Photograph by Tim Boyle/Bloomberg

A taxi leaves the Hyatt Regency Chicago hotel.

Updated 3:20 p.m. EST

Hotel and restaurant union workers plan to protest President Barack Obama’s pick of billionaire Hyatt heiress Penny Pritzker to lead the U.S. Department of Commerce.

“Hyatt has singled itself out as the worst hotel employer in the United States, leading the industry in outsourcing practices that destroy good jobs and hurt housekeepers,” UNITE HERE said today in a statement. The labor group has about 250,000 members.

For years, working conditions have prompted labor strikes and boycotts of Hyatt Hotel Corp., based in Chicago — also Obama’s home before he was elected president in 2008.

UNITE is a member of the umbrella labor organization AFL-CIO, which has documented labor problems at the hotel chain in years past.  AFL-CIO spokesman  Jeff Hauser declined to comment on UNITE’s protest of Pritzker when reached this afternoon.

Hotel workers affiliated with UNITE plan to gather today from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. Chicago time at the Hyatt McCormick Place. Organizers say they expect about 1,000 protesters. The New York Daily News first reported plans for the rally earlier today.

“Under Pritzker’s direction, Hyatt has led the hotel industry in a race to the bottom by aggressively subcontracting out career hotel jobs to minimum wage temps,” Cathy Youngblood, a Hyatt housekeeper and advocate for electing  a hotel worker to Hyatt’s board of directors, said in UNITE’s statement today. “This is not the model that will lead our country to a bright economic future.”

The rally comes as Senate confirmation hearings are scheduled to begin this week. Top Republicans told Bloomberg News they plan to ask tough questions of the billionaire heiress based on her disclosure of income from a trust in the Bahamas. Obama derided his 2012 Republican challenger Mitt Romney for having offshore accounts.

“It isn’t just about her or the offshore stuff, it’s about the fact that the president made a big deal out of Romney’s offshore accounts,” Senator Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said in an interview with Bloomberg’s Laura Litvan.

Original post is Hotel Union Protests Obama Commerce Nominee by Political Capital.

Photograph by Greg Johnston

Cayman Islands

Social welfare nonprofits, which can keep their donors secret, are a lot like Russian nesting dolls: Open one, and you’ll find a smaller version inside.

That’s what courts in California discovered last year when they tried to figure out who paid for TV ads attacking Gov. Jerry Brown’s tax increase plan. The courts forced an out-of-state nonprofit to reveal its donors only to find out that the ad money came from … another out-of-state nonprofit. That’s where the trail ended.

Prompted by a revelation last week that the Internal Revenue Service improperly targeted Republican-leaning nonprofit applicants, Congress is plunging  into the thicket of tax rules governing those entities. Hearings continue next week.

Campaign-finance watchdogs such as the Sunlight Foundation, Democracy 21, Common Cause and the Campaign Legal Center are imploring lawmakers to look broadly at whether politically active nonprofits are misuing their tax-exempt status. A Bloomberg story today highlights two groups — one Democratic and one Republican — that appear to be gaming the system by buying campaign-style ads and doing most of their work in election years.

There’s yet another way social welfare nonprofits participate in politics: They move dark money, Cayman Islands style. Sometimes a nonprofit gives money to a political committee that can more freely spend on politics, in effect keeping the real donors hidden. Bill Allison, editorial director of the Washington-based Sunlight Foundation, has called that phenomenon a “campaign-finance haven.”

Those tactics can bump up against stricter state campaign-finance laws, as was the case in California with the Americans for Responsible Leadership.

Two days before the November 2012 election, a California Supreme Court judge ordered the nonprofit based in Phoenix to reveal who gave it the $11 million that it in turn contributed to a business group opposing Brown’s California tax initiative.

Americans for Responsible Leadership reported that it received its money from the Center to Protect Patient Rights — another nonprofit with secret donors.

An October 2012 Bloomberg News investigation of the Center to Protect Patient Rights, also based in Phoenix, revealed that it raised $62 million for the 2010 elections and parceled out most of its money to other nonprofits.

