What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? Newt Gingrich is probably wondering who’s going to pay for him to fly around the country on private jets. His presidential campaign can’t afford the expense anymore, and his former gravy train 527 group American Solutions went belly up last month.

Peter Stone of the Center for Public Integrity broke the story yesterday:

Gingrich set up the 527 group in 2007, but it began to lose fundraising steam almost as soon as the former House Speaker launched his presidential bid in May, Joe Gaylord, the group’s chairman told iWatch News. […]

To make his bid for the GOP nomination, Gingrich had to sever his ties with the 527, as federal election law requires for candidates, and that proved to be a big blow to its growth and ongoing operations, Gaylord said.

According to a filing with the IRS on August 18, the 527 spent $2.9 million in the first six months of the year, but only raised $2.4 million in the same period.

A close political confidant to Gingrich since 1989, Gaylord said that the group shuttered its spacious K Street offices on July 7, when the last six staffers were laid off. At one point, the group employed more than three times that number. […]

In the two-year 2010 election cycle, American Solutions posted receipts of $28.2 million and spent $28.4 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Last year it was the biggest such committee in the country.

Gingrich used the once high-flying 527 to boost his political profile and to travel for speeches which helped lay the groundwork for his campaign this year. The 527 could accept unlimited corporate and individual checks, and was a magnet for conservative donors and corporate interests whose causes Gingrich often embraced.

The American Solutions Political Action Committee “formally terminated on August 8,” Stone reported. So once Gingrich stops pretending to be a serious presidential candidate, he’ll have to build himself a new political home from scratch.

Karen Tumulty noted in the Washington Post,

In its heyday, [American Solutions] raised more money than any other such organization, collecting more than $52 million in its first four years. Nearly two-thirds of that, however, went toward fundraising, which made it an unusually expensive operation.

The group’s donor base included more than 300,000 contributors who gave $200 or less, although it also had a number of wealthy benefactors, including casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who provided $6 million.

Somehow I got on the phone bank list for American Solutions a few years back. I posted here about their unethical tactics for raising money from small donors. Mark Blumenthal of Pollster.com said my experience sounded “like a clear cut example of fundraising under the guise of a survey” or “FRUGGing.” The Marketing Research Association frowns on that practice.

I thought Tim Pawlenty made the worst call in running for president, because if he’d stayed put, there’s a good chance he’d be a third-term Minnesota governor with a GOP-controlled legislature right now. Gingrich’s vanity bid has cost him even more, though. Instead of leading a 527 group that supported his luxury lifestyle (millions of dollars a year for private air travel alone), he’s a humiliated joke. If he hadn’t run for president, no one would know about his large debts to Tiffany’s, and he’d still be one of the GOP’s “ideas” men. Now Newt is the lazy campaigner whose whole staff deserted him.

Speaking of pathetic excuses for presidential candidates, former New York Governor George Pataki tried to get a little buzz going this week. He RSVP’d for the Polk County Republican Party’s August 27 picnic and presidential forum, and indicated he would make a “major announcement” there. Although Pataki said recently that he might run for president, I didn’t think he was delusional enough to imagine there’s room for him in this field. I assumed his big announcement would be a publicity stunt for his 501(c)4 group No American Debt, or perhaps his endorsement of one of the other candidates.

It looks like I was wrong, because Pataki canceled his planned trip to Iowa after ruling out a presidential bid. Not a classy move, but at least the Polk County GOP has three other confirmed candidates for tonight’s event: Texas Governor Rick Perry, Representative Ron Paul, and Representative Thad McCotter. When Donald Trump left the Republican Party of Iowa in the lurch in May, party leaders nixed their big Lincoln dinner fundraiser.

Here’s some trivia I learned from Mr. desmoinesdem this week: Pataki is a Hungarian name derived from the Slavic word “potok,” meaning stream. So Pataki originated as a surname for someone who lived or worked by a stream. Bachmann is an old German name meaning the same thing.

This is an open thread.