How to Raise and Spend Money Secretly

Worth Clicking: Blasts from the past wound Romney

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February 07, 2012

How to Raise and Spend Money Secretly

BuzzFeed reports on a loophole that is already accelerating the collapse of the campaign finance system.

"The fundraising part of the loophole has been in the news lately: Some donors to Romney's SuperPAC simply set up shell corporations and gave through the corporations, whose ownership is opaque. Their identities, so long as they don't inadvertently disclose them, will remain secret. But a SuperPAC supporting John Edwards, and playing a supporting role in his trial, has already experimented with using shell corporations on the other end of the equation: spending."

"The net result: To turn these committees into black boxes, which report to the Federal Election Committee the total amounts raised and spent, and nothing else."

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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February 07, 2012