Tag: Campaign Finance

No, Just No

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This is a bad idea. A really bad one, on multiple levels – for starters, it threatens the integrity of Dem voter data & puts Nov prospects in hands of a shady firm w/ a failed track record.

Plenty of orgs bid for contracts. I hope there is enough good sense to reject this one. https://t.co/8kRIog03YM

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 10, 2020

As a part of Michael Bloomberg’s efforts to purchase the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment), his campaign organization is making a below cost bid to take over the campaign infrastructure of the Biden campaign, as well as various leadership PACs, and Eric (Place) Holder’s political organization.

If you don’t find this chilling, you are not paying attention.

Also, it should be noted that this is a classic part of the Bloomberg handbook:  Using his money to forestall any meaningful criticism of his actions so that he can secure power.

As an aside, the Sanders campaign should NEVER turn over its data to the DNC for just this reason:

The Bloomberg-owned firm Hawkfish, which ran the presidential campaign of Mike Bloomberg, is in serious talks to serve the presidential campaign of Joe Biden, according to sources with knowledge of the ongoing negotiations. Along with Biden’s campaign, the firm is courting a wide swath of other progressive and Democratic organizations, opening up the possibility of Bloomberg gaining significant control over the party’s technology and data infrastructure.

………

But instead it comes with other enticements to clients. Democratic operatives who’ve been pitched by Hawkfish say that the firm is able to offer extraordinarily low prices by operating at a loss subsidized by Bloomberg, whose wealth dangles as an added benefit that could come with signing the firm. A Hawkfish insider, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize employment, confirmed that the company is willing to operate at a loss in order to grab control of the party infrastructure, explaining that the firm hopes to offer a fee that would be small enough to entice the Biden campaign while passing muster with federal regulators. (If a firm offers services for less than fair market value, the discount is considered under campaign finance laws to be an in-kind contribution, and thus subject to legal limits depending on the entity collecting the contribution. A presidential campaign can’t accept more than $2,800 from a single individual per election, or any contributions at all from a company.)

The FEC won’t rule on the in-kind contribution until after the election, if it even could take action, since it still lacks a quorum to operate.


“When the objective isn’t money but control, $18 million is incredibly cheap to become the center of gravity for all Democratic political information, which we would be if both Biden and [House Democrats] have to come through us,” the source said, referring to the amount of money the Bloomberg campaign transferred to the Democratic Party last month, in a reversal of his earlier pledge to create a Super PAC in support of the party’s nominee. “And in the current environment, the public sees this as generosity.”

………

Waleed Shahid, spokesperson for Justice Democrats, which recruits progressive challengers to incumbents, said that Bloomberg’s firm running the party’s data operation would send the wrong signal and could have long-term, damaging repercussions. “The idea of the Democratic nominee potentially rewarding Bloomberg’s firm with this contract is disturbing,” he said. “We shouldn’t be the party of helping billionaires amass huge amounts of mega-data on voters that allow them to keep accruing obscene amounts of power in our democracy.”

In the annals of bad ideas for the Democratic Party, this one is definitely in the top three.

You Know All Those Movies Where Con Men are the Heroes?

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You know, the ones where are ripping off “The Man”, who is corrupt, or violent, or both?

Well it appears that Michael Bloomberg’s staffers have seen those movies too, considering the reports that they were robbing him blind:

Michael Bloomberg ended his presidential campaign on Wednesday after being walloped on Super Tuesday. But, according to nearly a dozen members of his campaign staff, the former New York City mayor’s presidential dreams really died when Elizabeth Warren eviscerated his record on live television during the February 19 debate in Las Vegas.

Not a single Bloomberg staffer that I spoke to was surprised by the campaign’s implosion. Speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional reprisal and because of the campaign’s nondisclosure agreements—which The Nation obtained a leaked copy of in February—campaign employees cited that bruising debate as well as a general lack of enthusiasm for Bloomberg among the staff as main factors ending his presidential run.

………

A third staffer also said that the debate marked a turning point, after which phone calls with voters became more difficult. “The day after [the debate] when we made calls people were like, ‘Oh yeah, I was thinking about him [Bloomberg], but I’m not really sure anymore.’”

Bloomberg’s performance, specifically his handling of Warren’s questions, even alienated the campaign’s volunteers. Of the volunteers that quit, one campaign employee told me, “Just about every one of them said it was because of the debate performance or the NDA scandals.”

