Ever Wonder What Motivates People To Contribute To Politicians-- Take Banksters And Nuclear Dump Owners For Example

"[C]ontributions from parties with an interest in legislation are really nothing but bribes. Sure, it's legal for the most part. Sure, everyone in Washington does it. Sure it's the way the system works. It's one of Washington's dirty little secrets-- but it's bribery just the same..."- Jack Abramoff, Capitol Punishment

I bet there aren't many DWT readers who flip between us and American Banker-- and that includes me. But someone sent me a story they ran this week that I thought I should share: Bankers For SuperPac for 'Surgical' Strike At Industry's Enemies. That set off alarm bells. couldn't any remotely non-corrupt politician be defined as the enemy of the banksters?

Frustrated by a lack of political power and fed up with blindly donating to politicians who consistently vote against the industry's interests, a handful of leaders are determined to shake things up.

They have formed the industry's first SuperPAC-- dubbed Friends of Traditional Banking-- that is designed to target the industry's enemies and support its friends in Congress.

"It comes back to the old philosophy of walking softly and carrying a big stick," says Howard Headlee, the president and chief executive officer of the Utah Bankers Association. "But we've got no big stick. And we should. We have the capacity to have one, we just aren't organized."

Think of it as an Emily's List for bankers and their allies.

"Congress isn't afraid of bankers," adds Roger Beverage, the president and CEO of the Oklahoma Bankers Association. "They don't think we'll do anything to kick them out of office. We are trying to change that perception."

Unlike traditional banking PACs, which target hundreds of House and Senate races, the SuperPAC instead is focusing on making a big difference in just a handful of close elections.

SuperPACs are the latest campaign finance innovation, made possible by two 2010 court decisions. They are officially known as "independent-expenditure only committees" because they are not allowed to coordinate their activities with candidates. SuperPACs are attractive because there are no limits on contributions or expenditures.

With a regular political action committee, like the American Bankers Association's BankPAC, an individual may donate no more than $5,000 a year. Then the PAC may contribute up to $10,000 to any one candidate in an election cycle-- $5,000 for the primary and another $5,000 for the general election.

But Friends of Traditional Banking can direct as much money as it can raise to certain races without such restrictions. Matt Packard, the SuperPAC's chairman and president and CEO of $670 million-asset Central Bank in Provo, Utah, views the SuperPAC as a complement to BankPAC.

"BankPAC is much broader and covers lots of different candidates. This is much more surgical," Packard says. "If someone says I am going to give your opponent $5,000 or $10,000, you might say, 'Yea, okay.' But if you say the bankers are going to put in $100,000 or $500,000 or $1 million into your opponent's campaign, that starts to draw some attention.

In case you're wondering where this is going, Packard himself only contributes to far right candidates like Jason Chaffetz and Willard. Ditto for co-organizers Howard Headlee (Chaffetz, Willard, McCain) and Roger Beverage (Blunt, Boren, Inhofe, Lucas, Sullivan, Fallin-- although he unsuccessfully tried bribing Elizabeth Warren and Barney Frank, probably the genesis of his anger). Although as you can see from the Tim Holden video above, not all corrupt congressmen serving the interests of teh Big Banks are Republicans. Blue Dogs, like Holden, are just as bad.

The banksters want their way and they don't want anyone questioning their motivations or casting doubt on their integrity. But their greed and avarice crashed the entire economy and destroyed the lives and dreams of millions of Americans. And not one bankster went to prison for it. In China, scores of them would have been rounded up and shot... which perhaps would have made future banksters more reticent about shenanigans the jeopardize the entire society. But instead they're forming a SuperPAC. I might mention that the Finance Sector is already the single biggest force for bribery in Washington. This cycle alone they have so far spent $207,196,396, 31.8% for Democrats (mostly conservatives, of course) and 52.2% for Republicans. Since 1989 the sector has poured over a billion dollars into bribing Members of Congress. In the case of the House, they spent $671,713,451, most of it ($370,956,409) on Republicans. Any regular DWT reader should easily be able to name the 3 most heavily bribed current House Members: Republican Speaker John Boehner ($6,391,518), Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor ($6,054,515) and Republican Chairman of the Financial Services Committee Spencer Bachus ($5,563,334). One of America's biggest problems is that the banksters have too much influence over the politicians, not that they don't have enough.

Of course, it isn't only the bankster scumbags who are destroying America in the name of their own demented selfishness and greed. Yesterday Bloomberg ran an exposé on the Republican Party's biggest bribe giver, Texas far right billionaire Harold Simmons. And, as they point out, his motivations are clear.

Harold Simmons built a West Texas dump for radioactive waste that is bigger than 1,000 football fields and he can’t fill it.

To turn it into a profitable enterprise, the Texas billionaire hired lobbyists to urge the Obama administration to expand the types of nuclear waste, including depleted uranium, the dump can accept and award his company disposal contracts. If the Nuclear Regulatory Commission changes the rule, it could open access to a market worth billions. The deadline for a decision is in 2014.

Simmons now is spending money in a new way that could improve his business prospects: He’s invested $15.9 million this election cycle in various groups to help elect Republicans, who advocate easing regulations on the nuclear industry.

The largest chunk of Simmons’s campaign cash-- $12 million-- has gone to American Crossroads, a so-called super political action committee that takes unlimited donations and has a stated mission of defeating President Barack Obama. He has given at least $700,000 to Restore Our Future, a super-PAC backing Republican front-runner Mitt Romney, whose call for a fast-tracked permitting process for new nuclear plants could benefit Simmons’s Waste Control Specialists LLC.

“Whatever federal switch has to be thrown to get uranium into the hole, believe me, it will be thrown; that’s how Harold Simmons works,” said Glenn Lewis, a former Texas environmental employee who retired in protest to Simmons’s influence in the state permitting process for his dump.

If it were up to me I'd dump Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Kennedy and Alito and their families in the middle of Simmons' dump and make them live there.