"Although the Commission may take further legal action, prompt action by you to refund, redesignate, and/or reattribute of the excessive amount will be taken into consideration.”
Among the complaints identified by the FEC, Bachmann had “one or more contributions that appear to exceed the limits set forth in the Act,” “incorrect values in the ‘Election Cycle-to-Date’ field,” “contributions from individuals for which the identification is not complete,” and the report “contains entries for contributions made by more than one person.”
Michele Bachmann, you've got some 'splainin' to do to those law and order Tea Tantrumers you pal around with.
Buried deep within the Internet, there is a place called the Federal Election Commission. Buried deeper within the Federal Election Commission, there is a place where any interested party can view requests for advisory opinions, read both sides’ arguments for and against, comment, and listen to the audio of public hearings.
Buried deeper still, are the seeds of a plan to circumvent all election finance laws and everything we know right now about so-called ‘astroturf organizations’ in a perfectly legal, United States Federal Election Commission-approved kind of way. [...]
People who might otherwise make donations to 527 groups (which are subject to campaign disclosure laws), will instead incorporate on their own as Limited Liability Corporations (LLCs). Each corporation will advertise, take polls, or conduct direct media campaigns for or against Federal candidates as they choose. The corporation will not accept any funds from any outside sources. Simply put, wealthy donors will no longer be restricted to current contribution limits or disclosure laws because they will be acting individually as a corporation to put their message on the air. This has long been held to be a First Amendment right of individuals. They’re allowed to spend whatever they want. It isn’t new. [...]
It’s not difficult to imagine 100 different Swiftboat ads, each with the same message but a different messenger, a messenger who is a client of Black Rock Group and involved in the same campaign against the same candidate. [...]
[W]e will be inundated with negative campaign ads funded by shadow entities who will be shielded from the light of day. They will say whatever they want to say in whatever fashion they want to say it, including the usual smear tactics, but will never have to own one word of what they’ve said, because they are shielded by a corporate entity surrounding the individual.
That’s the real problem here. If a Goldman Sachs executive wants to go negative on a candidate and has the funds to pay for it, no one will ever be able to point back to Goldman Sachs, nor will that executive ever have to own the words.Now multiply that by a factor of many, all blasting the same message over radio, tv, push poll, polls, and other means. It’s lucrative for Black Rock Group, shields candidates from associations they’d rather not disclose, and inundates the rest of us with a barrage of ‘nattering nabobs of negativity.’
This isn’t astroturf. It’s a concrete firewall, intended to shield and protect the messenger who brings destructive messages.
Former Gov. Sarah Palin's political action committee gave excessive contributions to two well-known Republicans and also is facing demands from the federal government for more detailed financial information on a number of fronts.
The deficiencies are highlighted in a five-page letter sent Aug. 19 by a Federal Elections Commission staffer to SarahPAC treasurer Tim Crawford. The FEC wants answers by Sept. 24.
"Failure to adequately respond by the response date noted above could result in an audit or enforcement action," FEC campaign finance analyst Allen Norfleet wrote.
Oh, come on, don't get all mad at her and stuff. It was just a computer program glitch. Don't look back, only look forward.
"I think you can say it was sloppiness on my part and my attorney's part," Crawford said, referring to the contributions. "We fouled up there. But it's been fixed." He said SarahPAC's lawyer is Mark Braden of Washington, D.C.
Wowzers, it's a good thing somebody as important as the F.E.C. caught that sloppiness or it might never have been fixed, right?
Or was it "fixed" from the start?
Crawford said SarahPAC uses election software, similar to TurboTax for income taxes, that walks aides through required disclosures. When they filed the mid-year report to the FEC, no violations were noted, so they thought they had done it correctly.
Typical Rushpublic response: Blame everyone and everything but yourselves.
I remember reading about this when it was going on, and it was obviously paying for votes. I'm sorry he didn't get fined more.
U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman's campaign will pay a $50,000 penalty to settle allegations of improper petty cash payments made to workers during a hard-fought race in 2006 for the U.S. Senate.
The agreement between the Federal Election Commission and the Lieberman camp stems from a complaint filed by the campaign of Ned Lamont, Lieberman's opponent. Lamont beat Lieberman in the Democratic primary, but Lieberman won the general election after running as an independent.
"It is a pretty significant penalty," Lamont's campaign manager, Tom Swan, said Monday.
Swan had asked the Federal Election Commission to review about $350,0000 in cash expenditures Lieberman reported as stipends paid to workers in the two weeks before the Democratic primary. The money was used for about 1,000 canvassers in the campaign's get-out-the-vote efforts, documents show.
President Barack Obama’s appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” during last year’s Democratic presidential primary did not violate campaign finance laws, according to a Federal Election Commission decision made public on Monday.
