Thursday, February 04, 2010
And speaking of money laundering...
It is not yet illegal because so many of the powerful do so, but the shifting of money to hide disclosure for campaign purposes is morally and ethically in the same boat. Raw Story has a look at how money is transferred to organizations that do not have to disclose where the money comes from.
Campaign finance experts confirmed that though disclosure rules remained intact in the new Supreme Court decision, there are effective methods to circumvent them.True it doesn't always take a rocket scientist to guess where the money is coming from, but you can't prove it and that lets the corporations piously sniff, "Who me". One only has to look at the health insurance reform efforts this year to get some idea of what goes on.
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, an attorney and campaign finance expert at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice, said corporations already effectively end-run campaign finance law by shuffling money through trade associations.
“One of their favorites right now is spending through trade associations,” Torres-Spelliscy said.
Trade associations are considered tax-exempt non-profit organizations under US law. While they must report contributions received from other corporations to the Internal Revenue Service, the document itself remains confidential and is not made available to the public.
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