Billions in 'dark money' is influencing US politics. We need disclosure laws

[turbinetree]

David Sirota and Joel Warner
Mon 29 Aug 2022 06.19 EDT

A donor secretly transferred $1.6bn to a Republican political group. Because of America’s lax laws, the donation was never disclosed in any public record or database


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This week, the Lever, ProPublica and the New York Times discovered the largest known political advocacy donation in American history. We exposed a reclusive billionaire’s secret transfer of $1.6bn to a political group controlled by the Republican operative Leonard Leo, who spearheaded the construction of a conservative supreme court supermajority to end abortion, block government regulations, stymie the fight against climate change and limit voting rights.

This anonymous donation – which flowed to a tax-exempt trust that was never disclosed in any public record or database – was probably completely legal.

Whether you support or abhor Leo’s crusade, we should be able to agree on one larger non-partisan principle: such enormous sums of money should not be able to influence elections, lawmakers, judicial nominations and public policy in secret. And we should not have to rely on a rare leak to learn basic campaign finance facts that should be freely available to anyone.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/29/billions-in-dark-money-is-influencing-us-politics-we-need-disclosure-laws

This jerk basically bought three+ Us Supreme Court Justices and more people to be put on the bench....and Sheldon White House D- Rhode Island has it right....

https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-cicilline-introduce-disclose-act-to-repair-americans-faith-in-democracy

[bullimiami]

1. No. We need to return to sane less-corrupt campaign finance laws.

1) Corporations are not people.
2) A person is one person. Period. Same limits for everyone.

[jimfields33]

2. A hill should have been written last week and voted on today.

This is a easy one to get through.

[Progressive dog]

3. Disclosure should be an easy thing to achieve in a government of and for the people,

but it won't be. The wanna be authoritarians will hold SCOTUS for decades unless there is a wave of voters turning their enablers out of office. Is it going to happen? IMO probably not.

[crickets]

4. Good for Senators Whitehouse and Cicilline. It's a start.

We need more than disclosure, however. The ability to throw around this amount of money in politics should be abolished entirely.