All posts tagged "Money In Politics"

This story was originally published by OpenSecrets.

Timothy Mellon, heir to Gilded Age industrialist Andrew Mellon, has continued to pour tens of millions into the campaigns of former President Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Republican congressional candidates in 2024.

Mellon has pumped over $165 million into the 2024 election, making him the top donor fueling outside spending groups this year. Mellon is known as a “guardian angel donor,” a term given to contributors who are a political group’s top donor and account for more than 40% of the group’s funding....

This article originally appeared in OpenSecrets. Sign up for their weekly newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

The Koch network’s flagship group, Americans for Prosperity, has spent two decades pouring money into influencing U.S. elections.

As the group celebrates its 20-year anniversary, its hybrid super PAC ranks third in outside spending in the 2024 cycle. ...

MILWAUKEE — An open secret about national conventions: the real action is often outside the convention hall, blocks or even miles away from where a political party will formally nominate its presidential candidate.

And this week in tony restaurants, trendy bars, hotel ballrooms and entertainment venues across Milwaukee, corporate lobbyists, megadonors and conservative advocacy organizations will engage in the age-old tradition of using money to influence politics.

The more money you have, the more access you can buy....

This article originally appeared in OpenSecrets. Sign up for their weekly newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Throughout Pride Month, it has become increasingly common for corporations to adorn their websites in rainbow flags, espouse their support for LGBTQ+ rights and try to win over a community that has historically been stereotyped as having a disposable income. But some of those companies still steer big money to groups and politicians who oppose LGBTQ+ rights.

Chief Economist at the Koppa LGBTI+ Economic Power Lab, Lee Badgett, said that the idea that LGBTQ communities have more money to spend is a misrepresentation of the community as a whole....

A paralegal specialist for the Federal Election Commission was found to have downloaded thousands of pornographic materials to his work laptops over the course of four years, according to a report released Thursday from the FEC’s Office of the Inspector General.

Nearly two years after initiating an investigation, the Office of the Inspector General reported that the employee was found to be in violation of agency policies and federal regulation by using federal property from 2018 to 2022 for unauthorized activities in “using his government-issued laptops to view and/or transfer inappropriate material from his personal cell phone to a flash drive,” the report said.

Those materials included five video clips on a shared FEC drive that “featured a nude female performing various sexually suggestive acts” and about 125 gigabytes of inappropriate content, including 8,166 “sexually explicit or suggestive images,” adult tourism guides to search for sex workers in Costa Rica, Italy, Mexico, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam, and 687 videos of inappropriate material, defined as “fully or partially nude persons and/or persons engaged in pornographic, sexually explicit or sexually suggestive acts.”...

Listening to Hillary Clinton's concession speech after the New Hampshire primary was almost like listening to a female version of Bernie Sanders ranting about the injustice of campaign finance and income inequality. She never found those issues important enough to mention before, and even claimed that she doesn't believe money influences politicians.