Why RNC Chairman Reince Priebus Is Freaking Out Over Pop Culture’s Hillary Rodham Clinton Obsession

BY ALYSSA ROSENBERG/Think Progress

Who’s afraid of Hillary Clinton? Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, apparently. Now that Hillary Clinton’s become a hot pop culture subject, with USA’s miniseries Political Animals in the rearview mirror, a feature-length biopic, Rodham in the works, Diane Lane starring in an NBC miniseries about the former First Lady and Secretary of State, and CNN working on a documentary about her, Priebus has told NBC and CNN that if they don’t suspend their projects, he will ask his members to agree not to hold debates on the networks or condone debates set up outside the RNC system that appear on NBC and CNN. The Hollywood Reporter explains:

In both letters, Priebus attempts to paint the Clinton projects as little more than lengthy and free campaign ads. In the letter to Greenblatt, he notes that David Cohen, who is an executive vp at Comcast, NBCUniversal’s parent company, has been a major donor to Clinton and other Democrats. “Your company has expressly stated that your choice to air the miniseries in the near future would avoid concerns of running afoul of equal time election laws,” Priebus writes in his letter to Greenblatt. “This suggests a deliberate attempt at influencing American political opinion in favor of a preferred candidate, not to mention a guilty conscience.”

It seems far more likely to me that the decision to order these projects speaks to the networks’ needs for something buzzy–NBC still hasn’t found anything other than The Voice that really works for it, and CNN is undergoing a dramatic renovation at the hands of Jeff Zucker–than it does to any particular affection for the Clintons.

But Priebus’ anxiety is telling. Pop culture riffs on the presidency have a strong bias towards scandal, because that’s what’s sexy. Primary Colors, the first major pop culture take on the Clintons, presented Susan Stanton, its Hillary surrogate, as a bisexual schemer with no particular regard for her own reputation as long as her husband continued to rise. Political Animals was kinder, but it still focused on adultery dramas. Reelz is reopening the Kennedy Assassination file again, because that’s where the ratings are. There’s no particular reason to believe that any of the forthcoming takes on Clinton will be in any way hagiography, and much to suspect that they’ll mostly focus on the conundrum that still seems so overwhelming to so many people: the fact that Clinton was cheated on repeatedly and stayed. But that Priebus is concerned about even portrayals that might not be positive suggests that Clinton’s achieved a particularly Teflon status, where even bad news from her past ends up generating sympathy or respect for her.

And I also wonder if Priebus might have motivations of his own for getting some RNC debates off networks. Given that the Republican Party seems no closer than it was in 2012 to reaching a decisive break between its radical and moderate wings, if I were Priebus, I might want to keep that debate between them as far away from mass audiences as possible. Given how far moderate Republicans like Mitt Romney have had to run to the right during their primary campaigns, one of the things that debates do is generate a vast trove of high-quality clips of things that the eventual nominee will eventually have to try to explain away in a shortened general election season. If I were Priebus, I’d want as few of those debates as possible, and I’d want them to happen further from the public eye so my eventual candidate has less baggage that can eventually be hung around her or his neck.

It’s true that painting the Clintons as the ultimate insiders benefitting from media sympathy, and trying to use the idea of dynastic succession that they avoided during the Bush years is probably one of the better lines of attack the RNC has against Clinton if she decides to run. But going after the mainstream media as biased is a way for Priebus to both throw a bone to the idea that Fox News and other conservative outlets are more balanced than NBC and CNN, while also potentially getting his candidates out of a spotlight that for them, can feel awfully harsh.

Random Friday video:TMNT: Out of the Shadows Just Blaze Trailer

Fox v. Fox On GOP Attempts To Defund Obamacare Through Government Shutdown

REMINGTON SHEPARD/Media Matters For America:

While some Fox News hosts and contributors such as Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin have supported a right-wing Republican plan to defund Obamacare by threatening a government shutdown, other Fox News contributors like Karl Rove and Charles Krauthammer have criticized the idea as unworkable and "nuts."

Republican Senator Mike Lee (UT) threatened to shut down the government in order to stop funding health care reform -- signed into law in 2010 and found to beconstitutional in 2012. He proposed that Republicans refuse to vote for any continuing resolution -- a measure that continues funding the operations of the federal government until a budget and annual appropriations can be passed -- that includes funding for the continued implementation of health care reform.

