{"id":862,"date":"2017-03-17T15:09:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-17T15:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commarts.pleather.us\/2017\/03\/17\/a-look-at-how-dark-money-influences-elections\/"},"modified":"2017-03-17T15:09:00","modified_gmt":"2017-03-17T15:09:00","slug":"a-look-at-how-dark-money-influences-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/2017\/03\/17\/a-look-at-how-dark-money-influences-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"A Look At How Dark Money Influences Elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most people are under the impression that the IRS and the FEC strictly enforce the rules that restrict nonprofit organizations, who are not required to reveal their donors to the public, from dedicating more than half of their proceeds to politics, but sadly, they would be mistaken. It\u2019s not because the rules are non-existent, it\u2019s because they aren\u2019t enforced or enforcible to begin with. This anonymous funding is known as dark money. <\/span><\/p>\n

The biggest issue is that these agencies\u2014the IRS and the Federal Election Commission and the like \u2014aren\u2019t very effective when it comes to overseeing dark money groups. <\/span><\/p>\n

The IRS, for example, does not have any procedures set up to assess political activity nor do they have the funds to properly train their employees. These were contributing factors that led to the discovery back in 2014 that those whose job it was to audit 501(c) applications for tax-exemption didn\u2019t quite grasp the regulations they were supposed to be enforcing.\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Now, although dark money groups aren\u2019t <\/span>allowed<\/span><\/i> to dedicate most of their proceeds to influencing elections, that just means they are only allowed to devote less than half, or 49%. And that does not mean that nonprofits don\u2019t regularly spend most, or even all, of their funds on elections. It\u2019s actually really easy for them to do so without even getting in trouble. <\/span><\/p>\n

The trick is a bit complicated, so here\u2019s how it works:<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Basically what is happening is nonprofits are daisy-chaining their contributions to fulfill their tax-exemption eligibility requirements while offsetting their spending on politics. And the worst part about it is that they don\u2019t even have to declare any of these transactions until the election is over. <\/span><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re still confused about dark money or you want to learn more, <\/span>check out this website<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

[Via: <\/span>Open Secrets<\/span><\/a>]<\/span><\/p>\n

Source: Visual News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most people are under the impression that the IRS and the FEC strictly enforce the rules that restrict nonprofit organizations, who…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":245,"featured_media":863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[45],"class_list":["post-862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-careering"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/107\/2017\/03\/dark-money-alchemy-infographic.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paqOTj-dU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/245"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}