………

But despite an almost limitless budget, the Bloomberg campaign would learn that money can’t buy loyalty. Staffers described an almost total lack of belief in Bloomberg himself. “Most people knew this was a grift,” one campaign official explained, describing even leadership as being unwilling to fulfill basic campaign responsibilities. “At our first office meeting, my [director] said, ‘We don’t need to canvass. We can just make calls, right guys?’ And everyone was like, ‘Yeah, that’s sensible.’”

Another employee who specialized in social media explained how their coworkers’ lack of enthusiasm resulted in lackluster engagement with social media audiences, which often led to tweets so perfunctory—many would just copy and paste campaign talking points—that their Twitter accounts would get mistakenly flagged as spam and suspended.

Multiple people described elaborate schemes to undermine the campaign and help their favored candidates. As one staffer explained, “I would actively canvass for Bernie when I was supposed to be canvassing for Mike. I know of at least one team of ‘volunteers’ that was entirely fabricated by the organizers who had to hit their goals. It was easy enough to fudge the data to make it look like real people put in real volunteer work, when in reality Mike was getting nothing out of it.”

Another staffer told me, “In San Diego, the regional organizers also exploited the campaign’s resources, staff, and infrastructure for local races they either were running in or consulting on.”

………

While most Bloomberg campaign employees who spoke to The Nation recalled being critical of Bloomberg from the very beginning, one was more sympathetic, citing Bloomberg’s climate change policies and desire to shrink the Pentagon budget. But he remarked, “The campaign truly made me jaded. I’m never going to sell my soul again.”

If these multi-billionaires are our modern royalty, then there can only be one conclusion from thesese reports.  While the peasants may not yet be revolting, they are going SERIOUSLY passive-aggressive.

Dr. Evil Would Get This

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Roll Tape!

Facebook has now announced that Russian provocateurs spent as much as $100,000.00 on political ads in 2016.
Seriously?  In a campaign where both sides spent billions, this is beneath the level of chump change:

Providing new evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election, Facebook disclosed on Wednesday that it had identified more than $100,000 worth of divisive ads on hot-button issues purchased by a shadowy Russian company linked to the Kremlin.

Most of the 3,000 ads did not refer to particular candidates but instead focused on divisive social issues such as race, gay rights, gun control and immigration, according to a post on Facebook by Alex Stamos, the company’s chief security officer. The ads, which ran between June 2015 and May 2017, were linked to some 470 fake accounts and pages the company said it had shut down.

Facebook officials said the fake accounts were created by a Russian company called the Internet Research Agency, which is known for using “troll” accounts to post on social media and comment on news websites.

The disclosure adds to the evidence of the broad scope of the Russian influence campaign, which American intelligence agencies concluded was designed to damage Hillary Clinton and boost Donald J. Trump during the election. Multiple investigations of the Russian meddling, and the possibility that the Trump campaign somehow colluded with Russia, have cast a shadow over the first eight months of Mr. Trump’s presidency.

I’m wondering if the incompetent Hillary Clinton campaign might have played a bigger role in this clusterf%$# than any potential foreign interference.

Of course, that conclusion would mean that any number of incompetent political consultants would have to find honest work, and as we know, the motto of the Democratic party is, “We gotta protect our phony baloney jobs.”

Tweet of the Day

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“Only our racist billionaire can beat their racist billionaire.“ – some Democratic pollster somewhere shopping for a new boat https://t.co/bPS4QAe2Zo

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) February 15, 2020

This is what the Bloomberg candidacy is all about, Democratic Party consultants desperately trying to get a piece of the money he is throwing around the campaign right now.

Pull Their Not-For-Profit Status

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The greatest danger to the state of Israel in the United States, AIPAC, has been revealed to be offering perks to people who make donations to an anti-Bernie Sanders PAC, which violates a sh%$-load of campaign finance and non-profit regulations.

The degree to which taxpayers are effectively funding fraudulent non-profit activities buggers the mind:

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is helping to fund a Super PAC launching attack ads against Sen. Bernie Sanders in Nevada on Saturday, according to two sources with knowledge of the arrangement. The ads are being run by a group called Democratic Majority for Israel, founded by longtime AIPAC strategist Mark Mellman.

