U.S. Chamber of Commerce building
I was sitting in the green room at 30 Rock recently with a security expert who was waiting to go on air, and we started discussing the flap over where the Karl Rove-Ed Gillespie Group, “American Crossroads”/Crossroads GPS, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, both of which are pouring insane amounts of largely anonymous money into the American election this year, might be getting their cash. As Rachel Maddow pointed out Wednesday, 75 percent of Crossroads’ funding is secret (though OpenSecrets has found some of them.) And Think Progress has dug into the very real possibility that the Chamber is funneling foreign money into our elections. So the question came up, what’s the worst case scenario about where some of the money pouring into the 2010 midterm could be coming from? China? What about the Saudis?
After all, as this gentleman (who I’m pretty sure was a Republican) pointed out, the Saudis own part of Fox News.
Foreign companies for the last several years have been buying up American roads and other infrastructure. Why wouldn’t foreign or “U.S.” multinational firms want to make big donations to the Chamber or Crossroads to up their influence in the next Congress? And why risk a consumer backlash by being named as the donors? Whatever party you belong to, its something to think about. And the IRS and FEC should indeed investigate, unless Mr. Rove would like to clear all this up by coming clean.
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