{"id":7934,"date":"2012-06-04T10:32:41","date_gmt":"2012-06-04T17:32:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=7934"},"modified":"2012-06-04T10:32:42","modified_gmt":"2012-06-04T17:32:42","slug":"social-welfare-rove-and-kochs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/06\/04\/social-welfare-rove-and-kochs\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Welfare? Rove and Kochs?!!?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is shameful that, since Citizens United<\/em>, political vultures like Karl Rove and the Koch Brothers can spend limitless $millions influencing elections with ads that are in no way related to the truth.  That they can claim tax exemption as social welfare agencies just adds insult to injury.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"4RoveEvery week the campaign dollars pile up, by the tens of millions, by the hundreds of millions, to a level never before seen in American political life. Outside groups now say<\/a> they plan to spend $1 billion on behalf of Republicans in the November election<\/strong>, which will probably be twice the level raised by groups supporting Democrats. Even the slush-funders of the Watergate era would have been slack-jawed at the number of seven- and eight-figure checks pouring into groups with names like Crossroads and Americans for Prosperity<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

The reason for these staggering numbers \u2014 and for the growing imbalance between the parties \u2014 is that the vast financial power of the business world has been loosed as a political tool by the federal courts. In pursuit of lower taxes and less regulation, businesses, led by the United States Chamber of Commerce, are determined to remove President Obama from office and return full control of Congress to the Republican Party<\/strong>. Executives and companies are the principal source of the unlimited checks that are fueling the rise of these outside groups. <\/p>\n

Many of the executives are giving money to \u201csuper PACs,\u201d which have to disclose their names. But because businesses usually don\u2019t want the public to know of their political activity, they prefer to launder their political contributions through the Chamber<\/a> or through \u201csocial welfare organizations<\/strong>,\u201d which can keep the names a secret. <\/p>\n

The law that permits these undisclosed contributions also puts explicit limits on these organizations\u2019 activities. Tax-exempt social welfare groups, known by their Internal Revenue Code section number as 501(c)(4)\u2019s, cannot be organized for the \u201cprimary\u201d purpose of political activity<\/a>. So far, the I.R.S. is looking the other way. <\/p>\n

But if not political activity, what is the primary purpose of a group like Crossroads GPS, the 501(c)(4) organized by Karl Rove<\/strong>, which plans to spend more than $100 million this year? It has already run at least a dozen ads this year, 11 of which accuse President Obama of breaking promises or committing serious policy errors. \u201cObama added almost $16,000 in debt for every American,\u201d says the latest<\/a>, a classic in misleading political hyperbole\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <NY Times<\/a>><\/p>\n

Part of the problem is that the IRS does not evaluate a firms finances and activity until year end.  By then, the election will be over, and if Republicans tale the White House, there will be no accountability for these illegal tactics.  <\/font><\/p>\n

If \u201cboth parties are the same\u201d as some misinformed people proclaim, Democrats are sure selling out cheap, because 95% of wall street political money goes to Republicans<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is shameful that, since Citizens United, political vultures like Karl Rove and the Koch Brothers can spend limitless $millions influencing elections with ads that are in no way related to the truth.  That they can claim tax exemption as social welfare agencies just adds insult to injury. Every week the campaign dollars pile up, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7934\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}