http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/09/california-tightens-lid-dark-money-groups
"California regulators took another step last week to crack down on secretive money in state elections. And for that, we have the Koch brothers to thank.
Politically active nonprofits have become a preferred way for deep-pocketed donors to influence elections without revealing their identities. As nonprofits, these groups are under no obligation to disclose where their money comes from. But as the amount of dark money entering elections has soared, federal regulators have largely taken a pass on adding new disclosure requirements. California regulators, on the other hand, have gone straight at the issue, and in the wake of a 2012 scandal involving several groups from the network of political organizations run by the Koch brothers, they have aggressively fought to keep dark money groups out of state elections.
On Thursday, state regulators added another layer of security, closing a loophole that might have allowed out-of-state groups and donors to secretly buy influence in California elections. If there was any wiggle room for dark money groups to operate in California, it's likely gone now.
California's dark-money crackdown stems from an investigation sparked in the run-up to the 2012 election, in which regulators uncovered a plot by a Virginia-based dark-money group called Americans for Job Security to funnel more than $24 million from secret donors through a series of intermediary groups to be spent on two state ballot initiatives: one to raise taxes and the other to ban labor unions from making political donations. According to the investigation, AJS routed the money to an Arizona dark-money group called the Center to Protect Patient's Rights, which then passed it on to two more groups, including one called Americans for Responsible Leadership. Those groups, in turn, channeled the money to at least two California-based groups that spent it on campaigns to defeat the tax increase proposal and to support the ban on donations from unions.
The CPPR, which was actually just a post office box in Arizona, became known as the ATM for a sprawling network of politically active groups tied to libertarian brothers Charles and David Koch."
