Exclusive: How corporations secretly move millions to fund political ads

[kpete]

Source: Raw Story

Exclusive: How corporations secretly move millions to fund political ads

By Brad Jacobson
Thursday, February 4th, 2010 -- 9:06 am


Exclusive: How corporations secretly move millions to fund political adsThe Supreme Court’s seismic January ruling that corporations are free to spend unlimited amounts of their profits to advertise for or against candidates may have been the latest shakeup of campaign finance – but gaping holes already allow corporations to spend enormous sums without leaving a paper trail, a Raw Story investigation has found.

Campaign finance experts confirmed that though disclosure rules remained intact in the new Supreme Court decision, there are effective methods to circumvent them.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, an attorney and campaign finance expert at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice, said corporations already effectively end-run campaign finance law by shuffling money through trade associations.

“One of their favorites right now is spending through trade associations,” Torres-Spelliscy said.
Trade associations are considered tax-exempt non-profit organizations under US law. While they must report contributions received from other corporations to the Internal Revenue Service, the document itself remains confidential and is not made available to the public.

Read more: http://rawstory.com/2010/02/exclusive-trade-groups-swiss-bank-accounts-campaign-finance/

[rucky]

1. I followed the press releases of banking associations during the drafting of TARP

They pretty much ran the show.

[msongs]

2. only registered to vote humans should be allow to make campaign donations of any kind nt

[MidwestRick]

5. Would you eliminate

PAC funding and union commercials as well?

-MR

[tomm2thumbs]

3. why so confidential? I thought everyone wanted openness in politics... (chortle)

if you saw half of what gets funneled, you wouldn't wonder any longer why companies are losing money - they are keeping it from workers to spend on politics, all the while continuing to butter the bread of the upper levels of management and owners.

[defendandprotect]

4. If you ever wondered how the right wing stays in office . . .

Evidently with the death of CIA/Bill Buckley a few pieces of information came floating

out -- i.e., that the CIA had been funding right wing members of Congress -- two I'm

familiar with are Sen. Strom Thurmond and Rep. Jerry Ford. There were others.

I've also read quite some long time ago that the CIA would take money from any right

wing source -- including the KKK.

Meanwhile, at times 50% of the Federal Education budget was covert funding for the CIA.

So -- who's been running our country?

And, if you've ever wondered how voters could be so dumb, maybe we should think again?


Computer voting is another issue which continues on and which raises questions about all

of our elections back to the mid and late 1960's -- Nixon/Humphrey?

Was there ever a "Southern Stragegy" or was there simply steal elections by hacking

computers?

Also keep in mind that the LARGE computers used by our corporate press also began to come

in during the mid-1960's. Election reporting used to be based on official vote tallies/

results. The computers gave the corporate press new powers to now only report actual

results but to begin to PREDICT and CALL elections for candidates and by states --

PREDICTING ELECTORAL COLLEGE VOTES and CALLING elections for presidential candidates!


We saw those powers reversed in 2000 when Fox/Jon Ellis RECALLED Florida from Gore and

later CALLED it for Bush!

[unc70]

6. Tip of the iceberg, disclosure would help. But other things are far worse

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is a major scandal as previously reported. I had not realized that direct corporate "donations" did not require public disclosure.

There is a far worse problem in plain sight which no one seems to be covering. Taxpayer "funding" of RW groups and candidates via various "money laundering" techniques. In most cases, trying to unravel the various layers is extremely difficult even for DUers; trying to explain it to others, impossible and likely gets one branded a CT nutcase. But I now see a case that can be presented in a simple, straigh-forward narrative.

Erik Prince and Blackwater. A large, secret, no-bid Federal contract pays Blackwater for security services at highly-inflated rates. The huge, excess "profits" at Blackwater are little more than theft from the taxpayers. As the sole owner of Blackwater, Erik Prince now has the enormous wealth which he "donates" to RW candidates, causes, and organizations including the Family Research Council (co-founded by Prince's father).


There is almost no oversight anywhere, no accountability, no disclosure -- everything blocked by claims of national security. Even the Inspector Generals at State and Defense are often "friends". While there has often been corruption involving government contracting, this modern version began with Cheney and Rumsfeld leading the privatization push some thirty years ago.

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