Batman and Hawkins

There's a lot to ridicule in this post by John Hawkins, who "hired" one of his site's contributors, "Jay Batman," to research how much money given to "big name" wingnut PACs actually went to candidates or candidate advocacy. Apparently the Godamn Batman wrote "a 170 page report" that we don't get to read (perhaps because it's just screen printouts from OpenSecrets.org), but in which the GDBM concluded that many right-wing PACs are stone cold ripoffs.

In other words, dog bites man.

Bulbs dim and bright have picked up on the story.

Among the "big name" offenders Screamin' Jay Batman fingers are a draft Ben Carson PAC which has no affiliation with Carson and thus sucks $$$ away from Carson's own PAC (not investigated), Sarah Palin's SarahPAC, Madison Project, which attacks wingnut candidates from the right, the "Tea Party Army" (total expenditures, $25,000) and a couple of anti-immigration PACs that couldn't manage to scrape up $325,000. If you suspect Hawkins or his "partner" -- who had previously worked or "dealt" with three of the 17 studied PACs and reportedly is involved with her own (not investigated) PAC(s) -- might have a hate-on for some of the hand-picked PACs they criticize, I'm afraid I couldn't disabuse you of that notion.

Hawkins also negates his premise that he investigated "17 conseravative PACs" by asserting that one of the 17 -- the second most fiscally responsible one, per Hawkins' metric -- accepts money from unions, and is therefore "generally hostile to conservative Republicans."

The takeaways are (1) Hawkins is not to be trusted, even when he's telling some part of the truth and (2) don't flush your money down SarahPAC or any org with Tea Party in its name.

Update: At RedState (no link), Oly, Son of Olaf, says Hawkins' report is great, except for its criticism of the PACs upon whose teats Olafson suckles. For Olafson, a dollar spent on Olafson is never wasted.