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Archive for the ‘campaign finance’ Category

We have lost our way:

When the numbers are all in and tallied, if Obama wins, we are going to find that he will have spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $750,000,000 between the primary and general campaigns in order to buy himself and the Democrat party the White House.

[emphasis-mine]

*Update: Another interesting perspective on this issue from John at Power Line:
(the new site design there is really sharp)

But wait! We know that Obama is in favor of “spreading the wealth around” so as to achieve what he thinks is fairness. So presumably Obama will be willing to share his vast resources with the McCain campaign so the playing field will be level for the last weeks of the campaign. That’s only fair, right? What do you say, Barack? And if not, why not?

Good question, don’t you think?

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After reading this article and then this article I have decided we have finally come down to buying a president.

With all the people in the world going without enough food and shelter, not enough medical care etc. we have two candidates who are spending between them one billion dollars to get to the Oval Office in the White House.

It has become a campaign of greed by two people who claim to be reformers but are going about getting elected in more expensive ways than anyone prior to them.

It should be mandatory that all candidates after this election take public funding from the federal government matching funds program.

We hear one side or the other accusing each other of special interests and I can’t help but wonder what special interests would invest so much money to get one man elected to a job that pays just a few hundred thousand dollars a year.

We’ve all heard people complain this year that we really have no decent choice in the election for president, but how hard would it be for an ordinary citizen to be a candidate in today’s climate? How many primary opponents dropped out for lack of funds?

A cap should be put on primary spending and on the general election spending, including what the national committees and 527 organizations can spend.

It’s time to take the White House off the auction block and get down to the basics of being able to elect anyone president, regardless of his or her fund-raising ability. Only then will we be able to clean up the mess we have in Washington.

This should go for the candidates for Congress too. I am ashamed that we put all this money into electing someone when the money could be better spent on our own citizens in need and on those across the world who need it more than two rich men need it.

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When we consider the amount of cash that has been spent in recent elections, (local and otherwise) then the percentages below of returned illegal contributions could be considered relatively low.

While this WSJ emphasizes the Clinton campaign, it is clear from the chart that none of the current presidential candidates has escaped this problem.

And, if we look at what just the presidential candidates have laid out in their quest, the illegal contributions are just a drop in the bucket. Certainly money which should be returned but small potatoes by comparison.

There is a scary thought expressed in the piece referenced above which addresses primarily Indiana politics:

How much money?

The amounts are staggering. A peek at some of the political Web sites reveals some surprising insights. Just look at the presidential race:

Depending on which source you use, the total raised to date is astonishing. CNN’s Politics.Com shows the total raised is $777 million. Another site, OpenSecrets.com lists it as $792 million. Either way, we are well on our way to a presidential race costing one billion dollars. [emphasis, mine]

The necessity of a candidate to raise these enormous amounts of cash to finance a run for office would certainly leave the door open to those who might illegally help fund their choice for any number of reasons.

Those who work at the grassroots level have no delusions of grandeur or thoughts of becoming a power player in the party or in an administration. Maybe campaigns would begin once again to focus on these individuals rather than the power players. It might be beneficial in the long run.

Not being beholden in one way or another to individuals, corporations or special interest groups could produce a more honest candidate and one who might just work in the best interest of those who they represent. It would certainly go a long way toward trouncing the opinion that many running for office are bought and paid for.

I know, dream on, right? Money has become such a part of our political landscape that the chance for one without wealth and connections to secure a nomination for many offices becomes slim.

In no way do I mean to imply that all who run for office and win are in someones pocket. That would be painting the situation with all too broad a brush.

There are many who are involved (at local and state levels especially), who secure their positions due to trust which they have earned from their constituents through the years.

But when a citizen takes the time to study the numbers in the various pieces above it certainly does not leave you with a warm and fuzzy feeling.

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Kimsch at Musing Minds links to what looks like a fantastic idea when applied to campaign finance:

Comptroller Dan Hynes today unveiled a user-friendly website that allows citizens to track political contributions made by companies that have state contracts.

