The Center for Public Integrity has an important story today on Organizing for Action’s money in politics problem: Organizing for... View Article
Continue readingOFA Should Disclose Contributions and Expenditures in Real Time
Less than a week after Organizing for Action chairman and former Obama campaign strategist Jim Messina assured the public that... View Article
Continue readingOFA–A Dark Money Group by Any Other Name
Organizing for Action (nee Obama for America), the campaign committee that morphed  into an outside money haven, is trying change... View Article
Continue readingInside spending: super PACs, dark money groups dominated by political insiders
By suppressing the speech of manifold corporations, both for-profit and nonprofit, the Government prevents their voices and viewpoints from reaching the public and advising voters on which persons or entities are hostile to their interests.
-- from the majority opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission
When the Supreme Court handed down its landmark decision in the Citizen United case three years ago this week, the majority's expressed intent was to allow corporations--both for-profits like Exxon-Mobil and nonprofits like the Sierra Club--to add their voices to the public debate. In practice, an analysis by Sunlight finds, it has created ...
Continue readingSunlight Recommendations to Wyden/Murkowski Disclosure Proposal
Senators Wyden and Murkowski have offered a proposal to shine a light on dark money, and opened it up to... View Article
Continue readingDISCLOSE Developments
Representative Van Hollen reintroduced the DISCLOSE Act in the House, marking his continued support for legislation that would shine a... View Article
Continue readingSunlight’s Legislative Agenda for the 113th Congress
The Sunlight Foundation’s legislative branch agenda for the 113th Congress is sweeping and comprehensive, but if Congress is committed to... View Article
Continue readingSunlight Foundation’s 2012 Annual Report in Video
What a year 2012 has been! We faced an onslaught of unprecedented amounts of political spending. In this post-Citizens United... View Article
Continue readingObama Opens Floodgates for Corporate Inauguration Funding
President Obama has reportedly loosened fundraising restrictions, allowing huge corporate donations to support his 2013 inauguration festivities. Obama placed far... View Article
Continue readingWho benefited most from dark money in the 2012 election?
Eighteen incoming members of Congress each got more than $1 million in dark money donations during their recent campaigns, but many more have reason to resent the stealthiest of campaign contributions, a Sunlight Foundation analysis has found.
Dark money represents campaign contributions whose sources never have to be publicly reported. That's because the money is funneled through non-profit entities organized under a section of the tax code that protects them from having to name their donors. These kind of groups -- such as the pro-GOP Crossroads GPS and the pro-Democrat League of Conservation Voters -- have increased their electoral role in the wake of a series of court rulings that opened the door for unlimited corporate and union spending on campaigns. Nonprofit groups made more than $300 million of such donations during the course of the 2012 election cycle, the vast majority to influence the fall races.
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