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#dark money
saywhat-politics · 6 months
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“The donations are striking because American Compass is a partner organization in Project 2025, a controversial right-wing think tank that has been building the policy and personnel firmament for a second Trump administration.
Project 2025 is an arm of the Heritage Foundation and it has been criticized for its hard-right, authoritarian agenda—including “dehumanizing” rhetoric towards the LGBTQ community, re-upping Trump’s attempt to include citizenship on the census, leveraging the power of the Justice Department to crack down on critics, and a potentially unconstitutional plan to sic U.S. troops on domestic protesters.”
Many oligarchs and corporations have tried to mask their right-wing connections with small donations to left leaning institutions like NPR.
The Walton family oligarchs in particular (Walmart/Sams Cub) began scrubbing the internet and hiding their right-wing ties following calls for boycotts. This began during the two terms of Republican warmongers Bush/Cheney. Walmart is particularly susceptible to boycott because they lack the diversification of other oligarchs like the Koch family. But in fact they donate to Project 2025 and other high profile right-wing initiatives that we progressives protest against.
*As a side note many still refer to the Koch brothers but this is inaccurate as one died during the Trump years and is now rotting in Hell. Other members of the family hold power and run various programs and initiatives with the Republicans.
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kp777 · 2 months
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By Jake Johnson
Common Dreams
Jan. 6, 2024
"Billionaires attempting to influence politics from the shadows should not be rewarded with taxpayer subsidies," said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.
Legislation introduced Tuesday by a pair of Democratic lawmakers would close a loophole that lets billionaires donate assets to dark money organizations without paying any taxes.
The U.S. tax code allows write-offs when appreciated assets such as shares of stock are donated to a charity, but the tax break doesn't apply when the assets are given to political groups.
However, donations to 501(c)(4) organizations—which are allowed to engage in some political activity as long as it's not their primary purpose—are exempt from capital gains taxes, a loophole that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) are looking to shutter with their End Tax Breaks for Dark Money Act.
Whitehouse, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee who has focused extensively on the corrupting effects of dark money, said the need for the bill was made clear by what ProPublica and The Lever described as "the largest known donation to a political advocacy group in U.S. history."
The investigative outlets reported in 2022 that billionaire manufacturing magnate Barre Seid donated his 100% ownership stake in Tripp Lite, a maker of electrical equipment, to Marble Freedom Trust, a group controlled by Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard Leo.
The donation, completed in 2021, was worth $1.6 billion. According to ProPublica and The Lever, the structure of the gift allowed Seid to avoid up to $400 million in taxes.
"It's a clear sign of a broken tax code when a single donor can transfer assets worth $1.6 billion to a dark money political group without paying a penny in taxes," Whitehouse said in a statement Tuesday. "Billionaires attempting to influence politics from the shadows should not be rewarded with taxpayer subsidies."
"We cannot allow millionaires and billionaires to run roughshod over our democracy and then reward them for it with a tax break."
If passed, the End Tax Breaks for Dark Money Act would ensure that donations of appreciated assets to 501(c)(4) organizations are subjected to the same rules as gifts to political action committees (PACs) and parties.
"Thanks to the far-right Supreme Court, billionaires already have outsized influence to decide our nation's politics; through a loophole in the tax code, they can even secure massive public subsidies for lobbying and campaigning when they secretly donate their wealth to certain nonprofits instead of traditional political organizations," said Chu. "We can decrease the impact the wealthy have on our politics by applying capital gains taxes to donations of appreciated property to nonprofits that engage in lobbying and political activity—the same way they are already treated when made to traditional political organizations like PACs."
The new bill comes amid an election season that is already flooded with outside spending.
The watchdog OpenSecrets reported last month that super PACs and other groups "have already poured nearly $318 million into spending on presidential and congressional races as of January 14—more than six times as much as had been spent at this point in 2020."
Thanks to the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United ruling, super PACs can raise and spend unlimited sums on federal elections—often without being fully transparent about their donors.
Morris Pearl, chairman of the Patriotic Millionaires, said Tuesday that "there is no justifiable reason why wealthy people like me should be allowed to dominate our political system by donating an entire $1.6 billion company to a dark money political group."
"But perhaps more egregious is the $400 million tax break that comes from doing so," said Pearl. "It's a perfect example of how this provision in the tax code is used by the ultrawealthy to manipulate the levers of government while simultaneously dodging their obligation to pay taxes. We cannot allow millionaires and billionaires to run roughshod over our democracy and then reward them for it with a tax break."
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eretzyisrael · 3 months
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by Robert Williams
In 2017, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt, made 13 demands of Qatar: "to cut off relations with Iran, shutter Al Jazeera, and stop granting Qatari citizenship to other countries' exiled oppositionists." They subsequently cut ties with Qatar over its failure to agree to any of the demands, including ending its support for terrorism, the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Jazeera.
