{"id":7300,"date":"2012-03-04T00:01:06","date_gmt":"2012-03-04T08:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=7300"},"modified":"2012-03-04T00:01:06","modified_gmt":"2012-03-04T08:01:06","slug":"who-are-the-super-pac-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/03\/04\/who-are-the-super-pac-men\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Are The Super PAC-Men?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since five right-wing activist ideologues ignored the Constitution in Citizens United<\/em>, deciding that corporations have more rights than people, and that money supersedes speech, federal elections have become dominated by Super PACs.  In my research I found an excellent article that describes the ten largest super PAC donors.  Here is number one.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"4superpac\"The coming election cycle will likely be the most expensive in history. Thanks to Citizens United and other recent court decisions, individuals, corporations and unions can make unlimited donations to so-called super PACs that support a candidate. The money is flowing in<\/a><\/font>. So, exactly who is donating, and what do they want?<\/font><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s our guide to the top 10 super PAC contributors through Jan. 31, the latest date for which donors have been required to disclose. Unless otherwise noted, all estimates of net worth are from Forbes. (See our PAC Tracker for an interactive breakdown of all the money going to super PACs and others<\/a><\/font>.)<\/font><\/p>\n

Harold Simmons<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

Amount donated: <\/font><\/em><\/span>$11.2 million (Contran, a company owned by Simmons, has donated $3 million.)<\/font><\/p>\n

To whom<\/font><\/em><\/span>: $10 million to American Crossroads, the Republican super PAC affiliated with Karl Rove; $1 million to Winning Our Future, the super PAC supporting Gingrich; $100,000 to Restoring Prosperity Fund, the super PAC supporting Rick Perry; and $100,000 to Restore Our Future, the super PAC supporting Mitt Romney<\/font><\/p>\n

Net worth:<\/font><\/em><\/span> $9.3 billion<\/font><\/p>\n

Residence: <\/font><\/em><\/span>Dallas<\/font><\/p>\n

How he made his fortune:<\/font><\/em><\/span> Buying and selling companies.<\/font><\/p>\n

Background: <\/font><\/em><\/span>Dubbed \u201cDallas\u2019 most evil genius\u201d<\/a><\/font> by D Magazine, Simmons made waves in the Longhorn State a decade ago when his company, Waste Control Specialists, won permission to build a $500 million, low-level radioactive waste disposal site in West Texas. At the time, Simmons was Gov. Rick Perry’s second-largest donor<\/a><\/font>, having given $100,000 to Perry\u2019s campaign 10 days after Perry signed legislation allowing WCS to accept low-level radioactive waste from outside Texas. Much of the waste WCS was cleaning up came from another Simmons company that had repeatedly been cited for environmental violations.<\/a><\/font> A Simmons spokesman<\/a><\/font> said at the time that concerns about the project were exaggerated.<\/font><\/p>\n

On a personal note, Simmons has been sued by two of his daughters. In 1997, the daughters alleged that he had used trusts<\/a><\/font> set up for them for his own purposes. They also claimed that Simmons had pressured them to make hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the funds. Two other daughters sided with Simmons, whom The New York Times called a \u201ccorporate version of King Lear.\u201d<\/a><\/font> The legal battle ended a year later when Simmons agreed to give his daughters $50 million<\/a><\/font> each if they would relinquish claims to the rest of his fortune. Simmons denied all wrongdoing.<\/a><\/font>.. [emphasis original<\/em><\/span>]<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Truth-out<\/a>><\/p>\n

I strongly recommend that you click through to the original article to read about the other nine.<\/font><\/p>\n

You won\u2019t find an Obama donor until you get to number seven and he\u2019s the only one on the list.  The Super PAC-Men are overwhelmingly Republican.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since five right-wing activist ideologues ignored the Constitution in Citizens United, deciding that corporations have more rights than people, and that money supersedes speech, federal elections have become dominated by Super PACs.  In my research I found an excellent article that describes the ten largest super PAC donors.  Here is number one. The coming election […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7300\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}