And so, the tsunami of money for negative ads begins

by John MacBeath Watkins

From today's New York Times:

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/26/super-pac-buys-6-million-ad-targeting-obama-in-swing-states/

The group Americans for Prosperity just went up with a $6.1 million ad buy in swing states that accuses the Obama administration of squandering American taxpayer dollars on green energy projects, asserting that some of the money actually went to foreign entities. The ad is going up in eight states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio and Virginia.

In making the general assertion that “billions of taxpayer dollars spent on green energy went to jobs in foreign countries,” the ad cites as evidence $1.2 billion that went “to a solar company that’s building a plant in Mexico.” In fact, the company involved in the plant, SunPower, said that the $1.2 billion federal loan guarantee was for its solar ranch in California, and that while some of the panels for the ranch will be coming from a plant in Mexico, most were coming from its California operations.

AFP is chaired by David H. Koch and played a major role in promoting the Tea Party candidates in the 2010 election.

And so begins the tsunami of money predicted in this post. And so, also, begins the distortion of discourse caused by an imbalance in resources.

Remember, the most expensive campaign in history as a percentage of GDP was the 1896 election between William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan. The reason was that the financial sector saw Bryan as a threat to their profits. And Wall Street, despite President Obama's role in bailing them out, hates the president.

But Obama is the incumbent. Perhaps the outcome this time will be different.