-By Warner Todd Huston
The Washington Free Beacon has undertaken a series of reports that are important for anyone interested in a follow-the-money investigation of one of the biggest influences on today’s Democrat Party. This is a hard-core group of far left extremists holding the Democrats purse strings and is called the Democracy Alliance. It is a George Soros-sponsored group and it ain’t your father’s Democrat Party, for sure.
The Free Beacon has a great primer page (Democracy Alliance Editor’s Note) on this group that helps you follow the money and the players. But to me, one of the most insidious aspects about this group — aside from its purely anti-American ideals — is that it serves as a “pass through” organization.
By that I mean that the organization serves as a central money pot to which many Democrat and extremist progressive groups funnel their campaign cash. They do this for two reasons. One is to create an even larger pot of money for their causes and second is to hide their activity in the efforts of a third party.
You see, when a group gives its money to a pass through organization the donors have a certain level of plausible deniability on where the money ultimately ends up. That way, if something blows up PR-wise, the original donors can distance themselves from the trouble by saying that they didn’t necessarily donate for that purpose.
It is also a way to hide their donations from the prying eyes of transparency advocates. But remember this, these are the same sort of people complaining that the Koch Brothers and conservative donors don’t report their donations. So, as they complain out of one side of their mouths about of a lack of transparency by conservatives, they are asking for the same lack of transparency for themselves out of the other side of their mouths.
As the Beacon notes:
The secretive, invitation-only group, co-founded by hedge fund billionaire George Soros, has attracted the support of high-profile liberals such as Hollywood scion Rob Reiner. But many of its members are far more obscure. Business titans, socialites, and activists donate between $100,000 and $200,000 per year to join the elite alliance, while remaining anonymous—and, in some cases, publicly decrying the effect of secret “dark money” in American politics. An estimated 150 wealthy liberals attended its latest convention—double the 80 members it attracted in 2005.
The Beacon has a huge number of stories about this Democracy Alliance and if you want to follow the money, these are a great place to start.
This is an important group to become aware of, too, simply because they are so extremely left that their money influences the Democrat Party to veer heavily off the deep end. If you think that the Democrat Party has long ago left behind the main American principles upon which this country was founded, this group is one of the main reasons that is happening.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.