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Huffington Post: Koch Brothers, Chamber of Commerce Face Possible Campaign Donation Disclosure After Ruling
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-By Paul Blumenthal

March 30, 2012- WASHINGTON — On Friday evening, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a ruling that could begin the process of revealing the identities of secret donors to groups connected to Karl Rove and the Koch brothers.

The court ruled in Van Hollen v. Federal Election Commission that the FEC rules that restricted campaign donor disclosure are not valid and must be changed to provide for disclosure.

"We are very happy to see the judge got it right," says Paul Ryan, a lawyer for the Campaign Legal Center, a campaign finance watchdog that was a part of the team challenging the FEC rules.

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Huffington Post: Disclose Act’s Latest Incarnation Would Force Vote On Secret Political Slush Funds
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-By Dan Froomkin

March 21, 2012- WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats are setting up a showdown with Republicans on the issue of unlimited secret campaign donations, proposing new rules that would expose those donations to public view.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) on Wednesday introduced a stripped-down version of the 2010 Disclose Act, without any of the more controversial elements that Republicans cited in torpedoing the bill last time.

The new bill, which has 34 co-sponsors (all Democrats), would simply require all groups spending more than $10,000 on election-related advertising to publicly name all donors who gave $10,000 or more. To address the lack of real-time disclosure of who is paying what, the bill would require any broadcast ad to list the sponsoring group's top five funders.

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AlterNet: The Real History of ‘Corporate Personhood’: Meet the Man to Blame for Corporations Having More Rights Than You
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The real history of today's excessive corporate power starts with a tobacco lawyer appointed to the Supreme Court.

-By Jeffrey Clements

December 6, 2011- The following is an excerpt of Jeffrey Clement's Corporations Are Not People: Why They Have More Rights Than You Do and What You Can Do About It.) Click here to order a copy.

In 1971, Lewis Powell, a mild-mannered, courtly, and shrewd corporate lawyer in Richmond, Virginia, soon to be appointed to the United States Supreme Court, wrote a memorandum to his client, the United States Chamber of Commerce. He outlined a critique and a plan that changed America.

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Protect Our Elections Asks FBI To Expand Its Investigation Of NewsCorp To Include Its Relationship With US Chamber Of Commerce
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On August 14, 2011, Protect Our Elections attorney Kevin Zeese wrote a letter to the FBI asking that it expand its investigation of NewsCorp to include (1) its million dollar donation to the US Chamber of Commerce to gut the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in order to cover up, obstruct and undermine an investigation under the FCPA, and (2) a conspiracy with the Chamber to use private investigators, military intelligence contractors, and law firms to spy on Americans and organizations that they consider threats, either on political, financial or ideological grounds.

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Think Progress: USW President: U.S. Chamber Has Become ‘A Consulting Firm To Teach Companies’ About Outsourcing
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October 30, 2010- As ThinkProgress has previously reported, over a million jobs have been lost due to outsourcing since 1994. One of the main organizations promoting outsourcing has been the US Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber has been taking money from foreign corporations and holding clinics on how to outsource American jobs, such as one sponsored by billionaire Sheldon Adelson “inviting local businesses in Florida to come to Jacksonville and learn about outsourcing from Chinese government officials like Li Haiyan, the Counselor for Economic Affairs for the People’s Republic of China, U.S. Chamber lobbyist Joseph Fawkner, and BChinaB.”

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Watchdog Groups Call For Appointment of A Special Prosecutor to Investigate the Use of Secret Money to Influence Elections
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Comparisons To Watergate Scandal Grows

WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Today, several watchdog groups, led by Protect Our Elections, dedicated to clean and  transparent elections sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder  requesting the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the improper use of tax exempt provisions to raise and spend hundreds of millions of dollars to influence the 2010 midterm elections.  The letter, written by Kevin Zeese, the groups' attorney and spokesman, states that groups such as  American Crossroads, American Future Fund, the Chamber of Commerce and others are violating tax law, campaign finance law and criminal law by creating tax exempt organizations to engage in partisan political activity without restriction or accountability.

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