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The GQP: Trumpist Death Cult

Hugo Stiglitz

By Hugo Stiglitz
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aggie08
aggie08

This is such unbridled horseshit. I live in fucking California, and I'm not sure if I've ever seen a Fuck Trump shirt/flag/bumper sticker/whatever in person. I can't go a day without seeing Let's Go B

Jive Turkey
Jive Turkey

Did not have former Skid Row lead singer Sebastian Bach talking shit to MAGA cult members on my bingo card. But here we are.  

Ghost of LL
Ghost of LL

Yep. I was a George Will/Ronald Reagan/Al Laffer conservative.  I genuinely thought that if you cut taxes for the upper classes, then they would spend and invest and the economic result of that w

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Biff Tannen

Biff Tannen 45500

Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

 

They are starting up the fear machine.  R rep from Kentucky on Meet the Press right now screaming about the border.  Said Kentucky isn't a border state, but people in Kentucky are dying because of the border.  

Then, when asked what the R plans were other than blame Democrats, he went back down the same road.  Well, the border!!!11!!

 

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Blotto

Blotto 23434

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Michael Flynn and Roger Stone endorsed congressional candidate Martin Hyde drops a new ad about the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search: “I wish they’d turn up at my home. Cause they’d have gone home in a body bag.”

Now I kind of want the fbi to conduct a domestic terrorism investigation and serve a search warrant on this dumb prick's house. 

Edited by Blotto
  • Hook 'Em 4
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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 54006

Posted
Posted

"I can't believe the leopards ate my face!"

Quote

Former Arizona GOP House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who lost his bid for a state Senate seat, said America and the Republican party are in dire straits. 

"The constitution is hanging by a thread," Bowers told The Guardian in an interview published Saturday. "The funny thing is, I always thought it would be the other guys. And it's my side. That just rips at my heart: that we would be the people who would surrender the constitution in order to win an election. That just blows my mind."


Earlier this month, Bowers, who testified in front of the House January 6 committee lost his primary to Arizona state Sen. David Farnsworth, who was backed by former President Donald Trump. 

Trump and his allies had sought Bower's help to overturn Arizona's election results. Bowers told The Guardian that the GOP has embraced  "emotional violence."

"They've invented a new way. It's a party that doesn't have any thought. It's all emotional, it's all revenge," Bowers said of the party. "It's all anger. That's all it is."

 

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Brisketexan

Brisketexan 104635

Posted
Posted
44 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

Yeah Rusty, we all knew this a long fucking time ago. Way to catch up to reality way to fucking late. 

"Hey guys, I think this flesh-eating monster with no conscience that I helped create right up until a few months ago is actually going to eat all of our flesh with no conscience!  And that's bad!"

No shit, Rusty.  The last 6 years would like a word with you -- every sane person has been telling you exactly that the entire fucking time.

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WhatTheBuck

WhatTheBuck 28714

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

he only gives a fuck because he’s now on the outside, looking in

fuck him, tar and feathers is too good for this piece of shit 

That seems a little harsh. Did you forget that he was the first live witness in the Jan. 6 hearings? He delivered some pretty powerful testimony. At least he denied Trump’s request to overturn the AZ election results. I wouldn’t count on that with the next guy. He’s a freaking loon.

https://www.businessinsider.com/dave-farnsworth-interview-rusty-bowers-trump-qanon-mormon-2022-7

I don’t like Liz Cheney but at least she’s resisting going along with the rest of her party as the radicals amongst them plunge along with Trump into the abyss. I don’t think Liz should be tarred and feathered either because at least she’s doing one good thing with her life and it’s costing her her seat too.

Bowers shouldn’t just ride off into the sunset, though. He should become an activist. Maybe rethink some of his political assumptions. Acknowledge that the GOP is hopelessly broken and that you can’t fix it by voting for Republican candidates. Campaign against them.

 

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MC Fresh Breath

MC Fresh Breath 4074

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An Unusual $1.6 Billion Donation Bolsters Conservatives
A low-profile Republican financier donated his company to a new group run by the influential operative Leonard A. Leo.

WASHINGTON — A new conservative nonprofit group scored a $1.6 billion windfall last year via a little-known donor — an extraordinary sum that could give Republicans and their causes a huge financial boost ahead of the midterms, and for years to come.

The source of the money was Barre Seid, an electronics manufacturing mogul, and the donation is among the largest — if not the largest — single contributions ever made to a politically focused nonprofit. The beneficiary is a new political group controlled by Leonard A. Leo, an activist who has used his connections to Republican donors and politicians to help engineer the conservative dominance of the Supreme Court and to finance battles over abortion rights, voting rules and climate change policy.

This windfall will help cement Mr. Leo’s status as a kingmaker in conservative big money politics. It could also give conservatives an advantage in a type of difficult-to-trace spending that shapes elections and political fights.

The cash infusion was arranged through an unusual series of transactions that appear to have avoided tax liabilities. It originated with Mr. Seid, a longtime conservative donor who made a fortune as the chairman and chief executive of an electrical device manufacturing company in Chicago now known as Tripp Lite.

Rather than merely giving cash, Mr. Seid donated 100 percent of the shares of Tripp Lite to Mr. Leo’s nonprofit group before the company was sold to an Irish conglomerate for $1.65 billion, according to tax records provided to The New York Times, corporate filings and a person with knowledge of the matter.

The nonprofit, called the Marble Freedom Trust, then received all of the proceeds from the sale, in a transaction that appears to have been structured to allow the nonprofit group and Mr. Seid to avoid paying taxes on the proceeds.

 

 

Things like this are why some of us stay in the 'doomed' camps.  How do you fight that kind of money?

Spoiler

WASHINGTON — A new conservative nonprofit group scored a $1.6 billion windfall last year via a little-known donor — an extraordinary sum that could give Republicans and their causes a huge financial boost ahead of the midterms, and for years to come.

