The Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal has a pretty good article from May 11, 2012 detailing Andrew M. Cuomo's SuperPAC group, the Committee To Save New York.
CSNY failed to meet a tax deadline back in August of 2011 and didn't file until May of this year.
Some of the details we are seeing about CSNY's donor list, including the overseas gambling consortium that gave $2.4 million to Cuomo's SuperPAC as well as the building trade unions that gave CSNY $500,000, were filed in CSNY's overdue income-and-expense records.
We still don't know who else donated to CSNY and both the SuperPAC and Governor Cuomo himself refuse to release the list.
We do know that CSNY took in $17.4 million in 2011 and spent over $10 million on pro-Cuomo TV and radio ads.
The SuperPAC paid a total of "$9.7 million to ASGK Public Strategies, a public relations firm based in Chicago that was founded by David Axelrod and purchased in-state ads."
Axelrod left ASGK Public Strategies when he went to go work for the Obama campaign.
By law, CSNY is not supposed to coordinate with the Cuomo campaign or the Cuomo administration on these ads.
But of course with all of these corporate Democratic hacks hired by CSNY, the Cuomo administration doesn't have to coordinate with CSNY or ASGK Public Strategies on the ads.
The boys and girls at the Committee To Save New York and ASGK Public Strategies know exactly what kinds of ads to craft (i.e., anti-union, pro-Cuomo) and know just how to get them out to a wide audience to promote their business-friendly colleague in the governor's mansion.
In the latest poll, Governor Cuomo's approval rating stood at 71%, the highest of his term and the highest any governor has enjoyed since Governor Pataki in the days after 9/11.
This is modern politics and modern business in America for you.
Total coordination between business and political interests that manages to stay within the letter of the law but still works as a terrific propaganda ploy to advance both the career interests of the politicians and the business interests of the moneyed class.
It never ceases to amaze (and truth be told,disgust) me to what extent to which the American public has become willing co-conspirators in their own evisceration and disembowelment by fetishizing the corporatist plutocrats and kleptocracy whch have been allowed virtually unfettered access to our very souls.It's gotten to the point where I'm actively considering renouncing my "birthright" of American citizenship in favor of ? I'm not even sure, but I'm damned embarrassed about us at this point.
ReplyDeleteBut of course with all of these corporate Democratic hacks hired by CSNY, the Cuomo administration doesn't have to coordinate with CSNY or ASGK Public Strategies on the ads.
ReplyDeleteThe boys and girls at the Committee To Save New York and ASGK Public Strategies know exactly what kinds of ads to craft (i.e., anti-union, pro-Cuomo) and know just how to get them out to a wide audience to promote their business-friendly colleague in the governor's mansion.
As Noam Chomsky called it, Manufacturing Dissent.