parents in charge

see howard rich<div>
</div><div>Palmetto State PoliticsRich may have made his biggest mark in South Carolina — a state where he appears to have no personal connections or obvious business interests. But since 2006, Rich has spent large sums in the state, largely to pursue one of his favored causes: School vouchers to allow parents to send their children to educational institutions other than their local neighborhood schools.In 2010 alone, Rich’s organizations gave more than $1.7 million to a handful of South Carolina non-profits — groups like South Carolinians for Responsible Government and Conservatives In Action. South Carolinians for Responsible Government is actually two separate nonprofits, one a 501(c)(3) and another a 501(c)(4). Both groups are based at the same address and have the same president and identical boards of directors. Combined, they listed having more than $1.6 million in revenue in 2010.“South Carolinians for Responsible Government is a statewide grassroots non-profit organization,” the group claims on its <a href="http://www.scrgov.org/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">website</a>. “Unlike our opponents, who use tax dollars to fund their operations, we depend entirely on the generosity of citizens like you.”But that’s true only if “citizens like you” includes four of Rich’s groups, which, according to their tax filings, made five grants to the two South Carolina organizations totaling $1.5 million — about 90 percent of the recipient groups’ revenues. It’s a classic Rich maneuver, indirect and complicated.As is Rich’s sidestepping of South Carolina’s campaign finance laws: A <a href="http://www.thestate.com/2012/04/08/2225730/ny-dollars-flow-into-sc-school.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">recent investigation</a> by The State newspaper found that since 2008, Rich had contributed at least $188,000 to 38 members of the South Carolina House of Representatives. An OpenSecrets Blog review of South Carolina’s campaign finance disclosures indicate that since that article was published, Rich has given at least another $19,000 to three state Senate candidates facing primary fights.But since South Carolina caps individual donations at $2,000, Rich had to be creative. Instead he made his gifts through shell companies with names like Stillrich LLC, Coolcal LLC, 188 Claremont LLC, 123 LaSalle, Inc., and 51 First Avenue, LLC. The companies, many of which appear to linger from Rich’s time in real estate – a realm in which it’s common for each property to exist as its own LLC — all list 1420 Walnut Street, Suite 1011, Philadelphia, PA, as their address.That’s the address of the Center for Independent Thought, the libertarian think tank run by Rich’s wife, Andrea Millen Rich.Dick Harpootlian, the chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, is blunt in his assessment of Rich.“He owns the whole f*ing state,” Harpootlian said recently in an interview with OpenSecrets Blog.Phil Noble, a Democratic party activist who in 2010 traveled the state confronting candidates for taking Rich’s campaign contributions, is almost as blunt.“He’s basically bought the Republican Party and virtually all the state House candidates is what it boils down to,” Noble told OpenSecrets Blog. “God knows how many millions he has spent here.” According to Noble, Rich first came to the state to back former governor Mark Sanford, who was a prominent school voucher proponent.Noble said that Rich has targeted candidates, often moderate Republicans, in primary contests, usually shortly before an election. One left-wing South Carolina blog found that in 2008, LLCs and individuals affiliated with Rich contributed $40,000 to a conservative state Senate candidate, Lee Bright, in the final two weeks before he faced off against an incumbent Republican. The contributions, which were not made public until after the vote, accounted for 20 percent of Bright’s funds in that election.Simultaneously, the South Carolina Club For Growth — a group affiliated with the national Club For Growth, where Rich is a board member — dropped <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFwoAEGdNuA" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">an attack ad on the incumbent</a>, blasting him for taking money from trial lawyers.Bright narrowly won the race.Noble blames Rich for corrupting South Carolina’s political culture by encouraging the development and use of secretive non-profits to attack political enemies.“He was sort of the impetus for the the creation of a whole (c)(4) support network for Sanford and his agenda,” Noble said. “He brought that whole culture with him.”Furthermore, said Noble, Rich and his network “don’t care at all” about bad publicity. “They just spend what they have to, and they keep spending big.”Continuing to Spend...</div>