What is a slush fund?
Wiki has this to say
A slush fund, also known as a black fund, is any fund or account maintained for corrupt or illegal purposes, especially in the political sphere. Such funds may be kept hidden and maintained separately from other funds that are used for legitimate purposes. They may be employed by government or corporate officials as part of efforts to discreetly pay influential people in return for preferential treatment
A Reddit discussion sounds these thoughts:
It's off-the-books money used for illicit purposes, especially in politics. It comes from donors but is hidden from the public and regulators.
Sometimes you want to pay someone money without anyone asking annoying questions like "why are you paying this person" or "who are they and how do you know them" or "how did you even get this money in the first place." A slush fund is when you pull that off by making it hard to figure out where money came from, where it went, or how much there is.
We will look at little at the mechanics of how slush funds work, then we will look at the biggest example of a slush fund in American political history, the Clinton Foundation, we'll extend that look to the Democratic party, and we'll end by looking at other government oriented slush funds. While slush funds can be run by any organization, our Information War take will be limited to political corruption
How do they work?
Financial Web explains
Most of the time, slush funds are simply accounts that are hidden from public oversight. This can take many forms. They are usually established under someone else's names and hidden in places where they wouldn't be easily found. Many slush funds are held in foreign banks, where they are protected by local confidentiality laws. In most cases, the money is deposited in slush funds in secret. In other cases, the money is deposited under a seemingly legal facade. For example, many politicians have deposited money by creating fake jobs. In this setup, real people are put on the payroll, and they seemingly get paid out of the campaign funds. In reality, the jobs don't exist, and the "salaries" are deposited into slush funds.
First and foremost, it is important to remember that even if slush funds are not used for illegal purposes, the slush funds themselves are illegal. The problem is that the financial regulators that are supposed to keep track of slush funds don't have the money or the manpower to pursue every single lead. So, unless someone brings them evidence that suggests that slush funds exist, they won't pursue them. As a result, many slush funds aren't discovered for years or, in some of the more notorious cases, decades.
THE DARKER SIDE OF NONPROFITS: WHEN CHARITIES AND SOCIAL WELFARE GROUPS BECOME POLITICAL SLUSH FUNDS, a paper for The Pennsylvania Law Review explained how these funds...
used gaps in the law to engage in otherwise prohibited partisan endeavors
...and...
Due to loopholes in the IRC and FECA, charities and social welfare groups are able to engage in partisan activities, yet argue that their actions are nonpolitical.
Another study,POLITICAL CORRUPTION, CAMPAIGN SLUSH FUNDS AND THE IMPACT ON THE QUALITY OF DEMOCRACY IN BRAZIl, notes the term "stooge" in relation to slush funds...
used in its popular meaning, as to the person who accepts to be accused in order to
protect another;
The Reddit discussion also describes how donors are not the sole source of slush funding.
They are Typically created by budgeting too much money for something, adding a line item amongst many others or cancelling budgeted expenditures while retaining the budgeted funds.
I will let the IRS submit the final assessment of the use of slush funds...
secret slush funds [are] used for such purposes as ... political contributions, bribery, lobbying,
kickbacks, and diversions to personal use...
Internal Revenue Service Efforts to Detect Slush Funds in Large Corporations
The Clinton Foundation
The Clintons have a long history of slush fund use...
From THE DARKER SIDE OF NONPROFITS: WHEN CHARITIES AND SOCIAL WELFARE GROUPS BECOME POLITICAL SLUSH FUNDS
Vote Now '96 begins to look a lot less like a nonpartisan charity engaged in voter registration and much more like an
offshoot of the Democratic Party, performing the politically valuable service of getting Democrats to the polls.
I'm not going to spend a lot of time going over the Clinton Foundation as a slush fund; too many watchdog groups, open government research groups, and documentaries have done the hard work there. What I will do is to give a timeline of some of this data, and then point you at the hour-long video Clinton Cash.
Some things to look for
- Foreign contributions to the Clinton Foundation
- DOJ and FBI connections to the Clinton Foundation; i.e Comey and HSBC
- The revolving door between government offices and service with the Clinton Foundation for cronys
- Marital ties between such officials and media figures
- "Speaking fees" from the same donators
2008 The Hillary Clinton Slush Fund: Dirty Tactics, Dirty Money
2015 The Clinton Foundation Reeks of Crooks, Thieves, and Hoods
2015 Watchdog: Let's Face It, the Clinton Foundation is Basically a 'Slush Fund'
2015 Charity watchdog: Clinton Foundation a ‘slush fund’
2015 The Clinton Foundation: A cauldron of conflicts and cronyism
2016 Clinton Foundation Lawyers Thought Non-Profit Was Shady Too
2016 Hillary Clinton Used Leadership PAC as “Slush Fund” in 2008-09
2016 The Clinton Foundation And The "India Success Story": Self-Serving Philanthropy, Watered Down Drugs, and Money in sub-Saharan Africa
2016 The Clintons’ Controversial Foundation
2016 Hillary Clinton’s Track Record & Agendas
2017 Slush Fund, Pay-to-Play Clinton Foundation Facing Financial Meltdown. Big Surprise: World’s largest corporations end contributions.
Clinton Cash
The Clintons aren't the only democrats using government funded and other slush funds
Committee Works to Close Obamacare Slush Fund, Remove Jackpot Winners from Medicaid
How Jeff Sessions is stopping the EPA’s slush fund
Judiciary Chair Claims Internal Docs Reveal Obama DOJ 'Slush Fund'
Remember Strzok's "insurance policy" against Trump? This wasn't simply Comey/FBI/DNC Pro-Hillary partisanship. This was Cover Your Ass for illegal activities, including slush funds, under the Obama administration
However, the Democrats are NOT the only corruptocrats using the tool of the slush fund
TARP: A NEW SLUSH FUND FOR WASHINGTON
Congress’ sexual harassment system, decoded
ATF Ran Illegal Mixed-Money Slush Fund For Years With Zero Oversight, Auditing, Or Punishment
Inside the Pentagon’s ‘Slush Fund’
I've noted before the Baptists and Bootleggers problem; do-gooders aligning with rent-seekers for political advantage AND misuse of government office. The use of the slush fund is simply a symptom of this kind of human problem. Also consider growth complex theory (very similar explanations are found in Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy, and the bureaucratic politics model)
If you have a hankering for serious reading, James Q. Wilson's Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do And Why They Do It. I have noted my estimate of Wilson as a genius before; understanding how agencies work in reality, subject to political influence, will aid in your understanding of these malfeasant inluences and how slush funds are used in political corruption.
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