It's a Scam

One of the things that is interesting about the American right is how predatory it is.

When I am forced to listened to right wing radio, I am always amazed at how many of their advertisers are things like colloidal silver, gold coins, dubious dietary supplements, and various other scams.

Movement conservationism seems to spend a lot of its time and effort in separating rubes from their money, and it's not just talk radio, or magazines.

It turns out that political PACs are scamming their small donors as well:

A group of conservative operatives using sophisticated robocalls raised millions of dollars from donors using pro-police and pro-veteran messages. But instead of using the money to promote issues and candidates, an analysis by The New York Times shows, nearly all the money went to pay the firms making the calls and the operatives themselves, highlighting a flaw in the regulation of political nonprofits.

………

“This is Frank Wallace calling for the American Police Officers Alliance. Very quickly, we’re mailing out the envelopes to help fight for our officers who protect our nation’s citizens, just like yourself. Once you receive your card in the mail, you can send back whatever you think is fair this time. That’s all.”

This is not a policeman. This is not even a human. This is a computer, making thousands of robocalls with the same folksy voice.

And like “Frank Wallace,” the American Police Officers Alliance is not what it seems.

In theory, it is a political nonprofit called a 527, after a section of the tax code, that can raise unlimited donations to help or oppose candidates, promote issues or encourage voting.

In reality, it is part of a group of five linked nonprofits that have exploited thousands of donors in ways that have been hidden until now by a blizzard of filings, lax oversight and a blind spot in the campaign finance system.

Since 2014, the five groups have pulled in $89 million from small-dollar donors who were pitched on building political support for police officers, veterans and firefighters.

But just 1 percent of the money they raised was used to help candidates via donations, ads or targeted get-out-the-vote messages, according to an analysis by The Times of the groups’ public filings.

About 90 percent of the money the groups raised was simply sent back to their fund-raising contractors, to feed a self-consuming loop where donations went to find more donors to give money to find more donors. They had no significant operations other than fund-raising, and along the way became one of America’s biggest sources of robocalls.

But one other set of expenditures was especially notable: The groups also paid $2.8 million, or 3 percent of the money raised, to three Republican political consultants from Wisconsin who were the hidden force behind all five nonprofits, according to people who worked for the groups and who in some cases were kept in the dark by the consultants about the finances of the operations.

The three political consultants are former Marquette University College Republican buddies, John W. Connors, Simon Lewis, and Kyle Maichle.

This is also former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's alma mater, though he did not graduate.

Those three consultants helped organize the nonprofits, the people said, then billed them — through shell companies that obscured the connection.

The campaign-finance system is built to police who puts money into politics, legal experts say. These groups embodied a flaw: The system is poorly prepared to stop those who raise money and channel it somewhere other than candidates and causes.

………

In their calls, the groups identified themselves to potential donors as political organizations. Beyond that, they were often vague about whom they supported and how. The American Police Officers Alliance told donors it was “supporting efforts to elect lawmakers to advocate for those who protect our nation's citizens.”

Ryan Meyer, who was president of the American Police Officers Alliance from 2017 to 2021, said the three Wisconsin consultants used him as a figurehead and ousted him after he learned that most of the money raised by the group went back into more fund-raising and demanded changes in the organization’s direction.

Of course, the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is corrupt as well, as I have noted on a number of occasions, but they are nowhere as near as obvious or as egregious.

When one compares the Democratic Party base and the Republican base, it is rather surprising that it falls out this way.

The Republican base is far more likely to own firearms, and they fetishize vigilante justice, so it would seem to me that Republican fraudsters are putting themselves at much greater physical risk.

It does seem though that this appears to disprove the old Robert Heinlein maxim, "An armed society is a polite society."