The center’s donors remain a secret.

Original post is Nonprofits: Cayman Islands of Political Money by Political Capital.

Photograph by Ross D. Franklin/AP Photo

A Tea Party Express rally prior to the arrival of former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in Phoenix.

The Internal Revenue Service had questions. Lots of questions.

The U.S. tax agency has acknowledged targeting anti-tax groups with “Tea Party” or “patriot” in their names for extra scrutiny — an admission that has Congress asking questions of its own. It’s unclear whether the IRS actions were just inept, or malicious, Bloomberg’s Richard Rubin writes this morning.

IRS surveys sent last year to Tea Party groups across the country included queries aimed at discerning how election-focused the groups planned to be, according to a Bloomberg News review of about a dozen surveys. By law, political activities cannot be the “primary” purpose of a nonprofit.

Yet the IRS also had questions that, to Ohio Tea Party leader Tom Zawistowski,  felt ”a lot like opposition research.” Here’s a look at some of the agency’s lines of inquiry:

Who do you know?

IRS employees wanted to learn more about who was training some of the newly formed Tea Party groups. They asked the Georgia Tea Party about its relationship with Americans for Prosperity, a nonprofit formed more than a decade ago by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch.

“Explain your relationship,” the IRS said in a Jan. 26, 2012, letter. And give us copies of any contracts with and training materials provided by Americans for Prosperity.

A Jan. 26, 2012, letter to the Hawaii Tea Party probed that group’s relationship with the Arlington-based Leadership Institute, which trains Tea Party activists, and with Dylan Nonaka, a Hawaii Republican activist.

Let’s talk about your family

That same letter to the Hawaii group asked about the group’s board members, officers, key employees and family members who work with other groups or might be interested in running for office.

A Feb. 8, 2012, IRS letter to the San Fernando Valley Patriots in California seeks resumes for past and present directors, officers and key employees. The agency also requested information about family and business relationships for each of those people.

Give us paper

Zawistowski and other Tea Party leaders said they were stunned by the amount of paperwork the IRS sought. Most of the surveys reviewed by Bloomberg included a request for hard copies of the groups’ web sites, including pages only members could access, and printouts of social media sites such as Facebook.

The IRS also wanted copies of all handouts and fliers produced by the groups. In some cases, Tea Party groups were asked to compile a dossier of all media coverage and contacts.

About your money …

“Provide copies of any agreements you have with others for provision of goods or services, sharing of facilities or other cooperative agreements, or anything else,” the IRS told the Waco Tea Party in Texas in a Feb. 1, 2012, letter.

Toby Marie Walker, president of the Waco group, said the request made her nervous because the same letter included a warning that all responses to the IRS would be made public. She said she worried that vendors aiding the Tea Party would face retaliation.

The San Fernando Valley group was asked to provide the IRS “details regarding all members’ fees and benefits” in addition to fundraising and expenditure information.

And, sorry this took so long

In a Jan. 9, 2012, letter to the Richmond Tea Party, the IRS thanked the group for its “thorough responses” some 14 months earlier. “Unfortunately,” the IRS wrote, “we now have some lapse of time.”

Now they needed more info.

Original post is IRS to Tea Party Groups: Tell Us Everything by Political Capital.

Photograph by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Staff members sit behind a chart of guns during a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill on January 30, 2013 in Washington, DC.

The National Rifle Association today released a plan calling for more armed personnel in schools — and pitching itself as a school safety trainer.

The gun-rights lobby, which claims five million members, is spending $1 million on what it calls the National School Shield, accordingt to former Arkansas Rep. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican paid consultant to the NRA and director of its schools project.

In the days after a gunman killed 20 schoolchildren and six educators at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre said schools should increase security measures, including arming teachers and hiring more school officers, while opposing federal legislation such as expanded background checks for gun-buyers and limits on certain weapons and large-capacity ammunition magazines.

