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In December 2016, a largely unnoticed report from The Citizen’s Audit revealed that David Brock’s Media Matter’s allegedly hid $1 million from the IRS spanning 2010 to 2014. Brock’s Media Matters owns a lease to the entire 6th floor of a building in Washington D.C. – also reported by The Citizen’s Audit – and subleases office space to thirteen other organizations. However, the city of Washington D.C. only recognizes one registered occupant on the 6th floor – Media Matters for America. If they all share the same floor space and pay rent to Brock, that's something to tell the IRS....

The incident involves the unwitting exposure of "tens of thousands" of Social Security numbers, according to a recent audit by the independent transparency and public-domain group Public.Resource.org. The identifying numbers were on the Internet for less than 24 hours after being discovered, but the damage was done. And unfortunately, the data-breach concerns some of the most sensitive types of transactions: Those made by nonprofit political groups known as 527s.

Republican strategist Karl Rove said today that in running a slew of TV ads paid for by undisclosed donors, GOP groups are only doing what Democrats have done in the past. “This has been going on for a long while,” he said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “Suddenly everybody’s gotten spun up about it this year… Once we copied what liberals did, liberals got upset.” Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.), who heads the committee working to elect House Democrats, replied, “Karl Rove just told you he did not want the voters to know who is spending tens of...

Now is the time for FReepers to identify and help fund the best 527(s) with the best ads. I’ve seen some good ones posted here but no concerted efforts to identify and get behind the best ones with an on-going call to action. Once identified, we need to fund these 527s, e-mail these to like minded friends to help fund them and ask them to pass on to others. We also need to keep pressure on FOX and conservative commentators to give them air time. Personally, I’d even recommend a section in the sidebar on the right of the FR...

Has anyone started a thread about conservative 527 groups in battleground states? I'm looking at donating, but I'm unsure which groups (and which states) would be most efficient. I'd appreciate any suggestions.

Barack Obama has published an enemies list and conspiracy web on his presidential campaign website, Fight the Smears.The site lists conservative activists David Bossie, Floyd Brown, Bob Perry, Craig Shirley, Bruce Hawkins and James Lacy.The Obama campaign posted an accompanying graphic that lays out a web of connections between the conservatives, groups they represent and their efforts opposing liberals, including "Swift Boat", "Clinton Impeachment" and "Willie Horton Ad".The text never connects any of those listed to 'smears' against Obama, but instead lists their politcal sins such as working with the Minutemen, Ann Coulter, Gary Aldrich, donating to the Swift Boat...

Rove Gang Moves In McCain Campaign Manager, Rick Davis, was unable to repel a Rovian boarding party with the naming of Steve Schmidt as the new day-to-day manager of the McCain campaign. Davis retains the title but is relegated to “long-term planning.” Schmidt is part of a troika of former Rove aides now in place to revive a campaign that seems to be having trouble defining a message both for McCain and against Barack Obama.

WASHINGTON — Democrats and the media have used the term so much that it's almost an article of faith. But the so-called "Republican attack machine" waiting with piles of unregulated cash to chew up Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is anything but. Obama cited the threat of unregulated attack groups — called "527s" because they're authorized to raise unlimited cash under that section of the Internal Revenue Service code — to justify dropping his pledge to take public financing — along with its spending limits — for the general election campaign. Yet there's no 2008 equivalent to the 2004 Swift...

Liberals Hit the Road on Bush 'Legacy Tour Bus' By Penny Starr CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer June 25, 2008 (CNSNews.com) - Americans United for Change (AUC) unveiled its "museum on wheels" on Tuesday in Washington, D.C. The group is giving tours of the 45-foot, 28-ton bus that is filled with exhibits intended to highlight the apparently failed policies of the Bush administration and its "conservative allies." The bus will be driven around the country this summer to share the exhibits with the American people, organizers said. "The Bush legacy is nothing less than a disaster that leaves behind an economy...

Senators Joseph I. Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, prominent surrogates for Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign, stepped down Wednesday from their positions with an independent group that released a pair of Internet advertisements attacking Senator Barack Obama on Iraq. Mr. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, and Mr. Graham, Republican of South Carolina, were both on the policy advisory board to the organization, Vets for Freedom, which on Wednesday released its second Web advertisement in less than a week attacking Mr. Obama. The senators’ positions with the group, which describes itself as a grass-roots advocacy organization pushing for victory in Iraq and Afghanistan,...

John McCain's campaign asked a prominent Republican consultant, Craig Shirley, to leave his official campaign role Thursday after a Politico inquiry about Shirley's dual role consulting for the campaign and for an independent "527" group opposing the Democratic presidential candidates. The campaign also released a new conflict of interest policy barring such arrangements. Shirley, a conservative public relations veteran, doubled as a consultant to McCain and to the group Stop Her Now, a 527 group barred from coordinating its activities with presidential campaigns. He is not currently on the McCain campaign’s payroll, but would also step down from his role...

