The Puppet Masters

Posted: February 23, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 elections, 2012 presidential campaign, 2012 primaries, Republican politics, Republican presidential politics | Tags: , | 12 Comments

Last week, we learned that the primary bank roller behind Santorum’s Super PAC is an odd and out-of-it old billionaire that probably still calls women “tomatoes” when he’s not on TV explaining how birth control in his day was aspirin-enhanced nonslutiness.  Oh what fresh hell has the Supreme Court wrought with its Citizens United decision?  We’ve long known that negative, nasty political ads work. Now, each candidate seems to have an endless supply of funds so that proxies can say what ever they want in such ads with absolutely no accountability.  We’re all so finding out these Super PAC ads are being funded by a few “Super Donors”.  This adds a new twist to voter beware homework.  We know have to investigate the candidate’s funding sources.  After all, money screams in elections these days. We now have Swift Boat Idiots for Lies on steroids.  Each candidate seems to collect billionaire gadflies with specific agendas in mind.

Robert Reich just wrote a blog piece on the GOP’s Big Investors.  The GOP has always been a magnet for big money so it’s really interesting to see the Super Pac Super Money play out on in their primary dynamics.  I think we’ve seen that Romney’s Super Pac had some effect on Florida and the Gingrich rising star.  We’re really going to get some of the flavor of this ruling since the final four have now gotten some cash infusion from various billionaires.  The lead up to Super Tuesday on March 6th should be very very interesting and telling.  Since we know they bankroll the garbage, who are these enablers of smack?

Have you heard of William Dore, Foster Friess, Sheldon Adelson, Harold Simmons, Peter Thiel, or Bruce Kovner? If not, let me introduce them to you. They’re running for the Republican nomination for president.

I know, I know. You think Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and Mitt Romney are running. They are – but only because the people listed in the first paragraph have given them huge sums of money to do so. In a sense, Santorum, Gingrich, Paul, and Romney are the fronts. Dore et al. are the real investors.

According to January’s Federal Election Commission report, William Dore and Foster Friess supplied more than three-fourths of the $2.1 million raked in by Rick Santorum’s super PAC in January. Dore, president of the Dore Energy Corporation in Lake Charles, Louisiana, gave $1 million; Freis, a fund manager based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, gave $669,000 (he had given the Santorum super PAC $331,000 last year, bringing Freis’s total to $1 million).

Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam provided $10 million of the $11 million that went into Gingrich’s super PAC in January. Adelson is chairman of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation. Texas billionaire Harold Simmons donated $500,000.

Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, provided $1.7 million of the $2.4 million raised by Ron Paul’s super PAC in January.

Mitt Romney’s super PAC raised $6.6 million last month – almost all from just forty donors. Bruce Kovner, co-founder of the New York-based hedge fund Caxton Associates, gave $500,000, as did two others. David Tepper of Appaloosa Management gave $375,000. J.W. Marriott and Richard Marriott gave a total of $500,000. Julian Robertson, co-founder of hedge fund Tiger Management, gave $250,0000. Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman gave $100,000.

Welcome to the tyranny of the Super Donor.

About two dozen individuals, couples or corporations have given $1 million or more to Republican super PACs this year, an exclusive club empowered by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and other rulings to pool their money into federal political committees and pour it directly into this year’s presidential campaign.

Collectively, their contributions have totaled more than $50 million this cycle, making them easily the most influential and powerful political donors in politics today. They have relatively few Democratic counterparts so far, with most of the leading liberal donors from past years giving relatively small amounts — or not at all — to the Democratic super PACs.

And unlike in past years, when wealthy donors of both parties donated chiefly to groups that were active in the general election campaign, the top Republican donors are contributing money far earlier, in contests that will determine the party’s presidential nominee.

“What unites them? They’re economic conservatives,” said Christopher J. LaCivita, a Republican strategist who helped advise Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a forerunner of this cycle’s super PACs, and who in 2008 co-founded another Republican advocacy group, the American Issues Project, that ran advertisements against President Obama.

“Most of these guys are serious business tycoons,” Mr. LaCivita added. “They’ve built something big — usually something bigger than themselves.”

We’re lucky some of these guys are open about their donations. They have some tools available to them to avoid the public exposure.  It will be interesting to see if more or less of that occurs as we study their influence on candidates and races.