The Saudi state-run news agency SPA said at the time:
"[Qatar] embraces multiple terrorist and sectarian groups aimed at disturbing stability in the region, including the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS [Islamic State] and al-Qaeda, and promotes the message and schemes of these groups through their media constantly,"
This is the kind of influence that US universities and colleges are more than happy to see on their campuses in exchange for billions of dollars in Qatari donations. According to ISGAP:
"[F]oreign donations from Qatar, especially, have had a substantial impact on fomenting growing levels of antisemitic discourse and campus politics at US universities, as well as growing support for anti-democratic values within these institutions of higher education."
In November 2023 ISGAP published a report, "The Corruption of the American Mind: How concealed foreign funding of higher education in the United States predicts the erosion of democratic values and antisemitic sentiment on campus." It found that there is a direct correlation between antisemitism and censored speech on campus and undocumented contributions from foreign governments, notably Qatar. According to the report:
"At least 100 American colleges and universities illegally withheld information on approximately $13 billion in undocumented contributions from foreign governments, many of which are authoritarian. "In institutions receiving such undocumented money: "Speech intolerance—manifesting as campaigns to investigate, censor, demote, suspend, or terminate speakers and scholars—was higher at institutions that received undocumented money from foreign regimes."
Qatar makes it possible for Ivy League universities to claim that they receive no funds from the Qatari state, because the donations are funneled through the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, a not-for-profit organization established in 1995 by the Emir of Qatar. This ensures that the foundation can identify itself as a private organization, which enables Qatar to conceal its state funding as private donations.
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☝️
Highly recommend. A glimpse into the right-wing network of conservative think tanks and non-profits working to promote a pro-business culture, weaken all social programs, and undermine democracy.
Everything from weakening child labor laws to writing Trump’s Project 2025, although the authors refused to use the term “Project 2025” in their description of it.
Republican politicians never come up with legislation on their own. All Republican policy is crafted and written by right-wing political associations and then handed to Republicans stooges to sign and introduce into Congress. It is this behind the scenes network of oligarch dark money funded think tanks that are waging war against us.
You protest individual Republican politicians and their policies but neglect the oligarchs like Koch, Walton, Crow, and DeVos that actually write those policies. Then you support those same oppressive oligarchs by buying Koch products, shopping at Walmart, and sending your kids to charter schools operated by DeVos.
Thousands of us have been calling for a boycott of Walmart since the 90’s but the majority refuse because it would be inconvenient. I don’t want to drive an extra few miles to the store or I don’t want to spend and extra dollar at another store. Common refrains whenever a boycott is broached. Walmart is the most obvious target because they are not diversified like other oligarch families. A short boycott would change their tune real fast.
You know what’s really inconvenient; black people being executed in the streets by cops and denied the right to vote. You know what else, trans people being eliminated and lgbt being stripped of legal rights as citizens. How about bounties being placed on women who have abortions and women who have to travel across country to have those abortions and often having lost the right yo safely return to their home state at all. Migrants being held in camps and being separated permanently from their children is also inconvenient as is the human trafficking of them. How about the re-introduction of child labor without parental consent being required. Maybe unions being busted, pensions and health insurance being stripped, minimum wage being reduced and full-time jobs arbitrarily being turned into part-time jobs. I could go on and on here.
STOP USING YOUR DOLLARS TO SUPPORT THE OLIGARCHS AND CORPORATIONS THAT OPPRESS YOU.
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gwydionmisha · 2 months
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viridianriver · 4 months
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The US's Support of Israel - Who's buying out our politicians?
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Stephen Semler's great research on how much the US's 'representatives' opinions differ from the peoples' when it comes to a ceasefire in Gaza made me wonder why our representatives ain't representing.
And as always, I try to follow the money. The dark money specifically - money that's quietly passed through lobbying groups that obscure the identity of the donors and give millions to politicians.
OpenSecrets LittleSis and PoliticalMoneyLine are several great sites that dig into PACs, or political action committees, lobbying groups that fund politicians' campaigns, often for business reasons.
But to save you the reading, AIPAC is the largest pro-Israel lobbying group in the US. Let's see what they say about themselves:
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Ho...Ly.. Shit. 17.4 million dollars in campaign donations? I wonder who's donating.
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Well, that ain't too specific. Other than giving me the vibe that it's white people. I think we can do better, by grabbing some data from the federal election commission site - where campaign donations are a matter of public record, and available for bulk data download!
I grabbed the 2023 data just to keep the dataset somewhat manageable and current! So we're only looking at contributions to AIPAC from this year.
