The For-Profit D.C. Firm Staging America’s ‘Grassroots’ Movements

Tablet Magazine ^ | September 13, 2022 | Hayden Ludwig

[T Ruth]

Behind the closed doors of an unassuming philanthropic consultancy in Washington, D.C., is one of the most powerful lobbying forces in the United States. The Atlantic has called it “the massive progressive dark-money group you’ve never heard of” and “the indisputable heavyweight of Democratic dark money.” The Washington Post believes its potent lobbying arm is reason enough for Congress to enact forced donor disclosure laws, while Politico labelled it a “dark-money behemoth.” “The system of political financing, which often obscures the identities of donors, is known as dark money,” wrote The New York Times, “and Arabella’s network is a leading vehicle for it on the left.”

Meet Arabella Advisors, the brainchild of ex-Clinton administration staffer Eric Kessler and the favorite tool of anonymous, billionaire donors on the progressive left. Since 2006, the Arabella hub has overseen a growing network of nonprofits—call them the “spokes”—that collected $2.4 billion in the 2019-20 election cycle, nearly twice as much as the Republican and Democratic national committees combined.

These nonprofits in turn manage and supervise a vast array of “pop-up” groups—mainly political attack-dog websites, ad campaigns, and “spontaneous” demonstrations staffed by Arabella’s network of activist professionals who pose as members of independent activist organizations. These groups—such as Fix Our Senate, the Hub Project, and Floridians for a Fair Shake—typically emerge very suddenly in order to savage the political opposition on the policy or outrage of that particular day or week, then vanish just as quickly. The pop-ups do not file IRS disclosures or report their budgets, boards, or staff. In most cases, their connection to Arabella goes unreported. Many of them have offered sympathetic ordinary voters the opportunity to donate to whatever the “grassroots” cause happens to be, when in fact the money feeds back into Arabella’s enormous dark-money network.

[who_would_fardels_bear]

I have mixed feelings about revealing the identities of all people who donate to candidates.

The left has hounded even small-time donors when they appear on donor lists. There was a story about a waitress who got hounded at her job who gave a small amount for Prop 8 in California (the one defining marriage as only between a man and a woman).

Maybe there should be an amount below which donors can just be represented by an ID number.

[Chode]

and yet, contribution lists to the USCP are protected...

[Hypo2]

A little off topic but…abortion clinics should be “non profit” if not outlawed.

I don’t think private abortion clinics should exist, but if a state decides they should, then they should not be able to make a profit.

It might be a “compromise”.

A state might even require medical proof that the mother was in danger, before reimbursing the clinic for costs.

But, really, any medical emergency should be performed at a hospital