Mulesoft-CD basics - MuleSoft Certified Developer -Level 1 (MCD-Level1) Updated: 2023

What is Dark Money?

“Dark money” refers to spending meant to influence political outcomes where the source of the money is not disclosed. Here’s how dark money makes its way into elections:

• Politically active nonprofits such as 501(c)(4)s are generally under no legal obligation to disclose their donors even if they spend to influence elections. When they choose not to reveal their sources of funding, they are considered dark money groups.
• Opaque nonprofits and shell companies may provide unlimited amounts of money to super PACs. While super PACs are legally required to disclose their donors, some of these groups are effectively dark money outlets when the bulk of their funding cannot be traced back to the original donor.

Dark money groups have spent roughly $1 billion — mainly on television and online ads and mailers — to influence elections in the decade since the 2010 Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court ruling that gave rise to politically active nonprofits.

Citizens who are barraged with political messages paid for with money from undisclosed sources may not be able to consider the credibility and possible motives of the wealthy corporate or individual funders behind those messages.

Infographic: See how Dark Money flows between nonprofits

Types of Election Spending

Political jargon can get confusing. What you need to know about spending to influence elections is that there are two main types.

Hard money: traditional political spending

With this kind of spending, donors must be disclosed, contribution limits apply and organizations are allowed to coordinate their efforts to help elect a candidate. This is not dark money. These groups include candidate committees, political parties and traditional Political Action Committees (PAC).

Soft money: outside political spending

Outside spending — sometimes referred to as independent or non-coordinated spending — refers to political spending made by organizations and individuals other than the candidate campaigns themselves. All outside groups that aren't political parties — except for a few traditional PACs that make independent expenditures — are allowed to accept unlimited sums of money from individuals, corporations or unions. With these donations, groups may engage in a number of direct political activities, including buying advertising that advocates for or against a candidate, going door to door, or running phone banks. However, these organizations are not allowed to coordinate their spending with political candidates or parties. While some outside groups — like super PACs — are required to disclose their donors, others are not. These nondisclosing organizations are referred to as dark money groups.

As the chart below illustrates, dark money groups are growing in size, scope and share of election spending with each election cycle.

Graph: Outside Spending by Nondisclosing Groups, Excluding Party Committees

Based on data released daily by the FEC. Last updated on October 24, 2023.

Types of Dark Money Spending

Whenever money is spent in a political election with the purpose of influencing the decision of a voter and the source of the money is not disclosed, it is dark money. Common types of organizations that can spend in elections while shielding the sources of their money are outlined in greater detail below.

Political Nonprofits

Nonprofit, tax-exempt groups organized under section 501(c) of the Internal Revenue Code may engage in varying amounts of political activity. Because they are not technically political organizations, they are generally not required to disclose their donors to the public. These groups, like super PACs, cannot coordinate spending with political parties or candidates, and therefore are allowed to raise unlimited sums of money from individuals, organizations and corporations.

Types of 501(c) Organizations

There are a number of types of 501(c) organizations with different structures, uses and capabilities. None of these organizations are required to publicly disclose the identity of their donors or sources of money though some disclose funding sources voluntarily.

• 501(c)(3) groups: These organizations operate for religious, charitable, scientific or educational purposes. These groups are not supposed to engage in any political activities, though some voter registration activities are permitted. Donations to these organizations are tax-deductible.

  Groups you may know: NAACP, Center for American Progress, Heritage Foundation, OpenSecrets

• 501(c)(4) groups: Often referred to as "social welfare" organizations, these nonprofits are the most common kind of dark money group. They may engage in political activities, as long as these activities do not become their primary purpose. The IRS has never defined what "primary" means, or how a percentage should be calculated, so the current de facto rule is 49.9 percent of overall expenditures, a limit that some groups have found easy to circumvent. Donations to these groups are not tax-deductible.

  Groups you may know: National Rifle Association, Planned Parenthood, Majority Forward, One Nation

• 501(c)(5) groups: These are labor and agricultural groups and may engage in political activities, as long as they adhere to the same general limits as 501(c)(4) organizations. They are generally funded by dues from union employees. Donations to these groups are not tax-deductible.

  Groups you may know: Service Employees International Union (SEIU), American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)

• 501(c)(6) organizations: These are business leagues, chambers of commerce, real estate boards and trade associations, which may engage in political activity as long as they adhere to the same general limits as 501(c)(4) organizations. Donations to these groups are not tax-deductible.

  Groups you may know: US Chamber of Commerce, American Bankers Association, National Association of Realtors

Graph: 501(c) Spending by Type

Based on data released daily by the FEC. Last updated on October 24, 2023.

Super PACs

Technically known as independent expenditure committees, super PACs may raise and spend an unlimited amount of money and accept contributions from companies, nonprofits, unions and individuals. Since super PACs cannot provide money directly to candidates, they are exempt from the limits on fundraising and spending that regular PACs must abide by.