Other Republicans are critical of this approach, with Senator Richard Burr (NC) calling it "the dumbest idea I've ever heard of." Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman noted in a July 25 New York Times column that even Republican leaders now recognize that confrontations like this threat to shut down the government will "inflict substantial harm on the economy."

Despite this, some Fox News hosts and contributors have rallied in support of the right-wing Republican brinksmanship plan. On the July 23 edition of his radio show, Fox host Sean Hannity hosted Lee andexpressed support for the effort. Two days later on his radio show, Hannity called the issue a "litmus test" for the conservatism of Republicans and threatened to primary any Republican who did not support the effort.

In a July 25 RedState post, Fox News contributor Erick Erickson similarly wrote that Republicans who did not support the defunding effort should be challenged in primary elections:

Why would Republicans keep funding a law that hurts so many people and is so unpopular? Why would they do that?

Republicans in Congress have a choice this fall with the latest continuing resolution. They can choose to not include funding for the implementation of Obamacare. Negotiate everything, but make that their line in the sand. If the Democrats choose to shut down the government over an unpopular law that hurts people, it is their choice. Republicans should not fund Obamacare.

Any Republican who chooses to fund Obamacare should be primaried. The advertisements write themselves. Republicans, by voting to fund Obamacare, are putting people out of work, driving up healthcare costs, and hurting families. Republicans are not listening to voters who hate the law if they fund Obamacare.                                

Fox News contributor Sarah Palin also jumped on the government shutdown bandwagon, arguing on the July 30 edition of Hannity that using a government shutdown as leverage to defund Obamacare was "common sense."

Other Fox News contributors have found the idea of government shutdown over health care reform to be "ludicrous" and "nuts." On the July 30 edition of America's Newsroom, Fox News contributor Jonah Goldberg said that the idea "works fantastically well for fundraising when you want to go and run in 2016 for president" but is "ludicrous" as a winning legislative strategy.

Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer called the idea "really dumb" on the July 26 edition of Special Report, and in his August 1 Washington Post column said it was "nuts," because the effort will invariably fail and hand President Obama a victory:

The other battle is about defunding Obamacare. Led by Sens. Mike Lee and Ted Cruz, the GOP insurgents are threatening to shut down the government on Oct. 1 if the stopgap funding bill contains money for Obamacare.

This is nuts. The president will never sign a bill defunding the singular achievement of his presidency. Especially when he has control of the Senate. Especially when, though a narrow 51 percent majority of Americans disapproves of Obamacare, only 36 percent favors repeal. President Obama so knows he'll win any shutdown showdown that he's practically goading the Republicans into trying.

[...]

This is about tactics. If I thought this would work, I would support it. But I don't fancy suicide. It has a tendency to be fatal.

Similarly, Fox News contributor Karl Rove argues on Hannity July 30 that the effort was problematic because the votes could not be mustered to pass an effort to defund Obamacare and because Republicans would be blamed for the resultant shutdown.

On occasion Fox has argued with itself on obstructionist strategy. During the 2011 debate surrounding theRepublican-manufactured debt ceiling crisis, some Fox News personalities supported the destructive measure, while others recognized that failing to raise the debt ceiling "would indeed be Armageddon."

REPORT: Fox's Month Of Inaccurate Minimum Wage Coverage

CHARLIE RAFKIN/Media Matters For America

Throughout the month of July, a majority of Fox News' segments discussing minimum wage policy pushed the myth that increasing the minimum wage forces businesses to cut jobs. In fact, multiple economic studies confirm that raising the minimum wage has no effect on employment.

Majority Of Fox's July Reports On Minimum Wage Argued Wage Hikes Lead To Job Losses

A Majority Of Fox News' July Coverage Of The Minimum Wage Claimed Wage Hikes Increased Unemployment.  A Media Matters count of Fox News segments covering the minimum wage during the month of July determined that 24 out of 37 segments -- 65 percent -- included the myth that increasing the minimum wage would cause job losses.

Only One Fox News Segment Acknowledged That Minimum Wage Raises Do Not Cause Unemployment. Only one segment, or just under three percent of Fox News' coverage, acknowledged the fact that minimum wage hikes are not correlated with unemployment.

68 Percent Of Fox News' Segments Focused On D.C.'s Effort To Enact A Living Wage. Twenty-five of the 37 segments concerning the minimum wage focused on the D.C. Large Retailer Accountability Act, a pending D.C. City Council bill to enact a living wage of $12.50 per hour for employees at big box retailers with annual incomes of at least $1 billion.  

