How to Raise $89 Million in Small Donations -- And Make It Disappear

[Nevilledog]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/05/14/us/politics/scam-robocalls-donations-policing-veterans.html

No paywall
https://archive.is/5gHmr

*snip*

The campaign-finance system is built to police who puts money into politics, legal experts say. These groups embodied a flaw: The system is poorly prepared to stop those who raise money and channel it somewhere other than candidates and causes.

By minimizing their aid to candidates, the consultants who helped set up the five nonprofits avoided scrutiny from the Federal Election Commission and most state watchdogs, and put their groups under the jurisdiction of a distracted and underfunded regulator, the Internal Revenue Service. As a result, their spending records were posted not on the F.E.C.’s easily searchable site, but on a byzantine I.R.S. page written in bureaucratic jargon.

To understand what these groups did with their $89 million, The Times analyzed 15,851 pages of their financial reports, including 135,843 separate expenditures, searched corporate records in 10 states, and interviewed the nonprofits’ leaders and vendors.

Four of the five nonprofits remain active. In statements, they said they had not sought to avoid oversight, enrich insiders or deceive donors.

Instead, the groups said, they simply believed in helping politicians indirectly — not by giving them money or buying them ads or mentioning their names, but by obliquely raising issues that could shift voters their way.

*snip*

[Bristlecone]

1. Money in politics will be the death of us all.

[Bristlecone]

2. And thank you for the archive link

[Nevilledog]

3. I try to always include one.

I want people to actually be able to read what I post.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

4. Your care in posting makes me pick your threads first. . . . nt

[Nevilledog]

5. ...

😍