The source of the money was Barre Seid, an electronics manufacturing mogul, and the donation is among the largest — if not the largest — single contributions ever made to a politically focused nonprofit. The beneficiary is a new political group controlled by Leonard A. Leo, an activist who has used his connections to Republican donors and politicians to help engineer the conservative dominance of the Supreme Court and to finance battles over abortion rights, voting rules and climate change policy.

This windfall will help cement Mr. Leo’s status as a kingmaker in conservative big money politics. It could also give conservatives an advantage in a type of difficult-to-trace spending that shapes elections and political fights.

The cash infusion was arranged through an unusual series of transactions that appear to have avoided tax liabilities. It originated with Mr. Seid, a longtime conservative donor who made a fortune as the chairman and chief executive of an electrical device manufacturing company in Chicago now known as Tripp Lite.

Rather than merely giving cash, Mr. Seid donated 100 percent of the shares of Tripp Lite to Mr. Leo’s nonprofit group before the company was sold to an Irish conglomerate for $1.65 billion, according to tax records provided to The New York Times, corporate filings and a person with knowledge of the matter.

The nonprofit, called the Marble Freedom Trust, then received all of the proceeds from the sale, in a transaction that appears to have been structured to allow the nonprofit group and Mr. Seid to avoid paying taxes on the proceeds.


For perspective, the $1.6 billion that the Marble trust reaped from the sale is slightly more than the total of $1.5 billion spent in 2020 by 15 of the most politically active nonprofit organizations that generally align with Democrats, according to an analysis by The Times. That spending, which Democrats embraced to aid the campaigns of Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his allies in Congress, dwarfed the roughly $900 million spent by a comparable sample of 15 of the most politically active groups aligned with the Republican Party.

The Marble Freedom Trust could help conservatives level the playing field — if not surpass the left — in such nonprofit spending, which is commonly referred to as dark money because the groups involved can raise and spend unlimited sums on politics while revealing little about where they got the money or how they spent it.


In a statement, Mr. Leo cited some of the left’s biggest donors and an advisory firm that helps manage the nonprofit groups they fund.

“It’s high time for the conservative movement to be among the ranks of George Soros, Hansjörg Wyss, Arabella Advisors and other left-wing philanthropists, going toe-to-toe in the fight to defend our constitution and its ideals,” Mr. Leo said. Mr. Seid and an associate did not respond to messages seeking comment.

The Marble Freedom Trust’s formation in May 2020, the donation of Tripp Lite shares by Mr. Seid, and Mr. Leo’s role have not been previously reported.

The funds are difficult to trace through public records. Tripp Lite is a private company that is not subject to corporate disclosure rules for public companies. On its tax filing, Marble indicated that the $1.6 billion came from the “sale of gifted company and subsidiaries,” but indicated that it withheld identifying information “to protect donor confidentiality.”

And Eaton, the publicly traded Irish company that bought Tripp Lite, does not refer to Marble in statements related to the sale.

The person with knowledge of the matter said that the Tripp Lite shares were donated to Marble months before the deal with Eaton was announced in January 2021. The sale was completed in March 2021.

Katy Brasser, a spokeswoman for Eaton, said in a statement, “We have no additional information to share regarding the acquisition that was announced last year.”

Ray D. Madoff, a professor of tax law at Boston College who is the director of the school’s Forum on Philanthropy and the Public Good, said the structure of the transaction was most likely legal but did appear to allow a donor to avoid federal tax obligations from the sale of the company.

Here is how it works: Marble Freedom Trust is registered under a section of the tax code — 501(c)4 — for organizations that focus primarily on what the Internal Revenue Service calls “social welfare” and as a result are exempt from paying taxes. Such groups are allowed to engage in political advocacy, but their supporters are not entitled to deduct donations from their income taxes. Supporters can, however, donate assets that a nonprofit can sell and avoid capital gains taxes on the sale.

“These actions by the super wealthy are actually costing the American taxpayers to support the political spending of the wealthiest Americans,” Ms. Madoff said.

She said that donating corporate shares to a nonprofit was one way that those with incredible wealth skirt taxes when giving away money not just to charities, but to more politically minded nonprofits.

The tax filings shows that the Marble trust paid $940,000 for legal fees related to the sale to Sullivan & Cromwell, a leading New York law firm that specializes in business transactions. Other law firms paid by Marble include Kirton McConkie, a Utah corporate firm that was paid $140,000, and Holtzman Vogel, a Virginia firm specializing in political law that was paid more than $100,000.

The mission that the Marble trust lists in its tax filings is vague. “The trust exists to maintain and expand human freedom consistent with the values and ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States,” it says in the filing.

The person with knowledge of the matter said that the group’s name derived from the metamorphic rock, signaling the group’s intent to be enduring and maintain a clarity of purpose.

Mr. Seid has kept a low political profile in recent years. His last federal campaign donation, in 2008, was to a Republican running for Congress in Illinois, and his name has previously appeared only once in The Times, in 1990, for lending a Republican candidate for governor of Illinois nearly half a million dollars.

His family foundation, the Barbara and Barre Seid Foundation, has operated with an annual budget of several million dollars, giving most often to the Chamber Opera Chicago, which Mr. Seid founded decades ago. He has been linked as a donor to some conservative causes in the past, though nothing at the scale of the Marble Freedom Trust.

Mr. Leo developed relationships with many major donors during his years as executive vice president of the Federalist Society, an influential conservative legal group through which he helped advise Republican presidents on the selection of Supreme Court justices.

In 2018, during a live event, Justice Clarence Thomas joked about how honored he was to be sharing the stage with Mr. Leo, calling him “the No. 3 most powerful person in the world.”

In recent years, Mr. Leo increasingly expanded into a broader role in the conservative movement, shaping the big money flow as an adviser to donors and nonprofit organizations. In 2020, he left the Federalist Society to become chairman of a company called CRC Advisors, which advises and helps manage conservative nonprofits.