Of Those Segments, 72 Percent Claimed D.C.'s Living Wage Bill Would Lead To Job Losses. Eighteen of Fox's 25 segments discussing the D.C. Large Retailer Accountability Act claimed that the bill would increase unemployment. 

Economic Studies Conclude Minimum Wage Increases Do Not Raise Unemployment Rates

CEPR Economist: Increasing The Minimum Wage Has "No Discernible Effect On Employment." In a Center for Economy and Policy Research report titled "Why Does the Minimum Wage Have No Discernible Effect on Employment?" senior economist John Schmitt determined that there is "little or no employment response to modest increases in the minimum wage." According to Schmitt, extensive research revealed that raising the minimum requirement has little or no statistically significant effects on employment at all. [Center for Economic and Policy Research, February 2013] 

IRLE Experts: "No Employment Effects Of Minimum Wage Increases." A 2010 Institute for Research on Labor and Employment study determined that minimum wage increases do not lower employment rates. The authors explained:

[O]ur results explain the sometimes conflicting results in the existing minimum wage literature. For the range of minimum wage increases over the past several decades, methodologies using local comparisons provide more reliable estimates by controlling for heterogeneity in employment growth. These estimates suggest no detectable employment losses from the kind of minimum wage increases we have seen in the United States. Our analysis highlights the importance of accounting for such heterogeneity in future work on this topic. [Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, November 2010]  

EPI: More Than 650 Economists Agree That "Modest Increases In The Minimum Wage Have Had Very Little Or No Effect On Employment." More than 650 economists -- including Nobel Laureates and former presidents of the American Economics Association -- signed a statement affirming that increasing the minimum wage would have little or no effect on employment but would improve workers' well-being:

We believe that a modest increase in the minimum wage would improve the well-being of low-wage workers and would not have the adverse effects that critics have claimed. In particular, we share the view the Council of Economic Advisors expressed in the 1999 Economic Report of the President that "the weight of the evidence suggests that modest increases in the minimum wage have had very little or no effect on employment." While controversy about the precise employment effects of the minimum wage continues, research has shown that most of the beneficiaries are adults, most are female, and the vast majority are members of low-income working families. [Economic Policy Institute, 2006]

The D.C. Living Wage Would Help Low-Income Workers Without Threatening Employment

D.C. Workers Require A High Minimum Wage Because Of D.C.'s High Cost Of Living. According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, which uses 2012 data to scale hourly wages to living expenses, the hourly wage that supports one adult in D.C. is $13.68 -- over five dollars higher than the city's current minimum wage. According to MIT, an adult requires a pre-tax annual income of $28,454 to live in D.C., yet a person who works 40 hours for the entire 52 weeks a year at D.C.'s current minimum wage of $8.25 earns only $17,160 annually. [The Living Wage Calculator, accessed 7/30/13]

CLRE: A Living Wage Would Help Low-Income Families. In 2011, the UC Berkley Center for Labor Research and Education reviewed a metro area with a high cost of living and concluded that instituting a living wage at Walmart in that location would help low-income workers: 

Our analysis reveals that establishing a higher minimum wage for large retailers like Walmart would have a significant impact on workers living in poverty or near-poverty. We find that 41.4 percent of the pay increase would go to workers in families with total incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level (200 percent FPL). These poor and low-income workers could expect to earn an additional $1,670 to $6,500 a year in income for each Walmart employee in the family, before taxes. [Center for Labor Research and Education, April 2011]

Economist Mark Brenner: "To Date There Has Been No Evidence Of" Living Wage "Laws On The Books Leading To Systematic Job Losses." In an interview conducted by the Political Economy Research Institute, Brenner argued that living wage laws would not harm unemployment. According to Brenner, economists who argue otherwise rely on "weak" evidence and inaccurate models. [Political Economy Research Institute, accessed 7/30/13]

EPI: "There Have Been Either No Or Only Small Employment Losses As A Result Of Adopting Living Wages." In a comprehensive analysis examining how a living wage affected businesses, the Economic Policy Institute found an agreement among economists that instituting living wages, even in specific sectors, resulted in little to no employment loss:

A frequently expressed concern about living wage ordinances is that the increased cost might decrease employment opportunities for low-skilled workers by causing employers to hire fewer workers or even lay off employees. The employment impact of living wage ordinances is a primary focus of most recent living wage studies. In attempting to answer the question of whether or not living wage ordinances have a significant impact on employment, different researchers have used a variety of approaches, ranging from qualitative interviews with service contractors and affected workers, to detailed before-and-after analysis of impacted firms, to econometric analyses of readily available labor market data. Most of the available studies have concluded that there have been either no or only small employment losses as a result of adopting living wages. [Economic Policy Institute, 2/15/06]

