Author: Papa Giorgio
Thanks Obama $ Company-I have wanted this subject of Foreign Campaign Donations back in the headlines (plus Krauthammers~Reptilian Desperation)
Here is Bob Schieffer on the matter:
I was wondering when this would pop-up on the press’ radar screen — well, FoxNews’ screen.
I posted in this quite some time ago (Sept 2008 I posted a story from NewsMax on the topic):
Secret, Foreign Money Floods into Obama Campaign
The Barack Obama campaign has raised a whopping $426.9 million
[….]
Under campaign finance laws, an individual can donate $2,300 to a candidate for federal office in both the primary and general election, for a total of $4,600. If a donor has topped the limit in the primary, the campaign can “redesignate” the contribution to the general election on its books.
In a letter dated June 25, 2008, the FEC asked the Obama campaign to verify a series of $25 donations from a contributor identified as “Will, Good” from Austin, Texas.
Mr. Good Will listed his employer as “Loving” and his profession as “You.”
A Newsmax analysis of the 1.4 million individual contributions in the latest master file for the Obama campaign discovered 1,000 separate entries for Mr. Good Will, most of them for $25.
In total, Mr. Good Will gave $17,375.
Following this and subsequent FEC requests, campaign records show that 330 contributions from Mr. Good Will were credited back to a credit card. But the most recent report, filed on Sept. 20, showed a net cumulative balance of $8,950 — still well over the $4,600 limit.
There can be no doubt that the Obama campaign noticed these contributions, since Obama’s Sept. 20 report specified that Good Will’s cumulative contributions since the beginning of the campaign were $9,375.
In an e-mailed response to a query from Newsmax, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt pledged that the campaign would return the donations. But given the slowness with which the campaign has responded to earlier FEC queries, there’s no guarantee that the money will be returned before the Nov. 4 election.
Similarly, a donor identified as “Pro, Doodad,” from “Nando, NY,” gave $19,500 in 786 separate donations, most of them for $25. For most of these donations, Mr. Doodad Pro listed his employer as “Loving” and his profession as “You,” just as Good Will had done.
But in some of them, he didn’t even go this far, apparently picking letters at random to fill in the blanks on the credit card donation form. In these cases, he said he was employed by “VCX” and that his profession was “VCVC.”
Following FEC requests, the Obama campaign began refunding money to Doodad Pro in February 2008. In all, about $8,425 was charged back to a credit card. But that still left a net total of $11,165 as of Sept. 20, way over the individual limit of $4,600. ….
NewsMax has since taken this post down in lieu of a larger post on this issue – Funny Money. In this excellent investigative article we find this:
Newsmax began its own investigation of the Obama campaign in early September. By that time, the Democratic presidential candidate had raised $426.9 million, most from small donors whose names the campaign wouldn’t disclose.
In addition to concerns that donors were defrauding the system to donate more than allowed, there were indications that millions of dollars also were coming from outside the U.S., another violation of campaign finance law.
Federal law does not require campaigns to identify donors who give less than $200 during the election cycle. However, it does require that campaigns calculate running totals for each donor and report them when they go beyond the $200 mark. The first red flag was the enormous number of Obama donors who never broke the $200 threshold.
“Contributions that come under $200 aggregated per person are not listed,” said Bob Biersack, a spokesman for the FEC. “They don’t appear anywhere, so there’s no way of knowing who they are.”
By Sept. 29, the FEC breakdown of the Obama campaign identified a staggering $222.7 million as coming from contributions of $200 or less. Only $39.6 million of that amount came from donors the Obama campaign has identified. That made it the largest pool of unidentified money that ever has flooded into the U.S. election system, before or after the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms of 2002.
Massie Ritsch, a spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics, tells Newsmax that there was skepticism about all the unreported money, especially in the Obama campaign coffers. “We and seven other watchdog groups asked both campaigns for more information on small donors,” he says. “The Obama campaign never responded,” whereas the McCain campaign “makes all its donor information, including the small donors, available online.”
