“People say, ‘Wow - they’re so generous!’ It’s just the best available option for them. Billionaire donors get tax benefits for philanthropy, but they still control how the money is spent. So what do those nonprofit organizations do with the donations they receive? Keep reading.Ģ. And donations to political operations like the RNC are not tax-deductible, whereas all of the entities bulleted above are tax-deductible 501(c)(3) organizations. This “dark money” cannot be tracked back to the hands of the original donors because nonprofits are not required to disclose their donors.ĭonating to “Americans for Prosperity” sounds much less political than donating to something like the Republican National Committee. These peculiarly American organizations, run with little transparency or accountability to either voters or consumers yet publicly subsidized by tax breaks, have grown into 800-billion-pound Goliaths in the public policy realm.” -Jane MayerĬan you guess what these organizations with snooze-worthy names have in common?Īll of the organizations above are nonprofit organizations or think tanks whose goal is to weaponize donations for political purposes. “In 2013, there were over a hundred thousand private foundations in the United States with assets of over $800 billion. Secretive nonprofits and think tanks often funnel money into political activities while obfuscating the donor records. Here are the five biggest revelations from Mayer’s research: 1. Mayer is an award-winning staff writer for The New Yorker, and her book unearths a number of appalling things about how money has corrupted American politics. I just finished reading Dark Money by Jane Mayer. politics, I’ve decided to learn more about the hidden forces that shape our political system.
I normally don’t even post political content on social media because I want to stay above the fray.īut with all of the current unrest in U.S. I’m not the type of person who generally writes about politics.
We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” -Louis Brandeis
0 kommentar(er)
