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by Paul R. Hollrah, Lincoln Heritage Institute Senior Fellow
An op-ed column circulating on the Internet purports to be written by Maureen Dowd of the New York Times. Titled “Obama’s Troubling Internet Fund Raising,” the article describes how members of Obama’s internet fundraising staff have been puzzled by the number of contributions apparently originating from overseas internet service providers (ISPs).
The article goes on to say that Obama’s people were unable to track most of the sources of the contributions because of firewalls and other blocking devices. However, the ISPs they were able to identify were located in China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other Middle Eastern countries. And while the Obama people were convinced that the contributions were coming from individuals who were not American citizens, the decision was made that the overseas contributions did not violate the Federal Election Campaign Act. Wrong!
Unfortunately, the article appears to be a hoax with Ms. Dowd as the victim. Yes, Barack Obama is an empty suit. He is painfully naïve, he has no definable moral compass, he has no meaningful experience, he is motivated by monumental ambition, and he will say whatever he thinks will bring applause and votes from the audience of the moment. And yes, it would have been nice to catch this charlatan of all charlatans in the greatest campaign finance scandal of all time, and it would have been nice to have the acerbic witch of the New York Times as the trigger-person, but whoever the author of the article might be…it was not Ms. Maureen Dowd. Dowd’s op-ed column for June 29, 2008, was a biting review of the phony Clinton-Obama kiss-and-make-up farce in Unity, N.H., titled, “It’s Over, Lady!”
However, that is not to say that the unknown author of the piece is not on the right track in demanding a full-scale investigation of the Obama fundraising juggernaught. Obama boasts of having built a contributor base of 1.5 million people, each contributing $5, $10, $20 – or, as Obama has put it, “whatever they could afford.”
Obama may think the American people are dumb enough to believe that, but those of us who’ve gone beyond 4th grade arithmetic and who’ve done a bit of political fundraising in our lives, are not. Fundraising records show that, as of May 31, 2008, Obama had raised some $265 million. Of that amount, one-fourth, or $66.25 million, came from some 33,000 contributors, each contributing at least $2,000. This means that the remaining $198.75 million of his $265 million total was contributed by some 1.47 million people, each of whom contributed, on average, $135 – not $5, or $10, or $20.
What Obama suggests is the equivalent of 29,350 people, in each of the 50 states, reaching into their pockets and shelling out more than $135 apiece. If the President of the United States visits a state and holds two fundraisers at $150 per person ($300 per couple), local party officials are hard-pressed to sell a thousand tickets for each event. So to suggest that Obama has attracted, on average, more than $130 each from 29,350 people, in each of the 50 states – people who don’t even get to share a “rubber chicken” dinner in the same auditorium with Obama and a thousand of their closest friends – is pure nonsense. It has never happened before in the history of political fundraising, and it is not happening now.
Republicans should be hiring some of the top investigators in the world to find out who is distributing millions in illegal money behind the scenes to literally “buy” the U.S. presidency.
The Obama campaign raised an additional $30 million during the month of June (they were expecting $100 million) and, in the period between the convention and the general election, they expect to tap their “heavy hitters” for an additional $66.25 million. In a moment of undisguised chutzpa, Obama declared that he is raising his general election funds outside the public funding system because that system is “broken,” and that his private fundraising – from fewer than of 1% of the American people – represents “true public financing.”
There are snake oil salesmen and there are snake oil salesmen – and then there’s Barack Obama, the king of them all.
July 8, 2008 – Throughout his campaign for the presidency, Obama has spoken passionately about his intention to “pull the teeth of the powerful special interests and their lobbyists” once he’s in the Oval Office – driving those in his audience into fits of emotional frenzy. What has apparently occurred to few of his supporters is that a great many of those cheering the loudest are public school teachers and public employees wearing National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) t-shirts – members of two of the five most powerful lobbying organizations in Washington and the source of much of his campaign cash.
If he had threatened to go to Washington to pull the teeth of the NEA and AFSCME, he would have been booed off the stage and, very likely, physically assaulted.
When discussing the role of lobbyists in our governmental processes, federal or state, it is never a matter of “us” vs. “them,” as many in the mainstream media and the political left would have us believe. We are all special interests in one way or another and all of our special interests are represented by lobbyists.
Contrary to the picture painted by many counter-culture journalists and dishonest politicians, such as Obama and John Edwards, the lobbying profession is one of the last – if not the last – professions in which a handshake is as good as a signed contract.
If members of the mainstream media had half the integrity, half the respect for truth and honesty, of those who follow the lobbying profession, we would be a very well-informed nation – but we’re not. And that says far more about them than it does about us.
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