Strings attached

With information often available instantaneously these days, it is a wonder how much of it still is considered secret concerning government at all levels.

In 2016, the Internal Revenue Service gave up a five-year battle and approved a 501(c)4 nonprofit status to Karl Rove’s political group Crossroads GPS. Though the genius strategist Rove has rarely done anything nonpolitical, his group is now considered a nonprofit “social welfare group.”

It now has the IRS’s blessing to take unlimited donations from individuals and corporations and spend huge sums on direct political activity without revealing its donors.

Why more citizens do not view this as a threat to good government and transparency is beyond us. Guess we are too busy staring at our phones. Even those who feel campaign donations are a part of “free speech” should recognize that the huge sums of so-called “dark money” continue to be a dangerous trend in American politics. It is the biggest scandal of our era that the wealthy may pump in billions to affect our political processes and do so in total obscurity.

Donors behind our candidates, both incumbents and challengers, should be open information and it should be reported weekly, as the speed and ease of technology allows today. Political groups have exploited the IRS’s ambiguity and that 2016 ruling only opened the floodgates further.

Organizations that aren’t required to disclose donors spent about $100 million for political purposes between 2000 and 2010. By the 2012 presidential cycle, dark-money spending had soared to more than $300 million and by the 2020 election, it had topped $1 billion.

This is not how a democracy is supposed to work, and both conservatives and liberals should seek to change this system.

Are there strings attached to this big money? Voters and constituents — that’s us — deserve to know who has their hooks in a candidate and why.

— K.E.C.