A few of the megadonors gave through limited liability companies, shielding their identity. One $1 million donation to Restore Our Future came from F8 LLC, a company whose listed address in Utah leads to an accounting firm. A charitable foundation linked to Sandra N. Tillotson, co-founder of the skin care company Nu Skin, uses the same address. Ms. Tillotson was reimbursed by Restore Our Future in July for what appeared to be costs associated with a fund-raiser at her New York apartment. But Ms. Tillotson said in an e-mail Wednesday that she did not know who the owner of F8 LLC was and had not made a donation backing Mr. Romney’s campaign.

So, I’ve been on a Google Trek to try to figure out who some of these people are and what their agenda might be.  Bruce Kovner is a hedge fund executive and seems to have a fairly traceable history via the Wall Street set.  He’s been likened to a Republican version of George Soros.  He has been active in Republican circles for some time.

Some investors, like George Soros and Stanley Druckenmiller, have decided that rather than weather the whims of outside investors, they would prefer to manage their own money as a family office, a designation that allows them to largely avoid regulation.

Like Mr. Soros, Mr. Kovner has grown extremely wealthy betting on global market trends using stocks, currencies and commodities, among other things. He bought the former International Center for Photography on Fifth Avenue and 94th street for $17 million and spent another $10 million renovating it. An avid collector of rare books, Mr. Kovner named his hedge fund after the first printer of English-language books. Forbes magazine estimated Mr. Kovner’s wealth to be in excess of $4.5 billion.

Unlike Mr. Soros, a generous donor to liberal causes, Mr. Kovner is a conservative supporter who counts among his associates former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney. He is a trustee of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research organization, and has given more than $100,000 to Republican causes and candidates since 2010.

William Dore has a lower public profile. Interestingly enough, a couple of these super donors appear to come from Louisiana.  I suppose it only makes sense since the state has a seriously regressive atmosphere when it comes to taxes, spending, and outside New Orleans Culture. Dore’s money comes from marine construction and diving which translates into connections to the oil platforms that dot the Gulf.  So, Kovner represents Wall Street interests while Dore is most likely more interested in the treatment of the Oil Industry. Sheldon Adelson is a gambling industry tycoon who is extremely interested in the interests of Israel.

Two rumours are circulating around Sheldon Adelson, the Jewish Las Vegas casino magnate and publisher of pro-Netanyahu tabloid Israel Hayom. One is that he is about to pump another $10 million into Newt Gingrich’s presidency bid. The other, apparently contradictory, piece of speculation is that he is shifting his support to Mitt Romney.

Evidence that can be marshalled in favour of the first rumour is that Mr Adelson and his family have already donated $11m to a pro-Gingrich super PAC – a group that lobbies on behalf of a political candidate. Meanwhile, he told Forbes magazine this week he may increase that to $100m.

What is going on? Fred Zeidman, a close friend of Adelson and a major fundraiser for Mr Romney, explained: “As long as Newt is in the race it appears that Sheldon is going to continue to support him. I don’t know what that means in terms of money, but I think… when Newt is out of the race, you will see Sheldon devote that money directly to supporting whoever is running against Barack Obama.” Mr Adelson’s overriding objective, said Mr Zeidman, is to ensure Mr Obama does not win.

Peter Thiel’s money comes from Pay Pal. He’s a major libertarian, has a foundation, and goes out on the lecture circuit to proselytize for Ayn Randish ideas. Here’s an account from one true believer on another.  I still don’t understand the idea of how libertarians worship at the alter of out spoken fascists like Ludwig Von Mises and enjoy the support of the KKK, storm front and all those old Confederate Crusaders.  I think it comes from spending too much time in fantasy worlds.  Anyway, they all seem to be the new 21st century Marxist ideologues.  Damn all the evidence, let’s just put into effect a lot of things that have been proven to not work just because it sounds all ideologically sexy.  Try not to imagine this writer masturbating as he’s writing this.  I dare you. Of course, Thiel’s is a Paultard.

Whatever their number, these young libertarians are the potential saviors of the country.   Peter Thiel – co-founder of PayPal and Facebook angel investor – made this argument as the SFL conference keynote speaker.  According to Thiel, the United States is in a bad position:  Innovation drives the U.S. industry and our innovation (with a few exceptions, namely the computer/internet world) has stagnated.  Witness the airplane – the planes we now fly go the same speed as they did in 1990.  We use coal for large amounts of energy, just as we did in the nineteenth century.  The number of new drugs we produce has slowed.  Life expectancy is no longer rising at the rate it once did. Etc.