Economists Find Presence Of Walmart Not Tied To Increased Prosperity, May Increase Poverty

Economists: "Each Wal-Mart Worker Replaces Approximately 1.4 Retail Workers." Many of Fox News' segments focused on Walmart's announcement that it would not move forward with plans to build at least three stores in D.C. because D.C.'s proposed living wage bill required big box retailers to pay workers a living wage. But according to a Journal of Urban Economics study by economists David Neumark, Junfu Zhang, and Steven Ciccarella, the presence of Walmart's stores would have increased unemployment in DC:

The employment results indicate that a Wal-Mart store opening reduces county-level retail employment by about 150 workers, implying that each Wal-Mart worker replaces approximately 1.4 retail workers. This represents a 2.7 percent reduction in average retail employment. [Journal of Urban Economics, July 2007] 

Economists Stephan Goetz And Hema Swaminathan: Presence Of Walmart Is Linked To Higher Poverty Rates. Contrary to the assertions by Fox News pundits that the D.C. living wage bill harmed low-income job seekers, a 2006 study published by the Social Science Quarterly found that counties with Walmarts are correlated with higher poverty rates. According to the economists Stephan Goetz and Hema Swaminathan, "counties with more initial (1987) Wal-Mart stores and counties with more additions of stores between 1987 and 1998 experienced greater increases (or smaller decreases) in family-poverty rates during the 1990s economic boom period." [Social Science Quarterly, 5/9/06]

For more information on how media ignore minimum wage facts, click here and here. 

METHODOLOGY: Media Matters searched internal video archives of all Fox News Channel recordings from 7/1/13 to 7/31/13 for the terms "wage" or "wages," and "wal-mart" or "walmart." Only segments that included discussion of minimum wage policy were included, and repeated shows and teases were excluded. Segments predicting a slowdown in future hiring from minimum wage increases were counted as segments describing job losses.

Palin's "Maverick" hypocrisy exposed

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Why Elites Want to Mask the Suffering of Poor Whites

By Chauncey DeVega/Alternet

NBC's recent story on how 80 percent of Americans will be living at or near the poverty level in their lifetimes was accompanied by the above photo of a "poor white family".

The heart of the the AP's report on the (further) economic imperilment of the American people is focused on the rise in "white poverty", and the struggles faced by the "white working class" in the time of the Great Recession.

Images that feature human beings "work" in communicating political and social meaning because of how the viewer "reads" them. As such, there are stated and unstated assumptions which the person who is "seeing" applies to the "object" of their gaze.

For example, the White Gaze views a photo of a young black man wearing a hoodie and whose pants are sagging and sees a person who exists in a state of criminality, and is a social predator.

A photo of a white man wearing a suit and walking down Wall Street in New York will be seen by the White Gaze as representing a "respectable" person and a "hard worker" living the "American Dream."

In reality, the former may be on the way to his 3rd job, has never been in prison or arrested, and takes care of his aged parents and siblings. The latter could be a child-molesting murderer and rapist, who is also embezzling millions of dollars from his clients.

White and male--and Whiteness more generally--views itself as benign and harmless. Black and male--and Blackness more generally--is viewed by White American society as dangerous and pathological. The power of images is how they harness and channel assumptions about how various types of personhood find representation in, and are configured by, a broader system of dominance, subordination, privilege, inclusion, exclusion, and hierarchy.

NBC.com's photo is an example of those processes at work. There we "see" two overweight white women with a young child, and thus make social and political assumptions about gender and class. We see a small home and generalize from that visual about how "poor people" live, and more importantly, "what type of people" they are.

Images also give the viewer permission to empathize or to condemn the subject. Are these "good" people or "bad people?" What is my sense of obligation to them? Does my sense of community extend to people like them?

***

Stereotypes serve as cognitive short-cuts which the viewer, and we as a society, use to categorize and evaluate the relative worth of whole groups of people. The way that images of white, "poor", female, "overweight", "unattractive", bodies are processed by the viewer is a reflection of how we as a society think about race, class, and gender. These concepts exist individually while also having meaning in relation to one another.

Moreover, in America, because of the Calvinist-Horatio Alger-Myth of Individualism and Upward Mobility, claims on poverty necessarily involve moral judgments.

