Tag Archives: Crossroads GPS

June 5, 2013 · 6:01 AM

The Top 10 Dark Money Donors — That We Know Of, Sort Of

Karl Rove

TPM Muckraker

Thanks to the folks at the Center for Responsive Politics, who have spent the past year and a half putting together the largest publicly available set of IRS data on politically active non-profits, the world of dark money got just slightly less opaque on Tuesday.

The Center’s employees manually inputted thousands of records from tax documents, including annual reports (called 990s) and applications for tax-exempt status (called 1024s), submitted to the IRS by 501(c)4 “social welfare” groups, 501(c)5 union groups, and 501(c)6 trade associations. The compiled information is now live on the Center’s website, OpenSecrets.org.

As the center points out, the biggest part of the data details grants to, from, and between politically active non-profits. While these groups don’t have to disclose their donors, they do have to report grants to other organizations. The Center found that grants to political active non-profits amount to almost $200 million so far. That number is soon expected to rise dramatically. Non-profit groups have an 11-month window following the end of their fiscal years in which to submit 990s, meaning that most 2012 filings will not be turned in until this fall.

The grant information is useful. We can’t know the individuals or corporations behind the hundreds of millions of dollars received and spent by dark money groups. But the figures show us which groups have been most active giving to politically active non-profits, getting us one layer of the onion closer to the source of millions of dark dollars.

Here are the top 10 politically active non-profits ranked by their giving to other non-profits, as compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics (The Karl Rove-linked Crossroads GPS ranks No. 3 on the list):

1. Center to Protect Patient Rights
Non-profit type: 501(c)4
Amount of money given: $55,740,985
Top recipient: American Future Fund

2. Sea Change Foundation
Non-profit type: 501(c)3
Amount of grant money given: $26,986,150
Top recipient: League of Conservation Voters

3. Crossroads GPS
Non-profit type: 501(c)4
Amount of grant money given: $13,875,000
Top recipient: Americans for Tax Reform

4. TC4 Trust
Non-profit type: 501(c)4
Amount of grant money given: $11,787,800
Top recipient: American Commitment

5. Donors Trust
Non-profit type: 501(c)3
Amount of grant money given: $8,832,250
Top recipient: Americans for Prosperity Foundation

6. Republican Jewish Coalition
Non-profit type: 501(c)4
Amount of grant money given: $8,000,000
Top recipient: American Action Network, Crossroads GPS (tie)

7. Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America
Non-profit type: 501(c)6
Amount of grant money given: $7,100,000
Top recipient: American Action Network

8. Green Tech Action Fund
Non-profit type: 501(c)4
Amount of grant money given: $5,775,300
Top recipient: League of Conservation Voters

9. Advocacy Fund
Non-profit type: 501(c)4
Amount of grant money given: $5,632,488
Top recipient: League of Conservation Voters

10. Alliance for Freedom
Non-profit type: 501(c)4
Amount of grant money given: $4,190,000
Top recipient: Alliance for America’s Future

 Dark Money
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November 8, 2012 · 1:17 PM

DEATH OF A SALESMAN

The Huffington Post

Karl Rove, American Crossroads Desperately Try To Explain How They Blew $300 Million On A Losing Campaign

No one lost as much on election night as Karl Rove.

Although he wasn’t running for office, his Crossroads organizations spent more than$300 million on Republican candidates in the 2012 election, with some of the biggest spenders in the conservative movement putting their hopes — and dollars — in the care of Rove. Combined, his groups were the largest single outside force of the 2012 election.

The results were bleak. According to the Sunlight Foundation, American Crossroads, Rove’s super PAC, saw just a 1 percent return on its investments. Crossroads GPS, the political nonprofit arm, saw a 14 percent return.

Rove remained in denial about GOP misfortunes on election night. Even after the networks had called Ohio for President Barack Obama, Rove continued to insist onFox News that Republicans could win the state.

Rove was back on Fox News Wednesday morning after his election night meltdown. He didn’t address his reaction to the Ohio call or Crossroads’ failures but instead argued that Republicans need to do a better job in reaching out to the Latino community.

“Obama kept the coalition that he had in 2008, only it was a little bit smaller,” he said. “This will be the first president reelected sent to second term with a smaller percentage of the vote than he got the first term. In fact, there are only two states — two states in the union — where he got a higher percentage of the vote this time around than he got the first time. One is Mississippi, by one quarter of 1 percent, and Hawaii by less than one fifth of 1 percent. Otherwise, he basically held together that coalition, which means if we’re going to win in the future, Republicans need to do better among Latinos and they need to do better among women — particularly single women.”

Continue reading here…

 

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October 18, 2010 · 4:49 PM

Lawbreakers In The 2010 Elections May Go Unpunished By The FEC, IRS For Years

This is extremely disheartening to me.  It means that these same people will be doing the same thing in 2012…

Huffington Post – Amanda Terkel

With an unprecedented amount of spending and a surge of new independent expenditure organizations thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, there will also likely be an incredibly high number of complaints filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which are responsible for enforcing election and tax laws. But these complaints won’t have any effect on the 2010 midterm elections. In fact, according to campaign finance experts, it’s unlikely that they will ever go anywhere, and even if they do, lawbreakers could go unpunished for years.

Already, independent political groups are facing complaints. Recently, a coalition of the U.S. Chamber Watch, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Corporate Ethics International and Main Street Alliance filed a complaint with the IRS alleging multimillion-dollar tax fraud by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Watchdog organizations Public Citizen and Protect Our Elections last week filed a complaint with the FEC against Crossroads GPS, led by former Bush advisers Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie. Crossroads is also facing a complaint from Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center to the IRS, alleging that the group “is operating in violation of its tax status because it has a primary purpose of participating in political campaigns in support of, or in opposition to, candidates for public office.”

Continue reading…   The IRS A Slow Regulatory Agency

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