I must apologize. There’s too much filthy smoke in Northwest Montana, and I’ll confess that a good part of it comes out of my ears after sundown as I watch the 10 p.m. local TV news. It’s not the news burning me up, but the political ads – can’t we bring back the geriatric drug commercials instead?
Not until after the election, peasants. First Amendment! Yep – but have you noticed that drug companies aren’t allowed to lie nearly as much as political advertisers?
The dark money is so pervasive this election, even usually oblivious “news” producers inside the Beltway can’t help but pretend to notice something: Not just slimy party PACs are playing this secret money game, but “nonprofits,” too.
Nonprofits are supposed to be nonpartisan, correct? That’s why the IRS gives them favorable income tax treatment, letting them essentially keep profits untaxed – because nonprofits are always noble, altruistic, humble, and would never ever grind a partisan political ax or represent a selfish special interest, correct? Sierra Club and the NRA don’t!
But that tax treatment is a big deal. Business profits are taxable, used to be 35 percent. Give money to a PAC or candidate, there’s no deduction. Donate to a nonprofit, or worse, a “charity” set up to launder cash for other “nonprofit” political operations, and your political dollar buys even more lies pretending to be “educational” or simply “free speech.” Yep, you guessed right – that’s why Lois Lerner was so slow to let “conservative nonprofits” get IRS clearance.
Voters seem to get it. I was gratified to see that 95 percent of Beacon participants think that “nonprofits” that play politics not simply should, but be “forced to disclose” their large donors. But the news media is dead in the water. In late July Politico (which is where a bunch of thankfully former Washington Post reporters ended up when they were laid off) actually reported on an “obscure nonprofit in Washington, DC,” the Sixteen Thirty Fund, that has “funneled millions [to] progressive causes in recent years.”
Politico identified 12 “groups” with “local members and names like Floridians for a Fair Shake,” which “added together” are among the most prolific political advertisers of 2018 – groups nobody ever heard of before 2018 and never will again, spending a level of cash about equal to the conservative “nonprofit” Americans for Prosperity (which is well-known), and playing an “outsize role shaping the 2018 [Republican congressional] field.”
I’ve known about this “obscure nonprofit,” the Sixteen Thirty Fund, ever since I learned (through 30 seconds on Google back in 2011) it shared an address and managers with another obscure “charity” nobody’s ever heard of (except me and some really rich donors) that burnt through $371 million in 2016. Trust me, neither one of these entities is “obscure” to any of the clients who write those obviously-huge checks.
The “millions” funneled by Sixteen Thirty since it was quietly created in “recent years” (2009, with $4.8 million in a partial first year – granting $376,000 to the Service Employees International Union for purposes unknown posing as “public education”). In 2010? A flat zero in income. But through 2014-2016 (the most recent year available), this “nonprofit” moved at least $42 million to “progressive” advocacy, with half of it spent in 2016. Want to see? ProPublica has all their IRS filings at the link in the Web version of this column. But no donor disclosure.
As for Politico’s story, that’s the first time I’ve ever read “mainstream” coverage of the fund in the nine years it has existed, and that brings me to a terrible Montana irony regarding 2018’s stinking flood of secret/dark/black/dirty advertising.
None of these slimy ads would run unless someone sold the space, namely the Montana Broadcasters and Montana Newspaper Association. I’m sure our “media” loves the flood of revenue, seemingly too much to deny running these tawdry ads unless buyers disclose who actually paid for the trash being pumped. But it seems they also love that cash too much to spend any of it on investigating who’s bought not just our government, but our free press, too. Shame.