“We don’t know what we don’t know”

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 2 Comments

Thomas Nast's famous cartoon depicting the Tammany Ring

The foregoing quote comes from Ellen S. Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, speaking to the New York Times about Super PAC donors. Tuesday did not just give us the primary that sealed the Republican nomination; it was also the day that various super PACs disclosed their funding, sort of. America’s bold experiment in calling money speech has yielded roughly eleventy gajillion dollars for both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, although Romney seems to have netted slightly more. A lot of his donors are whom you’d expect:  a coal company, a lobbyist for Altria, Haley Barbour’s nephew. Others are a little trickier, including a quarter million dollars from a corporation “with a post office box for a headquarters and no known employees.” Thomas Jefferson must be rolling over in his slave grave.

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Gingrich level reduced to amber

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates 6 Comments

*cough* Pussies!

The odds of a Gingrich presidency returned to safe levels last night with Mitt Romney’s decisive* victory in Florida. The former Speaker/Grand Inquisitor of the House has promised to continue his campaign into the summer, “unless Romney drops out sooner,” but that’s like the way Mr. Mxyzptlk threatens you as he’s getting sucked back to his home dimension. Perhaps Newt’s retreat will extend through the spring. Eventually, though, he must return to the mountains of Georgia to slumber and feed.

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Elizabeth Drew on how an election feels fair

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 3 Comments

For a publication staffed entirely by nerds, the New York Review of Books sure is fired up about democracy. Their coverage of Occupy Wall Street is far better than that of any traditional news outlet—by comparison, the Times appears to have closed its office in New York—and their vituperation of Super PACs is only slightly less comprehensive. This weekend, Elizabeth Drew published this consideration of whether the 2012 election can possibly be fair. “Will the presidential election reflect the will of the people?” she asks, presumably rhetorically. She follows with a more important question: “Will it be seen as doing so—and if not, what happens?”

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US democracy enjoys healthy rental market

By Dan Brooks in corporatocracy 4 Comments

Mitt Romney, whose 2010-2011 income came almost entirely from capital gains.

During a flashback in the episode of The Simpsons where Homer and Grandpa enjoy brief success selling a homemade aphrodisiac, child Homer says he hopes to someday be President. “Son,” his father says, “this is the greatest country in the world. They’ve got a whole system to prevent people like you from becoming President.” We are now in the first presidential election year since Citizens United v. FEC, and the richest man ever to run for that office has been goaded into releasing his tax returns. In 2010, Mitt Romney received an adjusted gross income of $26 million—approximately 500 times what I made. He paid a federal income tax rate of 13.9%, around four points lower than what I paid. In Romney’s defense, almost all of his income came from investments and his inheritance, whereas my income came from wage work, which is taxed at a higher rate. In my defense, fuck Mitt Romney and the federal corporatocracy he hopes to captain.

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Gingrich wins SC, moving one step closer to Throne of Destiny

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates 1 Comment

Newton Leroy Gingrich wipes away tears of vengeance.

Today is a particularly hectic day around the Combat! blog offices—it turns out many of the interns have been contracting freelance work when they were supposed to be cleaning the octopus tank—but it’s probably for the best, since it will give us all more time to think about this. Newt Gingrich didn’t just win the South Carolina primary; he exploded the entire GOP nominating contest, leaving America’s registered Republicans to stand numbly as smoldering flakes of Romney drift down from the sky around them. Or he spent five million dollars of casino money to convince America’s third least literate state that he hates the last 30 years, too. We probably won’t know until the convention, which is what makes election season so fun. Please god, please make Newton Leroy Gingrich the 2012 Republican nominee for President. Also please let the interns find my octopus by nightfall.