If You're Hillary, Money Can Buy Everything

Posted 28 weeks 2 days ago by KansasGirl

They say money can't buy everything. It can still buy elections.

DailyKos, ABC, and local sources are reporting that an "anonymous" 527 is running ads for Hillary in Ohio, and possibly Texas and Pennsylvania. Let me be clear, this isn't a vague attack on Obama. This is a clear violation of what 527's can legally do - run issue ads, and only issue ads. This is an ad explicitly supporting Hillary Clinton. Now granted, as long as you keep the magic words out of there, as long as you're not "telling people who to vote for," as long as you don't mind paying a six-figure fine when someone finally gets around to chastising you. . .

As long as you don't care about playing by the rules of the game, and have enough money to pay for it, I guess there's no problem.
Cost of doing business, right?

But when pundits claim that campaign finance problems solve themselves, this is what I'm going to point to. Huckabee's relatively low-dollar rise to fame and Obama's incredible numbers from thousands of small donors are reason to hope that things can change. Unfortunately, they're not reason to expect them to.

Watch the video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMVbE8Q7F...

Add a thought

Thoughts

Obama's financing

Submitted on February 21st, 2008 by KansasGirl

Wow, I thought that by mentioning Obama and Huckabee I wouldn't run into the, "Obama sucks" rhetoric. . . oh well!

Anonymous, I never said $10 donations - "small" donations are usually still in the hundreds of dollars. Plus, the Obama campaign has almost a million unique donors so far. The exact number is 934,410 as of 10:19 AM CST. Regardless of what you think of Obama, and you're entitled to your own opinion, you have to acknowledge that getting that many people involved in and giving to a political cause is incredible. And, courtesy of the FEC, here's the breakdown of how the money comes in:

Obama's Contributions:
Individual $101,429,472
PAC $25
Party $0
Candidate $0
Transfers-In $0

Size of Obama's donations:
$200 and Under $31,041,107
$200.01 - $499 $6,412,090
$500 - $999 $7,512,578
$1000 - $1999 $16,011,306
$2000 and Over $42,301,429

Over half of Obama's contributions come from people who aren't maxed out, and the second largest block of contributions come from people giving less than $200. Again, this is a situation that is relatively unique where Presidential election fundraising is concerned. The facts speak for themselves, so let's confine the criticism to reality, shall we?

small donations??

Submitted on February 21st, 2008 by Anonymous

If you are naive enough to think that the bulk of Obamas finance came from small $10. donations you are blind.. He is supported by the ultra rich of this country so they won't be taxed later..(left Liberal).. we will instead see taxing of the middle class. On top of that millions and millions of dollars supporting Obama have come from the back rooms of the gop.. are you people so naive??

The fruits of campaign finance reform

Submitted on February 20th, 2008 by Ben

Nice ad. I suppose somebody can and will file a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission, elaborating on the case you outlined. It's not an issue ad! It violates the McCain-Feingold law! Somebody must pay! And somebody will pay -- on or about August 22, 2009, when the FEC finishes its investigation and well after President Obama's honeymoon period has ended.

It doesn't need to be so difficult. Here's my idea of campaign finance reform: No limits on speech or money coupled with full and immediate disclosure. Is that so wrong?