At today’s press conference in Washington, Hutchinson reiterated that sentiment.

Among the eight recommendations in a 225-page report Hutchinson delivered to the NRA: The group should serve as the nation’s premier advocate and trainer for school safety while the federal government should focus on doling out money to school districts that need it to improve safety.

“The NRA has the nationally recognized expertise to develop and implement the stringent training courses” recommended by Hutchinson’s team, the report says. Grants to help pay for new school officers and security measures such as  heavier doors and metal detectors could be administered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the report suggests. It doesn’t recommend a specific dollar amount.

The NRA released a statement after the press conference saying its officials “need time to digest the full report” yet is confident that Hutchinson and his team’s recommendations “will go a long way to making America’s schools safer.”

Laura Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington legislative office, called the NRA plan “radical.”

She called on Congress to “reject any proposal that militarizes our schools.”

Original post is NRA Training Your School Guards? by Political Capital.

Photograph by Mark Wilson/Getty Images

President Barack Obama participates in a naturalization ceremony in the East Room of the White House on March 25, 2013 in Washington DC.

President Barack Obama will headline two San Francisco Bay-Area fundraisers next week for the Democratic National Committee, which is trying to dig itself out of a $22 million hole.

Obama will make his DNC pitches on April 4; the day before, he’ll participate in two San Francisco fundraisers for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

The April 4 festivities begin with a 30-person brunch at the Atherton  home of Liz Simons and Mark Heising, followed by a lunch for 200 at the nearby home of Marcia and John Goldman, according to DNC invitations.

Heising is managing director of Medley Partners, a private equity firm based in San Francisco. He sits on the board of the Environmental Defense Fund. Obama named Goldman, a board member of the San Francisco Symphony and its former president, to the Advisory Committee on the Arts for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Brunch costs $32,400 and includes a photograph with the president, and lunch is $1,000 per plate (more for a photo).

It could be a $1 million day for the DNC, which needs the cash influx. In its March 20 report to the Federal Election Commission, it reported almost $22 million in debts and obligations and about $4 million cash on hand as of the end of February.

The parties are experiencing a bit of reversal of fortune these days.

The Republican National Committee’s money woes while former Maryland Lt. Go.v Michael Steele was its chairman were well-chronicled. Last month, the RNC had zero debt and $7.5 million in the bank.

Original post is DNC in Money Pit, Obama Heading West: Gold on That Bay by Political Capital.

Photograph by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus at the National Press Club on March 18, 2013 in Washington.

The Republican National Committee is jealous of super-political action committees.

That bit of envy is tucked away on page 64 of the RNC’s 97-page “autopsy” of how to right itself after failing to win the White House and a Senate majority last fall. An introduction to the campaign finance section of the RNC report says that fundraising restrictions have put state and national political parties “well on their way to the intensive care unit.”

At the same time, outside groups such as super-PACs and nonprofit groups “use unlimited, and often unreported, amounts of the same money federal candidates and national parties are now prohibited from spending or raising,” the report, released today, says.

“The result is an illogical system where candidates and their parties no longer have the loudest voices in campaigns or even the ability to determine the issues debated in campaigns. Outside groups now play an expanded role affecting federal races and, in some ways, overshadow state parties in primary and general elections.”

Thanks to a series of Supreme Court decisions and rule changes in 2010, outside groups can raise unlimited amounts of money from individuals, corporations and unions and spend the money with few restrictions. No such luck for the Republican National Committee or and Democratic National Committee: Individuals are limited to giving $32,400 per year to the RNC or DNC, and corporations and unions can’t give directly to the parties at all.

Those restrictions help explain why super-PACs and nonprofits spent $890 million on last year’s federal elections — about four times as much as the parties, according to the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics.

The RNC doesn’t mind that the courts “restored the First Amendment rights” to the outside groups; it just wants similar access for itself. Today’s report recommends that elected officials, among other things, advocate for increasing the individual giving limits and ease restrictions on how the parties spend at the state and local level.

