Kathianne
06-20-2012, 02:09 AM
Anyone see a problem with this?
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/obamas-lawyer-demands-information-on-groups-donors/
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs_v3/thecaucus/thecaucus_post.png (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/)
<header class="postHeader"> June 19, 2012, 2:19 pm130 Comments (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/obamas-lawyer-demands-information-on-groups-donors/#postComment)
Obama’s Lawyer Demands Information on Group’s Donors <address class="byline author vcard">By MICHAEL D. SHEAR (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/author/michael-d-shear/)</address></header>6:29 p.m. | Updated The lawyer for President Obama (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/index.html?8qa) demanded on Tuesday that Crossroads GPS (http://www.crossroadsgps.org/) disclose its donors, saying in a complaint to the Federal Election Commission that the group is plainly a “political committee” subject to federal reporting requirements.
In the complaint (http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/370370-obama-lawyers-letter-to-crossroads.html), obtained by The New York Times, Robert F. Bauer, the campaign’s chief counsel, writes that the group — founded by Karl Rove, among others — can no longer shield the identity of its donors by defining itself as a “social welfare” organization.
“Crossroads seems to believe that it can run out the clock and spend massive sums of money in this election without accounting for a trace of its funding,” Mr. Bauer wrote in the complaint, filed Tuesday. “Now, a federal appellate court has issued a ruling that makes clear that Crossroads is out of time.”
The case Mr. Bauer cites is “Real Truth About Obama v. FEC,” in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that the government must determine the “major purpose” of groups like Crossroads.
In a letter to Mr. Rove and Steven Law, the president of Crossroads, Mr. Bauer urges them to immediately disclose their donors.
“Will Crossroads fight this out, knowing that disclosure is inevitable but looking to delay until after the election?” Mr. Bauer wrote.
Jonathan Collegio, a spokesman for Crossroads, questioned Mr. Bauer’s motivation, saying that the president’s lawyers only seem to take issue with groups that benefit Republicans. He noted that Mr. Obama’s campaign has embraced Priorities USA Action, a Democratic group.
“They send cabinet members to raise money for Priorities,” Mr. Collegio said. “Issue ads are apparently evil — unless they’re run by liberal groups, in which case Obama thinks they’re O.K.”
Mr. Collegio said that unless Mr. Obama’s campaign sends a similar letter to Priorities, people “will clearly see this for the dog and pony show that it is.”
So far this year, Democrats have been severely out-raised by groups like Crossroads GPS, which have tapped millionaires and billionaires to build war chests for the coming Congressional and presidential campaigns.
Official “super PACs” that openly back candidates are required to disclose their donors. But there is no disclosure requirement for groups that are formed as educational groups under a special part of the tax code.
Those organizations can raise unlimited sums from wealthy individuals without ever disclosing where the money came from. It is information from those groups that Mr. Obama’s campaign is hoping to pry open with the complaint.
But even if the election commission were to agree with the Democratic position, the argument would likely end up in court, where it could take months before a decision would be rendered — possibly after the 2012 campaign were over...
One might take pause, with good cause:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/05/dubious-donations-gangster-government-edition.php
Posted on May 3, 2012 by Scott Johnson (http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/author/scott) in 2012 Presidential Election (http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/category/2012-presidential-election), Obama Administration Scandals (http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/category/obama-administration-scandals)
Dubious donations (gangster government edition) We have published a series of posts on Obama’s “dubious donations” (http://www.powerlineblog.com/?s=dubious+donations&x=0&y=0) — i.e., the Obama campaign’s invitation of fraudulent and illegal giving through the disabling of basic credit card/debit card verification devices. I wrote about the Obama campaign fundraising operation in the October 2008 New York Post column “Dubious donations.” (http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/item_KkfGjfrru8G04iZCnsBr7K) The Post subhead observed: “Bam’s Web site invites fraud.”
The Washington Post reported on the matter two days later in the story “Obama accepting untraceable donations,” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/28/AR2008102803413.html) by Matthew Mosk. Mosk quoted Obama campaign officials on their practices. According to them, everything was copacetic.
It having worked so well the first time around, and it having aroused so little interest among the mainstream media, Obama is doing it again. So we have reported in the series of posts beginning with “Dubious donations (2012 edition).” (http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/04/dubious-donations-2012-edition.php) There is a story here, but you’d never know it if you get your news from the mainstream media.
In his Washington Examiner column (http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/article/obamas-chicago-politics-thuggery-not-civility/515066) today, also posted here (http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/298740/fundraising-chicago-style-michael-barone) at NRO, Michael Barone picks up where we left off:
It has been reported that the Obama campaign this year, as in 2008, has disabled or chosen not to use AVS in screening contributions made by credit card.
That doesn’t sound very important. But it’s evidence of a modus operandi that strikes me as thuggish.
