Right Wing "Propaganda" Thread

[CLW]

Alright my wonderful American friends... help me out here. I was watching Bill Maher today and I heard a term that I am not familiar with. This is the first year I remember hearing it and have NEVER heard it used in the political spectrum in Canada. What is a "SUPERPACK?" Yeah I could google it but I would rather hear a normal response. Cheers!

Very interesting. Thanks for the info. Basically they are just big time lobbyist/special interest groups then.

Think of them as an interest group. Both sides have them but the press and entertainers like Maher are only interested in the ones on the right.

As noted above Super PACs are basically groups that enjoy certain tax advantages b/c they spend $ on political advertising.

Short History

1. Congress in the 1940s (all times are approx b/c I'm too lasy to look it up) BANNED $ donations by Unions and Corporations. (IMHO this is where it all went wrong as Unions; Corporations; People shoudl be able to spend their/its money however it sees fit and has a right to do so under the U.S. Constitution i.e. Free Speech).

2. The Unions (and probably some cors as well but I think it was largely a labor movement issue) tried to work around this act by creating PACs

3. 1970s Congress passes law issuing rules/regs limiting how much can be given to a PAC and again prohibiting Corps/Unions from donating "directly" (again a blatant violation of Free Speech)

4. 2010 U.S. Supreme Court strikes down some of these 1970s rules/regs on Unions AND Corps.

In sum, PACs are a creature created because the Federal Government has limited the Free Speech rights of its citizens. If it weren't for these completely unconstitutional rules/regs people would be able to donate directly to the candidate of his/her choice. Instead we have this F'd up system where each side has a proxy war of PACs and candidates can deny being responsible for the ads. (Obama has former Obama people running "his" PACs and Romney is the same).

Its a COMPLETE AND UTTER joke but one that was 100% preventable if the Government stopped violating people's right to speech.

Take for example how ticked we all get over the frivolousness of lawsuits today. Most politicians are lawyers, most judges were lawyers, politicians make the laws......they want these lawsuits, it is how they get paid. CLW can fact check me here but I think the last statistic I saw was over 65% of attorneys are Democrats. Then they just stack the jury with the bitter and envious that have been trained to hate the 1% and viola you can see where and WHY we are where we are.

I've never really seen any hard studies but I'd be shocked if it wasn't higher than the % you cite. There are a whole host of reasons for this (too many to go on for this thread as it will be derailed more than it already is). Safe to say that the VAST MAJORITY of lawyers are liberals and the few conservatives in the legal profession are either (1) one of the minority of conservative jurists within the system or (2) have given up all hope as the cancer has spread to the point where it is inoperable from within and short of blowing the system up from the outside (i.e. tort reform legislation from State Legislatures/Congress)