last May, he launched the Republican Super PAC, which hasn't done much since, and he worked on the pro-Rick Santorum super-PAC Leaders for Families before throwing his support behind Mitt Romney.

C is for campaign commercial (and that's good enough for me): On Thursday, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2 to 1 to strike down a ban on political advertisements on public TV and radio. The court ruled that the ban was too broad, violated free speech rights, and that its repeal wouldn't pose a threat to educational programming. Does this mean attack ads during Downton Abbey?

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

10 Big Companies That Pay No Taxes (and Their Favorite Politicians)

—By Gavin Aronsen

| Fri Apr. 13, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Between 2008 and 2011, 26 major American corporations paid no net federal income taxes despite bringing in billions in profits, according to a new report (PDF) from the nonprofit research group Citizens for Tax Justice. CTJ calculates that if the companies had paid the full 35 percent corporate tax rate, they would have put more than $78 billion into government coffers.

Here's a look at the 10 most profitable tax evaders and the politicians their CEOs, employees, and PACs give the most money to.

Verizon Communications
Profits: $19.8 billion Effective tax rate: -3.8%
Top recipients, 2011-2012
President Barack Obama: $51,493
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.): $24,450
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.): $23,700
Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio): $22,500
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.): $15,000

General Electric
Profits: $19.6 billion Effective tax rate: -18.9%
Top recipients, 2011-2012
Mitt Romney: $53,750
President Barack Obama (D): $30,493
Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.): $23,900
Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.): $21,860
Rep. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.): $19,750

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

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.

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:

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