Without those changes, the report says, the parties won’t be able to compete with outside groups. The report tracks with what Steven Law, proprietor of several powerful outside groups, observed last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference: “There are no kingmakers in the parties in the way that there used to be.”

Original post is RNC Suffers Super-PAC Envy by Political Capital.

Photograph by Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images

National Rifle Association (NRA) CEO Wayne LaPierre speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, on March 15, 2013.

Wayne LaPierre, chief executive officer of the National Rifle Association, drew enthusiastic applause at the Conservative Political Action Conference today when he took the stage after playing news clips of political pundits calling him “crazy.”

The longtime gun-rights lobbyist reiterated NRA stances to a friendly crowd, saying that “the real goal” of universal background check legislation moving through Congress is to develop a registry of gun owners that the government can make public and use to impose taxes.

LaPierre also said the NRA’s push for armed officers in all schools is being denounced by “powerful elites who will always have their own private security.”

“In their distorted view of the world , they’re smarter than we are,” he said. “They’re special. If we dare disagree, they’ll scorn us, they’ll demonize us and they’ll try to shut us up.”

He added: “We will not be silenced,” a line that moved audience members to their feet.

Original post is NRA’s LaPierre: ‘Will Not Be Silenced’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo

Sen. Tim Scott speaks at the 40th annual Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md, on March 14, 2013.

Steven Law, who leads several outside groups that help finance Republican candidates, argued today at the Conservative Political Action Conference that political parties are no longer the force they once were.

Speaking at a panel about who should pick candidates, Law said party leaders were once powerful enough to usher a chosen person to office. No longer, he said. Because of campaign-finance laws that limit contributions, he said, “there are no kingmakers in the parties in the way that there used to be.”

Enter, outside groups.

Super political action committees have more funding freedom than the parties — they can accept unlimited sums from individuals, unions and corporations and spend that money on ads attacking and helping candidates of their choice.

Law just so happens to have several such groups.

His latest, the Conservative Victory Project, will spend money in Republican primaries. Law and fellow strategist Karl Rove said they will back the most conservative candidates who can win general elections.

These outside groups “can’t pick a candidate, but it’s OK to support a candidate,” Law said.

But some leaders of the anti-tax Tea Party movement and of socially conservative groups such as Brent Bozell’s For America don’t want Law and Rove involved in primaries at all.

Bozell today said that he is sending a letter to major contributors to another Rove entity, American Crossroads, warning them not to give him more money.

“Groups like Crossroads squandered hundreds of millions of dollars in what were arguably the most inept campaign advertising efforts ever,” Bozell says in the letter.

Law said during the CPAC panel that various Republican groups should work together to find and promote quality candidates.

“We have got to pull together to stop the most serious threat to liberty that probably anyone has seen in our lifetime,” he said, referring to President Barack Obama’s second-term agenda.

One questioner at the panel epitomized the mixed feelings Republicans have about the Conservative Victory Project, saying he’d withhold judgment until he sees what kinds of candidates it supports.

“I’m either 100 percent for you or 100 percent against you,” the questioner said. “I can’t decide.”

Original post is Law at CPAC: Party Kingmaking Gone by Political Capital.

Photograph by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Students are viewed through a target at a class taught by King 33 Training at a shooting range on Feb. 24, 2013 in Wallingford, Connecticut.

Twitter is all atwitter over a social media campaign on gun-control legislation that’s being promoted by President Barack Obama’s new policy group.

In the past week, Twitter users have sent some 36,000 messages with the hashtag #wedemandavote, according to social media tracker Topsy — many of them directed to the official accounts of members of Congress.

Do the tweets demonstrate grassroots energy on gun control — or “astroturfing?”

Texas Rep. Steve Stockman, a Republican, suggested in a press release that Obama’s group is “using the same scam techniques that sell ‘male enhancement pills’” He said in the release that two-thirds of the #wedemandavote Twitter messages his office had received were from “computer-generated spambots.”

