Progressive journalist Rogers Cadenhead looks into Jane Hamsher’s PAC filings and notes that it’s been very, very good to her (and Glenn Greenwald)…
Accountability Now collected $113,695 in donations during 2009, as it reported to the FEC, and spent $169,992 that year on nine consultants. Six of those people managed the committee: The PAC paid Hamsher $24,000, another $24,000 to PAC cofounder Glenn Greenwald of Salon.Com, $65,710 to two executive directors and $38,047 to two management consultants.
The PAC also paid $4,000 to Firedoglake for “rent,” according to its FEC filings. This expenditure is difficult to understand. Hamsher has operated her web site out of post office boxes at UPS Stores in Los Angeles and Falls Church, Va., and the Accountability Now web site states that “we have purposely avoided hiring a large staff or incurring the type of unnecessary expenses typically incurred by PACs (including even office rentals) in order to make our donors’ contributions last as long as possible.”
Out of the $234,920 raised by FDL Action PAC in 2009, $44,192 was paid to Firedoglake and other business entities affiliated with Hamsher, according to FEC filings. The PAC paid $16,411 to Firedoglake for “shared general administrative expenses,” $14,111 to the site for “list purchase,” $9,920 to CommonSense Media for “online advertising” and $3,750 to KMP Research for “strategic consulting.”
So out of $113K one PAC raised, a total of $151K was spent on salaries and consulting…133% of collections as overhead.
The other PAC paid 19% to Hamsher and related entities.
Damn, when I was trying to launch VictoryPAC, if I’d realized I could have paid myself like that, instead of spending money, I would have kept it going!
Look I don’t often agree with Hamsher politically (but sometimes do). But what I’m unhappy about more than anything is the political class and the platinum hog trough it’s made of politics.
Does Hamsher want to change that, or just get a seat at the banquet?
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In other news, Hank Johnson, who was once endorsed by Winds of Change (in fact, the only politician ever endorsed by WoC), seems to think that Island float on the water’s surface, and that Guam will capsize if too many people go there.
That being said, he is extremely lucky in the timing of this snafu, and can save face if he claims it was an April Fool’s joke.
However, even after this, he is STILL better than Cynthia McKinney, by a long shot.
I too popped in to mention Hank. It is, however funnier than da-googles AF joke. FWIW, I thought he seemed sane then too.
Then (WOC):http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/008840.html
Now(AOS):http://ace.mu.nu/archives/300087.php
Cheers,
A.L. talked me into giving money to a Democrat – a Democrat that didn’t even have a gun pointed at my head – and this is what I got. A guy who thinks Guam is going to capsize, and that space missions are going to knock the moon out of orbit.
Still, I guess he’s a bargain compared to Obama.
Just an FYI–Johnson has Hep C, and the (experimental) meds he is taking are apparently really taking a toll. He’s not my favorite, and he’s obviously gone deep of late, but cut him some slack. He’s pretty sick.
It does raise the question of SanFran Nan’s priorities. Is she so hard up for votes supporting her agenda that she won’t force him to take a leave of absence? He really doesn’t belong in Congress right now. Let him go home and rest, and hopefully heal.
No, damn it, I want what William F. Buckley wanted: The first 400 names in the phone book, plus another 100 to make senators with. The law of averages would supply the revolution, and it couldn’t possibly be worse.
That’s not an excuse. If he’s that sick, he should step down and let his constituents elect someone healthy enough to do the job. If he insists on hanging on ala Ted Kennedy until they carry him out feet first then he’s responsible for everything he says and does and should be criticized accordingly for it.
I think big donors, like the small number of big donors that contribute so much to the parties at a high level, get much more value for their money, especially if they hang together with the same financial, ethnic and value interests. They can supervise the politicians, and see their interests are dealt with with the utmost compliant sensitivity. They can fund movements, media, magazines and think-tanks, to direct from behind the scenes the creation of bills that politicians will never read, and indeed that Hank Johnson would not be capable of reading or of comprehending. And they rake in rewards observable to them, massively, as with the big bailouts: destroy the finances of the nation, get emergency government aid and enrich yourself more than ever; it’s nice work if you can get it.
Small donors who can’t supervise or control how their money is spent, and who are not making out like bandits on government “stimulus” funding etcetera, are being played for suckers.
Hank Johnson’s mentality is not necessarily all that “impaired”. What it is, is the alternative to Cynthia McKinney, once you set your population, and thus your voters, and thus in time, in a democracy, your rulers. He’s Idiocracy at work.
What follows from that is, as in any organization where “minorities” must be promoted, “break through glass ceilings” etc., is that under “the great one,” there is an unappreciated White guy, or a bunch of them, or nowadays a bunch of bright Asians, who are doing all the work.
Those unappreciated toilers are in effect suckers – unless they have very good friends. By “very good friends” I refer to the capacity of big donors and important people to fund movements etcetera..
From the point of view of significant donors, that can make un-astute politicians and the populations that will inevitably elect them a feature, not a bug.
I forgot to link to the smoking gun that proves that Republican small donors at least are being played for suckers by insiders who despise them: (link).
This is why the people that the Republican Party should represent are being destroyed. Because in a country where everything is increasingly politicized on “rob Peter to pay Paul” lines as diversity increases, they have no elites to fight for them, only exploiters to rob and mock them.
I distinctly said that even after this, he is STILL better than Cynthia McKinney.
An affable dunce is harmless compared to a violent and projection-immersed witch.
Of course, if these are our choices, it is hard to say that America deserves to be more prosperous than Zimbabwe.
I’ll bet real money that his predecessor, Cynthia McKinney, is equally ignorant.
Plus, she is violent and evil. At least this guy is polite and peaceful.
Anti-incumbent party.
I’m curious – doesn’t it bug anybody that Hamsher is using the PAC as a piggy bank? And that this violently anti-Establishment activist is using all the tactics and ethics that Michael Steele does, writ larger?
Marc
Marc,
Of course it bugs me. One thing it doesn’t do, however, is surprise me. Perhaps the lack of comments from others shows that they share my view on that latter point.
Boy, it sure does. I would much rather they used that money for their stated purpose, which is flooding democratic primaries with progressive barrel-fish.
I don’t know Jane Hamsher, Firedoglake, or any of the others mentioned here from Adam.
Best case scenario: the money is really well spent because the consultants and PAC employees are brilliant and effective at furthering the stated goals of the PACs. If so, I guess that’s o.k.
Worst case scenario: the money is really poorely spent because all those consultants and PAC employees are really focused on raising more funds to continue their salaries and fees in perpetuity instead of furthering the cause of the PACs.
Intermediate bad: the consultant and staff positions are infrastructure to support a much larger fundraising effort, i.e something to get the overhead/money raised ratio back to someting like 5%, but over a number of years only enough money is raised to pay the overhead–and the goals of the PACs are not advanced.
It’s hard to tell what the case is here from looking at the raw numbers. I suppose this is a struggle faced by all fundraising organizations.