The Nevada attack ads, which will air in media markets in Reno and Las Vegas, follow a similar spending blitz by DMFI ahead of the Iowa caucuses. Like the ads that aired in Iowa, the Nevada ads will attack Sanders on the idea that he’s not electable, Mediaite reported.

DMFI spent $800,000 on the Iowa ads, while the spending on the Nevada ads remains private. AIPAC is helping bankroll the anti-Sanders project by allowing donations to DMFI to count as contributions to AIPAC, the sources said. As is typical with most big-money giving programs, the more a donor gives to AIPAC, the higher tier they can claim — $100,000 level, $1 million level, and so on — and the more benefits accrue to them. A $100,000 donor gets more access to members of Congress at private functions, for instance, than someone who merely pays AIPAC’s conference fee. A $1 million donor gets still more, which means that it is important to donors to have their contributions tallied. There is also status within social networks attached to one’s tier of giving. The arrangement allows donors to give directly to DMFI, which is required to file disclosures naming its donors, without AIPAC’s fingerprints.

Rachel Rosen, a spokesperson for DMFI, said she was unaware of any AIPAC encouragement to donate to the organization. “As far as we know, what you are suggesting is completely untrue,” she said. “But because we are a separate organization, we can’t know exactly what other organizations are doing. Therefore, we are the wrong address for the the specific questions you ask — they need to [be] directed to AIPAC.”

AIPAC denied the arrangement. “AIPAC is not and has not been involved in the ad campaigns of any political action committee,” spokesperson Marshall Wittmann wrote in an email. “The accusation that AIPAC is providing benefits to members for donating to fund these political ads or this political action committee is completely false and has no basis in fact.”

If you believe AIPAC’s denials, I have some prime swamp land in Tel Hazor to sell you.

This is a Feature, not a Bug

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The Bloomberg campaign is spending so much money so quickly that it is sucking up basically all of the experienced campaign staff, hobbling other campaigns.

This is likely to harm Democratic candidates who are running for offices other than President:

While I am generally supportive of businesses bidding up the salaries of their employees, Bloomberg is strip mining the political operations of Democratic oice seekers from top to bottom, and it is the Republicans who will benefit from this:

………

The former New York City mayor, who has committed to directing his money in support of whoever the eventual Democratic nominee is, claims that his billions of dollars will save the party. Neither Leeper nor her campaign managers responded to requests for comment, but hers is a story that is unfolding in local, state, and federal races across the country. The promise of Bloomberg’s campaign — “Mike Will Get it Done” — is meant to assure anxious Democrats that he and his money will rescue a moribund party. For staffers, working for Bloomberg means guaranteed employment through November, something campaigns that are competing in primaries can’t promise to their employees. The billionaire is now opening an office in New Hampshire, just as other presidential campaigns are packing up and leaving after Tuesday’s primary. For a swath of voters, there’s something comforting about the money he’s willing to spend. But for candidates across the country — the type needed to hold majorities in Congress and in state legislatures, and to boost turnout for the presidential election — the billions in spending means quite the opposite.

Progressive groups, local campaigns, and presidential operations are either losing staff to the Bloomberg campaign, or are struggling to hire people because the former mayor has picked so many political operatives and canvassers up, according to interviews, emails, and messages from dozens of people involved in hiring. Several of them spoke to The Intercept on condition of anonymity, either not to offend the biggest spender in political history, or not to expose publicly that they are having a hard time finding staff, which the public could perceive as suggestive of weakness.

………

The Bloomberg campaign is offering field organizers, or FOs) $6,000 per month and guaranteed pay through November, and many have realized that if they demand more, they will likely get it, according to hiring managers. A typical salary for that position at the state or federal level might be $3,000 to $4,000, and multiple operatives in charge of hiring FOs say they’ve never had a harder time recruiting, and applicants are making extreme demands. Regional organizing directors are being offered $8,000 a month to start, significantly more than typical campaigns.

………

Bloomberg’s network is even trying to recruit the children of big donors. As one donor messaged a friend: “Saw Nancy Pelosi yesterday at a fundraiser. Very inspiring. Lots of folks are starting to agree with [us] about Bloomberg. I know [your daughter] is a progressive but we have to win this time. One of the sons of our group is now on Bloomberg’s staff and he said they’re hiring young people with no experience at $8k a month. Any way we can talk [your daughter] into getting paid for real on the campaign?” (A Sanders supporter, the daughter declined and forwarded the message to The Intercept. It is edited to conceal identifying information, so as to avoid an unpleasant conversation with mom.)

