"Who Needs a Smoke-Filled Room?"

[applegrove]

Who Needs a Smoke-Filled Room?

by Thomas B. Edsall at the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/10/opinion/karl-rove-the-koch-brothers-and-the-end-of-political-transparency.html?_r=0

"SNIP........................



Tax-exempt “social welfare” organizations, the new political weapons of choice, are widening the gap between the rich people who control campaign financing and the economically anxious voters targeted by their ads.

We don’t know who the contributors are to Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS because they can hide behind provisions in federal tax law designed to protect donors to “social welfare” charities, but we do know how much each gave, and we do know generally, from Crossroads’s annual 990 filings with the I.R.S., how the money was spent. In 2012, according to its own statement, Crossroads GPS spent $74.2 million not on commonly understood social welfare objectives but on direct political activities.


Crossroads raised the money for its 2012 tax-exempt activities from 291 unnamed men and women who wrote checks for a total of $179.7 million, an average contribution of $617,525 – nearly 12 times the 2012 median household income in the United States of $53,046, and 22 times the 2012 per capita income of $28,051.

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A two-class structure of election financing is emerging. The first is the traditional system of federally regulated individual contributions in which the small donor has become increasingly important. The second is the combination of “super PACs” and tax-exempt independent expenditure groups, including 501(c)(4)s, which together operate without limits and cater almost exclusively to those at the very top of the economic pyramid. Policing the hodgepodge of regulations, statutes and rulings governing elections has become virtually impossible. A kind of lawlessness prevails that is incompatible with the goals of democracy.


.........................SNIP"

[GeorgeGist]

1. The per capita US income in 2012 was $42693.