Loophole allows foreign money to flow into super PACs through shell companies | Hacker News Reader

Loophole allows foreign money to flow into super PACs through shell companies

issueone.org

31 pointshammock11 comments

This is reported on as if the loopholes allowing foreign money into US politics was not intentional in the first place. It would be quite simple to close these sorts of holes, but those in charge have generally made use of loopholes, and so are not about to close off their funding sources.

> reported on as if the loopholes allowing foreign money into US politics was not intentional in the first place

It wasn’t. It’s literally illegal.

> would be quite simple to close these sorts of holes

How would you do it? What would be your coalition, i.e. which voting blocs would either turn out more or flip for this?

Maybe you have something beyond reflexive cynicism. But when I hear peoples’ simple solutions to such policy problems, even setting aside the politics, it takes no more than minutes to structure a loophole. That doesn’t mean you’re corrupt or stupid. It means it’s a hard problem.

The whole. PAC Universe is designed to wash the money of people and corporations.

> PAC Universe is designed to wash the money of people and corporations

It’s a natural consequence of enabling unions, NGOs and—yes—-companies to participate in our political process. Banning PACs while e.g. letting the EFF or your block association organise politically is incredibly tricky.

So tricky that we did it for 100 years? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tillman_Act_of_1907

Good example. Tillman does not prohibit most PACs.

Beneficial Ownership Registries are a partial answer to so many corruption problems. It's the same deal with these odd bans on "Foreign Ownership of Farmland" -- so a Chinese national owning farms in Texas is bad, a Chinese company owning farms is bad, but how do you stop them if they use even one iota of the silly privacy laws protecting against disclosure? The bills include language like, "directly or indirectly controlled" but how in the world do you police that without knowing the ownership percentages and stakes? If a Texan firm is 100% owned by a Delaware C-Corp that's owned by a Delaware LLC which is managed by a Caymen company completely controlled by the CCP, it's essentially impossible to tell.. so you've basically just banned people who don't use complicated legal setups to own real estate -- which seem like the exact wrong people to ban.

Who would have thought that people who solicit, accept, and deliver on bribes might engage in corrupt practices?

The best democracy money can buy. Labor and voters have borders but capital does not.

Article is from 2020

Working as intended

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