Rob Quan, a political operative in Los Angeles, is currently consulting for a local city council candidate. “This is hands down the toughest time I’ve ever had finding field staff,” he said. He’s posting jobs for canvassers, paying $18 an hour, and is “getting crickets.”

Interestingly enough, I think that this will benefit Sanders, since his campaign apparatus uses unpaid non-professionals than any of his opponents.

Missing the Point

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A number of publications have reported with much fanfare that Bernie Sanders is leading the field in donations from active duty military personnel by a large margin.

This misses the point, which is that we as a society should not give a flying f%$# in a rolling doughnut about this.

The fact that it is a major story, and cast as a major victory for the Sanders campaign, is a reflection of a hyper militarized, and hence highly dysfunctional, society.

Corruption Much?

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The DNC has allowed Michael Bloomberg to buy his way into the next series of debates.

This is an artifact of Bloomberg’s large donations to state parties as well as the large amount of money that he is dropping on political ads, which generates a similarly large amount of commissions for political consultants.

It sucks, but maybe Bloomberg will be destroyed in the debates for his history of racist policies and hostile work environments:

The Democratic National Committee is drastically revising its criteria to participate in primary debates after New Hampshire, doubling the polling threshold and eliminating the individual donor requirement, which could pave the way for former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg to make the stage beginning in mid-February.

 Candidates will need to earn at least 10 percent in four polls released from Jan. 15 to Feb. 18, or 12 percent in two polls conducted in Nevada or South Carolina, in order to participate in the Feb. 19 debate in Las Vegas. Any candidate who earns at least one delegate to the national convention in either the Iowa caucuses or New Hampshire primary will also qualify for the Nevada debate.

………

Not everyone is thrilled that Bloomberg — who has hit 10 percent in only one of the requisite four polls released so far — could be on stage after the donor threshold was eliminated.

“To now change the rules in the middle of the game to accommodate Mike Bloomberg, who is trying to buy his way into the Democratic nomination, is wrong,” Jeff Weaver, a senior adviser to Sanders, told POLITICO as the rules were being announced.

I agree with Mr. Weaver.

F%$# Their Butt-Hurt

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I give quite a bit to fellow Dems – we’ve fundraised over $300,000 for others (more than my “dues”), w/ over 50% going to swing seats.

DCCC made clear that they will blacklist any org that helps progressive candidates like me. I can choose not to fund that kind of exclusion. https://t.co/qqwdwPAqek

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 10, 2020

The powers that be in the Washington, DC Democratic Party have bleating piteously over Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) refusing to raise money for the DCCC, because the DCCC has decided to go on a Jihad against progressive Democrats.

Of course the DCCC has always been an enemy of the progressive wing of the party, but Nancy Pelosi put the hapless Cheri Bustos in charge of the organization this time around, who made it official, so AOC’s action is reasonable, particularly when juxtaposed with her prodigious fundraising for Democrats in swing districts:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) announced she had formed a political action committee on Saturday to help raise funds for progressive primary candidates.

The congresswoman has been a vocal opponent of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s policy to “blacklist” vendors and firms that work with candidates mounting primary challenges against Democratic incumbents. Ocasio-Cortez was one such candidate, having run a successful primary campaign against Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.) in 2018.

Democratic leadership sees the rule as necessary to protect seats and win elections, but critics like Ocasio-Cortez and fellow 2018 upset victor Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) say it prevents fresh voices from reaching Congress and could encumber efforts to increase diversity in the halls of the Capitol.

Ocasio-Cortez has also not paid her dues to the DCCC during this campaign cycle and said she did not plan to pay. The funds are traditionally provided to the DCCC by House members to redistribute among other important races.

Fox News reported that nearly 100 members had yet to pay their dues as of October.

Considering the fact that the DCCC is blacklisting people and organizations for people who are supporting challengers to right wing sellouts like Henry Cuellar and Dan Lipinski, who are in reliably Democratic districts, her actions are not only justified, but obligory.

Quote of the Day

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It’s vulgar to say this, but it’s may be true that we learn less about the materialist politics of academic writing by reading it — and some of it can be famously obscure; Butler was the winner of a Bad Writing contest in 1998 — than by looking up the author in the Federal Elections Commission records.