One way to detect a spambot is to look at the Twitter user’s profile and tweeting history. For example, @jimbormiller recently sent Stockman a message saying:

.@stevestockmanus I’m 1 of the 92 percent of Americans who
support universal background checks. #WeDemandAVote

— Jim Miller (@jimbormiller) February 25,
2013

That particular Twitter user has no followers and a history of tweets that reads like a list of infomercials. Here’s one: “OMG I just made $150 USD yesterday thanks to this” and includes a suspicious link.

Some pro-gun Twitter users have spent the afternoon warning members of Congress that the #wedemandavote hashtag shows “astroturfing” — that is, a phony effort to show grass-roots support for something.

Yet a review of the tagged tweets shows that many appear to have come from legitimate users.

Rep. Alan Lowenthal, a California Democrat, took the tag seriously enough to tell his Twitter followers:

To those who tweeted with #WeDemandAVote: I’m a proud cosponsor of @repmccarthyny‘s H.R. 137, Fix Gun Checks Act 2013 beta.congress.gov/bill/113th-con…

— Rep. Alan Lowenthal (@RepLowenthal) February 25, 2013

The tag is being promoted by gun-control groups, Democrats, unions and Obama’s Twitter account, which has more than 27 million followers and is now run by Obama’s re-election campaign-turned-policy group, Organizing for Action.

On Feb. 22, the @BarackObama account tweeted:

Newsflash for Congress: Universal
background checks for gun sales should not be controversial. #WeDemandAVote, twitter.com/BarackObama/st…

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama)
February
22, 2013

A spokeswoman for Organizing for Action could not immediately be reached.

The #wedemandavote tag sounds a bit like Obama’s State of the Union riff on guns: “Gabby Giffords deserves a vote. The families of Newtown deserve a vote. The families of Aurora deserve a vote.”

On Friday, Organizing for Action held a “National Day of Action” and began an online advertising campaign to press Congress to pass Obama’s proposals on gun control.

Original post is Obama’s Gun-Control Campaign, #wedemandavote: Astroturfing? by Political Capital.

The San Diego-based maker of communications microchips revised its policy on disclosing political spending to settle a lawsuit,  Bloomberg’s Phil Milford reports. The company voluntarily itemized the money it gave trade groups and other tax-exempt organizations, and posted a list of the donations on its website.

In January, New York Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli brought a suit on behalf of the state’s public employee retirement fund to determine whether Qualcomm’s contributions were in the best interest of shareholders.

Companies typically aren’t required to disclose donations to tax-exempt organizations — even though some of the groups, such as the Chamber, participate in election politics.

Qualcomm’s founder, Irwin Jacobs, is a major Democratic donor. For the 2012 elections, he gave $2 million to a super-political action committee dedicated to helping President Barack Obama win re-election and $200,000 to other Democrat-friendly super-PACs, according to the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics.

His son, Paul E. Jacobs, the chief executive officer and chairman of Qualcomm, gave $5,000 to Obama’s campaign in 2011. In recent years, Paul Jacobs contributed $40,800 to the Democratic National Committee and gave thousands more to state party committees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

“Increased transparency for election-related activities by corporations is very beneficial,” Paul Jacobs said in a joint statement with DiNapoli.

Qualcomm’s contributions to political candidates and tax-exempt groups show a bipartisan approach.

Its top gift of $1 million went to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonprofit group in Washington that has been pushing Congress to reduce the federal deficit. The Chamber of Commerce, which tends to give money Republicans, received $385,000 from Qualcomm.

The company invested $78,000 in California state candidates and political groups, and $161,000 in federal races while giving nothing to super-PACs. Those kinds of donations were already public because they were reported to the Federal Election Commission.

“Qualcomm’s disclosure policy sets a high standard,” DiNapoli said in the joint statement. “The company deserves praise for its actions.”

Original post is Qualcomm, Settling Lawsuit, Discloses More Than $3 Million in Political Spending by Political Capital.