He is trustee and chairman of the Marble trust and has “primary authority” to decide how the money is spent, according to the tax filing, which shows that he was paid $350,000 in salary by the group.

Others named on the tax filing include Jonathan Bunch, who is listed as successor trustee. Mr. Bunch is president of Mr. Leo’s firm, CRC Advisors.

The Marble trust, which has already reported donations totaling nearly $229 million to other nonprofits, will expand the capabilities of a network of nonprofit groups that Mr. Leo has helped shape and guide in recent years.

In 2020, groups linked to Mr. Leo spent a total of $122 million on issues that animate the conservative base, including working to confirm conservatives to federal judgeships, fighting to restrict access to abortion and defending measures that Republicans cast as protections against voter fraud but that Democrats contend are hurdles to voting.

One of the groups, the Rule of Law Trust, which has been involved in judicial confirmation fights, received $153 million from the Marble trust last year. Another, the Concord Fund, received $16.5 million from the new group.

Two other funds that steer money into conservative politics, Donors Trust and Schwab Charitable Fund, received a total of $59.1 million from the Marble trust, according to the filing.

That left the Marble trust with a whopping $1.4 billion to spend at the end of April 2021. While that money cannot be donated directly to campaigns or party committees, it could help mitigate slowing Republican fund-raising ahead of a 2022 midterm cycle that otherwise seemed to favor the party in many ways.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/us/politics/republican-dark-money.html

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Horn Under a Bad Sign

Horn Under a Bad Sign 20345

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Posted
23 minutes ago, MC Fresh Breath said:

 

Things like this are why some of us stay in the 'doomed' camps.  How do you fight that kind of money?

  Reveal hidden contents

WASHINGTON — A new conservative nonprofit group scored a $1.6 billion windfall last year via a little-known donor — an extraordinary sum that could give Republicans and their causes a huge financial boost ahead of the midterms, and for years to come.

The source of the money was Barre Seid, an electronics manufacturing mogul, and the donation is among the largest — if not the largest — single contributions ever made to a politically focused nonprofit. The beneficiary is a new political group controlled by Leonard A. Leo, an activist who has used his connections to Republican donors and politicians to help engineer the conservative dominance of the Supreme Court and to finance battles over abortion rights, voting rules and climate change policy.

This windfall will help cement Mr. Leo’s status as a kingmaker in conservative big money politics. It could also give conservatives an advantage in a type of difficult-to-trace spending that shapes elections and political fights.

The cash infusion was arranged through an unusual series of transactions that appear to have avoided tax liabilities. It originated with Mr. Seid, a longtime conservative donor who made a fortune as the chairman and chief executive of an electrical device manufacturing company in Chicago now known as Tripp Lite.

Rather than merely giving cash, Mr. Seid donated 100 percent of the shares of Tripp Lite to Mr. Leo’s nonprofit group before the company was sold to an Irish conglomerate for $1.65 billion, according to tax records provided to The New York Times, corporate filings and a person with knowledge of the matter.

The nonprofit, called the Marble Freedom Trust, then received all of the proceeds from the sale, in a transaction that appears to have been structured to allow the nonprofit group and Mr. Seid to avoid paying taxes on the proceeds.


For perspective, the $1.6 billion that the Marble trust reaped from the sale is slightly more than the total of $1.5 billion spent in 2020 by 15 of the most politically active nonprofit organizations that generally align with Democrats, according to an analysis by The Times. That spending, which Democrats embraced to aid the campaigns of Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his allies in Congress, dwarfed the roughly $900 million spent by a comparable sample of 15 of the most politically active groups aligned with the Republican Party.

The Marble Freedom Trust could help conservatives level the playing field — if not surpass the left — in such nonprofit spending, which is commonly referred to as dark money because the groups involved can raise and spend unlimited sums on politics while revealing little about where they got the money or how they spent it.


In a statement, Mr. Leo cited some of the left’s biggest donors and an advisory firm that helps manage the nonprofit groups they fund.

“It’s high time for the conservative movement to be among the ranks of George Soros, Hansjörg Wyss, Arabella Advisors and other left-wing philanthropists, going toe-to-toe in the fight to defend our constitution and its ideals,” Mr. Leo said. Mr. Seid and an associate did not respond to messages seeking comment.

The Marble Freedom Trust’s formation in May 2020, the donation of Tripp Lite shares by Mr. Seid, and Mr. Leo’s role have not been previously reported.

The funds are difficult to trace through public records. Tripp Lite is a private company that is not subject to corporate disclosure rules for public companies. On its tax filing, Marble indicated that the $1.6 billion came from the “sale of gifted company and subsidiaries,” but indicated that it withheld identifying information “to protect donor confidentiality.”

And Eaton, the publicly traded Irish company that bought Tripp Lite, does not refer to Marble in statements related to the sale.

The person with knowledge of the matter said that the Tripp Lite shares were donated to Marble months before the deal with Eaton was announced in January 2021. The sale was completed in March 2021.

Katy Brasser, a spokeswoman for Eaton, said in a statement, “We have no additional information to share regarding the acquisition that was announced last year.”

Ray D. Madoff, a professor of tax law at Boston College who is the director of the school’s Forum on Philanthropy and the Public Good, said the structure of the transaction was most likely legal but did appear to allow a donor to avoid federal tax obligations from the sale of the company.

Here is how it works: Marble Freedom Trust is registered under a section of the tax code — 501(c)4 — for organizations that focus primarily on what the Internal Revenue Service calls “social welfare” and as a result are exempt from paying taxes. Such groups are allowed to engage in political advocacy, but their supporters are not entitled to deduct donations from their income taxes. Supporters can, however, donate assets that a nonprofit can sell and avoid capital gains taxes on the sale.

“These actions by the super wealthy are actually costing the American taxpayers to support the political spending of the wealthiest Americans,” Ms. Madoff said.

She said that donating corporate shares to a nonprofit was one way that those with incredible wealth skirt taxes when giving away money not just to charities, but to more politically minded nonprofits.

