Thread: Obama's Ethics Rules Won't Ban Big Fundraisers From Transition

Nov. 12 (Bloomberg) -- President-elect Barack Obama is barring lobbyists from participating in the transition that will help install his administration. He will still leave room on his team for the rich and powerful.

Top fundraisers and other well-connected supporters will serve in an advisory capacity before the Democrat takes office on Jan. 20.

Five of the 12 members of Obama's transition advisory board raised at least $50,000 for his presidential campaign, and eight contributed the maximum individual donation of $4,600. Other transition team members include a partner in a lobbying firm and two executives of financial companies whose employees were among his biggest donors.

``If an Obama administration is going to sell influence, these are the ones who have bought it,'' said Craig Holman of Public Citizen, a Washington-based advocacy group that favors stronger campaign-finance and lobbying laws.

Obama spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter defended the advisory board, saying it ``was selected based on the skill and experience of each member, and they are providing critical advice to ensure a smooth transition process.''

Transition co-Chairman John Podesta yesterday released rules banning registered lobbyists from raising money for the transition or working for the new administration in areas on which they represented clients.

The new rules also prohibit members of the transition team who become lobbyists from trying to influence the administration on any issues that they worked on. Podesta called them ``the strictest, the most far-reaching ethics rules of any transition team in history.''

Bundlers Exempt

The rules, however, won't prevent campaign fundraisers known as bundlers from serving.

Valerie Jarrett, a transition co-chairwoman, raised between $100,000 and $200,000 for Obama, according to his campaign Web site. Two advisory board members, Julius Genachowski, managing director of Rock Creek Ventures, a Washington firm that invests in online companies, and Donald Gips, a vice president of Broomfield, Colorado-based Level 3 Communications Inc., each raised at least $500,000 for Obama.

A third, Michael Froman, brought in between $200,000 and $500,000 for the campaign. Froman is a managing director at New York-based Citigroup Inc. The financial institution's employees and their families contributed $581,216, Obama's seventh-biggest source of campaign cash, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based research group.

Campaign co-chairman William Daley, a vice chairman at New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co., also sits on the advisory board. JPMorgan employees and their families were Obama's sixth-biggest source of donations, giving $581,460.

Registered to Lobby

Another board member, Mark Gitenstein, was registered to lobby through June, House records show. Gitenstein is a partner in the lawyer-lobbying firm of Mayer Brown LLP, whose clients include Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford Motor Co., which is pushing for government help, and New York-based Merrill Lynch & Co., which sold itself to Bank of America Corp. in September.

Obama may be learning quickly that what sounds good on the campaign trail may not always be best for governing, said Costas Panagopoulos, director of Fordham University's Center for Electoral Politics and Democracy in New York.

``They want to find the most qualified people; some will have been donors,'' Panagopoulos said. ``It was probably shortsighted to make promises that such individuals would not be included in his administration.''

Plenty of Jobs

The president-elect will have plenty of opportunities to fill jobs before he takes office. Podesta said he expects the transition to have a $12 million budget and employ about 450 people. With less than half that amount coming from federal appropriations, Obama's transition team will raise money privately, he said. As in the campaign, Obama won't accept money from registered lobbyists and political action committees, Podesta said.

Obama raised a record $650 million for his presidential campaign as he became the first major party nominee to shun federal funds for the general election.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan D. Salant in Washington at jsalant@bloomberg.net .
Last Updated: November 12, 2008 00:01 EST

Is anyone surprised ? Anyone ?

I am completely surprised!!!

Originally Posted by Jolie Rouge

Is anyone surprised ? Anyone ?

No, not surprised at all. He won the election and now it's time for them to cash in.

The president-elect will have plenty of opportunities to fill jobs before he takes office. Podesta said he expects the transition to have a $12 million budget and employ about 450 people. With less than half that amount coming from federal appropriations, Obama's transition team will raise money privately, he said. As in the campaign, Obama won't accept money from registered lobbyists and political action committees, Podesta said.

If he gets donations like he did during the campaign, there's no way to tell where the money is coming from.

Friday, June 19, 2009[b]
Obama's fundraising hypocrisy [/i]


From the Hill:

Obama ridicules critics and rakes in some bucks, old-school style, last night at the Mandarin Oriental. But first he warns his supporters to gird those loins because it's going to get ugly as he tries to shove his policies down the throats of Americans:

Obama noted that many of the actions he has taken are "not necessarily popular," and he warned that the criticisms of his administration will only get worse as he takes on more issues.