The rise of the Internet as a campaign funding tool raised new questions about the adequacy of FEC requirements on disclosure. In pre-Internet fundraising, almost all political donations, even small ones, were made by bank check, leaving a paper trail and limiting the amount of fraud.
But credit cards used to make donations on the Internet have allowed far more abuse.
“While FEC practice is to do a post-election review of all presidential campaigns, given their sluggish metabolism, results can take three or four years,” says Ken Boehm, the chairman of the conservative National Legal and Policy Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C.
When FEC auditors questioned the authenticity of Good Will from Austin, Texas, they also issued a request to the Obama campaign to “re-designate” contributions in excess of the finance limits.
Under campaign finance laws, an individual can donate $2,300 to a candidate for federal office in both the primary and the general election, for a total of $4,600. If a donor has topped the limit in the primary, the campaign can re-designate additional contributions to the general election on its books.
But if the candidate accepts public financing — as McCain did — then he is barred from accepting donations for the general election, so that individual donors are limited to just $2,300 each. Busting this limit gave Obama a distinct advantage in the money race.
In response to the FEC request in July, campaign records that Newsmax reviewed show that 330 contributions from Mr. Good Will were credited back to a credit card. But by Sept. 20, Good Will’s contributions stood at $8,950 — still well over the $4,600 limit. The Obama campaign no doubt noticed these contributions, since its Sept. 20 report specified that Good Will’s total contributions had reached $9,375, in clear violation of the law.
Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told Newsmax that the campaign would return the donations but could not guarantee a refund would be made before Election Day.
Much like Good Will, a donor identified as “Pro, Doodad,” from “Nando, NY,” gave $19,500 in 786 separate donations, most of them for $25. For most of these donations, Mr. Doodad Pro creatively listed his employer as “Loving” and his profession as “You,” just as Good Will had done.
The FEC also noticed Doodad Pro and issued another request to the Obama camp to clear up the discrepancy. The records indicate that Doodad Pro engaged in a flurry of giving, including 14 separate donations of $25 each on July 7. Obama officials claim that they refunded $8,425 to the credit card listed with the Doodad Pro donations. That still left a net total of $11,075 from the obviously fake donor.
LaBolt again pledged that the questionable contributions would be returned but gave no date. And the bogus contributions continued to roll in. Bart Simpson, Family Guy, Daffy Duck, King Kong: All contributed to Obama in September and October with no attempt to screen them out.
The fake donors could have been caught. Even rudimentary online merchant security procedures would have stopped donors from using a name or address that didn’t match the credit-card account. The Obama campaign had turned off most of those safety features on its Web site, industry analysts and a confidential informant told Newsmax.
That facilitated scenarios like the one on Oct. 14, when an individual using the name “O.J. Simpson” participated in an Obama small-donor fundraising drive, and made a $5 donation through the Web site. Giving a Los Angeles address, he listed his employer as the “State of Nevada” and his occupation as “convict.” The donor used a disposable “gift” card to make the donation. The Obama campaign sent O.J. a thank-you note confirming his contribution.
Four minutes earlier, an individual using the name “Raela Odinga” also made a $5 contribution, using the same gift card. The real Raela Odinga became prime minister of Kenya in April and has claimed to be a cousin of Obama’s through a maternal uncle. Obama donor “Raela Odinga” listed his address as “2007 Stolen Election Passage” in “Nairobi, KY.” This donation raised no alarm bells in Obama’s campaign.
A few minutes earlier, “Daffy Duck” gave $5 to the Obama matching campaign, listing his address as “124 Wacky Way, Beverly Hills, Calif.”
But just as with Odinga’s address, the “Wacky Way” address failed to raise any alarm bells or security traps on the Obama campaign Web site. Daffy Duck also used the same card as “O.J. Simpson” and “Raela Odinga.” Within the hour, three other new donors gave $5 to the Obama campaign:
Bart Simpson of 333 Heavens Gate, Beverly Hills, Calif.