“Open Book” is a searchable database of state contracts and campaign contributions that combines information from the Comptroller’s accounting system with official semi-annual campaign disclosure reports filed by political committees with the State Board of Elections (SBE).

This sounds like something every state should emulate. It would be one way to restore faith in the fairness and honesty involved in many of these contributions to political candidates.

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Courtesy of Hot Air this is a must see.

Sorry for the brevity of the posts folks, my internet connection through Comcast has been less than reliable all week.

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Sorry folks, I have a great deal of distrust for Hillary Clinton. In what appears to be another purely political move on her part she had decided to return further monies donated to her campaign which were in some fashion tied to this felon.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign said Monday it will return $850,000 in donations raised by Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu, who is under federal investigation for violating election laws.

Clinton, D-N.Y., previously had planned only to give to charity $23,000 she received from Hsu for her presidential and senatorial campaigns and to her political action committee, HillPac.

Isn’t it just a wee bit interesting there was no interest in returning this full amount of money when the original story surfaced and $23,000 was returned, but now that the FBI is investigating, she wants to wash her hands of this man and all of his contributions.

I expect some carefully crafted statement to come from her campaign soon or perhaps the candidate herself to speak. Must have frightened her a bit too that her name was bandied about in papers like the NYT and the LAT in a less than favorable light. When was the last time you heard of that happening to a candidate with the last name Clinton. I suppose now she will attempt to become the hero for “doing the right thing.” No. Doing the right thing would have been to give all the money back when it was learned that Mr. Hsu was a fugitive from justice.

This story is not going to disappear and the more we learn the worse it could become for those on the left who can be tied to this man. Let me rephrase that, if we don’t have another teflon candidate that would be the case…my greatest fear is that we do and that others not so deeply involved with Mr. Hsu’s money will pay the consequence.

Update: Further information has become available following the initial piece:My Way News is reporting the following:

“In light of recent events and allegations that Mr. Norman Hsu engaged in an illegal investment scheme, we have decided out of an abundance of caution to return the money he raised for our campaign,” Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said in a statement Monday night. “An estimated 260 donors this week will receive refunds totaling approximately $850,000 from the campaign.”

Wolfson said the Clinton campaign also will vigorously review its fundraisers, including thorough criminal background checks, in the future. “In any instances where a source of a bundler’s income is in question, the campaign will take affirmative steps to verify its origin,” he said.

The amount that the campaign identified as raised by Hsu would make him one of her top fundraisers. During the first six months of this year, her presidential campaign raised $52 million from individual contributors, second to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., who raised $58.5 million.

So now they will thoroughly vet their fundraisers? Nice timing don’t you think?

HT: Drudge Report

Check out Macsmind where he mentions the growing FBI investigation of this campaign finance fraud. Good stuff.

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In light of the recent developments surrounding the Hillary Clinton Presidential campaign, the media appears to be digging further into campaign contributions she has received. The Washington Post is on the trail of another donor to the Senator.

Sant S. Chatwal, an Indian American businessman, has helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaigns, even as he battled governments on two continents to escape bankruptcy and millions of dollars in tax liens.

The founder of the Bombay Palace restaurant chain, Chatwal is one of a growing number of fundraisers in the 2008 presidential campaign whose backgrounds have prompted questions about how much screening the candidates devote to their “bundlers” while they press to raise record amounts.

Chatwal’s case reached from his native India to New York City. The IRS pursued him for approximately $4 million in unpaid business taxes, while New York state placed a lien seeking more than $5 million in taxes. He forfeited a building to New York City on which he was delinquent on property taxes and was sued by federal regulators seeking to recoup millions of dollars in loans from a failed bank where he served as a director.

What is particularly interesting here though, are the answers not only of a person on Mrs. Clintons staff but that of a friend of Mr. Chatwal. Pay close attention to the first sentence of the final paragraph in the blockquote below.