—Liza Featherstone writing in Jacobin

The article notes how many radical leftist academics are donating to conservative Democrats.

Academe is not an environment that rewards forthright personal statements, so I agree with Ms. Featherstone, this says more about the academics listed than does their writings.

I Can’t Even………

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I always knew that Mike Bloomberg was a sanctimonious self-important piece of sh%$, but even I could imagine that his campaign would use prison labor to make phone calls.

Even if you don’t have a problem with the morality of using prison labor, and I do, the reckless stupidity of doing so in the Democratic Party primary, were even the most squishy Democrats want to signal virtue, positively buggers the mind.

From a non political perspective, giving prisoners a list of people with enough money, and the  profound lack of common sense required to donate to Mike Bloomberg, seems to be problematic as well:

Former New York City mayor and multibillionaire Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg used prison labor to make campaign calls. Through a third-party vendor, the Mike Bloomberg 2020 campaign contracted New Jersey-based call center company ProCom, which runs calls centers in New Jersey and Oklahoma. Two of the call centers in Oklahoma are operated out of state prisons. In at least one of the two prisons, incarcerated people were contracted to make calls on behalf of the Bloomberg campaign.

According to a source, who asked for anonymity for fear of retribution, people incarcerated at the Dr. Eddie Warrior Correctional Center, a minimum-security women’s prison with a capacity of more than 900, were making calls to California on behalf of Bloomberg. The people were required to end their calls by disclosing that the calls were paid for by the Bloomberg campaign. They did not disclose, however, that they were calling from behind bars.

This is the most Mike Bloomberg thing ever.

This is SO Buttigieg

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Under pressure, Pete Buttigieg promised to open up his fundraising meetings and to reveal his big dollar donation bundlers.

His release of information omitted about 20 of his biggest dollar bundlers.

I’m sure it was an accident, what can you do? ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign omitted more than 20 high-level fundraisers from a list of top bundlers it disclosed last week.

The public list of bundlers, featuring more than 100 people who have raised at least $25,000 for Buttigieg, was meant to bring a close to more than a week of feuding between Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren over campaign transparency. But the list left off a number of people the Buttigieg campaign had previously touted as top donors in an internal campaign fundraising report obtained by POLITICO.

They include uberwealthy supporters such as Boston power broker Jack Connors Jr. — who declared he was “all in for Pete Buttigieg” in a June fundraiser invite — and Hollywood producer Jordan Horowitz, whose films include “La La Land.” Buttigieg also omitted hedge fund investor John Petry; William Rahm, senior managing director at the private equity firm Centerbridge Partners; Nicole Avant, the former U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas; and former U.S. Ambassador to Italy John Phillips. The latter two were also major Obama donors.

Candidates voluntarily disclose bundlers to signal forthrightness and allay concerns about conflicts of interest, and lists of bundlers — people who are frequently rewarded with ambassadorships and nominations to other administration posts — offer important windows into the high-powered networks that support candidates like Buttigieg.

In a statement, the Buttigieg campaign said it had made an error and would update its public list of campaign bundlers “to include an accurate accounting.”

Don;’t blame him, it’s just the way that McKinsey & Company almuni count.

Bribery as a Political Strategy

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I am referring, of course, to Mike Bloomberg, who has used significant payments and grants to secure endorsements for his Presidential campaign:

Michael R. Bloomberg and Mayor Michael Tubbs of Stockton seemed like an improbable political duo on Wednesday as they heaped praise on each other. Mr. Tubbs, a 29-year-old liberal who is Stockton’s first black mayor, hailed Mr. Bloomberg as a leader “with the resources, with the record and with the relationships” to defeat President Trump in 2020. Mr. Bloomberg, a 77-year-old centrist billionaire, called the younger man “my kind of mayor.”

Mr. Tubbs had reason to feel kinship with Mr. Bloomberg. Last year, he graduated from a mayoral training program that Mr. Bloomberg sponsors at Harvard University. Mr. Tubbs had attended a conference co-sponsored by Mr. Bloomberg’s philanthropic foundation in Paris in 2017, and was featured in its 2018 annual report. And this past June, Mr. Bloomberg’s foundation donated $500,000 to an education reform group based in Stockton, a struggling inland city in Northern California.