Family Guy of 128 KilltheJews Alley, Gaza, Ga.
King Kong of 549 Quinn Street, Capitol Heights, Md.
Newsmax learned of these contributions, which all were made on a single $25 Visa gift card (oddly, the total was $30), from a source that requested anonymity.
The source said he had been following the Newsmax investigation of Obama’s campaign finance irregularities “with great interest” and believed that some of the small donations were coming from gift cards — “you know, the type of disposable debit card you can pick up at Rite-Aid or just about any supermarket.”
“I tried it myself a few days ago,” he said. “I’m attaching for you proof of the contributions I made. This needs to be exposed.”
As Newsmax dug further into the Obama finance records, other spurious donors were discovered including “Dertey Poiiuy,” “Mong Kong,” “Fornari USA,” and “jkbkj Hbkjb.”
[….]
The Obama Web site allowed a contributor to select the country where he resided from the entire membership of the United Nations, including such places as North Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Unlike McCain’s online donation page, the Obama site did not ask for proof of citizenship. With such lax vetting of foreign contributions, the Obama campaign may have indirectly contributed to questionable fundraising by foreigners.
For example, in June, Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi gave a public speech praising Obama, claiming foreign nationals were donating to his campaign.
“All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man,” the Libyan leader said. “They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success, and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him to win the American presidency.”
Gaddafi asserted that fundraising from Arab and African nations was “legitimate,” despite the U.S. federal laws banning such contributions.
In July and August, the head of the Nigeria’s stock market sponsored a series of pro-Obama fundraisers in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city. The events attracted local Nigerian business owners. At one fundraising dinner, a table for eight went for $16,800. Nigerian press reports claimed sponsors raked in an estimated $900,000.
The fundraisers were intended to help Nigerians attend the August Democratic convention in Denver, sponsors said. But the Nigerian press expressed skepticism of that claim, and the Nigerian public anti-fraud commission is investigating the matter.
Just as Internet-based credit-card donations made it easier to perpetrate identity fraud domestically, they also greased the skids for foreign nationals to donate to American campaigns, especially if they claim their donation is less than $200.
LaBolt cited several measures that the campaign has adopted to “root out fraud,” including a requirement that anyone attending an Obama fundraising event overseas present a valid U.S. passport. Despite those efforts, a pair of Palestinian brothers, Hosam and Monir Edwan, contributed more than $31,300 to the Obama campaign in late 2007, ostensibly to buy Obama T-shirts, FEC records show.
Here, Atlas Shrugs compiles many of its posts and links to other on this topic (some may not work anymore, but many do.
A number of Atlas readers have written that Atlas was cited on FOX News at around 7:00 am this morning — if anyone can grab the clip …… I’ll be your best friend :)
UPDATE: Atlas broke the story with the indispensable help of researcher Cathy, John Jay, Doc, Slim guy, Randall, Laura – the individual doing the heavy lifting.
Matthew Mosk of the Washington Post did a whitewash on Obama’s fraud, do no investigative work and did not even make a cursory call to yours truly. They contacted Powerline – who did no investigative work. Great reporting work, WaPO!
While the potentially fraudulent or excessive contributions represent about 1 percent of Obama’s staggering haul, the security challenge is one of several major campaign-finance-related questions raised by the Democrat’s fundraising juggernaut.
Uh, says who Mosk? Did you pull that out of your …. ear, or just run what you were told to run by the Obama thugs. Same diff.