Unreasonable explanations for this include:  1) We’ve reached the end of history; it’s impossible for us to improve on the technology of the plane, and 2) We’re not as smart as we used to be.

Peter’s alternative explanation – developed in his essay “The End of the Future” – is far more feasible:  the modern regulatory system has choked invention.

And the only people in the place to fix this aren’t the statists on the right or on the left, but the libertarians.  As Peter said, “It’s an exciting time to be a libertarian.”

Armed with new enthusiasm, I spent the rest of the weekend at SFL learning more about how the state is choking development, and I met the people who are going to fix this course in the near future.

My theory is that these Paulbot guys know the only way they will EVER have sex outside of the virtual world, pot induced hallucinations, and hookers is to have enough money to buy a trophy mistress and wife.  Since I’m not a voyeur to self abuse, I’ll leave you to google more on this dude in the privacy of your own home,  By Onan’s withered Balls!

So, all this googling has left me feeling like the plutocracy is live and well.  If you didn’t think America’s government was basically up for sale these days, reading about any of these folks will do it.  I’ve been boycotting Marriott for decades since all that Mormon money went heavily into running anti-ERA efforts in the late 70s.  I watched that unfold first hand as a baby feminist and activist. It’s now creeping and crawling around the Romney campaign. There’s a lot of Mormon corporate money behind the Romney Super Pac.

Several of the biggest donors to Restore Our Future, the super PAC backing Mr. Romney, share the candidate’s Mormon faith. A quartet of companies connected to Melaleuca, a company based in Idaho that makes nutritional supplements and home care products, donated a combined $1 million to Restore Our Future.

The company is headed by Frank VanderSloot, a national finance co-chairman of the Romney campaign and a graduate of Brigham Young University, Mr. Romney’s alma mater. “I am very concerned about the direction of the country and especially the administration’s constant attacks on free enterprise,” Mr. VanderSloot said in an e-mail.

Many of the biggest givers to the pro-Romney super PAC hail from the world of finance, particularly private equity and hedge funds. Julian H. Robertson Jr., who has given at least $1.25 million to Restore Our Future, is considered one of the godfathers of the hedge fund industry.

The one thing these Super PACS have done is put the agendas right out there if you look for them. You can clearly see the Romney agenda from your front porch. If you like women’s unequal status and gamed financial markets,by all means support Willard just like his SuperPac Puppet Masters do! Any way, I suggest you try to keep track of these ballers and who they buy.  I also wonder if these billionaires will be happy if the press starts focusing laserlike on their activities. Right now, Forbes appears to be the only magazine with the lives and ideology of the rich and not so famous.   I figure if they want to buy our elections, the least we can do is out their activities for all to see.

Financing Politics and Democracy: the ultimate one percent

Posted: December 13, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: U.S. Politics, We are so F'd | Tags: , , | 19 Comments

A recent examination of political donors by the Sunlight Foundation has found some extremely disturbing numbers on how campaigns are financed. I knew it would be bad but it’s worse than I personally imagined. Nearly all political donations are made by a select few and those donors are not ordinary citizens.  There is a sliver of folks/institutions that fund campaigns and they do so with huge amounts of funds and impact.  It is difficult to imagine that democracy can survive under these circumstances.

In the 2010 election cycle, 26,783 individuals (or slightly less than one in ten thousand Americans) each contributed more than $10,000 to federal political campaigns. Combined, these donors spent $774 million. That’s 24.3% of the total from individuals to politicians, parties, PACs, and independent expenditure groups. Together, they would fill only two-thirds of the 41,222 seats at Nationals Park the baseball field two miles from the U.S. Capitol. When it comes to politics, they are The One Percent of the One Percent.

A Sunlight Foundation examination of data from the Federal Election Commission and the Center for Responsive Politics reveals a growing dependence of candidates and political parties on the One Percent of the One Percent, resulting in a political system that could be disproportionately influenced by donors in a handful of wealthy enclaves. Our examination also shows that some of the heaviest hitters in the 2010 cycle were ideological givers, suggesting that the influence of the One Percent of the One Percent on federal elections may be one of the obstacles to compromise in Washington.