So much for the will of the people.

We just don't know what's good for us.

"But that's the nature of things," Obama said. "This is when the criticism gets louder. This is when the pundits get impatient. This is when the cynicism mounts."

The president dismissed those who say he is not changing the way Washington works, laughing at critics who question whether or not change is possible.

"Can't do it. System overload. Circuits breaking down," Obama said, mimicking a robot. "It's so predictable.

I guess there were no cameras there or that would have racked up a zillion views on YouTube by now.

And speaking of change, it's the same-old same-old when it comes to raising money:

Republicans have seized on what they say is the hypocrisy of the fundraiser, noting that Obama has pledged not to accept donations from lobbyists — and saying that while at this one he didn't take money from lobbyists, on Friday morning he will.

It's just a little work-around in the rules:

Obama does not accept contributions from political action committees and lobbyists.

While lobbyists and their big bucks won't be around tonight, they and their personal donations will be welcome tomorrow morning at a Democratic event at the same hotel that is not subject to Obama's lobbyist restrictions.

Michael Steele calls it hypocrisy:

"This is the height of hypocrisy and just one more example of President Obama's rhetoric not squaring with reality," said Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC). "Candidate Obama said lobbyists and special interests will not fund the Democratic Party, but now the Democrats are cashing their checks as fast as they come in, 364 days a year."

The New York Times puts it this way:

But at the same downtown hotel on Friday morning, registered lobbyists have not only been invited to attend an issues conference with Democratic leaders, but they have also been asked to come with a $5,000 check in hand if they want to stay in good favor with the party’s House and Senate re-election committees.

The practicality of Mr. Obama’s pledge to change the ways of Washington is colliding once more with the reality of how money, influence and governance interact here. He repeatedly declared while campaigning last year that he would “not take a dime” from lobbyists or political action committees.

So to follow through with that promise, Mr. Obama is simply leaving the room.

Talk about cynical.

http://www.punditandpundette.com/200...hypocrisy.html

Top Obama campaign donor accused of fraud
By JACK GILLUM | Associated Press – 12 hrs ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — A major donor to President Barack Obama has been accused of defrauding a businessman and impersonating a bank official, creating new headaches for Obama's re-election campaign as it deals with the questionable history of another top supporter.

The New York donor, Abake Assongba, and her husband contributed more than $50,000 to Obama's re-election effort this year, federal records show. But Assongba is also fending off a civil court case in Florida, where she's accused of thieving more than $650,000 to help build a multimillion-dollar home in the state — a charge her husband denies.

Obama is the only presidential contender this year who released his list of "bundlers," the financiers who raise campaign money by soliciting high-dollar contributions from friends and associates. But that disclosure has not come without snags; his campaign returned $200,000 last month to Carlos and Alberto Cardona, the brothers of a Mexican fugitive wanted on federal drug charges.

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt declined comment to The Associated Press. He instead referred the AP to previous statements he made to The Washington Post, which first reported the allegations against Assongba in its Sunday editions. LaBolt told the paper 1.3 million Americans have donated to the campaign, and that it addresses issues with contributions promptly.

Assongba was listed on Obama's campaign website as one of its volunteer fundraisers — a much smaller group of about 440 people.

Assongba and her husband, Anthony J.W. DeRosa, run a charity called Abake's Foundation that distributes school supplies and food in Benin, Africa. A photo posted on Assongba's Facebook page shows the couple standing next to Obama at a May 2010 fundraiser.

In one Florida case, which is still ongoing, Swiss businessman Klaus-Werner Pusch accused Assongba in 2009 of engaging him in an email scam — then using the money to buy a multimillion-dollar home, the Post reported. The suit alleges Assongba impersonated a bank official to do it. Pusch referred the AP's questions to his attorney, who did not immediately return requests seeking comment Sunday.

Meanwhile, Assongba has left a trail of debts, with a former landlord demanding in court more than $10,000 in back rent and damages for a previous apartment. She was also evicted in 2004 after owing $5,000 in rent, records show.

In an interview with the AP on Sunday, DeRosa said the allegations against his wife were untrue, although he couldn't discuss specifics because of pending litigation. He said he and Assongba were "very perturbed" by the charges, and said the couple's charity does important work in Africa.

Assongba has given more than $70,000 to Democratic candidates in recent years, an AP review of Federal Election Commission data shows. Her larger contributions include $35,000 to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee between Obama and the Democratic Party, and $15,000 to Democrats running for Congress. DeRosa also gave $15,000 to Obama's victory fund in April 2011, records show.