The tax filings shows that the Marble trust paid $940,000 for legal fees related to the sale to Sullivan & Cromwell, a leading New York law firm that specializes in business transactions. Other law firms paid by Marble include Kirton McConkie, a Utah corporate firm that was paid $140,000, and Holtzman Vogel, a Virginia firm specializing in political law that was paid more than $100,000.

The mission that the Marble trust lists in its tax filings is vague. “The trust exists to maintain and expand human freedom consistent with the values and ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States,” it says in the filing.

The person with knowledge of the matter said that the group’s name derived from the metamorphic rock, signaling the group’s intent to be enduring and maintain a clarity of purpose.

Mr. Seid has kept a low political profile in recent years. His last federal campaign donation, in 2008, was to a Republican running for Congress in Illinois, and his name has previously appeared only once in The Times, in 1990, for lending a Republican candidate for governor of Illinois nearly half a million dollars.

His family foundation, the Barbara and Barre Seid Foundation, has operated with an annual budget of several million dollars, giving most often to the Chamber Opera Chicago, which Mr. Seid founded decades ago. He has been linked as a donor to some conservative causes in the past, though nothing at the scale of the Marble Freedom Trust.

Mr. Leo developed relationships with many major donors during his years as executive vice president of the Federalist Society, an influential conservative legal group through which he helped advise Republican presidents on the selection of Supreme Court justices.

In 2018, during a live event, Justice Clarence Thomas joked about how honored he was to be sharing the stage with Mr. Leo, calling him “the No. 3 most powerful person in the world.”

In recent years, Mr. Leo increasingly expanded into a broader role in the conservative movement, shaping the big money flow as an adviser to donors and nonprofit organizations. In 2020, he left the Federalist Society to become chairman of a company called CRC Advisors, which advises and helps manage conservative nonprofits.

He is trustee and chairman of the Marble trust and has “primary authority” to decide how the money is spent, according to the tax filing, which shows that he was paid $350,000 in salary by the group.

Others named on the tax filing include Jonathan Bunch, who is listed as successor trustee. Mr. Bunch is president of Mr. Leo’s firm, CRC Advisors.

The Marble trust, which has already reported donations totaling nearly $229 million to other nonprofits, will expand the capabilities of a network of nonprofit groups that Mr. Leo has helped shape and guide in recent years.

In 2020, groups linked to Mr. Leo spent a total of $122 million on issues that animate the conservative base, including working to confirm conservatives to federal judgeships, fighting to restrict access to abortion and defending measures that Republicans cast as protections against voter fraud but that Democrats contend are hurdles to voting.

One of the groups, the Rule of Law Trust, which has been involved in judicial confirmation fights, received $153 million from the Marble trust last year. Another, the Concord Fund, received $16.5 million from the new group.

Two other funds that steer money into conservative politics, Donors Trust and Schwab Charitable Fund, received a total of $59.1 million from the Marble trust, according to the filing.

That left the Marble trust with a whopping $1.4 billion to spend at the end of April 2021. While that money cannot be donated directly to campaigns or party committees, it could help mitigate slowing Republican fund-raising ahead of a 2022 midterm cycle that otherwise seemed to favor the party in many ways.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/us/politics/republican-dark-money.html


Bezos farts that much money every day.

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Biff Tannen

Biff Tannen 45500

Posted
Posted (edited)
47 minutes ago, MC Fresh Breath said:

 

Things like this are why some of us stay in the 'doomed' camps.  How do you fight that kind of money?

  Hide contents

WASHINGTON — A new conservative nonprofit group scored a $1.6 billion windfall last year via a little-known donor — an extraordinary sum that could give Republicans and their causes a huge financial boost ahead of the midterms, and for years to come.

The source of the money was Barre Seid, an electronics manufacturing mogul, and the donation is among the largest — if not the largest — single contributions ever made to a politically focused nonprofit. The beneficiary is a new political group controlled by Leonard A. Leo, an activist who has used his connections to Republican donors and politicians to help engineer the conservative dominance of the Supreme Court and to finance battles over abortion rights, voting rules and climate change policy.

This windfall will help cement Mr. Leo’s status as a kingmaker in conservative big money politics. It could also give conservatives an advantage in a type of difficult-to-trace spending that shapes elections and political fights.

The cash infusion was arranged through an unusual series of transactions that appear to have avoided tax liabilities. It originated with Mr. Seid, a longtime conservative donor who made a fortune as the chairman and chief executive of an electrical device manufacturing company in Chicago now known as Tripp Lite.

Rather than merely giving cash, Mr. Seid donated 100 percent of the shares of Tripp Lite to Mr. Leo’s nonprofit group before the company was sold to an Irish conglomerate for $1.65 billion, according to tax records provided to The New York Times, corporate filings and a person with knowledge of the matter.

The nonprofit, called the Marble Freedom Trust, then received all of the proceeds from the sale, in a transaction that appears to have been structured to allow the nonprofit group and Mr. Seid to avoid paying taxes on the proceeds.


For perspective, the $1.6 billion that the Marble trust reaped from the sale is slightly more than the total of $1.5 billion spent in 2020 by 15 of the most politically active nonprofit organizations that generally align with Democrats, according to an analysis by The Times. That spending, which Democrats embraced to aid the campaigns of Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his allies in Congress, dwarfed the roughly $900 million spent by a comparable sample of 15 of the most politically active groups aligned with the Republican Party.

The Marble Freedom Trust could help conservatives level the playing field — if not surpass the left — in such nonprofit spending, which is commonly referred to as dark money because the groups involved can raise and spend unlimited sums on politics while revealing little about where they got the money or how they spent it.


In a statement, Mr. Leo cited some of the left’s biggest donors and an advisory firm that helps manage the nonprofit groups they fund.

“It’s high time for the conservative movement to be among the ranks of George Soros, Hansjörg Wyss, Arabella Advisors and other left-wing philanthropists, going toe-to-toe in the fight to defend our constitution and its ideals,” Mr. Leo said. Mr. Seid and an associate did not respond to messages seeking comment.

