... Large donations — none of which were publicly disclosed by the chamber, a tax-exempt group that keeps its donors secret, as it is allowed by law — offer a glimpse of the chamber’s money-raising efforts, which it has ramped up recently in an orchestrated campaign to become one of the most well-financed critics of the Obama administration and an influential player in this fall’s Congressional elections.
They suggest that the recent allegations from President Obama and others that foreign money has ended up in the chamber’s coffers miss a larger point: The chamber has had little trouble finding American companies eager to enlist it, anonymously, to fight their political battles and pay handsomely for its help.
Companies cited by the Times include Prudential, Dow Chemical and Goldman Sachs, among others. There's nothing illegal about what they're doing. The problem is that it's done behind a scrim of secrecy. Examination of their tax records revealed what they've been doing, as representatives of large corporations, to buy a new Capitol Hill that's even friendlier of big business.
The chamber makes no apologies for its policy of not identifying its donors. It has vigorously opposed legislation in Congress that would require groups like it to identify their biggest contributors when they spend money on campaign ads.
Among other "secret" contributors are health insurance corporations targeting the health care bill trying to avoid "harrassment" from supporters of legislation. It's the secrecy -- the avoidance of disclosure -- that does the real harm.
As a nonprofit organization, the chamber need not disclose its donors in its public tax filings, and because it says no donations are earmarked for specific ads aimed at a candidate, it does not invoke federal elections rules requiring disclosure.
The annual tax returns that the chamber releases include a list of all donations over $5,000, including 21 in 2008 that each exceed $1 million, one of them for $15 million. However, the chamber omits the donors’ names.
The Chamber is skating on thin ice.
In January, the chamber’s president, Thomas J. Donohue, a former trucking lobbyist, announced that his group intended “to carry out the largest, most aggressive voter education and issue advocacy effort in our nearly 100-year history.”
The words were carefully chosen, as the chamber asserts in filings with the Federal Election Commission that it is simply running issue ads during this election season. But a review of the nearly 70 chamber-produced ads found that 93 percent of those that have run nationwide that focus on the midterm elections either support Republican candidates or criticize their opponents.
And they're not shy about the results of their secretive money bombs. One Chamber exec acknowledged that "we are all tired — no doubt about it. But we are so close to bringing about historic change on Capitol Hill."
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The most startling thing about it is that the Chamber is, of course, heavily supporting Republicans even, NPR points out this morning, at a time when the Republican party has never been less popular. Note that word, "popular." It means "people." An historically large percentage of Americans don't like the Republican party. That doesn't matter. Money trumps people -- and American voters appear to be easily bought.
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The Center for American Progress adds this:
Amid an unprecedented surge in mostly secret money into this year’s election campaign, a new report released yesterday by the Center for American Progress Action Fund details how 13 right-wing groups — including large secret money groups like American Crossroads, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and American Action Network — have spent more than $68.5 million this year on “misleading and fictitious televisions ads designed to shape midterm elections and advance their anti-clean energy reform agenda.” In addition to the anti-clean energy ads polluting our airwaves, an earlier CAPAF report outlined an astonishing $242 million in spending on lobbying by the 20 biggest oil, mining, and electric utility companies.