No More Incumbents Blog

Here’s an illustrative little political cartoon that greeted me this morning when I opened up my stupid newspaper(the same paper that can’t seem to spell things on their front page and makes the most ridiculous mistakes with a staff of writers and editors to back them up).I thought the image in general summed up the situation rather nicely. It strikes me that the Democratic Party that should be positioned to wrestle power away from Republicans after a two term Presidential night mare of the Bush Administration, but instead seems to be bound and determined to show all Americans just how screwed up Democrats and specifically the Democrat Party and Democrat Party leaders really are.

In a way the extra screwy antics of Howard Dean (Can you imagine how bad of a President he would have been? He can’t even put on a Democratic primary. Democrats are lucky he didn’t get elected. He probably would have made George W look good, because he would have shaved off the worst half of the 2 terms and obviously Dean couldn’t even manage a hole in the head.)

This Democratic Primary has proven to be completely un-democratic. In fact the Democrats have made the term ‘Democratic Primary’ into a complete oxymoron. This should be a wake up call for voters.

Sure if you vote a Democrat in 2008, you are taking power away from Republicans that couldn’t spell the word ‘manage’ when they were trying to manage a hole in their head. At first glance kicking Republicans out of power, seems like a good idea. But consider just how screwed up Democrats are proving themselves to be before they even get power.

-Taking the Vote Away from Florida and Michigan Voters (I’m not talking about following the party rules. The rules were setup one way, so that the people (you know those ‘We the people types’ could not express their views and pick the candidate that they wanted. That is not very democratic when you cook the rules and fail to compromise with millions of people in 2 of the most important voting blocks in the country.)

-Campaign Contributions Down the Drain (Consider all of those millions of dollars that have been donated to the Democratic party over the last year, only to get flushed down the drain in the primary itself as opposed to being used to compete against Republicans.)

-Don’t forget about the 2006 Democratic Takeover Fiasco (You may remember that Democrats were given power in 2006 to get us out of Iraq and put the Checks and Balances Back in government against George W. Not sure if you have noticed lately but we are still in Iraq and the Checks and Balances and the Constitution itself have been decimated even more since 2006.)

Instead of sending Republicans packing in 2008, Democrats through their policy of full implementation and disclosure of all their own issues might send Republicans un-packing their Rimowa designer luggage to stay permanently in the White House.

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Without calling out the demons (and examples) of past elections, we would like to explore the topic of money laundering in the campaign election cycle.  Criminals that launder money work through a very similar process that campaign contributors work through when they work to donate large sums of money to various campaigns.  Its not a coincidence that both activities are illegal either!

This is going to be the first part in a series of articles exploring Campaign Contributions in the current election cycle.  This is likely to be one of the most expensive election cycles in the history of the United States and with big money comes big opportunities for corruption and corrupters seeking influence over the process and influence over the future office holders.

Commonalities between Money Laundering and Campaign Contribution Fraud

The motivation to launder money and the motivation to skirt or break campaign contribution laws are very similar.  Money laundering has the goal of taking large sums of illegally gotten gains (money) and transferring it and converting it in a way that hides the money’s illegal sources.  The US Federal government, the FBI and even Homeland Security watch for this and have a number of tools at their disposal.  Plus, they have a lot of practice at putting two and two together as they chase the criminal element 24/7/365.

The Federal Election Committee (FEC) however does not quite have the expertise, the people power, nor the legislative clout to track campaign contributions and this in the past has enabled elected officials to receive large contributions from big donors in the form of smaller contributions split up amongst what appears to be many donors.  This has taken the form of employers providing bonuses to their employees who are then supposed to pass on that bonus to a political campaign.  We have seen money given by foreign governments, their agents, or shady people with ties to the same, giving money to nuns, monks, religious organizations, even poor people and immigrants pressured into helping a political campaign that will never help them in any form or fashion.

Electronic Payment Processes into the Election Process Enabling Election Fraud and Money Laundering

A little thing came along in 2004 however that has turned the election process and fund raising in particular inside out.  Its the internet and the communication medium that used to be famous for connecting people to cheap flights can now enable contributors to funnel money to a candidate through hundreds if not thousands of donors with just a few clicks and in ways that are not tracked and can easily be subverted.

There are many many good reasons why Americans should be and in many case are more concerned and active in politics during this election cycle.  However, Americans have been given good reasons in the past as well and when it came to politics and elections in particular the honest truth is that we often times sleep through the process in mass.  With that in mind, it would be nice and pleasant for us to assume that the massive amounts of money going into the political process through 2007 and now 2008 are from valid and legitimate campaign contributors.  Unfortunately, this is the first election cycle in history where electronic payments are present and utilized around the country and around the world by a rapidly growing number of people.

