Recently, I was made aware of a new film by Kimberly Reed, an independent film maker residing in New York City. The title of the film is Dark Money and it addresses the issue of corporate and foreign money being used to fund political contests at both the state and federal levels. In 2010 the U. S. Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that: “Political spending is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment and the government may not keep corporations or unions from spending money to support or denounce individual candidates or elections.” This decision opened to the proverbial lid of Pandora’s Box. The decision allowed entities to set up 501(c) 6 organizations as a means of protecting the sources of money received, as well as not providing any data to show how the money was spent. Hence the term “Dark Money” was born and continues to thrive. Not only have these types of organizations been used by corporations, but they have become a popular source of funding for colleges and universities.
An article, “How the University of Alabama System funneled $1.4 million through a ‘dark money’ web”, appeared in AL.com back in August 2016. Also, another media source, Inside Higher Ed, included in their August 10, 2016, issue an article, “A University System’s Back Channel Way of Lobbying State Officials”. This article was also referencing The University of Alabama. At the time, I wrote a Letter to the Editor of The Tuscaloosa News, raising questions about the content of the article. The paper chose not to publish the letter, but what I wrote included the following:
“Each of these media outlets addressed a growing phenomenon amongst colleges and universities to side-step the prohibition of not-for-profit organizations from engaging in political activity. This is being done by forming 501(c)6 organizations, which allows them to funnel money into Super PACs for the purpose of lobbying state legislators. The University of Alabama System is a member of the Alabama Association for Higher Education (AAHE) and has given substantial sums of money to this organization which then provides money to Innovation PAC. Allegedly, there are 9 members of this association; however, when questioned, officials associated with the AAHE or the university’s system office have avoided identifying the other members. As reported in the Al.com article, the principal architects of the Alabama Association of Higher Education were Bill Jones, the former lobbyist for the University System and Robert Witt, the retiring Chancellor of the System. What is being done is not illegal, but there is a reason the funds are referred to as “dark money”. The practice undermines the law that allows organizations to be not-for-profit entities and makes a mockery of the principal of transparency.”
The ability to “hide” the donors and identify the beneficiaries of the funds creates an environment of mistrust and a blatant lack of confidence in the political process. Indeed, elections are being bought and there is no greater evidence of this than the involvement of the Koch brothers in the use of “dark money”, primarily in providing funds to higher education to promote their rightwing political agenda.