The One Percent of the One Percent are not average Americans. Overwhelmingly, they are corporate executives, investors, lobbyists, and lawyers. A good number appear to be highly ideological. They give to multiple candidates and to parties and independent issue groups. They tend to cluster in a limited number of metropolitan zip codes, especially in New York, Washington, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

There is little wonder in my mind about the role of this type of campaign finance concentration in the ever-increasing march to plutocracy.  It is no wonder that most laws reflect self-dealing and monopoly protection to these same interests.  It is also why we continue to see bail outs for these folks and usound economic policy during recessions.  There is no room for common sense when policy priorities can be bought.  These folks are savvy.  Their money is going to Super PACS to represent their interests.  We know that Grover Norquist sits on an incredible amount of bucks and is accountable to no one.  We also know that his deep pockets have bought off many a republican.  He is just one example.

In the 2010 election cycle, the average One Percent of One Percenter spent $28,913, more than the median individual income of $26,364

At the top of this elite group are individuals such as Bob Perry, CEO of Perry Homes, who gave $7.3 million to Karl Rove’s American Crossroads in 2010 and $4.4 million to Swift Vets and POWs for Truth in 2004, and Wayne Hughes, owner and chairman of Public Storage Inc., who gave $3.25 million to American Crossroads in 2010, and Fred Eshelman, CEO of Pharmaceutical Product Development who spent $3 million in 2010 on his own group, RightChange. Sunlight’s Ryan Sibley writes more about the top donors here.

Unlike the other 99.99% of Americans who do not make these contributions, these elite donors have unique access. In a world of increasingly expensive campaigns, TheOne Percent of the One Percent effectively play the role of political gatekeepers. Prospective candidates need to be able to tap into these networks if they want to be taken seriously. And party leaders on both sides are keenly aware that more than 80% of party committee money now comes from these elite donors.

Campaign finance reform is one of those things that doesn’t get much press.  It goes no where in Congress.  Lobbyists fight it tooth and nail.  It appears the stranglehold of big, monied interests is a sure thing.  It can only lead to more social unrest since there are no traditional ways to remove it.  The Supreme Court has upheld the rights of institutions to act as individuals.  Courts have generally been the only bastion of counter measures.  This is the kind of thing that sent many tea party and Occupy participants to the streets.  Unfortunately, these statistics show that no one is listening.

Monday Reads

Posted: August 29, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, morning reads | Tags: , , , , , | 37 Comments

Good Morning!

Paul Krugman has a great piece in the NYT on how Republicans are against science.  They do appear to ignore it in favor of myth, conspiracy theories and wishful thinking.  However, it does us no good to send Democrats into office that won’t fight for science and rational thought, either.  How much more nonsense do you think will come out during the 2012 political season?

Mr. Perry, the governor of Texas, recently made headlines by dismissing evolution as “just a theory,” one that has “got some gaps in it” — an observation that will come as news to the vast majority of biologists. But what really got peoples’ attention was what he said about climate change: “I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. And I think we are seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change.”

That’s a remarkable statement — or maybe the right adjective is “vile.”

The second part of Mr. Perry’s statement is, as it happens, just false: the scientific consensus about man-made global warming — which includes 97 percent to 98 percent of researchers in the field, according to the National Academy of Sciences — is getting stronger, not weaker, as the evidence for climate change just keeps mounting.

In fact, if you follow climate science at all you know that the main development over the past few years has been growing concern that projections of future climate are underestimating the likely amount of warming. Warnings that we may face civilization-threatening temperature change by the end of the century, once considered outlandish, are now coming out of mainstream research groups.

But never mind that, Mr. Perry suggests; those scientists are just in it for the money, “manipulating data” to create a fake threat. In his book “Fed Up,” he dismissed climate science as a “contrived phony mess that is falling apart.”

I could point out that Mr. Perry is buying into a truly crazy conspiracy theory, which asserts that thousands of scientists all around the world are on the take, with not one willing to break the code of silence. I could also point out that multiple investigations into charges of intellectual malpractice on the part of climate scientists have ended up exonerating the accused researchers of all accusations. But never mind: Mr. Perry and those who think like him know what they want to believe, and their response to anyone who contradicts them is to start a witch hunt.

All the candidates are pushing bad economics as well.

I’ve been kind’ve “blown away” by the news coverage of the remnants of Irene today.  It seems like most of the TV coverage has been 24 hours now worth of people saying we dodged a bullet and trying to find people impacted by the storm.  You’re beginning to see headlines like this now: Get Real: Hurricane Irene Should Be Renamed “Hurricane Hype”.  Last night Geraldo looked like he’d just re-opened that silly empty vault again.