Abake's Foundation is listed by the IRS as a registered nonprofit organization; its financial reports were unavailable. A representative who picked up the phone at the foundation's Benin office declined to answer questions, and instead referred the AP to Assongba.

Obama's campaign declined to comment on whether its vetting procedures were thorough enough, or whether Assongba's contribution would be refunded. All told, Obama has raised more than $120 million this election, not counting millions more from the Democratic Party — giving him a financial advantage thus far over any of his Republican challengers.

http://news.yahoo.com/top-obama-camp...204442621.html

Here we go again: Obama website accepting contributions from phony donors?
posted at 7:38 pm on April 2, 2012 by Allahpundit

Via Bryan Preston, your must-see clip of the day. http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/04/02...m-nidal-hasan/

But before you watch, re-read Ed’s posts from October 26 http://hotair.com/archives/2008/10/2...real-question/ and October 29 http://hotair.com/archives/2008/10/2...mas-deception/ of 2008. This isn’t the first time AVS protections have mysteriously disappeared from Team Hopenchange’s donations page, and it’s not just the missing security-code field that got them in trouble in 2008. Remember how they made a point of accepting money from untraceable prepaid credit cards then too? WaPo raised an eyebrow at the time: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...803413_pf.html

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…

When asked whether the campaign takes steps to verify whether a donor’s name matches the name on the credit card used to make a payment, Obama’s campaign replied in an e-mail: “Name-matching is not a standard check conducted or made available in the credit card processing industry. We believe Visa and MasterCard do not even have the ability to do this…

Juan Proaño, whose technology firm handled online contributions for John Edwards’s presidential primary campaign, and for John F. Kerry’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee in 2004, said it is possible to require donors’ names and addresses to match those on their credit card accounts. But, he said, some campaigns are reluctant to impose that extra layer of security.

Republican Patrick Ruffini tested Obama’s AVS procedures at the time, attempting to donate five dollars by providing an address different from the one linked to the credit card he used. Result: Transaction accepted. http://www.thenextright.com/patrick-...ne-donor-fraud

Said Ruffini, who worked on online organizing for Bush’s campaign, “The ability to contribute with a false address, when the technology to prevent it not only exists but comes standard, is a green light for fraud.” Note the part too about AVS protections being “standard.” Mark Steyn checked the prefab template for his own little web store at the time and found that the defaults were all set for maximum verification. http://www.nationalreview.com/corner...eet/mark-steyn To make the system as lax as it was — and apparently still is — at BarackObama.com, you had to deliberately weaken its security checks. Which, per the staff’s own admission to WaPo, they did.

I recommend re-reading that old WaPo piece in its entirety as it cites the case of a retired insurance manager whose name had been stolen to donate $174,800 to Obama. In reality, the manager had never donated a cent. Team O claims that they catch all this stuff on the back end when they review the names and donations to look for suspicious activity, which is easy to do when the phony contribution came from “Bart Simpson” but not so easy to do when it came from “Paul Smith” or some other generic yet plausible (and possibly stolen) name. In fact, the end result of all this nonsense was an FEC discretionary review (i.e. audit) of the campaign. You would think, after that, that they’d do everything by the book this time. But when your fundraising’s going worse than expected, maybe your priorities change — assuming anti-fraud priorities were ever there to begin with.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzRzs...layer_embedded

Exit question: Should we be worried that these same guys are pioneering new ways to donate electronically?


http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/0...-phony-donors/

comments

I seem to also remember.. that back in 2008, people were getting charges on their credit cards towards the Obama campaign.. and they never donated. The charges just appeared and that was it. They ended up donating whether they had wanted to or not.

...

The FEC is basically an arm of the DNC at this point.

..

This is a case study in liberals can be openly corrupt, even admit they turn off the security ware to allow phoney donations, but they’ll check, maybe, later,.. if they feel like it.

and the MSM says nothing..

crickets….

but hey, lets check into a speech some republican gave a decade ago in case there’s something we can extrapolate into another smear..

hey.. HEY.. WE TOLD YOU TO LOOK AWAY…

The MSM, Obama’s Praetorian Guard..

When did my country turn into a pale nite-mare imitation of the old Soviet Empire? They haven’t reached the worst criminal excesses yet, but even if they did, would the MSM even care?

apparently not.