That change makes it very possible for valid contributors to receive funds electronically and turn that money around in a contribution to a political candidate or campaign.  On the darkest side, it also makes it very possible for a single contributor to take funds convert them into multiple varieties of electronic currency and make contributions to political candidates in the name of legitimate donors.  In many situations this could even be done in a way that a political candidate or a PAC or other group, could receive the funds and never be able to tell a valid donation from an invalid donation.  Furthermore, when the campaigns follow through and make their monthly reports to the FEC, the campaigns reporting and the FEC receiving could easily miss the transactions taking place and the source of the funds behind those transactions.

Future Installments in our Campaign Finance and Money Laundering Series

In our next installments in this series, we will take a closer look at the mediums of transmission that could be involved in this process.  Then we will look at some differences in the structures used by campaigns taking place today that could subject the campaigns to abuse.   We will even look at situations or methods that could enable actual money laundering operations to utilize their illegal skills to influence actual political campaigns. Finally, we will take a look at some of the techniques that the FEC is using to combat this problem and what you can do to help. 

A small non-scandal almost erupted this week when it came to light that Barack Obama doesn’t have the grass roots support that we all thought he had.  Barack does not outsource the sale of political trinkets like pens, bumper stickers and banners.

So if you buy one of these things with your credit cards or pay with a check, he has to count it as a contribution and you as a contributor compared to his opponents that outsource this to companies, that just pass along the profits minus the names of contributors.  So Barack appears to have more small contributors and other candidates appear to be missing those contributors when in reality the number are apples to oranges (and there is a potential that those companies are selling those things to big businesses but that’s another issue).

The thing is there is a party in the middle of those transactions that has a political agenda of their own.  Your Credit card company and your bank.  They are by default collecting information about your spending habits and political contributions.  You might think that you are saving some money (or donating more) when you use cash back credit cards for example. But your credit card company is getting information about you and they are charging your candidate a fee for the transaction.

These same credit card companies lobby government officials for actions that benefit the credit card companies.  To a certain extent they have an inside track (binocular view) on where the money is flowing and which way the polls might go that is much more accurate than a CNN poll run by a company owned by Bill Clinton’s employer(Nice little factual tidbit there!)

So how do you avoid giving banks or credit card companies that type of information to be used against your political interests?  You can’t very well go drop a pile of cash in Hillary Clinton’s hands (the line might be too long and often gets confused for the lines to buy Harry Potter books).

Its not necessarily practical either to establish a credit card account with a bank that is outside of your own country.  For example, it might look a little strange if all of a sudden 30 million people started using UK credit cards to provide contributions to Mitt Romney even after taking the time to compare credit card rates abroad. There are laws against foreign donors, but not necessarily laws against national donors with foreign credit cards (provided you do not have money illegally stashed in an offshore account that you neglected to tell the IRS about. That would be a severe no no and something that typically the IRS only allows multinational companies to do.)

Cindy Sheehan is preparing to make some big headlines.  She has given House Speaker (D) Nancy Pelosi until July 23rd to file articles of impeachment against George Bush.  If Pelosi fails to file for impeachment then Nancy Sheehan will announce her run for Pelosi’s office.

Nancy Pelosi has recently inherited power as the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives.  Pelosi is no stranger to the house.  She has served in the House for 20 years, that’s 10 terms + that Pelosi has been an incumbent.  She has taken in over $7 million in contributions over the years, more than half of that from PACs.  Occidental Petroleum and Kleiner Perkins, a high profile high tech venture capital firm, were her largest individual contributors.  Her PAC was fined $21,000 a few years back for taking excessive campaign contributions over the allowed limits.

She has maintained a high profile in the House since the Democrats have taken power, but true to form as an incumbent, she has achieved very little.  Many Democrats that elected the Democratic party into power in 2006 wanted the Democrats to get the troops out of Iraq, end the war and impeach George Bush.  However, there is no political capital to be gained by seasoned incumbents in going through an impeachment process.

Cindy Sheehan has sold her protest ranch in Crawford and is traveling the country on her way to Washington where she will announce her run for office when or if Pelosi fails to file articles of impeachment against Bush.  Pelosi represents the 8th district of California in San Francisco.

Cindy Sheehan has indicated that she is intent on making incumbent politicians that have not lived up to their promises pay.