Irene has put on a remarkably similar show. Within the limits of forecasting error, Irene’s projected path makes it was impossible to rule out a major disaster. But, as a dangerous Category 3 storm within two days of land, something similar to what happened to Gloria occurred. Instead of going slightly off course, the power of her winds dropped markedly, at least as measured by hurricane hunter aircraft. Because it is prudent to not respond to every little tropical cyclone twitch (such as Gloria’s jog or Thursday’s wind drop), the Thursday evening forecast was virtually unchanged, the Internet went thermonuclear, and the Weather Channel’s advertising rates skyrocketed. From that point on, it became all Irene, all the time. With this level of noise, the political process has to respond with full mobilization. Hype begets hype.

A day later, the smart money is still riding a very Gloria-like track, but with a cyclone that will be weaker than projected. It is doubtful that Irene will even cough up eight bodies (the number killed by Gloria), though power outages east of where the center makes landfall (probably on Long Island) may be extensive.

I think the body count’s at 21 now which kind’ve makes this hype on all the hype look like hype.  Well, at least all the governors of the mid Atlantic states got some air time praising civil servants instead of demonizing them for a change.  Is it just me or does Chris Christine remind you of those big boy statues in front of those 1960s hamburger joints?  That man looks like a heart attack about to happen.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell–who cross party lines last year to hype Obama–is having second thoughts about hyping an Obama second term. Powell was on Face the Nation yesterday.

“I haven’t decided who I’m going to vote for,” Powell said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “Just as was the case in 2008, I am going to watch the campaign unfold. In the course of my life I have voted for Democrats, I have voted for Republicans, I have changed from one four-year cycle to another.

“I’ve always felt it my responsibility as a citizen to take a look at the issues, examine the candidates, and pick the person that I think is best qualified for the office of the president in that year. And not just solely on the basis of party affiliation,” he said.

Asked about the Republican field, Powell said there are some “interesting candidates,” but no one who has “emerged into the leading position.”

“So let’s see if anybody else is going to join, and we’ve got a long way to go,” he added.

Powell, the nation’s first African-American secretary of state, praised Obama’s leadership style in 2008 in endorsing him, saying shortly before the election that Obama “has a definite way of doing business that will serve us well.” He also said at the time that he didn’t think the GOP vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, was “ready” to be president.

The really, really bad thing about the political system these days is that PACs are getting bigger and more powerful.  They also seem more closely aligned with candidates.  Here’s an interesting story from the NYT.  The Supreme Court decision on corporations and first amendment rights has definitely impacted the political money machine.

But some advocates for tighter campaign regulation say existing rules on independent groups did not anticipate the emergence of Super PACs so closely tied to a single candidate, leaving so much room to maneuver that the independent groups are able to act as surrogates for the candidates.

“There’s not a big difference between these candidate-specific Super PACs and candidate campaign committees,” said Paul S. Ryan, associate legal counsel at the Campaign Legal Center. “I think it’s a joke. What they are doing is abiding by the very meager restrictions on coordinations on expenditures and solicitations. But that leaves a wide swath of activities that can be fully coordinated under present law.”

Increasingly, the new Super PACs are taking on tasks that in previous years were handled by — and paid for — the candidates themselves. But instead of using money raised in the $2,500 increments that federal law imposes on candidates, the Super PACs can accept donations of unlimited amounts. (The groups must disclose their donors, though some Super PACs, including Priorities USA and the Karl Rove-founded American Crossroads, have affiliated nonprofit arms that do not have to disclose donors.)

Just in case you haven’t read Rick Perry’s outrageous lies about Social Security, here’s some more information.  Perry calls the popular government program unconstitutional and refers to it as a Ponzi Scheme.  I want to hear him say this in Florida.

But Perry returned to the “Ponzi scheme” description on the campaign trail in Iowa last night:

“It is a Ponzi scheme for these young people. The idea that they’re working and paying into Social Security today, that the current program is going to be there for them, is a lie,” Perry said. “It is a monstrous lie on this generation, and we can’t do that to them.”

Later, in Des Moines, when a reporter asked about the suggestion that his campaign was backing off some positions in the staunch states-rights book, Perry said, “I haven’t backed off anything in my book. So read the book again and get it right.”

Kay Henderson has more on this:

Another reporter pressed the issue, asking if Perry believes Medicare is “unconstitutional” as well.