The Marble Freedom Trust’s formation in May 2020, the donation of Tripp Lite shares by Mr. Seid, and Mr. Leo’s role have not been previously reported.

The funds are difficult to trace through public records. Tripp Lite is a private company that is not subject to corporate disclosure rules for public companies. On its tax filing, Marble indicated that the $1.6 billion came from the “sale of gifted company and subsidiaries,” but indicated that it withheld identifying information “to protect donor confidentiality.”

And Eaton, the publicly traded Irish company that bought Tripp Lite, does not refer to Marble in statements related to the sale.

The person with knowledge of the matter said that the Tripp Lite shares were donated to Marble months before the deal with Eaton was announced in January 2021. The sale was completed in March 2021.

Katy Brasser, a spokeswoman for Eaton, said in a statement, “We have no additional information to share regarding the acquisition that was announced last year.”

Ray D. Madoff, a professor of tax law at Boston College who is the director of the school’s Forum on Philanthropy and the Public Good, said the structure of the transaction was most likely legal but did appear to allow a donor to avoid federal tax obligations from the sale of the company.

Here is how it works: Marble Freedom Trust is registered under a section of the tax code — 501(c)4 — for organizations that focus primarily on what the Internal Revenue Service calls “social welfare” and as a result are exempt from paying taxes. Such groups are allowed to engage in political advocacy, but their supporters are not entitled to deduct donations from their income taxes. Supporters can, however, donate assets that a nonprofit can sell and avoid capital gains taxes on the sale.

“These actions by the super wealthy are actually costing the American taxpayers to support the political spending of the wealthiest Americans,” Ms. Madoff said.

She said that donating corporate shares to a nonprofit was one way that those with incredible wealth skirt taxes when giving away money not just to charities, but to more politically minded nonprofits.

The tax filings shows that the Marble trust paid $940,000 for legal fees related to the sale to Sullivan & Cromwell, a leading New York law firm that specializes in business transactions. Other law firms paid by Marble include Kirton McConkie, a Utah corporate firm that was paid $140,000, and Holtzman Vogel, a Virginia firm specializing in political law that was paid more than $100,000.

The mission that the Marble trust lists in its tax filings is vague. “The trust exists to maintain and expand human freedom consistent with the values and ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States,” it says in the filing.

The person with knowledge of the matter said that the group’s name derived from the metamorphic rock, signaling the group’s intent to be enduring and maintain a clarity of purpose.

Mr. Seid has kept a low political profile in recent years. His last federal campaign donation, in 2008, was to a Republican running for Congress in Illinois, and his name has previously appeared only once in The Times, in 1990, for lending a Republican candidate for governor of Illinois nearly half a million dollars.

His family foundation, the Barbara and Barre Seid Foundation, has operated with an annual budget of several million dollars, giving most often to the Chamber Opera Chicago, which Mr. Seid founded decades ago. He has been linked as a donor to some conservative causes in the past, though nothing at the scale of the Marble Freedom Trust.

Mr. Leo developed relationships with many major donors during his years as executive vice president of the Federalist Society, an influential conservative legal group through which he helped advise Republican presidents on the selection of Supreme Court justices.

In 2018, during a live event, Justice Clarence Thomas joked about how honored he was to be sharing the stage with Mr. Leo, calling him “the No. 3 most powerful person in the world.”

In recent years, Mr. Leo increasingly expanded into a broader role in the conservative movement, shaping the big money flow as an adviser to donors and nonprofit organizations. In 2020, he left the Federalist Society to become chairman of a company called CRC Advisors, which advises and helps manage conservative nonprofits.

He is trustee and chairman of the Marble trust and has “primary authority” to decide how the money is spent, according to the tax filing, which shows that he was paid $350,000 in salary by the group.

Others named on the tax filing include Jonathan Bunch, who is listed as successor trustee. Mr. Bunch is president of Mr. Leo’s firm, CRC Advisors.

The Marble trust, which has already reported donations totaling nearly $229 million to other nonprofits, will expand the capabilities of a network of nonprofit groups that Mr. Leo has helped shape and guide in recent years.

In 2020, groups linked to Mr. Leo spent a total of $122 million on issues that animate the conservative base, including working to confirm conservatives to federal judgeships, fighting to restrict access to abortion and defending measures that Republicans cast as protections against voter fraud but that Democrats contend are hurdles to voting.

One of the groups, the Rule of Law Trust, which has been involved in judicial confirmation fights, received $153 million from the Marble trust last year. Another, the Concord Fund, received $16.5 million from the new group.

Two other funds that steer money into conservative politics, Donors Trust and Schwab Charitable Fund, received a total of $59.1 million from the Marble trust, according to the filing.

That left the Marble trust with a whopping $1.4 billion to spend at the end of April 2021. While that money cannot be donated directly to campaigns or party committees, it could help mitigate slowing Republican fund-raising ahead of a 2022 midterm cycle that otherwise seemed to favor the party in many ways.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/us/politics/republican-dark-money.html

Rooskies

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C-Man

C-Man 27062

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https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/22/politics/dark-money-donation-conservative-group-invs/index.html

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(CNN)A new group led by a prominent conservative lawyer has received $1.6 billion from one donor -- the largest single contribution to a politically focused nonprofit that's ever been made public, and a fortune that could be used to fuel right-wing interests.

The nonprofit, Marble Freedom Trust, received the contribution in the form of stock and then funneled more than $200 million to other conservative organizations last year, a tax form CNN obtained from the IRS shows.

Marble Freedom is led by Leonard Leo, the co-chairman of the conservative Federalist Society, who advised former President Donald Trump on his Supreme Court picks and runs a sprawling network of other right-wing nonprofits that don't disclose their donors, which are often referred to as dark money groups.