First story broke July 19th
CAMPAIGN FINANCE FRAUD: Obama, who is Jeanne McCurdy? July 19, 2008
Obama’s Foreign Contributions: Who is Ronald Hickel? July 23<Obama’s Anonymous Foreign Donors and Other Bizarre Illegal Activity July 30
Obama’s Gazan Contributions July 30
Obama’s Contributors: Good Will? Loving you? UPDATE: Doo da DooDa July 31
And then there is Obama’s Gibberish Donors …. August 2
>WND RUNS MY OBAMA GAZA CONTRIBUTION EXCLUSIVE August 4
“PALESTINIAN” CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION: OBAMA SHIPPED TEE SHIRTS TO GAZA? August 6
OBAMA’S FOREIGN DONATIONS: THE GLOBAL CANDIDATE FROM IRAN TO BRAZIL TO SOROS August 10
Obama Response to FEC: Chicago Style “Plausible” Deniability? August 11
Obama Contributions: Moving On MoveOn’s Money August 11
ATLAS, AMERICAN THINKER….. MEDIA AVERSION August 14
OBAMA’S CONTRIBUTIONS: I SEE FAKE PEOPLE … OVER THE LIMIT August 18
OBAMA LIED: “Palestinian” Campaign Contributions NEVER RETURNED OR REFUNDED August 26
More media on Obama’s Foreign, Illegal Contributions October 1
OBAMA CONTRIBUTIONS: THE RNC FINALLY BLINKS!, ATLAS GETS RESULTS! NEWSWEAK PLAGIARIZES ATLAS October 5
MCCAIN MENTIONS GAZA CONTRIBUTIONS October 6
nbsp; OBAMA’S CONTRIBUTIONS/EXPENSES: ABSOLUTE CORRUPTION October 21
MORE RECKLESS OBAMA CAMPAIGN FRAUD: NO REFUNDS, NO ACCOUNTABILITY, MORE GIBBERISH DONORS Ocrtober 24
ATLAS EXCLUSIVE: OBAMA’S CONTRIBUTIONS FROM ACTIVIST JUDGES October 25
CAMPAIGN FINANCE FRAUD: OBAMA’S LATEST RUSE, DEFLECT/RUN October 27
Surges
Good news about the Afghan surge from the Washington Times:
The U.S. military is starting to see signs that the troop surge in Afghanistan is working on a timetable similar to the Iraq reinforcement campaign in 2007, according to an outside adviser and military sources.
“There are already some early signs of a beginning of a momentum shift in our favor,” retired Army Gen. Jack Keane told The Washington Times.
Gen. Keane just returned from a two-week tour of the battlefield, where the focus is on ousting the Taliban from Kandahar, its birthplace, as well as from Helmand province and other southern and eastern areas.
Gen. Keane reported his findings to Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Kabul, who saw the surge of 30,000 troops completed in August, placing about 100,000 American service members in country.
An architect of the Bush administration’s surge of troops in Iraq, Gen. Keane advised Gen. Petraeus when he was the top commander there.
Gen. Keane told The Times he has witnessed in Afghanistan the same shift in fortunes: Taliban fighters are changing sides, villages are being cleansed of the enemy and protected, and intercepted communications show flagging Taliban morale.
“Overall, we can see now that the surge forces are starting to make a difference,” he said. “And you have to be encouraged by some of the progress that’s being made. All that said, we’re in a tough fight, and I believe we will continue to gain momentum.”
Is Money the Root of All Evil (Ayn Rand)
George Will Gets His Smackdown of Paul Krugman On!
N.O.W. supports men who call women whores
Carol Platt Liebau points out the obvious hypocrisy in the modern – progressive – feminist movement.
The day after he (or a member of his staff) is caught on tape calling Meg Whitman a whore, Jerry Brown has announced the endorsement of the National Organization of Women (NOW).
You know, it’s fashionable in feminist circles tosit around bemoaning the fact that few young women want to identify themselves as feminists.
Wanna know why? This kind of hypocrisy is the reason why. It’s OK with NOW, supposedly an organization devoted to the equal and respectful treatment of women for Jerry Brown to call his opponent — an accomplished woman, and more importantly, any woman — a “whore.” It’s OK with NOW for Bill Clinton to engage in sexual harassment of an intern in The White House, and possibly worse in his pre-presidential days. It’s OK with NOW to allow Sarah Palin to be denigrated in the cheapest, lowest and most sexist ways.