The black single mother is a "welfare queen" who is "lazy" and has "bad morals". The poor white person is a "redneck" or a "hillbilly" with all of the stereotypes and assumptions implicit in such language.

Consequently, poor white people are one of the few groups which can me made fun and mocked in American culture without consequence or public sanction.

White elites and opinion leaders do not want to talk about poor white people because that would expose the defects of capitalism. These same elites also avoid discussing white poverty because it would undermine how they have historically been able to mine white supremacy to mask inter-class conflict and exploitation among whites in the United States.

"Race is how class is lived in America." Consequently, the leaders in the black and brown community care about poverty as a general issue because it disproportionately impacts people of color.

White privilege extends to all white people in America. Black and brown folks have to deal with both the colorline and other types of inequality in American society. Moreover--and I do believe black and brown elites are more correct than not in this choice and instinct--there is a deep belief, one hard taught by American history, that poor and working class whites will consistently choose to serve the interests of rich white people because of the psychic wages that are paid to them by Whiteness. As such, why focus the limited political capital of the black and brown community in a time of crisis on solving a "white" problem?

Poor and working class whites may have much in common with poor and working class people of color. But, their greatest allegiance is doing the work of white racism against their own immediate class interests. From Bacon's Rebellion forward, with some notable deviations, this has been one of the key themes in American history.

However, the new white poor are not the stereotypes drawn from the exploitative TV show Honey Boo Boo.

They are the former middle class and non-college educated whites who worked in the skilled trades or as low-level municipal and public functionaries. Many of them are invisible as they couch surf with friends, or move back in with their aging parents or other relatives. The new white poor lost their homes and are living in motels (if they are lucky). Other members of the new white poor are sleeping in their cars, one of the last possessions that marked them as "middle class", after their IRA's and 401k's are drained, the credit cards maxed out many months ago.

The new white poor are the students in some of my classes who share with me how they are using their student loans to support their parents; thus they must pass their courses or the whole family will be homeless. The new white poor are those college students that universities are having to accommodate with showers, lockers, dorms, and other supports because many of them quite literally have no where to go when the school day is over, and when the academic year has ended.

The white poor are not toothless rural folks sitting around smoking meth and making moonshine as they are depicted in the American popular imagination. They are your neighbors, in the suburbs, rural areas, and our cities, that are right next door, and trying to get by while maintaining their dignity.

The type of white poverty stereotyped by the lede photo on NBC's news item is a caricature that is easy to mock and deride. Those poor white people are an alien Other. "Respectable" white folks (and others) mock them, because poor whites represent a basement below which the white middle class imagines they cannot fall beneath.

It is much harder to minimize and ignore the now poor white folks who are the former members of the middle and working class that shop at Trader Joe's or Target with their SNAP cards and pittance of remaining unemployment monies, praying that no one they know sees them, and then get back into their paid off SUV and drive to a parking lot to sleep for the night with their kids, and who then wake up early the next day to wash up in the McDonald's bathroom.

The mainstream news media will likely not show you a picture of failed white suburban domesticity in the Age of Austerity and the Great Recession. The Fourth Estate are not truth tellers. They support the status quo and the powerful.

As such, a meaningful discussion of white poverty in the Age of Austerity is not an approved topic for the public discourse even while "we the people" are suffering everyday.

Texas cop took fan photos before letting Zimmerman off with warning

By David Edwards/Raw Story
Officials in a Texas town said on Thursday that they planned to question one of their officers after it was discovered that he took what may have been fan photos of George Zimmerman’s driver’s license during a traffic stop.

Earlier this week, the former neighborhood watchmen was stopped for speeding in Forney, and pointed out to the officer that he was the same George Zimmerman that was recently found not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin.

“What a coincidence?” the officer replies in dash cam video that was released on Wednesday.

On Thursday, TMZ pointed out to Forney officials that the unmistakable sound of an iPhone snapping a photo can be heard after the officer walks back to his cruiser to write out the warning ticket. The sound typing on the keyboard could also be heard.

The Forney city manager told KDFW that the officer would be questioned to find out if he took any personal photos and what he might have done with those photos.

Former police officer and attorney Pete Schulte explained to KDFW that taking a photo of Zimmerman’s diver’s license may not be cause for discipline.

“I mean, officers have a right to have a phone with a camera just like anyone else,” Schulte explained. “The question then becomes is what they do with that information, and there’s no evidence that that particular photo went any further than the police department.”