A CNN review of financial documents connected the donation to Barre Seid, a low-profile, 90-year-old Chicago electronics company executive and philanthropist who has previously been tied to smaller anonymous contributions to other right-wing groups. The New York Times, which first reported the contribution on Monday, also identified Seid as the donor.

Donors with influence on Texas politics 02:52

The massive donation instantly makes the Utah-based group one of the most well-funded organizations bankrolling conservative causes in the US -- a staggering distinction for a group with zero public profile or even a website. In comparison, the single contribution is more than double the total amount raised by Trump's presidential campaign committee during the entire 2020 election cycle. 

Robert Maguire, the research director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, called the donation "stupefying," and "by far" the largest known contribution to a dark money political group. 

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"I've never seen a group of this magnitude before," Maguire said. "This is the kind of money that can help these political operatives and their allies start to move the needle on issues like reshaping the federal judiciary, making it more difficult to vote, a state-by-state campaign to remake election laws and lay the groundwork for undermining future elections."

Leo said in a statement that "it's high time for the conservative movement to be among the ranks of George Soros, Hansjörg Wyss, Arabella Advisors and other left-wing philanthropists, going toe-to-toe in the fight to defend our Constitution and its ideals" -- referring to two liberal-leaning billionaires and a consulting firm that manages several smaller dark money groups on the left.

Seid did not respond to requests for comment left on phone numbers listed for him and his longtime assistant.

Huge anonymous donation has ties to Chicago executive 

"Dark money" generally refers to nonprofits that get involved in politics but do not disclose their donors, a practice that significantly ramped up after the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision in 2010. Many dark money groups, like Marble Freedom, are 501(c)4 organizations -- nonprofits that are allowed to participate in politics as long as it is not their primary activity. 

Groups on both sides of the political spectrum have increasingly turned to dark money in recent years to sway voters or push agendas without revealing their ultra-wealthy benefactors -- but the Marble Freedom donation dramatically eclipses even the largest of the previously known groups. 

Marble Freedom's tax return covers its initial year of existence between May 2020 and April 2021. The gift of just over $1.6 billion came in the form of 100% of the stock of a privately held company, which Marble Freedom then sold to another company, according to the tax form. 

The arrangement likely saved Seid a large amount of money in taxes, according to Marcus Owens, an attorney and former director of the IRS division on tax-exempt organizations, who reviewed the form for CNN. If Seid had personally sold the stock in the company, he would likely have had to pay capital gains tax on the proceeds of the sale. By donating the stock to Marble Freedom, he avoided having to pay that tax, and the nonprofit would be exempt from paying it.

Marble Freedom wrote that it was withholding information about which company was donated and who it sold to because "disclosing it would effectively disclose the identity of its donors." 

Supreme Court issues rare emergency order favoring voters challenging elections rules

But details about the donation connect it to the sale of the Chicago-based electrical device firm Tripp Lite, whose longtime chairman was Seid. 

After receiving the donated stock, Marble Freedom sold the company on March 17, 2021, according to the tax form. The same day, according to Securities and Exchange Commission documents, the American-Irish power company Eaton acquired Tripp Lite for $1.65 billion. 

During the sale, "the sole shareholder of Tripp Lite" was represented by New York law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, Law360 reported at the time. Less than two weeks later, Marble Freedom paid Sullivan & Cromwell $940,000 in legal fees, the tax form shows. A spokesperson for Eaton said the company would not provide more details about the acquisition, and several lawyers involved in the transaction did not respond to requests for comment.

Seid served as chairman and CEO and listed himself as the "owner" of Tripp Lite in federal campaign donation records from 2008. He worked at the company, which produces power strips, surge protectors and other devices, for more than 50 years, according to a Facebook post from Tripp Lite. He grew up in Chicago, the son of immigrants from Russia, according to Census records, and graduated from the University of Chicago.

 Seid has previously had a history of donating anonymously to conservative political groups and causes. An internal 2015 document from the Bradley Foundation, a right-wing nonprofit, stated that the conservative think tank Foundation for Government Accountability had received support from "Barre Seid (anonymously)." The document was part of a trove of records from Bradley that was hacked and released, and was later included as an exhibit in Senate testimony. 

In addition, Salon reported in 2010 that "Barry Seid" was listed in tax documents as the identity of an anonymous donor who gave nearly $17 million to a group that produced an anti-Islam documentary and sent DVDs of the movie to millions of households during the 2008 election. An assistant for Seid told Salon that he did not contribute to the organization, although she didn't address whether he made the donation by routing it through another group.  

And publicly released emails suggest that Seid may also be the anonymous donor who pledged $20 million over five years to George Mason University's law school in order to rename it for former Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia in 2016. The emails were obtained through a public records request and published by George Mason Law alum Allison Pienta in 2019. The school has refused to identify the donor but has said that Leo coordinated the gift.

Seid and his wife make public donations through another nonprofit, the Barbara and Barre Seid Foundation, which mostly funds Chicago-based cultural organizations and universities but has given to conservative and libertarian groups such as the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Heartland Institute. Seid also donated to various political campaigns in Illinois and elsewhere in the 1990s and 2000s. 

Big spending and opaque groups

Even in its infancy, Marble Freedom Trust has already funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to other dark money groups.

Leo, Marble Freedom's chairman and trustee, is one of the most influential figures in the world of conservative dark money. A longtime executive at the Federalist Society, a national network of right-leaning lawyers, Leo has led or served on the board of more than a dozen different nonprofits. Several of his groups have been associated with political campaigns promoting conservative Supreme Court nominees, operating in complex networks of spending.

The new $1.6 billion donation "solidifies Leo as just an absolute gravitational force within the conservative political and legal world," Maguire said. "He was already the man behind the scenes raising money for reshaping the American judiciary, and this amount of money just takes it to a stratospheric level."

'I don't say his name, ever': Vulnerable Republicans seek to avoid Trump in 2022 midterms

On the Marble Freedom tax form, Leo is listed as being paid a $350,000 annual salary for 25 hours a week of work for the group. 

