{"id":17188,"date":"2021-01-12T12:28:43","date_gmt":"2021-01-12T20:28:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=17188"},"modified":"2021-01-12T12:28:46","modified_gmt":"2021-01-12T20:28:46","slug":"end-dark-money-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2021\/01\/12\/end-dark-money-now\/","title":{"rendered":"End Dark Money Now"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The insurrection shows why Democrats must enact long-overdue reforms that will expose who is funding the anti-government movement threatening our democracy.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Andrew Perez<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0David Sirota<\/a> Jan 11, 2021 (The Daily Poster)<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table>\n\n\n\n

This report was written by Andrew Perez and David Sirota.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you are a billionaire or a corporation in America today, you can bankroll seditious politicians and the radical right-wing movement that staged last week\u2019s violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol \u2014 and you can do so with impunity. You don\u2019t have to fear social ostracization, political consequences or a consumer backlash, because right now you can remain anonymous by funneling your cash through political groups that operate in the shadows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deterring this continued financing of violent right-wing radicalism \u2014 and allowing Americans to know who exactly is funding this dangerous movement \u2014 will require a new Biden administration and a Democratic Congress to finally enact long-overdue reforms to end the era of dark money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remember: Last week\u2019s uprising at the Capitol was not some spontaneous grassroots conflagration \u2014 ABC News<\/a> reported that \u201cPresident Donald Trump’s political apparatus worked behind the scenes with pro-Trump groups to plan and promote events in Washington, D.C., that ultimately led to Wednesday’s attack on Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following that assault, Americans have been reminded that billionaires, lobbying organizations and name-brand corporations have knowingly sponsored<\/a> the politicians<\/a> and groups that egged on the mayhem in hopes of overturning the national election \u2014 and a handful of those corporations<\/a> have said they will suspend political action committee donations to individual lawmakers who tried to overturn the election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While that\u2019s good news, PAC donations to individual politicians are only a small slice of all the resources financing the insurrectionist GOP \u2014 and existing laws and rules only provide the public a partial snapshot of the money fueling the radical right. Right now, an increasing portion of resources flooding into politics is going into dark money groups that do not have to disclose their donors. OpenSecrets estimated<\/a> that dark money groups injected more than $750 million into the 2020 elections \u2014 and that does not account for other dark money that funds propaganda, misinformation and astroturf organizing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President-elect Joe Biden has called<\/a> the insurrectionists at the Capitol \u201cdomestic terrorists\u201d \u2014 and a push for a new anti-terrorism law<\/a> may touch off a contentious debate over civil liberties. What should not be controversial is subjecting dark money to sunlight and disclosure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the name of protecting national security, lawmakers recently passed<\/a> bipartisan legislation requiring more transparency from anonymous shell corporations. The same logic should apply to dark money in an era of violent insurrection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These seven steps would let investors, consumers, journalists, watchdog groups and government agencies know who is funding the assault on our democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Require corporate disclosure of all political spending<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The Securities and Exchange Commission can require publicly traded corporations to fully disclose all spending on politics \u2014 including donations to 501(c)(4) dark money groups that have funneled money to the Republican groups<\/a> that promoted last week\u2019s insurrection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Public interest groups pressed the Obama administration to enact such disclosure requirements, but the administration\u2019s SEC chief, Mary Jo White, refused<\/a>. The Republican-controlled Congress in 2015<\/a> then included language statutorily barring the agency from enacting such a rule in the annual congressional spending bill \u2014 and the provision has been re-authorized each year in subsequent spending bills, including the one that passed in late December<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNone of the funds made available by this act shall be used by the Securities and Exchange Commission to finalize, issue, or implement any rule, regulation, or order regarding the disclosure of political contributions, contributions to tax exempt organizations, or dues paid to trade associations,\u201d the provision says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden can select an SEC chief who supports such a rule, and congressional Democrats can now strip out that language from new spending bills. To prevent delays, shenanigans or inevitable attempts to water down the initiative, Democrats can additionally re-introduce an existing proposal<\/a> statutorily forcing the SEC to issue regulations requiring public companies to disclose their political contributions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Require dark money nonprofits to disclose their donors<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

A dark money arm of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) was one of several nonprofits that helped direct people to the protest before the insurrection at the Capitol, according to Documented<\/a>. The shadowy organization, called the Rule of Law Defense Fund (RLDF), sent out robocalls urging people to \u201cmarch to the Capitol building and call on congress to stop the steal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A group calling itself the Rule of Law Defense Fund supporting efforts to overturn a national election is about as Orwellian as it gets \u2014 but if you try to follow the money behind the organization, you hit a brick wall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, while RAGA discloses its donors, records show more than 10 percent of the money it raised last election cycle came from the Judicial Crisis Network (JCN) and its parent organization, called the Concord Fund, which collectively donated $3.7 million. JCN separately reported<\/a> donating $700,000 to RLDF between mid-2018 and mid-2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Concord Fund and JCN are part of a cluster of conservative dark money groups led by Trump\u2019s judicial adviser Leonard Leo and have spent tens of millions of dollars on recent Supreme Court fights. Their funding sources are a total mystery<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