NOW has nothing to do with women’s rights, or the proper treatment of women. They are simply shills for abortion and big government. They ought to admit it and take the word “Women” out of their name, because they no more stand for “women” in general than President Obama stands for small government and low taxes.
Women — and men — are on to NOW’s racket. That’s why their endorsement means nothing. They’re just political hacks. What young woman in her right mind would want to be associated with such cheap political opportunism?
Bill Maher shows the depth of his position by saying~’F_k You’~to Guests Not Agreeing With His Religious Views
And this is about the extent of the new atheists position… bravo SE Cupp for sticking to your atheist guns against militant atheism:
SNL skit on Christine O’Donnells [horrible] first campaigne ad
If you haven’t seen the original, click here.
Willful Ignorance of History (Obama and JFK)
The American Spectator has a great post about Obama’s destructive behavior and the success of JFK and Reagan in cutting taxes on the rich and its affect on job growth (Red Planet h/t):
With 15 million workers unemployed and another 11 million underemployed, President Obama recently decided that the answer was to hit the road and throw some anti-rich red meat to some friendly stadium audiences.
At a Labor Day rally in Milwaukee, Mr. Obama declared that the United States “didn’t become the most prosperous country in the world by rewarding greed and recklessness.”
He didn’t say whether we became the most prosperous country via income redistribution and mandatory wealth spreading.
He also didn’t say whether the “greed” accusation applied to folks like Jay-Z and Lady Gaga or just to the regular capitalists and entrepreneurs who run America’s car repair shops and jewelry stores on Main Street.
He also didn’t say whether his definition of “recklessness” includes the nonstop and decentralized risk-taking that’s inherent in a free enterprise economy, a system rooted in what Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction.”
[….]
Mr. Obama also declared that “anyone who thinks we can move this economy forward with a few doing well at the top, hoping it’ll trickle down to working folks running faster and faster just to keep up — they just haven’t studied our history.”
In fact, the history of the 1960s and 1980s, under Democrat and Republican presidents, shows that the benefits of cuts in top marginal income tax rates clearly trickled down to help “working folks” in the form of more jobs, less unemployment, less poverty, less inflation, and higher wage growth.
The John F. Kennedy income tax cuts of 30 percent that were enacted in 1964, cutting the top marginal federal income tax rate from 91 percent to 70 percent, were followed by several years of 5 percent real GDP growth per year, dropping the unemployment rate from 5.2 percent in 1964 to 3.5 percent in 1969, a lower jobless rate than the 4.0 percent unemployment rate that’s generally defined as “full employment.”
Similarly, the Ronald Reagan income tax cuts produced real average annual GDP growth of 3.2 percent from 1981 to 1989, a higher growth rate than existed before and after the Reagan years — the 2.8 percent average real annual growth in the pre-Reagan years from 1974 to 1981, or the 2.1 percent growth in the post-Reagan years from 1989 to 1995.
Following the Reagan cut in the top marginal federal income tax rate from 70 percent to 28 percent, unemployment was cut in half, from 9.7 percent in 1982 to 5.3 percent in 1989.
And the impact on the poor? The real income, adjusted for inflation, of the poorest fifth of U.S. households increased 12 percent in the Reagan era, reversing a 17 percent decline in their average real income from 1979 to 1983 before Reagan’s pro-growth tax cuts kicked in.
The poverty population in the U.S., after growing by 7 million in the late 1970s, dropped by 4 million in the 1980s. The real median income, adjusted for inflation, of African-American households increased by 17 percent from 1982 to 1989, reversing a 10 percent decline from 1978 to 1982.
Obama’s strategy? Ignore the aforementioned history and raise taxes on “the rich” during a recession, for “fairness.” That’s a clear policy of economic and political “recklessness,” a strategy that will keep millions of people needlessly unemployed.
this is one magazine I Loved as a teen! Soldier of Fortune magazine turns 35 (memories)
I remember this issue displaying the million dollar reward! Awesome! James M. Simpson over at Big Government writes about this in his second of three posts commemorating the magazine:
[….]