As Mr. Bloomberg traverses the country as a presidential candidate, he is drawing on a vast network of city leaders whom he has funded as a philanthropist or advised as an elder statesman of municipal politics. Bloomberg Philanthropies, which has assets totaling $9 billion, has supported 196 different cities with grants, technical assistance and education programs worth a combined $350 million. Now, leaders in some of those cities are forming the spine of Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign: He has been endorsed so far by eight mayors — from larger cities like San Jose, Calif., and Louisville, Ky., and smaller ones like Gary, Ind., representing a total of more than 2.6 million Americans.

For all of those endorsers, Mr. Bloomberg has been an important benefactor. All have attended his prestigious boot camp at Harvard that gives the mayors access to ongoing strategic advice from Bloomberg-funded experts. More than half have received funding in the form of grants and other support packages from Mr. Bloomberg worth a total of nearly $10 million, according to a review of tax documents and interviews with all eight mayors.

The money he has given to cities underscores the extraordinary nature of Mr. Bloomberg’s candidacy. More than any presidential candidate in recent history, Mr. Bloomberg has established himself — through philanthropic giving, political endorsements and campaign spending — as a singular ally for a large cross-section of American politicians, many of whom feel a deep sense of loyalty in return. And there is no group to whom he is more tightly bonded with than his fellow mayors.

………

“Lots of people have money,” Mr. Tubbs said. “But the way he uses his money speaks to how he’s someone who has a vision for this party.”

Mr. Tubbs and other mayors say they are endorsing Mr. Bloomberg because of his platform and ideas, not because of any pressure, but some acknowledged that his wealth and philanthropy were an unavoidable factor.

“An unavoidable factor,” huh?

That’s an awfully genteel way to say, “Thank you for the bribe.”

Take away Mike Bloomberg’s money, and all you have as a candidate is a short racist, his recent apology for stop and frisk notwithstanding.

Trump Abides

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This is like the least surprising thing ever:

The Trump campaign is spending big money at the president’s properties, according to a review of Federal Election Commission data. Yet the records show that Donald Trump still has not donated any of his own funds to the campaign. That means America’s billionaire-in-chief has shifted $1.7 million from campaign donors into his private business.

Forbes first reported on this arrangement one year ago, when documents showed that Trump’s companies had taken in $1.1 million of campaign-donor money. By the end of 2018, that figure had climbed to $1.3 million. Subsequent disclosures show that more than $450,000 flowed into the Trump empire from January to September of this year.

The biggest beneficiary has been Trump Tower Commercial LLC, which controls the president’s famous Manhattan skyscraper. Trump still owns the entity, which has accepted $1.2 million in rent from the reelection effort and another $225,000 from the Republican National Committee. Since Trump became president, an estimated 1.6% of the tower’s revenue has come from either the RNC or the reelection campaign. The majority of Trump Tower’s income comes from Gucci, which leases 49,000 square feet of prime retail space on Fifth Avenue for roughly $21 million a year.

In the basement of Trump Tower, a much smaller space now serves as an official campaign store, selling hats, T-shirts, signs and other memorabilia. The rent payments for that space could be flowing through an entity called Trump Restaurants LLC, which has taken in $87,000 of rent since Trump became president. On a price-per-square-foot basis, the campaign may be paying more for that basement space than Gucci is paying for its street-level location upstairs. Smaller spaces tend to command higher rates, but the payments have nonetheless raised eyebrows.

This is why the impeachment investigation needs to go a lot deeper than it has.

There is way too much sleaze to uncover in just a few weeks of hearings.

Leaving Congress to Spend More Time with His Parole Officer

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I am referring, of course, to Duncan Hunter, Jr., who will plead guilty to embezzling campaign funds and resign from Congress.

Given that his district is pretty safely Republican, I believe that the Douglas Adams rule applies, and that he will be replaced by something even more bizarrely inexplicable:

After years of denials and claims that he was the target of a political witch hunt, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine) is scheduled to appear in federal court Tuesday morning to plead guilty in a sweeping campaign finance investigation.

The announcement was posted on the U.S. District Court docket Monday morning, then KUSI aired an interview with Hunter in which he said he would plead guilty to one of the 60 criminal charges against him. He suggested that he is likely to spend time in custody.

“The plea I accepted is misuse of my own campaign funds, of which I pled guilty to only one count,” Hunter told the station. “I think it’s important that people know that I did make mistakes. I did not properly monitor or account for my campaign money. I justify my plea with the understanding that I am responsible for my own campaign and my own campaign money.”