This is surreal… no way this is my country, when the news media doesn’t care that the president they shilled for and prop up, is dirty, just

do

not

care…

Obama to Hollywood Donors:
We Haven’t Quite Broken the Republican Party Yet
Posted by Jim Hoft on Monday, May 13, 2013, 5:16 PM

Barack Obama held another fundraiser last night with Jessica Biel, Justin Timberlake and other Hollwood elitists at Harvey Weinstein’s house.

Barack Obama held a fundraiser with Hollywood leftists last night. During the high-dollar event Obama told his supporters that he hasn’t quite broken the the Republicans yet. He also blamed Rush Limbaugh for the gridlock in Washington DC.

The Atlantic Wire reported: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/polit...imbaugh/65187/

President Obama told donors like Jessica Biel, Justin Timberlake (who was wearing hipster glasses), and Tommy Hilfiger that Washington gridlock is pretty much Rush Limbaugh’s fault on Monday evening at a fundraiser at Harvey Weinstein’s house in New York’s Greenwich Village.

Obama admitted that his theory — that after the 2012 election, the Republican “fever” would break, and they’d decide to co-sign some of his agenda — was wrong. “My thinking was when we beat them in 2012 that might break the fever, and it’s not quite broken yet,” Obama said, according to the White House pool report. This is because of a certain corpulent radio host. “I genuinely believe there are Republicans out there who would like to work with us but they’re fearful of their base and they’re concerned about what Rush Limbaugh might say about them. And as a consequence we get the kind of gridlock that makes people cynical about government.”

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013...can-party-yet/

comments

Since America has recently passed the 40th Anniversary of Watergate, it's fitting to note the eerie Nixon-Obama Parallels:

Obama Administration Replaces Top Generals Following Benghazi Disaster...Sounds like OBAMA has repeated Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre. The similarities between the two don't stop there....

NIXON: Invoked Executive Privilege to cover up his involvement in a scheme to subvert an election
OBAMA: Invoked Executive Privilege to cover up his involvement in a scheme to subvert the Second Amendment to the US Constitution which resulted in the deaths of two US border Patrol agents and thousands of mexican citizens.

NIXON: Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Colson and Mitchell
OBAMA: Jarrett, Emanuel, Axelrod, van Jones, Ayers, Dorn, Wright, Holder, Rezko, Jennings....

NIXON: Appointed a political hack Attorney General who politicized ALL DOJ actions and became the SECOND WORST AG IN AMERICAN HISTORY
OBAMA: Appointed a racist political hack Attorney General who racially focused and politicized ALL DOJ actions and became the WORST AG IN AMERICAN HISTORY

NIXON: A lawyer who disrespected the law
OBAMA: A lawyer who disrespects the law, the US Constitution, American values, Catholics, free enterprise, Jews, job creators, American Exceptionalism, Israel, American citizens....

NIXON: Kissed butt of America's enemy, the Chinese Communists
OBAMA: Kisses butt of each and every enemy of America

NIXON: Created an ENEMIES LIST of people who didn't support him and used the LIST to intimidate, harass and slur innocent people
OBAMA: Created an ENEMIES LIST of people who do not support him and uses the LIST to intimidate, harass and slur innocent people and have various agencies in the OBOZO regime go after these individual with the intent of destroying their business and/or livelihood.

NIXON: Used the IRS to harass and intimidate his "emenies"
OBAMA: ditto - but added his DOJ to do the same.

NIXON: Engaged in a massive cover-up of his crimes in Watergate
OBAMA: Engaged in a massive cover-up of his negligence and crimes in Benghazi and in the Fast and Furious gun-running operation - BOTH of which lead to DEATHS of American citizens.

NIXON: A chronic LIAR
OBAMA: A chronic, habitual, shameless, pathological, congenital, serial LIAR - to the billionth power

NIXON: Resigned is disgrace; pardoned by his dumb-@$$, incompetent, bumbling former VP
OBAMA: Hopefully resigns in disgrace or is thrown out of office in Nov. and takes his dumb-@$$, incompetent, bumbling VP with him.

...

All correct except Obama is too big a narcissist to resign. He will play the race card, victim card blame everyone else

..

Our cynicism about government has nothing to do with Rush and everything to do with those who occupy the seats of power.

..

I don't lsten to Rush, I'm admittedly and unapologetically moderate. My opinion of Obama, his agenda and M.O. is strictly obsevational. His followers may not have an ounce of independent, intelligent thought, but the rest of us do

..

That is our dear leader. President Oblamesomeoneelse!!!!