Money Rules

If there was any silver lining in the disastrous Supreme Court ruling on the Citizens United case, the case that opened the floodgates for unlimited individual and corporate donations to political action committees, it was that who donated and how much they donated had to be disclosed.

Tonight Stephen Colbert humorously, yet depressingly for those of us who still give a damn about good government, demonstrated how those donations can be rendered completely anonymous. Bonus: It's sooooo easy. Start with the SuperPAC such as Karl Rove's American Progress, an organization that must disclose all donations given to it. Then simply add a shell corporation under a legal designation called 501(c)(4). Rove's shell corporation is called Crossroads GPS. The corporation can take unlimited anonymous donations from individuals and corporations, then spend the money directly on "issue-oriented" political advertisements, OR give the to the SuperPAC. All the SuperPAC has to disclose is that it received the money from the shell corporation, thus completely shielding all contributors.

To show how easy the process is, Colbert created a shell corporation to gather anonymous donations, creatively named Anonymous Shell Corporation, to go with his already created SuperPAC.