The reversal comes nearly six months after Hunter’s wife and former campaign manager, Margaret Hunter, admitted to her role in a widespread scheme that saw the couple allegedly spend more than $200,000 in campaign donations on family expenses like vacations, gas, groceries, school lunches and oral surgery. Such spending is prohibited to prevent undue influence by contributors.

No analysis here, I’m just gloating.

A Feature, Not a Bug for the DSCC

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It turns out that former Colorado Governor, and current Colorado Senate Candidate, John Hickenlooper, is under ethics investigation for taking gifts from lobbyists.

This has been the case for some time, well before when the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee endorsed him in the PRIMARY.

Why would they endorse in the primary?

I’m sure that some will claim that this was just an oversight, but I believe that it was deliberate.

Where most of us see this sort of crap, and think, “Corruption,” but I think that Chuck Schumer and his Evil Minions™ see that and think, “He shares our values.”

Between Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Sherrod Brown, it makes it hard for Democrats to suck up to Wall Street, payday lenders, and oil companies, and the like, and another liberal in the Senate would make Chuck’s job just too damn hard:

The Colorado Independent Ethics Commission is expected to release an investigative report this week into allegations that John Hickenlooper, a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2020, violated state law by receiving free private jet rides and other gifts from corporations when he served as governor. While Hickenlooper has denied any wrongdoing, and last year the Denver Post editorial board said the complaint consisted of “politically motivated lies,” there are fears that the investigation stands to damage Hickenlooper’s chances in Colorado.

………

Some progressives worry that Hickenlooper, the current frontrunner and the Democratic Party’s preferred candidate, could fumble the party’s chances of flipping the seat if he is found guilty of violating the state ethics law. Hickenlooper, who abandoned his lagging presidential campaign in order to run for Senate in August, is one of eight Democrats vying for the chance to take on Sen. Cory Gardner, one of the most vulnerable Republicans heading into 2020. And though he was a popular governor and leads Gardner in head-to-head polls, Hickenlooper’s pro-fracking record could also be a liability in the primary, especially as voters’ anxieties over the climate crisis rise.

………

In August, The Intercept reported that former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, a progressive candidate largely considered to be Hickenlooper’s main competition, called the DSCC’s intervention a “recipe for disaster.” He said that if voters are told that their voice doesn’t matter, “then why would they show up in November?

The original complaint focused on travel including a trip to the Bilderberg Meeting in Italy and related luxury lodging and transportation costs, such as a ride in a chauffeured Maserati limousine; a flight from Dallas, Texas, to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to attend the American Enterprise Institute’s Jackson Hole Symposium; and a private jet from New Jersey to Colorado. (In 2006, Colorado voters passed a constitutional amendment that created additional restrictions on gifts to elected officials, including a ban on gifts exceeding $53 per year.)

The complaint is being dismissed as a political hit job, and there is definitely an element of that, but Hickenlooper is literally a guy who literally drank fracking fluid to demonstrate his allegiance to the oil industry, so these allegations are going to stick.

And Chuck Schumer and the DSCC are backing him because  they are worried about a real Democrat hurting the feelings of the K Street lobbyist crowds.

I Heard an Ad from Doctor Patient Unity on the Radio, and Did Some Digging

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Congress is getting close to advancing one of the few significant bipartisan reforms to the health care system still on the docket: legislation to curb the practice of “surprise medical billing.”

Naturally, that progress has sparked a last-ditch, dark money blitz bent on sinking these relatively modest bills, which aim to make it harder for unsuspecting patients to get hit with exorbitant bills if they see the wrong doctor in an emergency situation.

A group called “Doctor Patient Unity,” formed in June, has bankrolled a sweeping campaign of radio and television ads to pressure senators up for re-election in 2020 to oppose proposals to reform surprise medical billing.

Now, the dark money group is going after key lawmakers with direct appeals to their constituents. A mailer paid for by Doctor Patient Unity, obtained by The Daily Beast, urges Rep. Tim Walberg’s (R-MI) constituents to call his office and tell him to “say no to rate-setting” and “to put patients first.”

………

“They’re throwing the full kitchen sink at our efforts here and seeing what will stick,” said a congressional aide, who requested anonymity to discuss the matter candidly. “It’s unclear whether or not members are seeing a huge influx of constituent calls, but it’s obvious what they’re trying to do here, which is to back members off this proposal.”