AVS stands for Address Verification System. It’s the software that checks whether the name of the cardholder matches his or her address.
If a campaign doesn’t use AVS, it can wind up accepting contributions from phony names or accepting contributions from foreigners, both of which are illegal.
The 2008 Obama campaign pocketed money from “John Galt, 1957 Ayn Rand Lane, Galts Gulch CO 99999″ and $174,000 from a woman in Missouri who told reporters she had given nothing and had never been billed. Presumably she would have noticed an extra charge of $174,000.
Barone continues:
The Obama campaign is evidently happy to pocket the money. After all, this is the president who, according to political scientist Brendan Doherty, has appeared at more fundraisers in three and a half years than his six predecessors did in 35 years.
Obama has been to at least two fundraisers just in my apartment building. I often see police and Secret Service blocking traffic for a block around Washington’s posh Jefferson Hotel at 16th and M streets.
Obama talks a good game on transparency and openness, but he’s ready to flout the law by avoiding AVS and to break his high-minded campaign promises.
In the 2008 campaign cycle, he promised to take public financing for the general election. He broke that promise when it became apparent he could raise far more money on his own.
During much of this cycle, he’s been criticizing Republican super-PACs as a perversion of the political process. But when he saw that Republicans might be able to raise as much money as Democrats, he broke that promise too and authorized Cabinet members to appear at fundraisers for the super-PAC headed by his former deputy press secretary.
Democrats outraised Republicans in 2004 and 2008. Evidently Obama considers it grossly unfair that they might not do so this year. That’s not how things work in Chicago.
Barone being Barone, he assimilates Obama’s dubious donations to a larger theme. The theme is that of Obama’s Chicago-style politics. Barone himself dubbed it “Gangster Government” (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/09/13/gangster_government_stifles_criticism_of_obamacare _107122.html) in a May 2009 column that I can’t find online at the moment.
He concludes today’s column with a return to the dubious donations: “Other campaigns have not disabled their AVS systems. But then their candidates are not from Chicago. Obama likes to talk about the need for civility. He just doesn’t like to practice it.”
UPDATE: Reader Jeryl Bier of Speak With Authority (http://speakwithauthority-jsm.blogspot.com/) forwards the link to the May 2009 Examiner column in which Barone first identified the Obama administration’s practice of “Gangster Government.” (http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2009/05/white-house-puts-uaw-ahead-property-rights/106669)
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/obamas-lawyer-demands-information-on-groups-donors/
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs_v3/thecaucus/thecaucus_post.png (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/)
<header class="postHeader"> June 19, 2012, 2:19 pm130 Comments (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/obamas-lawyer-demands-information-on-groups-donors/#postComment)
Obama’s Lawyer Demands Information on Group’s Donors <address class="byline author vcard">By MICHAEL D. SHEAR (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/author/michael-d-shear/)</address></header>6:29 p.m. | Updated The lawyer for President Obama (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/index.html?8qa) demanded on Tuesday that Crossroads GPS (http://www.crossroadsgps.org/) disclose its donors, saying in a complaint to the Federal Election Commission that the group is plainly a “political committee” subject to federal reporting requirements.
In the complaint (http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/370370-obama-lawyers-letter-to-crossroads.html), obtained by The New York Times, Robert F. Bauer, the campaign’s chief counsel, writes that the group — founded by Karl Rove, among others — can no longer shield the identity of its donors by defining itself as a “social welfare” organization.
“Crossroads seems to believe that it can run out the clock and spend massive sums of money in this election without accounting for a trace of its funding,” Mr. Bauer wrote in the complaint, filed Tuesday. “Now, a federal appellate court has issued a ruling that makes clear that Crossroads is out of time.”
The case Mr. Bauer cites is “Real Truth About Obama v. FEC,” in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that the government must determine the “major purpose” of groups like Crossroads.
In a letter to Mr. Rove and Steven Law, the president of Crossroads, Mr. Bauer urges them to immediately disclose their donors.
“Will Crossroads fight this out, knowing that disclosure is inevitable but looking to delay until after the election?” Mr. Bauer wrote.
Jonathan Collegio, a spokesman for Crossroads, questioned Mr. Bauer’s motivation, saying that the president’s lawyers only seem to take issue with groups that benefit Republicans. He noted that Mr. Obama’s campaign has embraced Priorities USA Action, a Democratic group.
“They send cabinet members to raise money for Priorities,” Mr. Collegio said. “Issue ads are apparently evil — unless they’re run by liberal groups, in which case Obama thinks they’re O.K.”
Mr. Collegio said that unless Mr. Obama’s campaign sends a similar letter to Priorities, people “will clearly see this for the dog and pony show that it is.”