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Ahh that's a nice readable 8000 lines of donations. Let's get crunching.
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So... The top donors are often retired or not employed (presumably living off investments like stocks, landlording, etc - not being broke.) And for the employed ones, they're most commonly attorneys, CEOs, executives, corporate presidents or chairmen, investors, etc. Not super representative of the people.
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And the donors' most common employers? Lots of investment / real estate / venture capitol. (Might dig in deeper here when I have time?)
As for who's donating, there are so many small donors that the pie chart looks like an optical illusion.
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Just to dig into the biggest donors of 2020? They're in the 15k to 47k range, and I'm seeing a lot of finance folks, corporate higher-ups, and real estate folks in this list.
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And as for where these donors are?
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All over the country, with a bias towards big cities and wealthy areas! But perhaps a map will show it better... Color coded with red being over 100k, orange for 10k to 100k, yellow for 1k to 10k, and green for under 10k.
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And to zoom into a few hotspots (below readmore)? As someone who's traveled most of the country, it's sooo obvious that these donations are clustered in really wealthy areas. So - fuckin shocker - but the data seems to imply it's not the average joe.
So to wrap all this up and with something actionable?
Our politicians are bought out through the wealth of large corporations and investment groups. If you can this black friday / cyber monday / all the consumerist holidays coming up? Don't buy shit! It's time for crafty season!
And if you're looking to protest? Well, maybe these maps will help you pick a high-impact spot!
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also shoutout to the funniest man in the dataset - David - who reported his job title as 'big boy' (Google shows his job as a founder of a massive landlord corporation holding over $1 billion in homes. But alright big boy we can go with that.)
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How cable monopolists tricked conservatives into shooting themselves in the face
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No matter how hard conservative culture-war cannon-fodder love big business, it will never love them back. Take network policy, where rural turkeys in Red State America keep on voting for Christmas, then profess outrage when Old Farmer Comcast gets to sharpening his ax.
For two years, the FCC has been hamstrung because MAGA Senators refuse to confirm Gigi Sohn, leaving the Commission with only four commissioners. What do the GOP have against Sohn? Well, to hear them tell of it, she’s some kind of radical Marxist who will undermine free enterprise and replace the internet with tin cans and string.
The reality is that Sohn favors policies that will specifically and substantially benefit the rural Americans whose senators who refuse to confirm her. For example, Sohn favors municipal fiber provision, which low-information conservatives have been trained to reflexively reject: “Get your government out of my internet!”
Boy, are they ever wrong. The private sector sucks at providing network connectivity, especially in rural places. The cable companies and phone companies have divided up the USA like the Pope dividing up the “New World,” setting out exclusive, non-competing territories that get worse service than anyone else in the wealthy world. Americans pay some of the highest prices for the lowest speeds of any OECD nation.
For ISPs, bad service is a feature, not a bug. When Frontier went bankrupt in 2020, we got to look at its books, which is how we discovered that the company booked the one rural customers with no alternative as “assets” because they could be charged more for slower, less reliable service:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/frontiers-bankruptcy-reveals-cynical-choice-deny-profitable-fiber-millions
We also learned that Frontier had calculated that it could make an extra billion in profit by bringing fiber to three million households, but chose not to, because it would take a decade to realize those profits, and during that time, executives’ stock options would decline in value as analysts punished them for making long-term bets.
We can bring fiber to rural America, and when we do, amazing things happen. McKee, Kentucky — one of the poorest places in America — used federal grants and its New Deal era rural electrification co-op to bring fiber to every household, using a mule called Ole Bub to run it over difficult mountain passes, and the result was an economic miracle:
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-one-traffic-light-town-with-some-of-the-fastest-internet-in-the-us
The only Americans who consistently say they like their ISPs are people who live in the 700+ small towns that have run their own fiber, mostly in Red States:
https://muninetworks.org/communitymap
Small wonder that rural Americans prefer muni fiber to commercial ISPs’ offerings. When Trump’s FCC Chair Ajit Pai gave them billions in subsidies to improve rural connectivity, the monopolists spent it pulling new copper lines, not fiber — which would have been thousands of times faster.
Given all that, it takes a lot to convince rural Americans that municipal fiber is bad for them. Specifically, it takes disinformation. More specifically, it takes the lie that municipal fiber would result in “government interference” in users’ communications.
Boy, is this ever wrong. Private companies are free to set their own content moderation policies, and can discriminate against any viewpoint they wish. They can and do remove “lawful but awful” speech like racist diatribes, vaccine denial, election denial, and other conservative fever-dreams.