The form states that the group's mission is to "maintain and expand human freedom consistent with the values and ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States." While politics can't be its primary focus, it can use at least some of its huge resources to influence this year's midterms or future elections.

"This is such a significant amount that it would be a game-changer if they do decide to devote even a portion of that to election-related spending," said Anna Massoglia, the Editorial and Investigations Manager at OpenSecrets, a group that researches campaign finance.

Marble Freedom reported making four donations to other nonprofits -- transactions that appear to have taken place between the sale of the stock in mid-March 2021 and the end of April 2021. 

The largest contribution was a $153 million gift to the Rule of Law Trust, a dark money nonprofit led by Leo that has funded other conservative organizations. The group's tax returns show it received just under $80 million in donations in 2018 and no contributions in 2019 or 2020, so the gift from Marble Freedom represents a massive funding boost for the organization. 

Marble Freedom contributed $41.1 million to Donors Trust, a nonprofit that distributes money to conservative and libertarian groups in addition to nonpolitical organizations. The group is a donor-advised fund, which means its contributors can recommend where their donations to the fund are sent. 

In the past, Donors Trust has funneled millions of dollars to groups that have amplified false claims about election fraud and advocated for more restrictive voting rules. The group has previously said that its donations are intended to "serve the public good."

Marble Freedom also donated $16.5 million to The Concord Fund, a nonprofit that has advocated for conservative nominees to the Supreme Court and other judgeships and is associated with a group that has pushed restrictive voting laws. Concord, which was previously known as the Judicial Crisis Network, raised $20.4 million from July 2019 to June 2020, according to its most recent tax return. 

In addition to the three groups with political connections, Marble Freedom gave $18 million to Schwab Charitable Fund, another donor-advised fund.

 Marble Freedom lists two other board members in addition to Leo, both of whom are unpaid. One is Tyler Green, the former solicitor general of Utah, who has represented the Republican National Committee and other GOP groups in multiple voting-related lawsuits in recent years. Green, who is listed as Marble Freedom's administrative trustee, is also a former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The trust's address is listed as a home in North Salt Lake, Utah, that Green owns. 

The board's third member is Jonathan Bunch, a former Federalist Society vice president who has been involved with various groups led by Leo. Bunch is listed as Marble Freedom's successor trustee. Green and Bunch did not respond to requests for comment. 

At the end of April 2021, Marble Freedom had more than $1.4 billion in assets -- positioning it to play a major role in conservative causes potentially for years to come. 

"This group is emblematic of the corrosion and the breakdown of our campaign finance system," Maguire said -- and how it gives "wealthy donors, whether they be corporations or individuals, access and influence over the system far greater than any regular American can ever imagine."

 

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tchookem

tchookem 3900

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If you go thru this entire thread, I’m sure you’ll eventually see some people you may know:
 
 
I'd like to think there is some shame that eventually reaches these people. A boss asking if this is really them. A client that suddenly stops taking calls.

Alas, it'll never happen.
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Bojack

Bojack 2073

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Holy shit to that thread. I repped Pancho with the Hook 'em because there's no fitting reaction to it overall. I'm in awe of the bravery of some of those people like the pink haired student. How in the hell do you become like the guy in #25 and not take a long look at yourself along the way? I'd love to see way more of people like #31, Christians calling out the hateful as un-Christian.

 

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Voldemort86

Voldemort86 2259

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Posted (edited)
18 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Holy shit at :37 he said he was going to cum on the woketards faces and backs?! That’s some suburban school board meeting. 

Is it really that surprising?  The MAGA crew and Trump voters aren’t known for being respectful or considerate of others.

Edited by Voldemort86
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Pescado_Rojo

Pescado_Rojo 19331

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19 hours ago, MC Fresh Breath said:

 

Things like this are why some of us stay in the 'doomed' camps.  How do you fight that kind of money?

  Reveal hidden contents

WASHINGTON — A new conservative nonprofit group scored a $1.6 billion windfall last year via a little-known donor — an extraordinary sum that could give Republicans and their causes a huge financial boost ahead of the midterms, and for years to come.

The source of the money was Barre Seid, an electronics manufacturing mogul, and the donation is among the largest — if not the largest — single contributions ever made to a politically focused nonprofit. The beneficiary is a new political group controlled by Leonard A. Leo, an activist who has used his connections to Republican donors and politicians to help engineer the conservative dominance of the Supreme Court and to finance battles over abortion rights, voting rules and climate change policy.

This windfall will help cement Mr. Leo’s status as a kingmaker in conservative big money politics. It could also give conservatives an advantage in a type of difficult-to-trace spending that shapes elections and political fights.

The cash infusion was arranged through an unusual series of transactions that appear to have avoided tax liabilities. It originated with Mr. Seid, a longtime conservative donor who made a fortune as the chairman and chief executive of an electrical device manufacturing company in Chicago now known as Tripp Lite.

Rather than merely giving cash, Mr. Seid donated 100 percent of the shares of Tripp Lite to Mr. Leo’s nonprofit group before the company was sold to an Irish conglomerate for $1.65 billion, according to tax records provided to The New York Times, corporate filings and a person with knowledge of the matter.

The nonprofit, called the Marble Freedom Trust, then received all of the proceeds from the sale, in a transaction that appears to have been structured to allow the nonprofit group and Mr. Seid to avoid paying taxes on the proceeds.


For perspective, the $1.6 billion that the Marble trust reaped from the sale is slightly more than the total of $1.5 billion spent in 2020 by 15 of the most politically active nonprofit organizations that generally align with Democrats, according to an analysis by The Times. That spending, which Democrats embraced to aid the campaigns of Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his allies in Congress, dwarfed the roughly $900 million spent by a comparable sample of 15 of the most politically active groups aligned with the Republican Party.

The Marble Freedom Trust could help conservatives level the playing field — if not surpass the left — in such nonprofit spending, which is commonly referred to as dark money because the groups involved can raise and spend unlimited sums on politics while revealing little about where they got the money or how they spent it.