………

Those hospitals and doctors have led the charge in publicly opposing the changes Congress is mulling. But as for who exactly is pouring money into the mailers and TV ads, Doctor Patient Unity appears to have taken pains to conceal the identities of the individuals or organizations running and financing the effort. Public records provide some clues, however. Incorporation documents on file in Virginia list an address in the town of Warrenton that is shared by the prominent Republican law firm Holtzman Vogel Josefiak Torchinsky.

The group’s treasurer, according to filings with the FCC, is a woman named Janna Rutland. She serves as treasurer for a handful of other political and policy organizations, and appears to be an employee of the GOP consulting firm Crosby Ottenhoff, which counts a number of high-profile Republican candidates and party organs among its clients.

Emergency, anesthesiology, and neonatal intensive care practices are prime targets for private equity buys because the are typically involve people who are too desperate to do the deep digging required to avoid outrageous charging, which gives them almost unlimited pricing power.

Once again, there is nothing that Wall Street finance cannot get worse.

Do You Want Some Cheese to Go with That Whine?

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The NY Times published a searchable database and 4870 pages of donor names, all 146,000, all the way down to donors who gave $1 to the Clinton Foundation.

What’s the public interest in publishing a donor who gave $1? https://t.co/Qo1ISmxSJP

— amicable stationery helper 📎 (@xiruxi) August 7, 2019

Hypocrisy Much

Joaquin Castro is Presidential candidate Julian Castro’s twin brother, he grew a beard so that they are not confused, and he just
tweeted the names of people who have donated the maximum to the Trump campaign, and the Republicans, and the press has completely lost their sh%$.

This information is publicly available on the web, and, as death threats and doxxing is central to right wing communication, the pot is calling the kettle back:

Joaquin Castro, a Democratic congressman from Texas and chairman of the presidential campaign of his twin brother, Julián, fired back on Tuesday after being castigated on social media for tweeting the names and occupations of his constituents who’d maxed out their donations to President Donald Trump.

His tweet contained a graphic titled “Who’s funding Trump?” and listed the names of 44 people who purportedly contributed the maximum amount allowed by campaign finance laws. Their occupations, which, like donor names, are public record, were also listed. Close to a dozen of the donors shown are retirees.

“Sad to see so many San Antonians as 2019 maximum donors to Donald Trump,” Castro wrote, naming local businesses whose owners were on the list. “Their contributions are fueling a campaign of hate that labels Hispanic immigrants as ‘invaders.’”

The graphic, which Castro indicated had originated with a Democratic activist group, was blasted out to the more than 27,000 followers of his congressional campaign account on Tuesday afternoon. It came as politicians’ loaded rhetoric has come under closer scrutiny after a mass shooting over the weekend in El Paso that killed 22 and wounded dozens of others. Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, which mirrored language used by the suspected shooter in a racist manifesto, has loomed over the tragedy in the days since.

You are supporting a racist ratf%$#, in any decent society, opprobrium should be a consequence of this, you delicate snowflakes.

Useful Metric

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A list of Democratic Presidential candidates with the most donations from billionaires.

This list is important, because it shows who the billionaires perceive as being most friendly to their agenda, which is basically the preservation of their wealth and power.

What is interesting is just how many has beens (Gillibrand, O’Rourke, Klobuchar) and never was (Bennet, Hickenlooper) candidates are beating the number 2 & 3 candidates, Warren and Sanders, in this metric.

Obviously, getting donations from billionaires does not, in and of itself, make a candidate unsuitable, but it is a very big red flag.

In order (# of billionaires):

  1. Pete Buttigieg (23)
  2. Cory Booker (18)
  3. Kamala Harris (17)
  4. Michael Bennet (15)
  5. Joe Biden (13)
  6. John Hickenlooper (11)
  7. Beto O’Rourke (9)
  8. Amy Klobuchar (8)
  9. Jay Inslee (5)
  10. Kirsten Gillibrand (4)
    1. Elizabeth Warren (2)
    2. Steve Bullock (2)
    1. Tulsi Gabbard (1)
    2. Andrew Yang (1)
    3. Marianne Williamson (1)
    1. Bernie Sanders (0)
    2. Julian Castro (0)
    3. Bill De Blasio (0)
    4. Tim Ryan (0)

And yes, I spent almost as much time tweaking the HTML code for the numbering as I did the article.