Replies

Can we be sure that the claims of the two to be pilots and/or employees of Southwest Airlines are correct, or, for that matter, that their claims to be doctors are correct?

Look. You ask me a bunch of questions in several different messages. I don't pretend to know anything about how this data is gathered, except that it's done by the government. The contributors probably are required to fill out some sort of form, then some clerk enters the data, and some Database Administrator maintains it. It's probably a crime to falsify the data, and there almost certainly is false data (Buddhist Temples anyone?), but there aren't many prosecutions.

ML/NJ

I live in Las Vegas and practice medicine here. I loathe Cynthia McKinney and was surprised to see the list of Las Vegas contributors to her. I know most of the "donors" and they are indeed physicians. ie; Osama Haikal is an Egyptian. He practices gastroenterology and is well respected. He is in practice with Richard Yeh, Michael Zimmerman, and Toussif Pasha. He is a prominent member of the local Islamic community and runs the local Islamisc center. He has lived here at least 13 years. Bashir Chowdhry is a cardiothoracic surgeon. He has lived here perhaps 20 years. He is in solo practice and to my knowledge comes from Pakistan. Khaliq Baig is an internist who came about 6-8 years ago from Pakistan. His wife is a physician a psychiatrist. They appear to be observant muslims. Sayed Qazi is from Pakistan. I believe he arrived in the last five years. I thiink he's an internist. Waseem Ahmed is indeed a pulmonologist of relatively recent import. I don't know how these guys are involved with Cynthia McKinney incorporated. Perhaps she hosted a local fund raiser or alternatively the local Islamic PAC put out a request for money. I do not know of any gossip or rumor connecting these guys with anything. I have never discussed politics with any of them, on the other hand, Dr. Haikal has participated on public forums with my Rabbi.

I don't pretend to know anything about how this data is gathered, except that it's done by the government. The contributors probably are required to fill out some sort of form, then some clerk enters the data, and some Database Administrator maintains it.

As a former congressional campaign committee treasurer myself, I *do* know how this data is gathered. It is the burden of the campaign committee to gather up all the contribution details and submit them on a quarterly basis to the FEC. If the campaign committee fails to submit these within the deadline period, the committee can be found in non-compliance and would be subject to heavy fines, violation of the law, etc. If there is any MISSING information from a donor (address, contributor's occupation), it is the burden of the campaign committee to file an amended report with said information included.

The information available on-line at the FEC's own website (from which OpenSecrets.org gleans its information) is simply a SCAN changed into a .pdf of those exact same forms submitted by the candidate's campaign committee. In other words, if there was any falsifying to be done, it'd happen at the campaign committee level.