This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, August 29, 2012.

I'm Caleb Brown.

For all the bluster about disclosure in spending on political speech, one thing is clear, Americans like to spend their

own money talking about politics without having their identities made public.

The legal attacks on the non-profits moving these messages are rooted in

forcing identities out in the open. But for all the claims about not wanting to

chill political speech, forcing disclosure clearly does just that.

John Samples, director of the Cato Institute's Center for Representative Government, comments.

For tax code purposes, the groups are called social welfare groups.

If you don't like the groups, you would call them dark money groups.

That is, these are organizations that want to talk about politics

and yet do not want to disclose who is donating the money to talk about

politics and the tax code has a nice place for these people

501c4.

So what is that group?

I mean basically in the tax code C4s are charity organizations they were set up for that purpose

however they've always been allowed to do some political activity that distinguished

them from C3s Cato is a C3 to activity that

C3s, Cato is a C3 doesn't get involved in elections and these organizations like

Cato can't. But C4s have always been able to. The question always was that C4 as the social

welfare institutions could not have political activity as their primary concern.

It was part of what they did but not all. But what did that mean?

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