I think that if these folks are going to get in bed with bundlers, they need bundling boards!
Posted on 09/14/2007 1:15:43 AM PDT by CutePuppy
Campaign finance changes helped create the environment in which a fugitive could be welcomed by Kennedys and Clintons.
By Tom Hamburger, Dan Morain and Robin Fields
WASHINGTON — When Bill Clinton received an award at a gala dinner honoring the late Robert F. Kennedy last year, the former president expressed his thanks before an audience that included a Nobel Prize winner and a glittering array of show business celebrities and Wall Street titans. Yet the second sentence of his remarks expressed special gratitude to a man almost no one there had heard of: "our friend Norman Hsu."
The story of Hsu, the major Democratic fundraiser who turned out to be a fugitive from justice, is a tangled one that stretches back more than 15 years. But more recent developments in the world of campaign finance helped create the environment in which a man like Hsu could be welcomed into the company of people like the Kennedys and Clintons.
Hsu is what is known in political parlance as a "bundler," a specialized and increasingly important kind of fundraiser for today's campaign finance managers.
Federal law limits the amount any one individual can contribute to a candidate or party. But there is no limit on how much an individual can round up in smaller contributions from friends and associates, and then deliver to a favored politician or party as a "bundle."
That twist in the law has made bundlers indispensable, especially for presidential candidates and others who must raise record amounts of money to run campaigns without public financing.
The intensified money chase has created incentives for candidates not to look too closely into the backgrounds of individuals who can deliver big-time bundles.
......
Some investors had told The Times that they were pressed to make contributions to Clinton and other candidates.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I actually did LOL when I read this line--campaign finance changes somehow tricked the Clintons and Kennedys!
Man, they never ever get tired of protecting their own, do they?
The senator has new benefactors too, such as Michel Chaghouri, a 27-year-old Los Angeles-area resident who in 2004 was registered as a Republican. Chaghouri has raised at least $100,000 for Clinton. When he donated $4,600 earlier this year, he listed his occupation as not employed. He now works for the Clinton campaign.
Hsu apparently enlisted 260 people to give a total of $850,000 to Hillary Clinton for President, which the campaign said this week it would return.
The disgraced bundler and his network also delivered hundreds of thousands to other candidates. In 2005 and 2006, Hsu and his network gave at least $175,000 to Democratic Senate incumbents and candidates. House races were of less interest to Hsu -- only a handful of members received donations; most were friends of the Clintons."
I think that if these folks are going to get in bed with bundlers, they need bundling boards!
Would have been a good time to be mole.
I think that the key in this case - and the huge difference from the legitimate large campaign donors - is that money comes from large "investors" (like Rosenman) into Norman Hsu's various "enterprises" that existed only on paper, and Hsu then "washed" them through small donors like the Paws into political campaigns. This is not any different from usual money-laundering in criminal activities.
You’d think that anyone with any taste who got into bed with Hillary wouldn’t need any kind of board to keep away...
Great minds think alike. That was the one sentence that grabbed me, too.
The fact that Clinton specifically mentioned Hsu, with so many other notable people in attendance, says a lot.
I’m not defending Hsu at all, but I think he may have been more of a victim than the Clintons and Kennedys. If you want to talk about someone being duped by another and falling for their false promises and manipulation, then I would put the Clintons at the top of my list as the manipulators, not as the victims.
Think of all the voters who have fallen for their schtick.
But what I'm really thinking is "What do these people SEE in the Clintons?" They're not interesting, though Bill apparently has the gift of gab and women fall for his "Aw shucks" schtick. Hillary is a boring person. And no matter what they run on, ultimately they're out for themselves.
I just don't "get" the Clintons' appeal, or why so many people like this guy seem willing to fall on the sword for them.
http://www.whitehouseforsale.org/bundler.cfm?Bundler=11013
His handle is gum2me on several sites.