The officer was off duty on Thursday and has not been named publicly. City officials said that questions about the photos were not considered a formal investigation at this time, but the officer could be disciplined if department policies were violated.

Watch this video from KDFW, broadcast Aug. 1, 2013.

Dallas News | myFOXdfw.com

Rep. Rangel: Worse-than-terrorists tea partiers are ‘same white crackers’ who opposed civil rights

By David Ferguson/Raw Story

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) said on Friday that the conservatives who make up the tea party are the “same white crackers” who fought the U.S. civil rights movement. In an interview with David Freedlander at the Daily Beast, the congressman issued a scathing indictment of the far right.

On the Republicans in the House of Representatives who are blocking any and all Democratic attempts to govern, Rangel said, “What is happening is sabotage. Terrorists couldn’t do a better job than the Republicans are doing.”

And he was equally blunt in his assessment of the tea party caucus and its adherents. “It is the same group we faced in the South with those white crackers and the dogs and the police. They didn’t care about how they looked. It was just fierce indifference to human life that caused America to say enough is enough.”

He lamented that those in the tea party are turning on any Republican who does not toe the tea party line. “And now my friend Peter King is on their hit list. Peter King, a Republican, is considered a goddamn communist.”

“It has to do with whether or not in God we trust,” Rangel said with regards to the tea party’s desire to cut all social programs and destroy the social safety net. “I don’t know how much God played a role in the country, but it is everywhere…And I used to be an altar boy so that I can say, if you are talking about Jews and Christians and probably Muslims and Mormons, [there’s] the whole idea that…we are supposed to help the aged and provide health care and give kids a break and do all of these good things.”

“What are we Democrats fighting for?” he asked. “We are not fighting for salvation and going to heaven. But we are fighting for Medicaid, Medicare, health care, education, jobs, helping old folks. And I’ll be damned, besides same-sex marriage, I don’t hear the voice of the church. As a matter of fact, the pope is talking he can’t judge gays. Well, damn it to hell, ask for another message from God. Here we were born. I mean, why is there a silence on old folks and a silence on poverty and a silence on kids?”

Michele Bachmann’s Leadership PAC Spends 145 Times More On Legal Fees Than Campaigns

BY JOSH ISRAEL/Think Progress

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who announced in May that she would not seek re-election, operates a PAC with the stated aim of helping to elect other conservatives nationally. But while her “leadership PAC” spent more than $250,000 in the first half of 2013, just $400 of that went to supporting other political candidates — the lowest percentage of any such committee of its size.

In 2010, Bachmann registered the Many Individual Conservatives Helping Elect Leaders Everywhere political action committee (MICHELE PAC) with the Federal Election Commission. In 2012, the PAC raised more than $1.2 million from supporters. More than $100,000 of that went to conservative Republican candidates for U.S. House and Senate. The Federal Bureau of Investigation isreportedly investigating whether some of the money was also improperly spent to pay the national political director of her unsuccessful 2012 presidential campaign.

But a ThinkProgress analysis of campaign finance data reveals that, so far this year, the PAC has done almost nothing that would qualify as “political action.” Between January 1 and June 30, the committee reported raising nearly $300,000 and has spent more than $250,000. Of that, just 0.16 percent — a $400 contribution to a former staffer running for Mahaska County Supervisor in Oskaloosa, Iowa — went to the PAC’s alleged purpose of “helping elect leaders everywhere.”

Where did the rest of the money go? More than $58,000 went to legal fees — unsurprising given the legal imbroglio, but hardly helpful to her political cause. About $170,000 went to telemarketing, direct mailing, list rental, credit card fees, and other expenses associated with fundraising. The rest went to accounting and other overhead.

While political action committees, including leadership PACs, are mostly free to spend money on whatever the choose, the percentage spent on political activity is unusually low and MICHELEPAC appears to spending virtually nothing on its stated mission. In fact, no other leadership PAC that spent more than $100,000 in the first half of 2013 spent less than 7 percent on political activity and the median level was about 44 percent among those groups.

Campaign finance expert Paul S. Ryan of the Campaign Legal Center frequently warns — when donating to political action committees it is really “donor beware.”

Everything You Need To Know About Detroit’s Fight Between Investors And Retirees

BY ALAN PYKE/Think Progress

Two weeks ago, Detroit filed for bankruptcy protections, saying it is unable to pay back the roughly $18 billion it owes. The bankruptcy faces legal challenges from creditors who say emergency manager Kevyn Orr did not negotiate with them in good faith, and intended to steer the city into bankruptcy court. Emails from the winter involving Orr and state officials seem to support that claim. But if Orr can beat the legal hurdles and have the bankruptcy filing approved by a judge, the city will no longer need the approval of its creditors to repay less than what they are owed.