….SOF staff has engaged directly in training of allied troops, supplementing the U.S. military’s effort. They were particularly active in Central America’s recent civil wars. A recent Newsmax article by Barrett Tillman relates:
The byword is professionalism. For instance, a 1983 report describing the work of a 12-man SOF team in El Salvador covers 47 pages. It includes weapons maintenance, sound discipline on ambush, field medicine and sanitation.
On September 30th 1995, the El Salvadorian government awarded Brown their Combat Star medal. The citation reads: “In Recognition of Your Combat Support Services With Units of the Armed Forces of El Salvador, 1980 to 1992.”
SOF provided similar training to Nicaragua’s Contras during the Nicaraguan civil war. While they were at it, Brown grounded the Sandinistas’ entire fleet of Soviet Hind attack helicopters by posting the advertisement shown below. I interviewed Unintended Consequences author and firearms expert John Ross about it by phone, who confirmed the following account:
In the 1980s, Danny Ortega’s oppressive Communist regime in Nicaragua received a fleet of Russian Hind helicopters… to put down the Contras. When the Contras started to take heavy losses from these gunships, Bob Brown single-handedly grounded the entire fleet in less than 72 hours. How? By printing a full-page ad in his own magazine offering a million dollar reward to anyone who would bring us one of these choppers. The Russians knew damn well that every Cuban pilot would jump at the chance to fly into nearby El Salvador and get a million bucks and a Miami liquor license for his efforts. Bob’s actions helped cause Ortega’s fall, and stopped the spread of Communism in Central America dead in its tracks.
One of the few times running a guy over is warranted (not for the faint of heart)
Nicholas Waller had committed two carjackings on the night of April 4th, 2009, when he was chased on foot by Independence Police Sgt. Steven Boles. Waller had shot at Boles five times, missing each time, when Boles managed to fire back three times, hitting Waller in the chest.
Waller was then knocked down by a police cruiser driven by Sgt. Barry Huwar, whose dash-cam captured the entire incident.
“I thought my life was over when I started taking the gunshots and I couldn’t get my gun out,” said Boles. “I feel God put me on my knees that day and allowed me to persevere.”
Waller had just carjacked two different drivers including a pizza delivery driver at an Independence 7-11. He abandoned the car in front of a nearby home and took off on foot only to be stopped a minute later by Sgt. Boles, shooting at him before Boles could get a word out.
On Thursday, Nicholas Waller apologized in court, blaming his problems on years of drug and alcohol abuse, saying he started sniffing glue at age 12. He had already served years in prison for six prior felonies including assault on a law enforcement officer.
“Everyday I put the uniform on I realize it could happen again,” said Boles.
Jackson County prosecutor Jim Kanatzar called Waller’s attack on Boles an attack on all police everywhere.
“It’s a violence against all police officers who stand up everyday and try to protect society,” said Kanatzar. “We felt that a life sentence was appropriate in this case, we felt consecutive life sentences was appropriate in this case.”
Waller will be eligible for parole in 25 1/2 years
US SUPREME COURT May Limit Speech (rightly so)
Despite free-speech concerns, Supreme Court justices sounded sympathetic Wednesday to a lawsuit filed by the father of a Marine killed in Iraq whose funeral was picketed by protesters with signs like, “Thank God for IEDs.”
The justices appeared inclined to set a limit to freedom of speech when ordinary citizens are targeted with especially personal and hurtful attacks. The 1st Amendment says the government may not restrict free speech, but it is less clear when it shields speakers from private lawsuits….
How long before this is applies to peaceful protesters at abortion clinics? What I mean is that if the “health of the mother” can be interpreted as her not wanting a child who has a clef-palate and can get an abortion at the 8-and-a-hald month mark… then why can’t a limit to freedom of speech when ordinary citizens are targeted with especially personal and hurtful attacks be applied to a woman walking into a clinic. As much as I agree that there should be a limit placed on these whackos, what will the progressive left do with this ruling (if it comes)?