... The Chamber has admitted to taking foreign funds for the same 501(c)(6) account they use for attack ads, and ThinkProgress caught them collecting $885,000 from over 80 foreign companies by investigating the Chamber’s own fundraising documents. Normally, organizations take international funds through a 501(c)(3), which is prohibited from political activity. However, what the Chamber is doing, fundraising from foreign corporations and asking them to deposit the money in their 501(c)(6) — an undisclosed, unlimited vehicle for their attack ads — is unprecedented.
As for the Chamber’s concerns that disclosure would lead to negative retribution, Paul Blumenthal at the Sunlight Foundation referred to this as “the coward’s argument against transparency.” He wrote, “The powerful, the wealthy, are hiding behind a cloak of secrecy out of fear that citizens may discover their political positions and hold them accountable. Shiver.”
As I told Raw Story, “It seems like the Chamber has a problem with democracy. They run ads on behalf of corporations that are afraid to reveal their agendas to the public. If the Chamber wants to engage in the democratic process to influence the outcomes of elections with paid TV advertisements, they shouldn’t be ducking a debate over their donors.”
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