In a statement, Mr. Leo cited some of the left’s biggest donors and an advisory firm that helps manage the nonprofit groups they fund.

“It’s high time for the conservative movement to be among the ranks of George Soros, Hansjörg Wyss, Arabella Advisors and other left-wing philanthropists, going toe-to-toe in the fight to defend our constitution and its ideals,” Mr. Leo said. Mr. Seid and an associate did not respond to messages seeking comment.

The Marble Freedom Trust’s formation in May 2020, the donation of Tripp Lite shares by Mr. Seid, and Mr. Leo’s role have not been previously reported.

The funds are difficult to trace through public records. Tripp Lite is a private company that is not subject to corporate disclosure rules for public companies. On its tax filing, Marble indicated that the $1.6 billion came from the “sale of gifted company and subsidiaries,” but indicated that it withheld identifying information “to protect donor confidentiality.”

And Eaton, the publicly traded Irish company that bought Tripp Lite, does not refer to Marble in statements related to the sale.

The person with knowledge of the matter said that the Tripp Lite shares were donated to Marble months before the deal with Eaton was announced in January 2021. The sale was completed in March 2021.

Katy Brasser, a spokeswoman for Eaton, said in a statement, “We have no additional information to share regarding the acquisition that was announced last year.”

Ray D. Madoff, a professor of tax law at Boston College who is the director of the school’s Forum on Philanthropy and the Public Good, said the structure of the transaction was most likely legal but did appear to allow a donor to avoid federal tax obligations from the sale of the company.

Here is how it works: Marble Freedom Trust is registered under a section of the tax code — 501(c)4 — for organizations that focus primarily on what the Internal Revenue Service calls “social welfare” and as a result are exempt from paying taxes. Such groups are allowed to engage in political advocacy, but their supporters are not entitled to deduct donations from their income taxes. Supporters can, however, donate assets that a nonprofit can sell and avoid capital gains taxes on the sale.

“These actions by the super wealthy are actually costing the American taxpayers to support the political spending of the wealthiest Americans,” Ms. Madoff said.

She said that donating corporate shares to a nonprofit was one way that those with incredible wealth skirt taxes when giving away money not just to charities, but to more politically minded nonprofits.

The tax filings shows that the Marble trust paid $940,000 for legal fees related to the sale to Sullivan & Cromwell, a leading New York law firm that specializes in business transactions. Other law firms paid by Marble include Kirton McConkie, a Utah corporate firm that was paid $140,000, and Holtzman Vogel, a Virginia firm specializing in political law that was paid more than $100,000.

The mission that the Marble trust lists in its tax filings is vague. “The trust exists to maintain and expand human freedom consistent with the values and ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States,” it says in the filing.

The person with knowledge of the matter said that the group’s name derived from the metamorphic rock, signaling the group’s intent to be enduring and maintain a clarity of purpose.

Mr. Seid has kept a low political profile in recent years. His last federal campaign donation, in 2008, was to a Republican running for Congress in Illinois, and his name has previously appeared only once in The Times, in 1990, for lending a Republican candidate for governor of Illinois nearly half a million dollars.

His family foundation, the Barbara and Barre Seid Foundation, has operated with an annual budget of several million dollars, giving most often to the Chamber Opera Chicago, which Mr. Seid founded decades ago. He has been linked as a donor to some conservative causes in the past, though nothing at the scale of the Marble Freedom Trust.

Mr. Leo developed relationships with many major donors during his years as executive vice president of the Federalist Society, an influential conservative legal group through which he helped advise Republican presidents on the selection of Supreme Court justices.

In 2018, during a live event, Justice Clarence Thomas joked about how honored he was to be sharing the stage with Mr. Leo, calling him “the No. 3 most powerful person in the world.”

In recent years, Mr. Leo increasingly expanded into a broader role in the conservative movement, shaping the big money flow as an adviser to donors and nonprofit organizations. In 2020, he left the Federalist Society to become chairman of a company called CRC Advisors, which advises and helps manage conservative nonprofits.

He is trustee and chairman of the Marble trust and has “primary authority” to decide how the money is spent, according to the tax filing, which shows that he was paid $350,000 in salary by the group.

Others named on the tax filing include Jonathan Bunch, who is listed as successor trustee. Mr. Bunch is president of Mr. Leo’s firm, CRC Advisors.

The Marble trust, which has already reported donations totaling nearly $229 million to other nonprofits, will expand the capabilities of a network of nonprofit groups that Mr. Leo has helped shape and guide in recent years.

In 2020, groups linked to Mr. Leo spent a total of $122 million on issues that animate the conservative base, including working to confirm conservatives to federal judgeships, fighting to restrict access to abortion and defending measures that Republicans cast as protections against voter fraud but that Democrats contend are hurdles to voting.

One of the groups, the Rule of Law Trust, which has been involved in judicial confirmation fights, received $153 million from the Marble trust last year. Another, the Concord Fund, received $16.5 million from the new group.

Two other funds that steer money into conservative politics, Donors Trust and Schwab Charitable Fund, received a total of $59.1 million from the Marble trust, according to the filing.

That left the Marble trust with a whopping $1.4 billion to spend at the end of April 2021. While that money cannot be donated directly to campaigns or party committees, it could help mitigate slowing Republican fund-raising ahead of a 2022 midterm cycle that otherwise seemed to favor the party in many ways.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/us/politics/republican-dark-money.html

Man, Imagine how much good you could do in the world with 1.6 Billion dollars. Nah, lets just use it to fuel up the hate engine. These people are broken. 

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Horn Dog

Horn Dog 9674

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1 hour ago, Pescado_Rojo said:

Man, Imagine how much good you could do in the world with 1.6 Billion dollars. Nah, lets just use it to fuel up the hate engine. These people are broken. 

No shit.  Think of the tight end room we would have if he had just given that to Burnt Ends.

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