JCN donated<\/a> $50,000 to another group listed<\/a> as a participant in the Capitol protest \u2014 Turning Point Action, the 501(c)(4) affiliate of the conservative campus group Turning Point USA. Charlie Kirk, who leads the Turning Point groups, tweeted<\/a> two days before the insurrection in Washington that Turning Point Action was \u201csending 80+ buses full of patriots to D.C. to fight for the president.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

H.R. 1, a sweeping piece of democracy reform legislation recently re-introduced<\/a> by House Democrats, would require nonprofits that spend money in elections and on judicial nominations to immediately disclose their donors. If Democrats want to ensure there are no loopholes<\/a>, they can broaden this provision and force all nonprofits that work to influence policy to disclose their donors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Disclose contractor spending<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Biden could sign an executive order requiring federal contractors to fully disclose all political spending, including to dark money groups. At the end of his presidency, Obama considered<\/a> signing such an order, but he never did. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We already know that some corporations receiving government business are linked to those who finance the insurrectionist movement \u2014 for example, Uline receives government orders<\/a> while its billionaire owner Richard Uihlein funds<\/a> Turning Point USA, which provided Trump a platform<\/a> to claim he won the election weeks before the insurrection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without an executive order, the public cannot know the full extent to which such contractors may be financing groups promoting political misinformation fueling the insurrection movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Repeal Trump\u2019s dark money rule<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The Trump administration last year issued a rule<\/a> allowing nonprofits to avoid even privately disclosing their donors to Internal Revenue Service regulators. The rule followed a lobbying campaign by the Koch-linked dark money group, Americans for Prosperity<\/a>. This rule must be rescinded. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Rescind rules making it more difficult for shareholders to compel disclosure<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Shareholders have been filing resolutions<\/a> to try to force<\/a> corporations to fully disclose their political spending. The movement has resulted in more than 150 companies<\/a> agreeing to provide expanded disclosure of spending, including tens of millions of dollars of previously secret payments. But the Trump administration recently passed rules<\/a> to try to make it more difficult for such resolutions to be filed and re-submitted. Those rules can be rescinded by Biden\u2019s administration and a Democratic Congress. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

6. Pressure institutional investors to take action<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Billions of dollars worth of stock in workers\u2019 401k accounts are in the hands of the so-called Big Four institutional investors: Fidelity, BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street. The latter three are collectively the largest shareholder in almost 90 percent<\/a> of all corporations in the S&P 500. These institutional investors \u2014 not individual 401k account owners \u2014 get to decide how those shares of stock are voted in shareholder resolutions, and they often refuse to support resolutions requiring corporate executives to disclose political spending. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, \u201cBlackrock, Fidelity, and Vanguard supported almost no proposals to mandate that corporations disclose their political spending,\u201d wrote then-Delaware Supreme Court Justice Chief Justice Leo Strine in a 2018 report<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Had those asset managers voted the shares of stock in support of such initiatives, many of them might have passed<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strine called this a \u201cfiduciary blind spot\u201d because it effectively deprives these institutional investors of the information to know whether they are adequately protecting their customers\u2019 money and assuring it isn\u2019t misused. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Federal, state and local governments employ<\/a> these giant institutional investors to manage billions of dollars of government workers\u2019 retirement savings. That gives public officials leverage to demand that these companies start voting stock shares in support of resolutions requiring comprehensive political spending disclosure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If an asset manager like BlackRock does not want to vote for transparency measures, public officials do not have to continue giving the company the lucrative business of managing government workers\u2019 money. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

7. Use pensions\u2019 leverage to press for disclosure<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

We already know that Pennsylvania public workers\u2019 retirement system invests<\/a> in Blackstone, whose CEO has bankrolled the political machine supporting the lawmakers who tried to invalidate Pennsylvania\u2019s 2020 election. There are likely many perverse situations in which workers\u2019 pension funds are indirectly subsidizing the political movement trying to disenfranchise those same workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

State and local officials oversee almost $5 trillion<\/a> of assets in these public pensions. Those officials can spearhead \u2014 and vote their holdings for \u2014 shareholder resolutions<\/a> to force the companies to disclose all political spending including dark money spending. They can also review whether corporate resources are indirectly flowing to groups fomenting anti-democratic insurrections. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additionally, when negotiating new investment contracts, state and local officials can use their enormous leverage to require private equity and hedge fund firms to disclose all political spending as a condition of receiving lucrative pension investments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Workers deserve to know whether or not their retirement savings are subsidizing anti-democratic movements \u2014 these are ways to make that happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo credit: Spencer Platt \/ Getty Images<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The insurrection shows why Democrats must enact long-overdue reforms that will expose who is funding the anti-government movement threatening our democracy. Andrew Perez\u00a0and\u00a0David Sirota Jan 11, 2021 (The Daily Poster) This report was written by Andrew Perez and David Sirota. If you are a billionaire or a corporation in America… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17188"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17188"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17189,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17188\/revisions\/17189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}