Posted by
Defend America on Sunday, February 14, 2010 12:29:43 PM
In Black Caucus, a Fund-Raising Powerhouse
Published: February 13, 2010
WASHINGTON — When the
Congressional Black Caucus
wanted to pay off the mortgage on its foundation’s stately 1930s
redbrick headquarters on Embassy Row, it turned to a familiar roster of
friends: corporate backers like
Wal-Mart,
AT&T,
General Motors,
Coca-Cola and
Altria, the nation’s largest tobacco company.
Soon enough, in 2008, a jazz band was playing at what amounted to a mortgage-burning party for the $4 million town house.
Most political groups in Washington would have been barred by law
from accepting that kind of direct aid from corporations. But by taking
advantage of political finance laws, the caucus has built a
fund-raising juggernaut unlike anything else in town.
It has a
traditional political fund-raising arm subject to federal rules. But it
also has a network of nonprofit groups and charities that allow it to
collect unlimited amounts of money from corporations and labor unions.
From
2004 to 2008, the Congressional Black Caucus’s political and charitable
wings took in at least $55 million in corporate and union
contributions, according to an analysis by The New York Times, an
impressive amount even by the standards of a Washington awash in cash.
Only $1 million of that went to the caucus’s political action
committee; the rest poured into the largely unregulated nonprofit
network. (Data for 2009 is not available.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/us/politics/14cbc.html?partner=rss&emc=rss