Despite the sometimes inaccurate portrayal of them in the media, super PACs must identify all of their donors to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), and thereby to the public. They must do so on a monthly or semiannual basis in non-federal election years and monthly in the year of an election. In that sense, super PACs are quite transparent, except when the donor is a shell corporation or a nonprofit that doesn't disclose its donors.

So-called pop-up super PACs formed shortly before an election may game disclosure deadlines, enabling them to spend unlimited sums influencing races without disclosing their funding sources until after voters go to the polls.

While super PACs are not allowed to coordinate any of their independent expenditures with a candidate's campaign, many single-candidate super PACs are run by individuals who are personally close to a candidate or formerly associated with a campaign.

Hybrid PACs (Carey Committees)

A hybrid PAC has the ability to operate both as a traditional PAC, contributing funds to a candidate's committee, and as a super PAC that makes independent expenditures. To do so, these committees must have a separate bank account for each purpose. The committee may collect unlimited contributions from almost any source for its independent expenditure account, but may not use those funds for its traditional PAC contributions.

LLCs and Shell Companies

Limited Liability Companies (LLC) perform a number of necessary business functions. However, their unique structure may easily be abused or used in order to hide less than above-board activity. In politics, LLCs are sometimes established to help disguise the identity of a donor or source of money spent on behalf of a political candidate.

LLCs are governed by state law, but generally, minimal information is necessary to file the required articles of incorporation. In states such as Delaware, New Mexico, Nevada and Wyoming, LLCs may be incorporated without even disclosing the names of members or managers.

This lack of accountability and transparency have helped disguise the source of millions of dollars in political spending. Shell companies make major contributions to super PACs each election cycle, leaving voters in the dark while the recipient often knows the donor's true identity.

Feel free to distribute or cite this material, but please credit the OpenSecrets. For permission to reprint for commercial uses, such as textbooks, contact OpenSecrets: info@crp.org

Even if you didn’t own a TRS-80, the widespread footprint of Radio Shack in malls meant that if you are old enough, it is a good bet you have seen one and maybe even played with one. The games were crude, but state-of-the-art for 1982. If you wanted business software, that was there too, just don’t expect much on any of the personal computers of the day. My old TRS-80 Model III doesn’t boot anymore and is waiting for me to find time to pull it apart. But it turns out you can run all those old programs with almost no effort. If you’ve experimented with emulators before, you know there are two major problems. First, you need to install the sometimes-fidgety emulator. Second, you need to find the software you want to run and probably convert it into some format the emulator will read. The website named The Big List of TRS-80 Software solves both problems.

You are probably thinking this doesn’t solve any problem because it is just a list of links to software. That’s a reasonable thing to think, but we think the website really needs a new name. There are 15,873 pieces of software on the site, although some of them are duplicates or multiple versions of a single program. You can get them in a format that is useful for some emulators or, in some cases, the original files. But here’s the kicker. You can also click to launch a virtual TRS-80 in your browser and start the program.

Sounds great, right? Well, for the most part, it is. However, some of the programs are finicky and don’t run well in the browser. There’s also the problem of finding the documentation, but you can’t have everything. If you want a quick run of a very common game from back in the day, try Flying Saucers.

A Tale of Two Emulators

The browser-based emulator is from [Peter Phillips]. If the program you want to run doesn’t work well in the browser, you might want to try trs80gp, a full-featured stand-alone emulator that can run the DMK files you can get from the list.

The trs80gp software can emulate just about every TRS-80 and variant including the Model II and MC-10 Color Computer. The emulator is simply amazing. It not only emulates complete systems with cassettes, floppies, or hard drives, but it can even emulate the terrible display you’d expect from a vintage 1980s computer.

The emulator can slow down or run at full speed. You can even have cassette audio output captured automatically on the PC. Unfortunately, one of my old favorites — Asylum — acts the same in both emulators. It starts up, asks you a yes or no question, and refuses to accept any keyboard input. Keyboard input works for other programs, though. Even the emulator’s on-screen keyboard (both of them have one) won’t put input into this and a few other programs I tried.

Trash-80 Wine

There is a problem with the stand-alone emulator, though. There are versions available that don’t require Windows. However, the website mentions that the Windows version has more features. It does, however, run under Wine. In my case, I installed it using Crossover Office, which is a paid version of Wine. I can confirm that it works great.

If you find a program you want to try on the list, you can start with the AUTORUN link to run it directly in the browser. If you prefer, you can get the DMK file and mount it as a floppy on the stand-alone emulator. Some floppies are bootable, and others require you to use the second drive with a standard boot floppy in the main drive. Don’t forget, the drives are numbers in TRSDOS and most other TRS-80 operating systems. So DIR :1 will list the files on the secondary drive.

