CBS Discovers New Political Dirty Trick Called "Initiative Bundling"

NewsBusters ^ | December 4, 2007 | P.J. Gladnick

[PJ-Comix]

CBS News has discovered a dire new dirty political tactic. It is called "bundling." No, not the bundling of campaign funds as was performed by Norman Hsu for Hillary Clinton. This new bundling discovered by CBS involves allowing ballot petition initiatives to be "bundled" together by signature collectors. CBS has presented the fact that signature collectors in California are collecting signatures on the initative to allow district allocation of that state's Electoral College votes simultaneously with the collection of signatures for other ballot iniatives as some sort of dirty trick. They even have a video showing this "sneaky" practice that has been used for decades when collecting signatures for ballot initiatives. The bundling section of this video was provided to them by a member of the Daily Kos named E Love who made his own laughable video about this newly discovered dirty trick.

Typical of CBS, this video highlights this "dirty trick" of both "bundling" ballot initatives and attempting to make the electoral votes in California more proportional to the popular election results while allowing only a brief one sentence response by a Republican in this report. Some unintentional humor in this report comes to us via the hysterical melodramatics of Rick Jacobs the head of the Courage Campaign who opposes this iniative. He apparently thinks it is outrageous for an initiative to increase funding for childrens hospitals to be allowed to be "bundled" together with the electoral college initiative:

The mere idea that they would stoop so low as to use children's cancer as the bait to get people to sign a petition about a dirty trick so that they could steal the White House says everything. It's outrageous!

Equally as funny as Jacobs' melodramatics was the reaction of the members of the Daily Kos to this CBS report:

The GOP as a criminal enterprise. It's now time to deny the Republicans the dignity (undeserved) of a political party with some sort of an agenda that - for all its flaws - could credibly be regarded as an organization of good faith. It, in truth, is no more than a criminal enterprise for the sole purpose of accumulating and exploiting political power for purely selfish ends. It has more in common with the Mob than with a political movement.

Until this dirty trick is dead, we fight. We film. We organize. We blog.

This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that these Republicans will stoop to anything to 'win'. Scumbags! Using sick children for their dirty work.

Find and confront petition circulators this week! The petition circulators are all over California this week.

Let's use DailyKos as way of announcing to each other across the state where the petition gatherers are working in real time. If we know where they are we can make their job much more difficult.

You can read even more Drama Queen hysterics by the Daily Kos to this newly discovered political dirty trick of initiative bundling at the DUmmie FUnnies.

[PJ-Comix]

Somehow it is now a political sin to let separate ballot initiatives to even touch each other when collecting signatures.

[ClearCase_guy]

This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that these Republicans will stoop to anything to 'win'. Scumbags! Using sick children for their dirty work.

Yes, yes. *cough* the Democrats *cough* would never do such a thing.

[snowrip]

Riiiiiiiiiight.

I am a numbers person. When you look at the numbers regarding election fraud prosecutions in the United States, they are OVERWHELMINGLY against the democrats.

This is just one more case of handwringing liberals attempting to stampede the sheeple... by using rhetoric rather than facts.

[oh8eleven]

You can read even more Drama Queen hysterics by the Daily Kos to this newly discovered political dirty trick of initiative bundling at the DUmmie FUnnies.
I'd rather gargle with razor blades.

[jdm]

CBS Discovers New Political Dirty Trick Called "Initiative Bundling"

Can't be as bad as this...

"What about take-your-hostage-to-work day?"

[JerseyHighlander]

If the volunteers collecting signatures are actually unpaid volunteers, and the personnel at every level that there is crossover between separate initiatives are unpaid volunteers, there is no problem.

There is a natural conflict of interest if there is a paid worker for one initiative who is also working as an unpaid volunteer for another initiative, and is using resources (photcopiers, phones, office space, pc’s etc) to help both campaigns.

[PJ-Comix]

There is a natural conflict of interest if there is a paid worker for one initiative who is also working as an unpaid volunteer for another initiative, and is using resources (photcopiers, phones, office space, pc’s etc) to help both campaigns.

Actually no conflict. Most initiatives are done by paid workers who "bundle" several initiatives meaning they carry more than one on hand.

[JerseyHighlander]

The person funding initiative drive A is not putting his money into a non-profit vehicle to fund initiative drive B, unless explicitly stated so by every individual and organization that contributes to initiative drive A.

From a funding perspective there is a conflict of interest if any paid worker or any expenses from the coffers of initiative drive A are used to promote initiative drive B.

Bundling is fine for street level volunteers, there are some legitimate issues regarding other parts of these initiative drives.

(I’m saying this as someone who generally supports the initiatives in this article, my problem lies when this tactic is used by radical leftist organizations, say bundling a common sense Open Space initiative with a radical anti-hunting initiative, or something along that hypothetical line of thought.)