So far this year, Democrats have been severely out-raised by groups like Crossroads GPS, which have tapped millionaires and billionaires to build war chests for the coming Congressional and presidential campaigns.
Official “super PACs” that openly back candidates are required to disclose their donors. But there is no disclosure requirement for groups that are formed as educational groups under a special part of the tax code.
Those organizations can raise unlimited sums from wealthy individuals without ever disclosing where the money came from. It is information from those groups that Mr. Obama’s campaign is hoping to pry open with the complaint.
But even if the election commission were to agree with the Democratic position, the argument would likely end up in court, where it could take months before a decision would be rendered — possibly after the 2012 campaign were over...
One might take pause, with good cause:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/05/dubious-donations-gangster-government-edition.php
Posted on May 3, 2012 by Scott Johnson (http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/author/scott) in 2012 Presidential Election (http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/category/2012-presidential-election), Obama Administration Scandals (http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/category/obama-administration-scandals)
Dubious donations (gangster government edition) We have published a series of posts on Obama’s “dubious donations” (http://www.powerlineblog.com/?s=dubious+donations&x=0&y=0) — i.e., the Obama campaign’s invitation of fraudulent and illegal giving through the disabling of basic credit card/debit card verification devices. I wrote about the Obama campaign fundraising operation in the October 2008 New York Post column “Dubious donations.” (http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/item_KkfGjfrru8G04iZCnsBr7K) The Post subhead observed: “Bam’s Web site invites fraud.”
The Washington Post reported on the matter two days later in the story “Obama accepting untraceable donations,” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/28/AR2008102803413.html) by Matthew Mosk. Mosk quoted Obama campaign officials on their practices. According to them, everything was copacetic.
It having worked so well the first time around, and it having aroused so little interest among the mainstream media, Obama is doing it again. So we have reported in the series of posts beginning with “Dubious donations (2012 edition).” (http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/04/dubious-donations-2012-edition.php) There is a story here, but you’d never know it if you get your news from the mainstream media.
In his Washington Examiner column (http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/article/obamas-chicago-politics-thuggery-not-civility/515066) today, also posted here (http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/298740/fundraising-chicago-style-michael-barone) at NRO, Michael Barone picks up where we left off:
It has been reported that the Obama campaign this year, as in 2008, has disabled or chosen not to use AVS in screening contributions made by credit card.
That doesn’t sound very important. But it’s evidence of a modus operandi that strikes me as thuggish.
AVS stands for Address Verification System. It’s the software that checks whether the name of the cardholder matches his or her address.
If a campaign doesn’t use AVS, it can wind up accepting contributions from phony names or accepting contributions from foreigners, both of which are illegal.
The 2008 Obama campaign pocketed money from “John Galt, 1957 Ayn Rand Lane, Galts Gulch CO 99999″ and $174,000 from a woman in Missouri who told reporters she had given nothing and had never been billed. Presumably she would have noticed an extra charge of $174,000.
Barone continues:
The Obama campaign is evidently happy to pocket the money. After all, this is the president who, according to political scientist Brendan Doherty, has appeared at more fundraisers in three and a half years than his six predecessors did in 35 years.
Obama has been to at least two fundraisers just in my apartment building. I often see police and Secret Service blocking traffic for a block around Washington’s posh Jefferson Hotel at 16th and M streets.
Obama talks a good game on transparency and openness, but he’s ready to flout the law by avoiding AVS and to break his high-minded campaign promises.
In the 2008 campaign cycle, he promised to take public financing for the general election. He broke that promise when it became apparent he could raise far more money on his own.
During much of this cycle, he’s been criticizing Republican super-PACs as a perversion of the political process. But when he saw that Republicans might be able to raise as much money as Democrats, he broke that promise too and authorized Cabinet members to appear at fundraisers for the super-PAC headed by his former deputy press secretary.
Democrats outraised Republicans in 2004 and 2008. Evidently Obama considers it grossly unfair that they might not do so this year. That’s not how things work in Chicago.
Barone being Barone, he assimilates Obama’s dubious donations to a larger theme. The theme is that of Obama’s Chicago-style politics. Barone himself dubbed it “Gangster Government” (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/09/13/gangster_government_stifles_criticism_of_obamacare _107122.html) in a May 2009 column that I can’t find online at the moment.
He concludes today’s column with a return to the dubious donations: “Other campaigns have not disabled their AVS systems. But then their candidates are not from Chicago. Obama likes to talk about the need for civility. He just doesn’t like to practice it.”
UPDATE: Reader Jeryl Bier of Speak With Authority (http://speakwithauthority-jsm.blogspot.com/) forwards the link to the May 2009 Examiner column in which Barone first identified the Obama administration’s practice of “Gangster Government.” (http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2009/05/white-house-puts-uaw-ahead-property-rights/106669)