Federal Election Commissioners have approved an agreement by which Sen. Jim DeMint's (R-S.C.) campaign will pay a $25,000 fine for accepting contributions above legal limits, according to files made public Friday.
The freshman senator, who has emerged as a leading conservative voice, accepted $68,000 in excessive contributions during his 2004 bid to replace ex-Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings (D-S.C.). [...]
The FEC also released judgments against Kalyn Free, who ran for the Democratic nomination in Oklahoma’s 2nd District in 2004, and against Suzanne Haik Terrell (R), who narrowly lost a 2002 challenge to Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.).
The judgment against Terrell requires the candidate's committee to refund more than $625,000 in contributions and pay a fine of $42,543 for accepting illegal corporate contributions. Several individuals will pay fines ranging from $2,500 to $8,000 for their roles in the campaign.
In what the Washington Post called "perhaps the most ill-timed press release of the 2008 campaign," the California Republican Party announced that they'd filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging that Sen. Barack Obama had illegally funneled funds from his campaign account for his personal use.
The use? Visiting his dying grandmother, whose passing was announced this afternoon.
Timing is everything, isn't it, you sensitive members of the GOP, you?
The GOP sent the release at 1:30 pm ET, a few hours before Obama's grandmother's death was announced.
"Obama for America violated federal law by converting its campaign funds to Senator Obama's personal use," the release stated. "Senator Obama recently traveled to Hawaii to visit his sick grandmother. This was the right thing for any grandson to do -- at his own expense -- but it was not travel that his campaign may fund."
Federal law prohibits campaigns from using campaign funds for personal travel. Obama's campaign said beforehand that they had reviewed the trips with their lawyers and believed it was allowable. Republicans, meanwhile, contend that because Obama did not campaign in Hawaii, it should not have been budgeted as a campaign expense.
Obama announced Monday that the grandmother who brought him up had died, aged 86. He flew to Hawaii to visit Madelyn Dunham's side in Hawaii two weeks ago, fearing she would not live to see what polls suggest may be his triumph.
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) plans to file a fundraising complaint Monday alleging that John McCain's campaign accepted contributions that exceeded the federal limits and took donations from anonymous backers.
Democrats say in the complaint to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that Sen. McCain's (R-Ariz.) presidential campaign received 6,653 donations that each were at least $1,000 greater than the $2,300 donation limit. McCain also took 23 anonymous contributions that were greater than the $50 limit on donations from unnamed supporters, the complaint says. The complaint is based on records provided by the McCain campaign on its own website.
The DNC is asking the FEC to conduct an audit of all of McCain’s contributions.
I'll give you one guess as to how Gramm-pa reacted. Yep:
The McCain campaign has yet to respond to questions about the complaint.
Oh, that wacky Obama and his insistence that elections are run properly. What are we going to do with him?
John McCain and the Republican National Committee reported having a combined $84 million as of last week to spend before Election Day, according to reports filed Thursday with the Federal Election Commission.
McCain, who has accepted public financing for his campaign, is restricted in his spending. As of Oct. 15 he had more than $25 million in hand, but more than $1 million debts. The RNC, which has been helping his candidacy, had more than $59 million in the bank.
At McCain's spending rate of $1.5 million a day, the Arizona senator likely has only $12 million to spend in the next 11 days before the Nov. 4 election. [...]
If Obama sustains or exceeds his $5 million a day fundraising rate, he could report at least $75 million in new money in his pre-general election filings.
While the Republican Party is pushing the Federal Election Commission to investigate the possibility that Democrat Barack Obama collected excessive contributions, its own candidate is facing scrutiny on the same subject.
The FEC sent a letter to Sen. John McCain's campaign treasurer Sept. 30 demanding the candidate turn over more information about "contributions that appear to exceed the limits."
The letter is accompanied by a nine-page list showing scores of overages from McCain's August campaign finance report, including nearly $13,000 from Texas rancher Ray R. Barrett Jr.; $9,200 from an Iraqi security consultant, H. Carter Andress; and $5,000 from Joseph F. Davolio, an executive at a major national liquor, beer, and wine distributor.
"Please inform the Commission of your corrective action immediately in writing and provide photocopies of any refund checks and/or letters reattributing or redesignating the contributions in question," the letter from the FEC's senior campaign finance analyst, Leah S. Palmer, says. "The acceptance of excessive contributions is a serious problem."
The Republican National Committee's complaint about "foreign" contributions to Barack Obama's presidential campaign is a directed, political tactic designed to raise questions about Obama's foreign-ness and otherness.
There's a reasonable answer to all the head-scratching.
