Lawsuit revives fears of foreign cash (oh yeah..he's in full campaign scheming from now on)

Raising the specter of “foreign money” boosting your opponent’s campaign has become a bipartisan tactic in the past two election cycles.

In 2008, conservatives alleged that Barack Obama’s presidential campaign was fueled in part by illegal cash from Iran and other hostile lands.

Two years later, Obama and his allies ominously suggested that secret streams of foreign cash – this time from corporations – were boosting Republicans.

Neither side was able to offer much compelling evidence to support their arguments, and both endured accusations of stoking jingoistic sentiment for partisan advantage. So now an unlikely team of foreigners with no apparent ties to Washington’s political class is trying to do the unthinkable – make foreign campaign contributions legal.

Their lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission, which seeks to overturn a long-standing ban on foreign nationals contributing to campaigns, airing ads and making other expenditures, will be heard Thursday by a special panel of federal district court judges created specifically to fast-track campaign finance challenges straight to the Supreme Court.

Since election law experts believe such a case is ripe for a high court ruling, it could reignite another round of innuendos and accusations for the third consecutive election cycle.

But the lawsuit also has created a dilemma for Washington partisans who in recent years have clashed repeatedly over a series of campaign finance legal fights that have gone a long way towards relaxing rules governing the political playing field.

While conservatives have worked hard to loosen restrictions on political giving and spending, they also have supported tough immigration restrictions. And, while liberals are more likely to support expansions of citizenship benefits, they have opposed efforts to weaken campaign finance regulations, which they contend could allow big moneyed conservative interests – including foreign governments and companies – to pour money into campaigns.

“This cuts across the ideological or partisan divide, which I think is probably why people don’t have talking points at the ready,” said Allison Hayward, an official with the Center for Competitive Politics, a leading opponent of campaign regulations that – like many of the main combatants in the campaign finance battles – is sitting out the case, at least for now.

But the lawsuit has nonetheless generated some of the same rhetoric that partisans used to whip up their respective bases in 2008 and 2010.

The FEC’s lawyers, for instance, predicted in a filing defending the contribution ban, that its reversal “could open the door to millions — or even billions — of dollars of campaign advocacy by foreign corporations,” as well as “attack ads against American candidates” financed by “an individual paid by a foreign government to conduct espionage on the United States and harm American interests.”

Aug. 19,2008 - Pamela Geller
Obama's Foreign Donors: The media averts its eyes

Excerpt:

I have been researching, documenting and studying thousands upon thousands of Obama's campaign donations for the past month. Egregious abuse was immediately evident and I published the results of my ongoing investigation.

Each subsequent post built a more damning case against Obama's illegal contribution activity.

The media took little notice of what I was substantiating. I went so far as to upload the documents so that anyone could do their own research. I asked readers to download the documents and a number of folks pitched in.

Rafah refugee camp in Gaza who donated $33,000 to Obama's campaign, no big media picked up the story. Jihadis donating to Obama from Gaza? Could there be a bigger story? Foreign donations are illegal, but this story was all that and so much more. The "Palestinian" brothers were proud and vocal of their "love" for Obama. Their vocal support on behalf of "Palestinians" spoke volumes to Obama's campaign.
And yet still no media.
But Obama pricked up his ears. He smelled trouble and while no media asked, he answered anyway. Sen. Obama's campaign immediately scrambled and contended they had returned the $33,500 in illegal contributions from Palestinians in Hamas-controlled Gaza, despite the fact that records do not show that it was returned and the brothers said they have not received any money.

Having gone through all of Obama's refunds redesignations etc, no refund was made to Osama, Hossam, or Edwan Monir in the Rafah refugee camp. And still no media.

One of the Gazan brothers, Monir Edwan (identified here), claimed he bought "Obama for President" T-shirts off Obama's website and then sold the T-shirts in Gaza for a profit.

All purchases on the Barack Obama website are considered contributions.

The Palestinians allegedly claimed "they were American citizens", so said Obama's people. They listed their address -- zip code 972 (ironically the area code for Israel) and they input "GA"the state abbreviation for Georgia (screen shot here) They actually lived in a Hamas controlled refugee camp.

So if Obama's people thought it was "Georgia" why did they ship the tee shirts to the correct address in Gaza? Shipping overseas to a Gaza refugee camp is vastly different than the state next door.

Still no media.

"Some young men even bought the T-shirts for 60 shekel ($17.29), which is a lot to spend in Gaza on a T-shirt, but that is how much Gazans like Obama," Edwan claimed in a follow up article in the conservative websiet WorldNetDaily. And Hamas has publicly endorsed Obama.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Obama Accepting Untraceable Donations

By Matthew Mosk
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Excerpt:

Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity, campaign officials confirmed.

Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged. Instead, the campaign is scrutinizing its books for improper donations after the money has been deposited

~~~~~~

Our watchdogs had better be out there, on full alert and on duty NOW. Will anyone risk scorn and derision now to stand up for America ? Trump ?

From the comments section, I see the Obots are out in force working You Tube again.

How Obama’s Internet Campaign Changed Politics
By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

The Obama campaign’s use of the Internet has been cited as playing a large role in upending how presidential races are fought. (Credit: Peter Wynn Thompson for The New York Times)

One of the many ways that the election of Barack Obama as president has echoed that of John F. Kennedy is his use of a new medium that will forever change politics. For Mr. Kennedy, it was television. For Mr. Obama, it is the Internet.

“Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not be president. Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not have been the nominee,” said Arianna Huffington, editor in chief of The Huffington Post.

She spoke Friday about how politics and Web 2.0 intersect on a panel with Joe Trippi, a political consultant, and Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. (Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich had been invited to balance out the left-leaning panel, but declined, according to John Battelle, a chair of the conference.)

Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign -– which was run by Mr. Trippi –- was groundbreaking in its use of the Internet to raise small amounts of money from hundreds of thousands of people. But by using interactive Web 2.0 tools, Mr. Obama’s campaign changed the way politicians organize supporters, advertise to voters, defend against attacks and communicate with constituents.

Mr. Obama used the Internet to organize his supporters in a way that would have in the past required an army of volunteers and paid organizers on the ground, Mr. Trippi said.

“The tools changed between 2004 and 2008. Barack Obama won every single caucus state that matters, and he did it because of those tools, because he was able to move thousands of people to organize.”

Mr. Obama’s campaign took advantage of YouTube for free advertising. Mr. Trippi argued that those videos were more effective than television ads because viewers chose to watch them or received them from a friend instead of having their television shows interrupted.

“The campaign’s official stuff they created for YouTube was watched for 14.5 million hours,” Mr. Trippi said. “To buy 14.5 million hours on broadcast TV is $47 million.”
There has also been a sea change in fact-checking, with citizens using the Internet to find past speeches that prove a politician wrong and then using the Web to alert their fellow citizens.

The John McCain campaign, for example, originally said that Governor Sarah Palin opposed the so-called bridge to nowhere in Alaska, Ms. Huffington said. “Online there was an absolutely obsessive campaign to prove that wrong,” she said, and eventually the campaign stopped repeating it.
“In 2004, trust me, they would have gone on repeating it, because the echo chamber would not have been as facile,” Ms. Huffington said.

The Internet also let people repeatedly listen to the candidates’ own words in the face of attacks, Mr. Huffington said. As Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s incendiary words kept surfacing, people could re-watch Mr. Obama’s speech on race. To date, 6.7 million people have watched the 37-minute speech on YouTube.

The Internet also changes the way politicians govern. Mr. Newsom learned that last year when he ran for re-election. He showed up at a rally and didn’t see the usual crowd. His aides told him the audience was made up of his Facebook friends. “I said, ‘What’s Facebook?’” Mr. Newsom recalled.

These days, Mr. Newsom is “obsessed with Facebook.” It strengthens his connection with his constituents and their connection with the causes they care about, he said.
The constant exposure can, of course, turn against politicians.

Ms. Huffington’s “off the bus” team of 10,000 citizen journalists caught candidates saying things that embarrassed them later, like Mr. Obama’s “guns and religion” remark. Now, she said, “there is no off-the-record fund-raiser.”

Mr. Newsom says he is fearful of the constant need to watch his tongue. “I have to watch myself singing, ‘I left my heart in San Francisco’ on YouTube and it can’t go away. I am desperate to get it to go away,” he said dryly.

“There will be a lot of collateral damage coming to grips with the fact that we’re in a reality TV series, ‘Politics 24/7,’” Mr. Newsom said.

That’s a good thing, Mr. Trippi said. “This medium demands authenticity, and television for the most part demanded fake. Authenticity is something politicians haven’t been used to.”

He predicted that this real-time Internet contact with constituents will also change the way the president of the United States governs. He recently proposed that Mr. Obama start a Web site called MyWhiteHouse.gov to talk with citizens. (Mr. Obama just started a different site, Change.gov, on Thursday to keep in touch with people during the transition.)

“When Congress refuses to go with his agenda, it’s not going to be just the president” they oppose, Mr. Trippi said. It will be the president and his huge virtual network of citizens.

“Just like Kennedy brought in the television presidency, I think we’re about to see the first wired, connected, networked presidency,” Mr. Trippi said.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/how-obamas-internet-campaign-changed-politics/

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.