Asked whether anything in Chatwal’s background caused concerns about his activities on behalf of the campaign, Clinton spokesman Phil Singer answered, “No.” He declined last week to be more specific, saying only that major fundraisers are routinely vetted “through publicly available records.”

Rajen Anand, a longtime friend of Chatwal and another Clinton fundraiser, said the campaign encourages strict vetting for fundraisers. “They advise me to be very careful not to associate the campaign with people where there is something wrong,” he said.

Anand said, however, that Chatwal may have slid through any vetting, no matter how vigorous, because of his longtime friendship with the Clintons. The Clintons maintained a close association with Chatwal; both attended one of his sons’ weddings in 2002, and the former president attended another son’s wedding in 2006.

You must read the entire piece at the WaPo to understand why some might question the association of this man with any campaign in this country. It has also been discovered that Chatwal is a Trustee of the William J. Clinton Foundation and serves on the “Hillary Clinton for President Exploratory Committee”.

If Mrs. Clinton is questioned at any point about Mr. Chatwal I hope she is very forthcoming in her answers as there is already enough information out there for any obscure reply to be challenged.

In 1997, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. sued Chatwal over his role as a director and a guarantor of unpaid loans at the failed First New York Bank for Business. The government alleged that his loans had “resulted in losses to the bank in excess of $12 million,” and it questioned his claims that he could not repay the debts.

The regulators also questioned why Chatwal continued to rent a spacious penthouse apartment in New York in the midst of his financial turmoil. “The debtor has managed to continue living in luxurious style in the same penthouse apartment he resided in at a time he claimed a net worth of tens of millions of dollars without adequate explanation of how his family’s limited income is able to support such a lifestyle,” the government said in a 1997 filing.

In September 2000, Chatwal hosted a half-million dollar fundraiser at that Upper East Side penthouse for Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign.

A few months later the FDIC abruptly settled the case, agreeing on Dec. 18, 2000, to let Chatwal pay $125,000 for the loans that it had said caused at least $12 million in losses.

While the final paragraph may be speculative on the part of the WaPo writer (in the sense in implies the Clintons may have had a hand in this settlement), I believe anyone reading the entire piece might come away with the same thoughts. Friends in high places have been beneficial to many, but illegal activities are just that and it should make no difference who you “know.”

If Mrs. Clinton should win her party’s nomination and go on to be elected to the Presidency, I trust some of the individuals recently shown to have close ties to her will no longer be welcome to share her company.

HT: Macsmind

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I’m sorry I can’t give you a link to this story because it is in a subscription email I receive, but the facts are there as known now.

One of what I think is one of the most under-reported stories in recent memory is the strange saga of Norman Hsu (pronounced “shoe” of Daly City, Ca, and lately, New York.
Norman Hsu is a leading political fundraiser for Democratic causes, on a scale at least equal to that of disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, now doing time in a federal prison.

In political parlance, Norman Hsu is known as a ‘bundler’. He goes out and picks up small campaign contributions from individual donors, and then delivers them up to the intended candidate’s campaign fund — primarily Hillary Clinton’s.

So far this year, Norman Hsu has ‘bundled’ more than $1 million, — quite an accomplishment, given that the maximum individual donation is limited by law to only $4,600 per candidate and very few people ever donate the maximum.

It was recently disclosed that six members of the Paw family in Daly City, California, had donated a combined $45,000 to the Clinton campaign through Hsu since 2005, and a total of $200,000 overall to Democratic candidates since 2005.

Since the head of the Paw household, William Paw, earns about $49,000 a year as a US postal carrier and he recently refinanced is 1,200 square foot house, the donations raised some eyebrows at the FEC.

His wife is a homemaker. His grown children work at ordinary jobs making ordinary incomes. Like Norman Hsu, William and Alice Paw are of Chinese descent.

The entire family got their Social Security cards in California in 1982, according to state records. All but one of the Paws registered to vote as “nonpartisan.” A San Mateo County elections official said that members of the Paw family vote “sporadically.”

