Dan Backer

Dan Backer, free speech lawyer to billionaires, is flouting a Federal Elections Commission officer’s order to rename his Stop R.E.I.D. PAC. Apparently, one of the few rules the FEC is still allowed to enforce anymore is that political action committees cannot include the names of candidates in their own names. But Backer will fight to keep his petty snark intact:

Fat chance, says Backer, a Virginia-based lawyer who’s riding a measure of fame as the driving force behind McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission [5], the Supreme Court case that ended aggregate limits on campaign contributions to candidates, PACs and party committees earlier this month.

Backer told the Center for Public Integrity [6] that the committee’s name is, technically, Stop Reckless Economic Instability Caused by Democrats PAC. Therefore, he said, its acronym “happens to coincidently match the name of a particular candidate who the PAC sees as epitomizing all that is wrong with America.”

It’s the latest nomenclatural go-around between federal regulators and Backer, who has made a cottage industry out of challenging federal election laws and regulations. He has also drawn the FEC’s ire of late for his involvement with groups named “Stop Pelosi PAC [7]” and “Stand With Rand PAC [8].”

See? That’s not the name of a candidate, it’s a clever acronym Backer deliberately chose to flout the FEC rule and show us all what a free speech hero he is. Totally different! Backer is a big fan of the reckless economic instability Sarah Palin would cause in the Senate, but that too is totally different from the imaginary reckless economic instability that he projects on Harry Reid.

Dan Backer is just one thing that is wrong with America, but he is one of the biggest: when he talks about destroying the FEC, assume that he actually means it, and that he genuinely believes we will all be better off with our politics completely controlled by billionaires. Worse, he is well on his way to achieving that goal, which just happens to be a Koch brothers priority since at least 1980.

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