Post-Citizens United, corporate donors are still shy enough that they shield themselves behind undisclosed corporate donations to non-profits rather than direct candidate contributions. Now the Center for Public Integrity has released a detailed report of top corporations and their donations to those nonprofits. They were able to identify direct contributions of at least $185 million.
They gleaned the information from financial statements and other public records to the extent they were available. Some companies chose to make a full disclosure while others disclosed nothing, and still others only disclosed the name of the organization without the amount given.
Google falls into that last category, where we know who they donated to, but not how much. The list is damning. Not only did Google drop contributions onto lots of political non-profits on the right and the left, they aligned completely with the Koch side of the right-wing nonprofits.
For example, they were the only company to disclose a donation to Heritage Action, the Jim DeMint shut-down-the-government-kill-Obamacare group. Also on their list? The Texas Public Policy Foundation, ALEC, American Action Forum, Federalist Society, Washington Legal Foundation, Competitive Enterprise Institute, US Chamber of Commerce, Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, The Constitution Project, American Conservative Union (CPAC sponsor), American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Mercatus Center (the Koch-sponsored economic think tank at George Mason University), National Taxpayers Union and the Free State Foundation.
By contrast, the only identifiable left-leaning organizations on their list were the Center for American Progress Action Fund and NAACP Action. The rest were neutral or trade associations connected with the internet.
Just in case there's some dispute about what's evil and what isn't, Google should note the well-documented case against Heritage Action and their evil crusade to shut millions out of access to health care, the damage that the Koch-built Cato, Mercatus, AEI and CEI-derived policies wreak on ordinary people, and how all of these organizations work in concert to do harm to the middle class and working people.
Simply put, they do evil to ordinary people.
Google didn't do this by accident. They've decided to toss their lot in with extremists while using our data to buy their donations. There's something really, really evil about that.