His pic here:
http://profiles.friendster.com/gum2me
He has / had a blog that is now “restricted”... but from
“Tuesday, June 25, 2002
my biggest problem with Mr. Bush’s speech is that he does not condemn strongly the Israeli occupation and the systematic destruction of Palestinian infrastructure that it has participated in. To say that the Israeli occupation reminds me of Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor is not a stretch.
Ultimately peace between the Israelis and the Arabs will be a good thing. I for one am against economic integration with the Israelis, as they will then become the dominant nation in the region.”
And his prose from October, 2000 (does that sound like Republican?) :
http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/archives/id/1367/
“Israeli tactics toward Palestinians need to be punished despite being Holocaust victims
Michel Chaghouri
Published: Monday, October 16, 2000
Chaghouri is a third-year political science student.
....”
Seems to come from a large Lebanese family...
If they are related there is a Marc Chaghouri out in CA who is involved in a real estate firm called “The Azzi Group” ... I think his donation pattern may be similar.
Some of Issa’s constituents are Chaghouri family.
I think what LAT is trying to do is portray Hsu as a “bundler”... while, in fact, what he was doing was exactly the opposite - he was unbundling and “laundering” / “washing” the large sums of money (”bundles”) he received previously as “investment” in his “paper enterprises”.
If he were a Republican, of course...
Yep- it is money laundering, and wide open for foreign manipulation if not even made to order for that purpose. I can see why NSA wiretapping would be unpopular among this bunch.
I don’t know. I can only speculate. I see several possibilities.
1. These people make money off the Clintons - way more than they give. The campaign donations are bribes that come back to them many times over.
2. People like Hsu are just conduits for bigger players (Chinese government?). People like Hsu get paid to do this.
3. People are “starstruck.” They get sucked in by the power or fame and are willing to pay a lot of money to delude themselves into thinking that the famous or powerful person is their friend. They think that proximity to a famous or powerful person somehow rubs off onto them and makes them more powerful, too. Actually, in some sense it does. Someone with access to a powerful person aquires some of that power.
4. They are “buying” something, like a pardon, for instance.
Maybe other FReepers can think of more reasons. If we know the reason, we have a better chance of neutralizing it.
1 & 2 are the ones that most concern me in terms of government corruption. 3 concerns me in the sense that that is what I believe accounts for the masses of people who vote for these charlatans. If we can counteract #3, that would eliiminate the possibility of 1,2 & 4.
Great amount of good info and a list of “HillRaisers” (very subtle, isn’t it?) here :
http://www.examiner.com/blogs/Around_San_Francisco
Michel Chaghouri on the list, of course.
This constant use of the word “disgraced” by the MSM to describe Hsu but never the slimeballs who took his money is really starting to annoy me.
The DNC daily fax must really be pushing this.
To take it further, it means that Hsu is neither the “victim” nor the main perpetrator, rather he is a willing participant and intermediary in a laundering campaign cash “pyramid scheme”.
So it’s important to see who his “investors” are and where the money came from to them to “invest” in Mr. Hsu’s (and those like him) “on paper only enterprises”. The “investors” are the important players here. Norman Hsu is just a middleman, a “fence”.
The NY Times, on the other hand, has stock prices plummeting with charges of favoritism to extreme left wing groups such as MoveOn.org.
Maybe we should have a Freep-A-Thon to buy the NY Times...
With the success of the Catholics on the US Supreme Court (the current majority of Robets, Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Kennedy), maybe a few rich Catholic investors and Christina investors should buy the NY Times.
The point being is that the LA Times is willing to report the news.
On the other hand, if a Democratic figure who would espouse the socialistic and birth control/master race policies of Adolf Hitler might arise (Hillary Clinton), then they would praise a person who might seek to follow in Hitler's footsteps.
And many would agree that Hillary Clinton is in this for the Power she might be able to exert over people.
We have a very biased media, but at least the LA Times in this situation is actually going after a story that might hurt the Democratic Party.
A very unusual tactic, but one that might help the profitability of the LA Times.
As for the NY Times, looks the Gray Lady's ship might be sinking fast...
I hope so. The Clintonoids have played it fast and loose for too long.
Time for some payback.
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