A Campaign Like No Other
Okay, history is replete with shenanigans from both sides of the political spectrum, but this time around it seems to be most evident in Obama’s camp.
It turns out that half of Obama’s haul in 2008 has come in contributions of $200 dollars or less. These small donations do not require public disclosure under FEC guidelines, and the Obama campaign refuses to make public its list of contributors. Obama earlier announced he’d accept public financing if the GOP nominee did the same (and then, of course, broke his pledge in June after realizing he’d far surpass previous fundraising records). So there’s a pattern. By keeping his donor list secret now, the Illinois senator has heightened speculation of financial impropriety.
What strikes me is that the media can go all gaga over Sarah Palin’s wardrobe, yet not even pose a rudimentary question as far as Barack Obama’s questionable campaign contributions.
I mean, this kind of thing is alarming.
the Obama campaign refuses to screen credit card contributions for potential fraudulent transactions, and thus any individual could make unlimited contributions using infinite aliases.
It turns out, for example, that credit card companies deploy a variety of security measures to guarantee the processing of electronic transactions. For campaign giving, the key safeguards are vendor address verification, country of residence, and proof of citizenship. We now know that Obama operatives at the campaign’s website have disabled the security settings on vendor identity to expedite online donations, gifts that then speed through to fund election activities that would be flagged as illegal under normal FEC reporting standards.
Allapundit at Hot Air has shown that, as the news of Obama’s open-access credit card procedures went viral across the conservative blogosphere, readers conducted dozens of “experiments” to see if the Obama campaign would accept their money. In no time, the Obama campaign was accepting money from the likes of “JarackBoe BOamabiden” and “Nodda Realperson.” It’s unlikely that these donations will be flagged as fraudulent once the original credit card transactions clear. Thus, while amassing its illegal campaign-contributions war chest, the Obama campaign brazenly flouts the federal election regulations enacted during an earlier reform era of “hope and change.” Meanwhile, the pro-Obama liberal press looks the other way, partnering with the very corruption and duplicity the media industry has attacked during eight years of Republican power in Washington.
Make no mistake, the Democratic nominee may now be running the biggest underground finance operation since President Nixon deployed the “plumbers” as his key operatives for CREEP in 1972.
What’s particularly ironic is that the door to this form of “change” was opened by McCain himself with the absurd McCain- Feingold campaign finance reform act.