A far-Left dark money fundraising campaign hauled in an alarming $1.6 billion in cash from anonymous donors to bankroll Progressive, Fascist, and Democrat groups and causes in 2020.
Forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service show that the shadowy money network, managed by Washington, DC-based and Democrat-aligned consulting firm Arabella Advisors, pushed an astounding $896 million in contributions and grants to Progressive and Fascist groups last year.
The Arabella network illustrated how disingenuous Democrats – like Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders – quietly benefit from massive amounts of anonymous donations as they simultaneously – and hypocritically – rail against the influence of “dark money” in the political sphere.
The network’s web of activist groups sits under four Arabella-managed nonprofits: the New Venture Fund, Sixteen Thirty Fund, Windward Fund, and Hopewell Fund.
“Dark money” refers to political spending by nonprofit organizations – for example, 501(c)(4) (social welfare, political action) 501(c)(5) (unions) and 501(c)(6) (trade association) groups – that are not required to disclose their donors.
Each of these funds acts as a financial benefactor to other Progressive and Fascist nonprofits, providing their tax and legal status to the nonprofits housed beneath the funds. This scheme allows those groups to avoid filing tax forms which would shed light on their financials.
The four Arabella-managed funds are not required to disclose donors on their tax forms because of legislated exemptions for political and activist contributions.
An examination of the IRS filings by the Capital Research Center found the four funds facilitated more than 300 “pop-up” projects to boost Democrat, Progressive, and Fascist causes that exclusively attacked Republican initiatives.
Why This Is Important
This is what happens when groups and corporations are bestowed the rights reserved for citizens where electoral politics is concerned. And while the debate over Citizens United v. the FEC will continue for the ages, there are consequences for that ruling that have delivered our political system to the elitist, globalist, and corporate class, drowning out the citizen from the process but for the vote.
Summarizing the Citizen United v. The FEC decision, it dramatically increased the power of dark money groups (nonprofit groups that are not required to disclose their donors) to directly influence federal elections. And while the Right was tickled with this decision in the beginning, since the up-ending of the power structure in the United States – the metamorphosis of power in the boardrooms from free-market proponents to Woke, Marxism-motivated transformative activists – they are too busy getting “bitch-slapped” in the fundraising sphere to realize they are losing it all.
According to OpenSecret.org – a spectacular website with which you should acquaint yourself:
“The Citizens United ruling… [allowed] nonprofits to spend corporate treasury funds on ads that expressly advocate for or against a candidate’s election. These anonymously funded groups swiftly put their new powers to use. Dark money groups launched $139 million in FEC-reported outside spending during the 2010 midterms, then shelled out a record $313 million during the 2012 election cycle…
“Regulated by the Internal Revenue Service, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit may spend unlimited sums on political activities without ever disclosing donors, so long as its primary purpose is ‘social welfare.’ The IRS has not clearly defined what a primary purpose is or issued rules on how to calculate it, but the generally accepted test is that less than half of a 501(c)(4) nonprofit’s activities may be political. To stay under the 50 percent threshold, some dark money groups funnel anonymous cash to each other in complex networks.”
This is why Americans get bombarded with disingenuous political advertising every General Election cycle. In fact, the “lowest common denominator” mentality of political advertising goes hand in hand with why Americans have come to despise politicians, spin doctors, political pundits, and the mainstream media. Truth has been ceded to narrative control and the Alinsky-based, win-at-all-cost/the-ends-justifies-the-means, slash and burn political model.
While citizens certainly make up corporations and special interest groups, those groups themselves – as entities – routinely abuse the Citizens United ruling to propagandize and, because of that, abuse the notion of “social welfare.”
Social welfare is an imprecise term at best, and the IRS’s failure to rigidly define the term as it pertains to political campaign finance makes it an almost wholly useless catch-all that provides “plausible deniability” for any and all political advocacy.
Strictly speaking, the term refers to the overall well-being of the entire society. It is laughable to contend that the inaccurate, politically charged, hyper-partisan half-truths – and in many cases outright lies – foisted upon the American people by dark money groups in any way serves the overall well-being of our society. In fact, it can be argued, it achieves the exact opposite: the poisoning of our society.
With disingenuous players in the mix like Arabella – and the deep-pocket corporations and Woke activist billionaires that routinely cut checks with absolutely no exposure to accountability, it is time to revisit the idea of campaign finance.
No one and no entity should be able to skirt accountability for their actions while attempting to influence the electorate to their way of thinking. If a person or group of people believes in something enough to cut a check in support of an issue, they should have courage enough to stand up for their conviction.
Dark money contributions allow the cowards of the elitist class to hide behind the disingenuous and corruptive skirts of zealot organizations like Arabella.