"Perry pushed for a law that lets insurance companies raise homeowners’ rates without having to justify the increase." Back to Basics, --Wednesday, September 8th, 2010.
Spending by interest groups, so-called Political Action Committees and Unions most notably, is up well over 5 times what it was in the 2006 midterms, according to an article in New York Magazine. Spending is up on both sides of the aisle, but these third-party groups are putting most of their money behind Republican candidates by a huge margin, approximately 7 to 1, according to The Washington Post! This was all made possible by last years Supreme Court decision saying that limits on spending were essentially the same as limits on free speech.
I have a problem with this because I don’t think a pharmaceutical corporation should have a stronger voice than a network of cancer survivor groups just because they can spend more on campaigns, but I suppose outside spending isn’t all that different than spending by the candidates themselves. Nothing stops a multimillionaire candidate from using his own funds to vastly outspend opponents on advertising. In a sense this is buying the election, but legally it’s not seen that way.
What is disconcerting is the out and out dishonesty of the campaigns. I am not naive. Politics has always been a dirty game. But in this election it seems that the fact that the backers of those PACs with the patriotic names can remain anonymous has emboldened them. Politifact.com, a non-partisan service that evaluates the claims of political discourse, evaluated 31 claims made in the advertisments of these third party groups in the current campaigns throughout the country. Only 5 were rated “mostly true” and two “true.”
Think about that for a minute. 31 claims were made in the political ads of third party organizations analyzed by Politifact.com. On 16% of those were claims were based substantially on fact, on only 6% were essentially true. All others were significant distortions of the facts or outright lies.