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IPFS News Link • Politics: Republican Campaigns

"Black Americans for a Better Future"

• theintercept.com

New FEC filings show that all of the $417,250 in monetary donations to a Super PAC called "Black Americans for a Better Future" comes from conservative white businessmen — including $400,000, or 96 percent of the total, from white billionaire hedge fund manager Robert Mercer.

Mercer, co-CEO of Renaissance Technologies on Long Island, is best-known politically for donating $11,000,000 to Keep the Promise I, a Super PAC backing Ted Cruz's presidential run.

Beyond Mercer's support of Black Americans for a Better Future and Ted Cruz, Mercer has a long and peculiar history of donations to political and philanthropic causes.

The Mercer Family Foundation has given over $1.4 million to the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, which is stockpiling huge amounts of human urine to "revolutionize the evaluation of personal chemistry." In 2010 Mercer spent $600,000 in an effort to elect OISM's co-founder Arthur Robinson to Congress. (OISM is eager to collect as much urine as possible, so if you would like to donate a sample of your own, the details are available here.)

BABF appears to exist solely as a vehicle for Washington, D.C., consultant Raynard Jackson, who is African-American. Jackson is quoted on his firm's website stating that "You have a fundamental right to pursue business interests with the least amount of interference from the government."


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