And then what happens? Here’s everything you need to know about who is owed what and how they might fair if the bankruptcy goes forward:

Who does Detroit owe? Detroit owes money to two broad categories of creditors: secured and unsecured creditors. The first, “secured” creditors, are those whose debt is backed by some kind of legal claim to a physical asset of the city. Detroit’s bond obligations relating to the water and sewer department (DWSD) is the largest example of “secured debt” on the city’s books, with over $5 billion in accumulated borrowing since the early 1990s. The water and sewer bonds are backed by the revenues that the city’s utility company brings in using the pipes built with the borrowed funds. Secured creditors generally get much better deals from bankruptcy proceedings than the organizations that don’t have liens on physical assets connected to the debt. The investment management firm BlackRock says the secured debts will be repaid in full. Indeed, Detroit is continuing to pay its secured debts during bankruptcy.

“Unsecured” creditors, on the other hand, face steep cuts. Detroit’s unsecured creditors include, but are not limited to, the current and former employees of the city – or more precisely, the pension funds that are supposed to pay those workers and their families in retirement. Detroit’s pension obligations are split into two funds, one for police and firefighters and the other for all other city employees. $5.7 billion in health and life insurance benefits for retirees are separate from the pension liabilities and are also unsecured.

The remainder of Detroit’s unsecured debt is owed to investors who bought the city’s debt over the years. Hedge funds have reportedly been buying up large amounts of these unsecured bonds. The bondholders, and the bond insurers who would have to pay out any difference between what Detroit pays and what the bondholders are owed, will have significant incentive to fight any effort to cut their payout. To minimize their own cuts, investors must push to maximize the cuts to pensions and retiree healthcare.

The Detroit Free Press published a list of the 20 largest unsecured creditors in the city’s bankruptcy filing, with the two pension funds in the top two slots – but the numbers from the filing are not necessarily correct.

How far behind is Detroit on funding its pension obligations? Detroit’s pensions are not particularly generous compared with other large cities, and the shortfall owes to a combination of demographics, bad management, andfinancial industry manipulation rather than extravagant promises to workers. The financial crisis also wiped out nearly a billion dollars in pension fund holdings.

But the size of the pension shortfall is in dispute. Before Kevyn Orr was appointed emergency manager, the pensions were well funded. The police and firefighter fund had assets worth 99.9 percent of its liabilities in 2011, and the general retirement fund was 82.8 percent funded. As recently as February, the city was $650 million short on the two accounts. But when Orr commissioned private actuaries to examine the city’s books, that unfunded pension debtjumped to $3.5 billion. Reuters municipal bond market expert Cate Long calls Orr’s calculations “pension voodoo.” Orr used non-traditional actuarial assumptions for his figures, which are supported by some in the profession. But the city’s previous estimates used revenue assumptions of about 8 percent annually, which is in line with the past 25 years of pension fund history and supported by the majority of actuaries.

Yet the actuarial differences alone can’t account for Orr’s figures showing a pension gap five times larger than traditional math shows, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s Monique Morrissey. Morrissey notes it’s impossible to check Orr’s math because the accounting firm he hired hasn’t published the “very rough preliminary guesstimates” used to write the emergency manager’s proposal.

What will determine the fate of the pensions? The actuarial dispute determines the size of the debt to retirees that will be factored into bankruptcy negotiations, but the future of Detroit retiree benefits is largely up to federal bankruptcy judge Steven Rhodes. Rhodes is still determining whether or not the city’s bankruptcy declaration is even valid, but if Orr’s case clears that hurdle the negotiations that follow over who gets paid when will be subject to Rhodes’ approval. As Ian Millhiser detailed last month, there are various legal obstacles to cutting pensions, including the Michigan Constitution’s specific pension protections. The state’s Republican Attorney General has pledged to defend retirees against cuts.