Federal campaign finance law forbids campaigns from accepting donations from foreign nationals. The complaint will be formally filed with the FEC Monday. The RNC is requesting that the FEC begin auditing Obama's campaign contributions. [...]
RNC General Counsel Sean Carincross said various press reports have called into question at least 11,500 donors names. Those names donated approximately $33.8 million to Obama's campaign.
Carincross said, "There were no quality control devices," such as a method to verify a U.S. passport if a citizen was donating to Obama's campaign from overseas. He said he believed Obama had knowingly accepted foreign donations and taken no reasonable action to investigate the illegal donations.
Rightie sites are running with this. I have no idea what to make of it.
This morning, a full six members of the Federal Election Commission took their seats and announced they were back after a strange, seven-month hiatus. In their first official action, the commission elected a new chairman, Donald McGahn, who previously served as the lead lawyer for the House Republicans' campaign committee and handled legal work for former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas).
The Democratic National Committee said Tuesday it plans to file a lawsuit next week to try to force a federal investigation over whether John McCain’s withdrawal from the public financing system violated the law – the latest move in an effort that dates back to February, when the Arizona senator effectively clinched the Republican presidential nomination. [...]
The new suit, which the party plans to file in U.S. District Court next week, is intended to force the agency to take action before that period ends June 24.
Chipping away at the stellar reputation of the not-so-straight-talking John Sidney McWrongOnSoManyLevels.
ABC News' Rick Klein Reports: A watchdog group is launching an advertising campaign and filing an FEC complaint questioning the McCain campaign's ties to lobbyists, as Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama spar over each other's ties to special interests.
The TV ad from Campaign Money Watch, set to run on Washington, D.C., broadcast and cable outlets starting Monday, focuses on McCain's role in the awarding of an Air Force contract that would eventually go to the French company Airbus instead of the American company Boeing.
"Seven of McCain’s staff and fundraisers lobbied for Airbus," the ad says. "And guess what? John McCain intervened, which helped Airbus get that Pentagon contract. Tell John McCain to kick those lobbyists off the Straight Talk Express."
His lobbyist ties are eating him alive. The plot gets murkier and smirkier:
The group is also asking the Federal Election Commission to investigate two other public reports that touch on McCain's connections to lobbyists: That a lobbying company, the Loeffler Group LLP, made payments this year to McCain's national finance director, Susan Nelson; and that a company controlled in part by campaign manager Rick Davis sliced more than $100,000 off of McCain campaign's tab, when the campaign was starved for cash last year.
While working for Loeffler, Nelson lobbied on behalf of Airbus. Newsweek reported last monththat Nelson was rehired early this year as a consultant for the company, while on the McCain campaign's payroll.
Now that wasn't very smart, was it? Those could be considered "illegal corporate contributions", per an FEC complaint. Why, here's part of that complaint now!
"Simply asserting, without evidence, that they have done nothing wrong does not, in our judgment, satisfactorily answer the serious possibility that federal election law has been violated on at least two separate occasions."
The ol' denial routine has always been enough to keep BushCo off the hook. John Sidney McSame is Bush redux, so why admit to any wrongdoing? Fine with me. Let him continue to chug away on the Straight Talk Express, with one minor stipulation: They have to install bars on all the windows and doors... and rename it the Straight Talk Prison.
By GottaLaff Dear Mister President, I ran out of money, and my wife is throwing pots and pans at me, so I am pretty much outta here:
Controversial nominee Hans von Spakovsky withdrew his nomination from the Federal Election Commission on Friday, potentially ending a standoff that had crippled the FEC.
In a letter to Bush, von Spakovsky cited the two-and-a-half-year length of his pending nomination and said the process “has been extremely hard on my family.”
"Quite frankly, we do not have the financial resources to continue to wait until this matter is resolved,” von Spakovsky wrote.
Translation: He needs to spend more time with his angry family. Gosh! Will we finally get that FEC we've always dreamed of?
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) termed the news "a victory for our electoral process" and said he anticipated the Senate would "swiftly put a functioning FEC in place."
What's been holding up the works? It's not like the two opposing parties have been at each others throats or anything. ... ... Psyche!
The FEC is supposed to have six commissioners, but only has two confirmed because of a standoff in the Senate over von Spakovsky. Republicans had refused to move Democratic FEC nominees unless Democrats allowed von Spakowsky’s nomination to proceed.
Republicans are such babies. Like they have anything at stake here, right? What? They do?
Because of the impasse, there are not enough FEC commissioners to hold a quorum and it has not been able to rule on a number of issues, including public financing inquiries from presumptive GOP nominee Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
So what is so important that the Democrats shunned poor ol' Hans?
Democrats accused von Spakovsky of not supporting voting rights for minorities when he was an official with the Department of Justice. Republicans have repeatedly defended him and said the charges are unfair.
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