Karl Rove Loses Election After Being Checkmated By Cyber Sleuths?
Crossposted from Occupy For Accountability
Last month, we offered a million dollar reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone who rigged a federal election on November 6th. We urged computer experts to contact us with information about any election manipulation of the tabulation results.
We Received A Letter
On November 12th, we received a letter from “The Protectors,” apparently a group of white hat cyber sleuths, mentioning our reward and stating that two months ago, they began monitoring the “digital traffic of one Karl Rove, a disrespecter of the Rule of Law, knowing that he claimed to be Kingmaker while grifting vast wealth from barons who gladly handed him gold to anoint another King while looking the other way.”
“The Protectors” said that they had identified the digital structure of Rove’s operation and of ORCA, a Republican get out the vote software application. After finding open “doors” in the systems, they created a “password protected firewall” called “The Great Oz,” and installed it on servers that Rove planned to use on election night to re-route and change election results “from three states.”
Think Progress: Watchdog: Karl Rove And His Crossroads GPS Broke Election Law By Failing To Disclose Donors
-By Josh Israel
November 15, 2012- The non-partisan Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed complaints Thursday with both the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) alleging that Karl Rove and his secretive Crossroads GPS violated election law and may have engaged in a criminal conspiracy to do so.
Huffington Post: Karl Rove-Backed Groups Are Largest Single Outside Force In 2012 Election
-By Paul Blumnthal
November 4, 2012- WASHINGTON — The independent group American Crossroads, a super PAC, and Crossroads GPS, a social welfare non-profit, set a goal to raise and spend $300 million on the 2012 election. When all is said and done on Nov. 6, they will, in all likelihood, have reached or come incredibly close to that once unbelievable goal.
The two groups, founded by Republican political operative Karl Rove and others in 2010, have already spent $271 million, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission and press releases.
Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio told The Huffington Post that the groups will succeed in their $300 million effort.
"The Crossroads groups will meet their goal of raising $300m for the 2011-12 cycle because there is a great desire to change the direction of the country and donors see Crossroads as an effective and efficient platform for effecting change," he wrote in an email.
Reader Supported News: A Hostile Takeover of Our Country
-By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
October 29, 2012- American democracy is under assault.
In one super-PAC alone, Karl Rove and the Enron grifter Ed Gillespie, have assembled $200 million from big polluters and Wall Street moguls to buy the 2012 election.
Two of the Koch Brothers, Charles and David, pledged $130 million to elect candidates who favor unrestrained corporate profiteering.
The senators and congressmen they fund and elect are not representing the United States-they are representing Koch and its oil industry cronies, Big Pharma, and the Wall Street banksters currently mounting a hostile takeover of our government.
I have no problem characterizing these corporate-centric super-PACs as treasonous. We are now in a free fall toward old-fashioned oligarchy; noxious, thieving and tyrannical.
The most corporate-friendly Supreme Court since the Gilded Age had declared in its notorious Citizens United decision that corporations are people and that money is speech. Those who have the most money now have the loudest voices in our democracy while poor Americans are mute.
The Hill: Crossroads commits $16M to presidential, Senate campaign ads
-By Justin Sink and Cameron Joseph
October 2, 2012– The conservative super-PAC backed by former George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove announced Tuesday that it would purchase $11 million in television commercials this week, their largest one-week buy of the election, in a new campaign slamming President Obama's jobs record.
The significant ad buy from American Crossroads comes on top of an additional $1 million radio buy and a $4 million television campaign targeting U.S. Senate races in North Dakota, Florida, Virginia and Montana, the group reported Tuesday. The Senate ads will be funded by Crossroads GPS, an affiliated political advocacy organization.
"Obama's weak leadership has yielded weak results and a weaker America. Staying on Obama’s course means a weaker America every day," Crossorads Chairman Steven Law, a former Bush administration official, said in a statement.
New York Times: Conservative ‘Super PACs’ Synchronize Their Messages
From the numbers they cite to the illustrations they use, some of the televised anti-Obama commercials developed for conservative political groups are indistinguishable except for the disclaimer saying who approved the message
-By Jeremy W. Peters
September 24, 2012- Independent political groups have long been the guerrilla warriors of presidential elections, tossing explosive advertisements into the middle of a campaign like hand grenades, with little regard for the strategy of the candidate they support.
But this year, in a tight race that leaves very little room for error, the conservative “super PACs” and other outside entities working to defeat President Obama have reached a consensus: Going off message is simply too risky.
Huffington Post: Senate Races 2012: Conservative Groups Seek GOP Senate Control With Tens Of Millions In Ads
-By Paul Blumenthal
September 13, 2012- WASHINGTON — All eyes are fixed on the money race between President Barack Obama, Republican nominee Mitt Romney and the outside groups cheering them on with attack ads. That attention may allow one of the biggest money stories in the 2012 election to fly under the radar. In the fight for control of the Senate, a coalition of conservative groups have pummelled Democratic senators and candidates in the nation's closest races for more than a year in an attempt to wrest control of the chamber and make Sen. Mitch McConnell the next Majority Leader.
Since the beginning of last year, these conservative groups have poured more than $50 million into ads — both those reported to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and so-called "issue" ads that are not — targeting seven of the closest Senate races in the country, according to sources in Democratic campaigns, other ad-watching sources, and a series of publicly-reported figures and those collected from news reports and press releases. This compares to the slightly more than $20 million spent by liberal-allied groups on ads in these seven races.