What is Detroit’s emergency manager proposing for pensioners and bondholders? The only clear blueprint so far for what Orr might seek in bankruptcy comes from a June pre-bankruptcy proposal. At the time, critics said the offer appeared designed to fail. When the city’s creditors rejected the deal, that shored up Orr’s case that he had tried to resolve the city’s finances but had no choice but bankruptcy. So there’s reason to think that the June proposal makes a poor guide to what any final resolution might look like. Retirees and bondholders alike had better hope so: The proposal would replace $11.5 billion in total unsecured debts with $2 billion split among the various creditors. For retirees, the plan includes unspecified “modification of benefits” for healthcare and “significant cuts in accrued, vested pension amounts” for all 30,000 active and retired participants in the system. Even taking Orr’s assertions about pension shortfalls at face value, and assuming “significant cuts” means over 50 percent, pension debts would still eat up more than half of that $2 billion proposal. That would leave little for bondholders – and gives investors and bond insurance companies a lot of reason to fight the bankruptcy.

You Can Thank The Koch Brothers For The Big, Dirty Cloud Floating Over Detroit

BY KILEY KROH/Think Progress

On Tuesday, Detroit Bulk Storage confirmed that a large black cloud spotted over the Detroit River last weekend and caught on camera by residents across the border in Windsor, was indeed from the petroleum coke piles they have been storing illegally on behalf of Koch Carbon.

Watch the video, courtesy of the Windsor Star:

The petroleum coke is a high-carbon, high-sulfur byproduct of Canadian tar sands that are shipped from Alberta to Detroit to be refined. The uncovered black pile began building up along the river this year and drew outrage from residents of Detroit and nearby Windsor, Ontario as it grew to over three stories high and a block long.

The pet-coke was produced by Marathon Refinery but is owned by Koch Carbon which is controlled by Charles and David Koch — billionaire industrialists and major backers of a host of ultra-conservative efforts, including several aimed atobstructing action on climate change and impeding progress on clean energy.

According to WXYZ-Detroit, “Detroit Bulk Storage has been receiving shipments of the oil by-product and storing them near the Detroit River but a recent investigation by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality says the company broke the law by not getting a permit first.”

The company requested a permit to store the product at a public hearing on Wednesday.

Shortly after the pile appeared, Detroit residents began raising concerns about the potential impacts the growing mountain of tar sands byproduct might be having on their quality of life. According to the Detroit Free Press, “State Department of Environmental Quality regulators and Detroit city officials appeared to be caught flat-footed by the piles, and scrambled this spring to assess whether they harmed nearby air and water quality only after media reports and complaints from residents and local lawmakers.”

Although the DEQ has said the pet-coke “has low toxicity as it sits there in a pile,” citizens and local elected officials have raised serious concerns about the dust invading their air and water supplies and demanded that the long-term effects of the substance be studied.

Detroit resident Serene Arena told the Free Press that thick, black dust began appearing in her apartment this spring. Tests confirmed that the dust contained petroleum coke and “includes the metal vanadium, which is believed to cause cancer in high concentrations and prolonged exposures.”

Last month, protesters blocked the entrance to the dock where the pet-coke was being dumped. Detroiter Andre Glen, who lives in an apartment building nearby, told CBS Detroit that “he and his neighbors have been having respiratory problems due to thick black dust in the air.”

Congressman Gary Peters, whose district includes the waterfront where the pet-coke has been building up, told the Guardian earlier this year, “This is dirtier than the dirtiest fuel.”

In a statement released Tuesday, Peters expressed his outrage at the latest incident and demanded a federal study into the impacts of the product on public health and the environment. “We’ve been told that the pet coke dust issue is being contained, but here is firsthand evidence to the contrary. I am concerned and alarmed about repeated reports of pet coke blowing off the piles and into homes and businesses.”

Last year, the Marathon Refinery underwent a $2 billion expansion to allow for increased processing of Canadian tar sands. And as production expands, the mountain of pet-coke will continue to grow.

Not only does petroleum coke pose a serious risk to nearby air and water supplies, but the product can also be used as a cheaper — and even dirtier — alternative to coal. Since most power plants in the U.S. and Canada won’t burn pet-coke due to the high level of greenhouse gas emissions, the companies often ship the waste product to countries with looser emissions restrictions, such as China and India.

In June, the New York Times reported that a Canadian power plant, owned by Nova Scotia Power, had begun burning the pet-coke from Detroit “because it is cheaper than natural gas.”

The dangers of petroleum coke — both as a waste product gathering in communities and as an extremely dirty energy source — will only be compounded as increasing amounts of Canadian tar sands are brought into the U.S. to be refined. If, for example, the Obama administration approves the controversial Keystone XL pipeline and facilitates the transport of more tar sands into the country, it will exponentially increase the amount of pet-coke building up around the refinineries — leaving cities like Detroit wondering what to do with the mess it leaves behind.