Balder Ex-Libris

Author : Curtiss Richard H.
Title : Stealth Pacs : How Israel's american lobby took control of U.S. Middle East policy
Year : 1990

Link download : Curtiss_Richard_H_-_Stealth_Pacs.zip

Preface : What's Special About Pro-Israel PACs? "An examination of pro-Israel PACs provides a classic study of the PAC problem in our political system - the proliferation of PACs , the increase of PAC dollars , the concentration of interest group money in key congressional committees, and the single-minded focus of PAC giving. "President Fred Wertheimer of Common Cause. "Most lobbies, no matter how good they are, fade into insignificance beside the most ffictive-andvicious-ofthemall. Israel's lobby in Washington,lotov,n simply as "the Israel lobby," or, "the Lobby," has refined to a high art form the techniques of putting pressure on members of Congress and on the administration." Former Senator James G. Abourezk, Advise and Dissent : Memoirs of South Dakota and the U. S. Senate, Lawrence Hill Books, 1989. Virtually every special interest lobbying organization in the United States has created a Political Action Committee. The five largest such PACs in the United States are the National Association of Realtors PAC , which spent $3 million in the 1988 election cycle, and PACs established by the Teamsters Union, the American Medical Association, the National Education Association and the National Association of Federal Employees, each of which spent more than $2 million on candidates in 198g. Federal law limits a PAC contribution to no more than $5,000 to a candidate in the primary election, and another $5,000 to a candidate in the general election. Therefore no PAC, eventhe giants named above, can donatemorethan $10,000 ina single election year to reward an incumbent for voting according to the sponsoring lobby' s recommendations, or to finance a challenger to a member of Congress who votes against that lobby's recommendations. What would happen, however, if there were between 50 and 1 00 like-minded PACs, and if most of them followed recommendations of one special interest group, like Washington's pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (ATPAC) ? ...