But between them, they donated four times’ William Paw’s annual income to Hillary Clinton and other Democratic candidates over the space of three years.

All through Norman Hsu, who rose from mediocrity to one of the DNC’s top bundlers in just three years.

Intrigued FEC investigators were even more intrigued an amazing coincidence unearthed by the Wall Street Journal.

“According to public documents, Hsu once listed his address at the Paw home in Daly City, though it isn’t clear if he ever lived there.

Until three years ago, Hsu never made a campaign contribution to a presidential candidate, according to federal election records. No one in the Paw family had ever given a campaign contribution before the 2004 presidential election, according to campaign-finance reports.

Then, in July 2004, five members of the family contributed a total of $3,600 to the presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat. Five of the checks were dated July 27, 2004.

About the same time, Hsu made his first donations to a political candidate, contributing the maximum amount allowed by law to Kerry in two separate checks, on July 21, 2004, and on Aug. 6.

From then on, the correlation of campaign donations between . Hsu and the Paw family has continued. The first donations to Mrs. Clinton came Dec. 23, 2004, when Hsu and one Paw family member donated the then-maximum $4,000 to her Senate campaign in two $2,000 checks, campaign-finance records show.
In March 2005, the individuals gave a total of $17,500 to Mrs. Clinton.

Since then, Hsu, his New York associates and the Paw family have continued to donate to Democratic candidates. This year, Alice Paw and four of the Paw children have donated the maximum $4,600 to Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign.”

In summary, we have an immigrant Chinese family of apolitical background and ordinary means donating several times their annual income through immigrant Chinese fundraiser Norman Hsu, primarily to Hillary Clinton’s political action committees and campaign funds.

Does anybody else smell Kung Pao chicken here? And if that isn’t enough to make headlines, there’s more!

Norman Hsu, New York high-profile fundraiser for Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, is also Norman Hsu, convicted felon and fugitive from a three-year California prison sentence.

Assessment:
When the story broke on August 28, the Clinton campaign told the New York Times it saw no reason to return the suspicious donations. Even after it was discovered that Hsu was a fugitive from justice.

Hilliary’s campaign spokesman, Howard Wolfson, issued the following statement:

“Norman Hsu is a longtime and generous supporter of the Democratic party and its candidates, including Senator Clinton.

During Mr. Hsu’s many years of active participation in the political process, there has been no question about his integrity or his commitment to playing by the rules, and we have absolutely no reason to call his contributions into question or return them.”

It wasn’t until the next day that the Clinton campaign joined a flood of other Democratic recipients to divest themselves of the tainted contributions that Clinton reluctantly announced the campaign would donate some of the money ($23,000) to charity.

Noted the Boston Globe, “The decision came Wednesday as other Democrats began distancing themselves from Norman Hsu, whose legal encounters and links to other Democratic donors have drawn public scrutiny in the past two days.

Sens. Edward Kennedy and John Kerry, both of Massachusetts, also planned to turn over Hsu’s contributions to charity. Sens. Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein of California; Al Franken, a Senate candidate in Minnesota; Reps. Michael Honda and Doris Matsui of California; and Rep. Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania also said they would divest Hsu’s contributions.”

Before moving on, first, notice the list of frantic new charitable donors; John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Barack Obama, Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Al Franken, and last, but not least Hillary Clinton.

Now let’s go back the other way, through Norman Hsu and William Paw and a whole lot of money that seemed to materialize out of nowhere. Go back to 1995 and we find Hillary Clinton up to her neck in “Chinagate” and names like Johnny Chung, James Riady, the People’s Liberation Army, and John Huang.

Huang ended up with a job at the Clinton Commerce Department, on Hillary’s recommendation, where he was embroiled in a ‘controversy’ over Patriot missile sales, F-15 and F-16 fighter jet sales, and bribes paid to the Indonesian dictator Suharto.

Huang later pled guilty to passing Chinese money into the coffers of the DNC for the Clintons. In fact, Huang cited his Fifth Amendment rights over 2,000 times when asked if he was an agent of the Chinese military.

