Who Owns Your Presidential Candidate?

Source: Jake Anderson of Antimedia

It’s a new era of American politics. With regard to campaign finance, the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling — and the arguably worse McCutcheon v. FEC ruling — opened the doors to unrestricted corporate funding of our national elections.
The primary mechanism in place facilitating this flood of private money is the super PAC. You’ve probably heard of super PACs and how they’ve essentially taken over the role traditionally filled by individual campaign donors in Political Action Committees (PACs). But super PACs aren’t the end of it. There are puppet political non-profits, business associations, and now, single-candidate “dark money” outfits that, as of September 21, have already raised $25.1 million —  five times the amount spent by this time in the 2012 election cycle.
Small, private donors still exist, of course. Their campaign contributions are still capped at about $5,000 per individual, making them the tip of the iceberg in political campaign spending. Enter super PACs and single-candidate committees, who, because of the aforementioned SCOTUS rulings, have the ability to slither in between campaign finance laws and flood our elections with unlimited corporate money. The “dark money” 501(c) groups, sometimes known as “social welfare” organizations, are particularly insidious because, unlike super PACs, they are not required to disclose their donors to the public. Since they are legally viewed as a type of business, they don’t have to disclose disbursements until the IRS requires it. This means there is essentially a network of politically advantageous winks and nods, whereby candidates receive unlimited parallel spending from an interconnected syndicate of super PACs, non-profits, and business associations.
READ MORE:http://www.blacklistednews.com/Who_Owns_Your_Presidential_Candidate%3F/46462/0/38/38/Y/M.html