Contrast that with local governments, who are bound by the First Amendment, and prohibited from practicing “viewpoint discrimination.” This means that if a local government allows one viewpoint on a subject, they are generally required to allow all other viewpoints on that subject. This is how we get the Satanic Temple’s excellent stunts, like demanding that towns that display Christian icons on public lands also display statues of Baphomet right next to them.
https://www.npr.org/2018/08/17/639726472/satanic-temple-protests-ten-commandments-monument-with-goat-headed-statue
When your town government runs 100gb fiber into your basement or garage, it will have a much harder time blocking you from, say, running a Mastodon instance devoted to election denial or GhostGun production than your commercial ISP will. Convincing American conservatives to hate municipal broadband was a gigantic self-own:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/17/turner-diaries-fanfic/#1a-fiber
Even worse is what rural America has been sold instead of municipal fiber: Starlink, the My Pillow of broadband. Starlink sells itself as blazing-fast satellite broadband, but conspicuously fails to talk up the fact that every Starlink user in your neighborhood competes for the same wireless spectrum as you, so the service can only get slower and more expensive over time:
https://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/bad/starlink-nov-2022-data-caps.html
There’s been a concerted smear campaign against Sohn, and one of the major talking points is that Sohn is anti-cop because she sits on EFF’s board, and EFF wants to place limits on police access to commercial surveillance data. Which is wild, because one of EFF’s demands is limits on geofenced reverse warrants, where cops ask Google to reveal the identity of everyone who was in a specific place at a specific time. If you’ve heard about geofenced warrants lately, it was probably in the context of conservative outrage at their use in rounding up the January 6 insurrectionists.
Now, the primary use of these is to target Black Lives Matter demonstrators and other protestors, and EFF advocates for the normal Fourth Amendment rights that everyone is guaranteed in the Constitution. Conservative pundits didn’t give a damn about geofenced warrants until the J6 affair, and now they do — but they still insist that Sohn should be disqualified from sitting on the FCC because she shares their outrage at the abuse of private surveillance data by law enforcement.
All this raises the question: why have all these Red State senators made it their mission in life to block the appointment of an FCC commissioner who would deliver so many benefits to their constituents? It’s hard to say, of course, but Luke Goldstein has a suggestion in today’s American Prospect:
https://prospect.org/politics/democratic-majority-at-the-fcc-still-blocked/
“A torrent of lobbying money from the telecom industry has flooded Washington to block Sohn’s arrival at the FCC. AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and T-Mobile doled out over $23 million lobbying Washington this year.”
And why would these companies spend millions to block Sohn from sitting on the Commission? Because she would help the Democratic majority pass policies that make broadband cheaper and faster for America, especially rural America where costs are highest and service is worst, and this will limit the telco monopolists’ profits.
There’s a new Democratic senate majority that’ll sit in 2023, so perhaps Sohn will finally be seated and start delivering relief to all Americans, even the turkeys who can’t stop voting for Christmas.
[Image ID: A hunter in camo firing a rifle whose barrel has been bent back to point at his own face. A muzzle flash emerges from the barrel. The hunter wears a MAGA hat. Behind the hunter is a telephone pole with many radiating lines. In the bottom left corner of the image is a 1950s-style illustration of a broadly smiling salesman, pointing at a box that is emblazoned with the logo for ALEC.]
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porterdavis · 2 years
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Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
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wardsutton · 9 months
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My new cartoon up at The Boston Globe now:
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imkeepinit · 8 months
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saywhat-politics · 3 months
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A judge on Friday refused a bid by Arizona Republican legislative leaders to block an anti-dark money law that voters passed in 2022, concluding that their claims that the new state law is unconstitutional don’t pass muster.
House Speaker Ben Toma, R-Peoria, and Senate President Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert, filed a lawsuit in October alleging that Proposition 211 is unconstitutional because it violated legislative authority. They asked the court to immediately block the law so it could not be used to unveil the sources of campaign spending in the upcoming 2024 election that would have remained anonymous in previous years. 
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and the Citizens Clean Elections Commission, which is charged with enforcing the dark money disclosures, all defended the new law. 
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Republicans have been re-shaping America since the 60’s to suit their views. They have billionaires pumping unlimited dark money into hundreds of political foundations staffed by right-wing scholars and lawyers. We have a handful of social media bloggers sending warnings into the digital ether.
Educate yourself and educate others. They don’t even need to control Congress or the White House to do this. They’ve been doing this at the state level for decades, long before they purchased the Supreme Court.
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kp777 · 6 months
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Rightwing activist helps fund ‘predatory payday lenders’ in supreme court case
Excerpt:
The rightwing activist Leonard Leo has helped fund a network of groups involved in a crucial US supreme court case that could fundamentally weaken the federal government’s ability to hold corporations to account, a leading watchdog said as the conservative-dominated court prepared for its new term.
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Mother Jones :: No Labels
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😡
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