This isn’t intended as a Clinton hit piece. It’s partly about China and Chinese efforts to influence US politics by purchasing US politicians.

Clinton just happens to be the longest-serving member at the top of the list. I didn’t put her there. She did.

I asked you to peruse the rest of the list of top Hsu beneficiaries. Consider what they all have in common, the political, personal and moral values that they share, and their common reputations.

But it isn’t about them, really, either. It’s about the perilous times they represent.

Where are the screaming headlines? Half of America’s top political leadership is evidently on the payroll of the People’s Democratic Republic of China, and the big political story of the week is Larry Craig?

At the time of this writing, a Google news search on the keywords, “Norman Hsu” returned a total of 603 hits. A Google news search on the keywords “Larry Craig arrest” yielded 3,364 separate hits.

Larry Craig may or may not be gay, and may or may not have been ‘cruising’ an airport bathroom for casual sex.

Norman Hsu may or may not be a foreign agent involved in manipulating a US presidential election on behalf of the Chinese government.

Near as I can tell, Larry Craig pleaded no contest to a charge that he touched another man’s foot in a bathroom stall and waved his hand under the divider. That is apparently a ’signal’ for gay sex.

(I have to tell you, if the same thing happened to me, I’d either move my foot or hand the guy a roll of toilet paper. I never got the memo on what constitutes gay hand signals)

But when one compares the Larry Craig scandal to a presidential fund-raising scandal that could conceivably reach from the Clintons to Beijing, they are separated in importance by several orders of magnitude.

Still, the airwaves have been jammed with news about whether or not Craig is gay and if that would require his stepping down from Congress.

The liberal editorials began demanding his ouster, the conservative editorials started musing the hypocrisy demonstrated by the Party of Gay Rights when it comes to gay Republicans, and both sides devoted hours of coverage to his eventual resignation.

The mainstream media’s concentrated focus on the question of whether or not Larry Craig is gay managed to shift public attention away from Hillary Clinton, the top-tier of the Democratic Left, $200,000 in Chinese-tainted money, and Norman Hsu’s surrender as a California fugitive.

Let’s revisit the Hsu list once more, shall we? Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Barack Obama, Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Al Franken. . . the complete list is here.

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The WSJ, to their credit, is continuing to follow the Norman Hsu story and today informs that his legal problems may be far from over.

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating possible campaign-finance violations by top Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu, according to people familiar with the probe. On Friday, Mr. Hsu surrendered to California officials on an unrelated grand-theft charge dating to the early 1990s.

Norman Hsu surrendered on Friday to California authorities on grand-theft charges.
Mr. Hsu, who, until earlier this week was one of the biggest fundraisers for Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton, was booked at the San Mateo County jail, where he was handcuffed and later released on $2 million bail. Wearing a black suit and white shirt, Mr. Hsu rushed to a waiting black Chevy Suburban outside the jail lobby Friday afternoon without answering any questions from reporters.

If this investigation takes the path stated in the article it appears the Paw family will be closely scrutinized by the Department of Justice.

While California state prosecutors were dealing with the business-fraud case, the Justice Department was ramping up a look at Mr. Hsu’s more recent political activities. People familiar with the new probe said Justice officials are investigating a pattern of donations by acquaintances of Mr. Hsu’s in California. The investigation began following a Wall Street Journal story this past week about donations by these people — mail carrier William Paw and the five other members of his family who list their Daly City address as 41 Shelbourne Ave., a small house near San Francisco airport.

Hopefully this story and the Justice Department inquiry will continue to receive the attention they deserve until either all additional contributions connected somehow to Mr. Hsu are deemed legal, or those who cooperated in illegal activites are found and brought to justice.

For more information and a graph explaining both direct contributions by Mr. Hsu or indirect monies with a connection to him, take a look here. (Scroll down for the graphs and list of recipients.)

If the press and bloggers can compile all this information in short order, what is it with the candidates vetting process which obstructs them from doing the same?

Update More on this topic at the LAT.

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