“I never said it was unconstitutional,” Perry said. “I look at Medicare just like I look at Social Security. They’re programs that aren’t working and we ought to have a national conversation about it. You know, those that have said I’ve said they’re unconstitutional — I’m going to have them read the book. That’s not what I said.”

In his book, Perry called Social Security something akin to a “bad disease” that was created “at the expense of respect for the Constitution and limited government.”

This is going to be one weird, strange, political season. I’ve never seen so many people pushing so many unpopular positions.

Women may have hit the glass ceiling in the US, but women in emerging market countries are winding up in board rooms more and more all the time.  Remember, many of these countries have already had women presidents and prime ministers.

Seven of the 14 women identified on Forbes magazine’s list of self-made billionaires are Chinese. Many firms in emerging markets do a better job of promoting women than their Western rivals, some surveys suggest. In China, 32% of senior managers are female, compared with 23% in America and 19% in Britain. In India, 11% of chief executives of large companies are female, compared with 3% of Fortune 500 bosses in America and 3% of FTSE 100 bosses in Britain. Turkey and Brazil come third and joint fourth (behind Finland and Norway) in the World Economic Forum’s ranking of countries by the proportion of CEOs who are women. In Brazil, 11% of chief executives and 30% of senior executives are women.

Young, middle-class women are overtaking their male peers when it comes to education. In the United Arab Emirates 65% of university graduates are female. In Brazil and China the figures are 60% and 47% respectively. In Russia 57% of college-age women are enrolled in tertiary education; only 43% of men are. Business schools, those hothouses of capitalism, are feminising fast. Some 33% of students at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai and 26% at the Indian School of Business are female, a figure comparable with those of Western schools such as the Harvard Business School and INSEAD.

In “Winning the War for Talent in Emerging Markets: Why Women are the Solution”, Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Ripa Rashid point out that businesswomen face steep obstacles in emerging markets. How can they stay on the fast track if, as in the UAE, they cannot travel without a male chaperone? And how can they be taken seriously if, as in Russia, the term “businesswoman” is synonymous with prostitute? In every emerging market women bear the lioness’s share of family responsibilities. In many places, deals are sealed with booze and male bonding.

So, there’s some things to get us started on this Monday.  Hopefully, those of you on the east coast are getting back to normal after the storm.  Let us know how you’re doing!  What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Late Night Open Thread: Rick Parry …. “A New Hope”

Posted: August 13, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Republican presidential politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , | 14 Comments

CNN Political Ticker:

It’s not a typo. Comedian Stephen Colbert wants America to vote for Rick Parry – that’s right, Parry with an “A.”

In the first released ad by his “super” political action committee, Colbert urged Iowa voters to write in “Rick Parry” at the Ames straw poll on Saturday, suggesting in a satiric nod that he’s throwing his weight behind Republican Gov. Rick Perry of Texas for president.

“I called dibs on Rick Parry a long time ago,” said Colbert, who dubs himself president and assistant equipment manager for his PAC, in a statement Wednesday.

The ad, “Episode IV: A New Hope,” is a play on the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling, which allows super PACs to receive and spend unlimited amounts of money, as long as they don’t coordinate with a particular candidate.

“So to prove we’re truly uncoordinated, we’re asking voters to write in Parry with an A – as in America, IowA, or PresidAnt,” Colbert said. “You can feel confident he’s not asking us to do that.”

Politico doesn’t see the humor in Colbert’s “antics.”

…the real issues with the voting might come from counting write-ins, which are being allowed for the first time this year.

Comedy Central star Stephen Colbert is openly trying to cause trouble, running television ads urging Iowans, “On August 13th write in Rick Parry — That’s Parry with an ‘A’ for America, with an ‘A’ for IowA.”

Jeff Winkler at the right wing Daily Caller blog is also *concerned.*

In two separate ads running since Thursday, the comedian urged straw poll voters to write in the fencing-inspired surname. Funny as the joke is, it could cause serious issues for Iowa officials as they count the ballots Saturday evening.

“We’re treating the straw poll as if it were any other election,” said Erin Rapp, Communications Director for the Iowa Secretary of State, the department overseeing straw poll write-in votes. “Basically, it’s up to the individual canvasser to determine the voter’s intent. You know, there could be variations of spelling in terms of name, but it’s really up to the official.”

You can watch the Colbert Super PAC’s other ad, which features “cheap cornography,” at Mother Jones.