When we’re done with the tax returns…..
In 2007, then-Sen. Barack Obama proposed legislation that would have required all presidential candidates to disclose information about supporters who raised at least $50,000 for their campaigns during the two-year period prior to Election Day. That legislation was never adopted, but as a presidential candidate Obama voluntarily released certain information about his top fundraisers.
Obama has continued that practice as he revs the financial engine of his re-election campaign. Between April and the end of September, the Obama campaign released the names of 357 bundlers who had collected at least $50,000 to benefit him and the Democratic National Committee. Together, these elite moneymen (and women) raised at least $55.9 million — or about $8 out of every $25 added to Obama’s account during that time.
Current law requires candidates only to release the names of bundlers who are registered federal lobbyists; that statute was adopted in the wake of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.
No candidate on the Republican side of the aisle has gone beyond the law and joined Obama in voluntarily disclosing information about his or her other bundlers. (Ron Paul’s presidential campaign says it doesn’t use bundlers, as OpenSecrets Blog previously reported). Republicans Rick Perry and Tim Pawlenty each disclosed exactly one lobbyist-bundler last year. Mitt Romney has disclosed eight, who collectively have raised nearly $1 million for his campaign. Obama does not have any lobbyists bundling money for him, and his policy is to refund any money donated to his campaign by a lobbyist.
Mitt Romney has eight lobbyist-bundlers, and he was legally required to report those names, but are there more Romney bundlers? He’d have to answer that first question, don’t you think, if it were put to him?
If Romney gets to the general, we can start bugging him about this. Why won’t he voluntarily reveal the names of ALL his bundlers? Better, If Gingrich gets to the general (and, you know, has some bundlers: his “donors” seem to be one incredibly rich person) because Gingrich is the one who has been screeching nonsensically and insincerely about transparency.
After listening to idiot conservatives and pundit enablers spend three years turning a mundane, ordinary, state-issued birth record into something incredibly complicated and ultimately (apparently) unknowable I think they owe us complete transparency in all things.
Not complicated. List of names.
Benjamin Franklin
Let’s just dispense with the bulk of this nonsense.
Publicly Funded Elections.
rikryah
found this over in the comments at Washington MOnthly:
I love it!!!
make that ad!!!
homerhk
It’s funny that you hear these screeches from both right and left about Obama not being the most transparent administration ever and that he only says that for show and yet the reality is so much the other way around.
Kay
@rikryah:
I don’t know that you have to make an ad. It’s just not good for Romney. Even if it ends up being unfair or overblown, it’s just not a good thing for a presidential candidate.
Senyordave
One nice thing about either Mittens or the amoral, degenerate, racist windbag (Newt certainly merits more than a one sylabble nickname) is that for both of them, the ads pretty much write themselves.
For Mitt, the Dems could revive Joe the Plumber’s career by having him point out that even a fake plumber like himself pays a higher tax rate than Romney.
For Newt, just have a person read from the transcript of the House investigation. The final voice over would be “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me”.
Violet
Would John Cole be considered a bundler if his Balloon-Juice Act Blue fundraiser raises over $50,000 for Obama?
Violet
@Kay:
Some voters are so low-information that ads like that can really hammer home some key points. We’re all paying attention to the GOP primary race, but plenty of folks don’t follow politics and barely even know there’s a race going on. But Swiss bank accounts resonate with pretty much everyone so long as it gets hammered home.
kay
@Violet:
Yeah, I’m not trying to claim “finger on the pulse of the nation” or anything, but I just don’t think people are going to consider this “normal”, so I agree with you. I think it’s bad.
If I were a Romney supporter, I would be very worried by “swiss bank accounts”, just the general impression.
dmsilev
OT, but hilarious. Fidel Castro weighs in on the GOP primary:
The GOP field: so ridiculous that bombastic dictators are making fun of it.
dmsilev
@kay:
“Keeps his money in Swiss bank accounts and the Cayman Islands”. Between real-life stories and endless numbers of beach-reading novels, that’s a sentence which people are conditioned to interpret as “Has something to hide”.
Violet
@kay:
Yeah, what percentage of Americans have “Swiss bank accounts” or “offshore accounts in the Caymans”, for that matter? I’d expect it lines up pretty well with the 1% (used figuratively).
The average American wouldn’t even know where to go to open a Swiss or offshore account. They’re just happy if they can find an American bank that doesn’t gouge them for having a low balance and using a debit card.
kay
@dmsilev:
I just think the vast, vast majority of people are 1. familiar with those words, and, 2. have absolutely no personal experience with them.
Remember Bob Dole? People were like “he LIVES in a HOTEL”. That was just completely outside most peoples’ experience, and Dole was much, much more authentic than Romney.
geg6
OT, but iz r Sully lerning? Or at least, learning more quickly?
Meep meep, you stupid poncey Thatcherite motherfucker.
Amir Khalid
@homerhk:
The No-Drama President just gets on with being transparent about campaign finances and doesn’t brag about it. Just like he refused to “spike the football” after the Osama bin Laden kill, or the hostage rescue operation this week. This is laudable and the public should be made aware of it. But if Obama himself or the campaign does start calling attention to it, then that starts to look like bragging. Best to let outsiders call attention to it, I think.
If memory serves, you’re still in Hong Kong, right? If so, you posted that at almost 4 am. Are you an insomniac like me?
Amir Khalid
@dmsilev:
And all the more hilarious for being the unvarnished truth.
dmsilev
@geg6: “iz r Sully lerning?”
Doubtful. He’ll be harping on some other piece of nonsense within a day or two. That’s always been the problem with him; with enough effort, it’s possible to briefly bring him around to sanity, but he always descends back into that strange alternate reality of his.
General Stuck
The wingnuts owe us a lot of things, first among them, is an apology for having fucked up our country so badly. But my sense is they have become untethered from the realities of maintaining the minimum threshold of responsiveness to the electorate, that is spinning out of control some more with each new day. The crackup is near, and granted the public gives the white man party a lot more rope than the party of those “others”, there is still a limit to that leeway.
So I just try to remind myself of the axiom, no pain , no gain, and we are just going to have to suffer the results of the GOP crackup, the contrast of which couldn’t have been clearer than with Obama’s SOTU address last night. The people have a clear choice, and there is not a lot more to be done about it until they make that choice, other than what dems are currently doing.
I say let the cash and crazy fly its freek flag high, and call it a public service message from wingnut hell, and if the citizens of this country want an insane corporate run existence, well, that is just how it will be. Or, they can see what is happening, and become willing to support the only remedy of putting the shredder to the concept of money as guaranteed free speech, to make the constitutional change to put that whacked out theory to rest, and beyond the reach of wingnut judges.
geg6
@dmsilev:
What’s really interesting to me about this reader email is that I had a similar experience last night. I have two co-workers who are always complaining about politics (and the Democrats and Obama in particular) but who admit that they don’t follow it have gotten a lot of guff from me lately over that. So I challenged them to watch the SOTU last night. One (the one who always seems a bit more persuadable because she’s not a culture warrior and understands that Dems support higher ed a LOT more than GOPers) texted me “I love this speech!” about 3/4 of the way through. The other, a huge culture warrior and born-again type, texted after it was over, saying “I really liked most of what he said and I can imagine voting for him this time over those other two idiots”, meaning Gingrich and Mittens.
Gives me hope, it does.
gelfling545
@dmsilev: Yep. It’s always the bad guys in novels who have such accounts & the good guys have to figure how to get the embezzled/laundered/whatever money back,
homerhk
@Amir Khalid: moved back to London so not so bad time wise – HK was some five years ago so i salute your memory!