If things don’t work, you can try the DEBUG link. This lets you select if you want to boot under DOS Plus, LDOS, NewDos-80, or TRSDOS. Another option is to pick up the individual files. You can’t get these files directly from the table. Instead, you click on the file name, and a page will show you the file along with several options.

You can pick a few options for emulating or downloading the program from that page. You can also show and get the program parsed as a BASIC file, a text file, a Z80 program, or a  few other formats. The “Hex File” option, as far as I can tell, actually means raw, not an Intel hex format file. You can even edit the program in place and emulate it if you like, although for machine language programs, that will be difficult.

If you want a few things to try in addition to the UFO game mentioned above, try Battle Trek, or try your hand at word processing (type SCRIPSIT at the prompt). Just be prepared to explore the disks, run a few things, and maybe Google some old user manuals.

Practical?

Is all this practical? No way. But if you enjoy computer history, this is an easy way to poke around in what would have been a truly extensive software library in its day. Sure, a real TRS-80 would be even more fun. But it would also be a lot more work, not the least of which would be transferring media around.

Then again, you could build a clone. Or play with some other browser-based retro computers.

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Credit unions mainly offer savings and loans to their members, but some also offer basic banking services without the need for a credit check.

The Engage account is the most high-profile example. It's offered by various credit unions across the UK and is available to anyone, whatever your credit score or financial history.

You pay a monthly management fee of £2, and must load money onto the prepaid Visa debit card in advance. (Bank transfers are free and you can request up to £50 cashback at participating UK retailers when making a purchase, but Paypoint top-ups cost 50p plus 2.5%.)

There's no overdraft facility, so you can't run up debt, although you do pay 75p for cash-machine withdrawals. And if you use your card abroad, you'll pay an extra £1 (£2 for foreign cash-machine withdrawals) plus 2% of the transaction value.

You get your own UK sort code and account number, so you can set up direct debits, and participating retailers pay up to 15% in cashback rewards when you buy their goods with your Engage card.

As with other prepaid cards, the Engage card is issued by Contis Financial Services Limited under an e-money licence, so deposits are not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). However, they are held in a segregated account so that if the firm becomes insolvent, your money is protected against claims made by creditors.

Each school club must have a British Cycling qualified coach to run the coaching sessions. This can either be an external British Cycling qualified coach (eg from a local community club), or a qualified teacher who has attended one of British Cycling's coaching courses. The sessions can be run as either an after-school club, or during curriculum PE.

Teachers completing 'Coaching cycling for schools' (previously known as the ACAT) will be provided with Go-Ride Gears coaching workbooks, which outline various activities and skills tests relevant to the age and ability of the group in question.

The workbook series consists of seven distinct levels or gears. Each Go-Ride Gears activity can be adjusted to make it easier or harder, depending on the age and ability of the participants. As such, your school will be able to choose from over 100 different coaching activities, ensuring that sessions never get boring or repetitive.

Linking with a Go-Ride Club can benefit your school by:

• Providing appropriate opportunities for further development and participation for young people
• Bringing cycling to a wider range of young people
• Helping to develop competition officials for major school events through British Cycling's Cycling Award for Young Volunteers (CAYV)
• Optimising the provision of coaching expertise and leadership in cycling at school level

For more information please see the Go-Ride for Schools Leaflet.

Go-Ride and the School Games

School Games Challenge and Competition cards for primary and secondary schools can be downloaded using the links below.

Level 1 Primary Challenge
Level 1 Primary Competition
Level 1 Secondary
Level 2 and 3 Primary & Secondary (pages one - five)
Level 2 and 3 Primary & Secondary (pages six - eleven)

Go-Ride and Bikeability

British Cycling's cycle training team are currently running cycle training instructor courses that qualify attendees to deliver Bikeability to young people, passing on the necessary skills needed to cycle safely on the road.

Bikeability (previously known as cycling proficiency) is split into three levels:

• Level 1 - Basic skills delivered in a traffic free environment.
• Level 2 - Basic road skills on quiet roads.
• Level 3 - Advanced road skills on busier roads.

What is the next step?

If you are interested in becoming a Go-Ride school club, please contact your regional development manager for more information.

Through treatment interventions such as EMDR , somatic body work, and mindfulness, we will work together to create an environment that makes space for healing, empowerment, and building skills to help you cope with daily life.

Welcome! I’m so glad you’re here. Brene Brown once said, “Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness”. Our experiences in life can sometimes leave us feeling sad, angry, confused, lost, and everything in between. Whether you’re struggling with experiences of trauma, depression, anxiety, loss, any relational conflicts, or school difficulties, I’m here to walk alongside you on a path towards vulnerability and compassion for all parts of you. Instead of being who you’ve had to be (because trauma), this journey can bring you to who you’re meant to be.

Emma Langley slid nearly 500m down an icy slope on Mt Ruapehu in 2020. Photo / Supplied