Wealthy Democrats are preparing a four-month, $40 million media campaign centered on attacks on Senator John McCain. And it will be led by David Brock, the former investigative reporter who first gained fame in the 1990s as a right-wing, anti-Clinton journalist. The planned campaign is the product of a shakeup in the top ranks of the struggling independent Democratic groups. Brock, now best known as the ex-conservative founder of the liberal group Media Matters, last month quietly assumed the chairmanship of what's expected to be the main vehicle for independent Democratic attacks on McCain, now called Progressive Media USA. The...

April 01, 2008 B'rer McCain and the Briar Patch By Clarice Feldman In the classic Song of the South the wily rabbit begs the fox not to throw him into the briar patch knowing (what the fox doesn't) that he can easily escape the bushes' thorns and jump off to freedom, and that the fox will certainly do what he has begged him not to do. I loathe the co-called Campaign Finance Reform Act sponsored jointly by Senators McCain and Feingold after an unethical, if not illegal, largely sub rosa campaign by the tax exempt Pew Foundation. To me the...

When Democrats contemplate the apocalypse these days, they have visions of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton slugging it out à la Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter at the 1980 convention. The campaign's current trajectory is, in fact, alarmingly similar to the one that produced that disastrous affair. Back then, Carter had built up a delegate lead with early wins in Iowa, New Hampshire, and several Southern states. But, as the primary season dragged on, Kennedy began pocketing big states and gaining momentum. Once all the voting ended and Kennedy came up short, he eyed the New York convention as a...

McCain Slams Swiftboat Vets Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 1:19:32 pm PST Has anyone ever really shown that the allegations made by the Swift Boat Veterans against John F. Kerry were false? If someone has refuted the charges conclusively, I’ve never seen it—which makes John McCain’s continuing antipathy toward the Swiftboaters inexplicable: McCain Scrambles to Control Backers. Speaking to reporters aboard his campaign tour bus late Tuesday, McCain acknowledged that conservative independent groups pursuing a similar line to Cunningham’s could be impossible to control. “I think you have to worry about that, particularly the 527s,” McCain said, referring to the...

Ok, I did a quick search on 527's in FR forums and didn't find a more appropriate place for this, so I will start a thread to be a reference and link repository for this idea. As of today, it appears Mr. Obama is going to be the Dem's Presidential candidate in 2008, unless the Clintstones manage to pull something out with their dirty tricks. This presents one more of many problems for true conservatives in this election, namely, that Mr. Obama is, at best, and empty suit, or worst, a flaming commie, in the arena of ideas, and our...

He says he doesn't like them, and he says he doesn't need them. In fact, Barack Obama regularly criticizes the operations and the influence of 527s, scolding John Edwards and Hillary Clinton for their attraction to the outside political groups. But as the New York Times points out, Obama has become attractive to them as well, and benefits significantly from their assistance: After months of denouncing the influence of special-interest money in politics, Senator Barack Obama is nonetheless entering a critical phase of the presidential campaign benefiting from millions of dollars being spent outside campaign finance rules. Mr. Obama has...

A panicked and cash-short Clinton campaign is seriously considering giving up on the Nevada caucuses and on the South Carolina primary in order to regroup and to save resources for the massive 19-state mega-primary on February 5. At the same time, some top independent expenditure groups supporting Clinton have been exploring the creation of an anti-Obama "527 committee" that would take unlimited contributions from a few of Clinton's super-rich backers and from a handful of unions to finance television ads and direct mail designed to tarnish the Illinois Senator's image.

Senate Democrats are considering placing curbs on soft-money 527 groups amid evidence that they are beginning to lose the political advantage these largely unregulated funds have given them over Republicans. This is a move Democrats had strenuously opposed during the last Congress, when they were believed to benefit from the lion’s share of 527 money, but now there is evidence that more of the money from these groups, named for a clause in the tax code, is flowing to the GOP. Meanwhile, the second-ranking Senate Democrat, Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin (Ill.), is planning to introduce legislation in the next...

Despondent after George W. Bush won re-election, a small group of billionaire Democrats met in San Francisco in December 2004 to reflect on John Kerry’s failure to capture the White House. George Soros, Progressive Insurance Chairman Peter B. Lewis, and S&L tycoons Herb and Marion Sandler were angry and depressed. They felt they had been taken—seduced by the siren song of pollsters and the mainstream media who had assured them that the capture of the executive mansion was theirs. But despite giving millions of dollars to liberal candidates and 527 political committees, the donors came away with nothing. At about...