Fraudulent Obama Fundraising Will Probably Go Uninvestigated

Remember the reports about Obama receiving questionable campaign contributions? So does Douchebag Report.

Last December, someone using the name “Test Person,” from “Some Place, UT,” made a series of contributions, the largest being $764, to Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign totaling $2,410.07.

Someone identifying himself as “Jockim Alberton,” from 1581 Leroy Avenue in Wilmington, Del., began giving to Mr. Obama last November, contributing $10 and $25 at a time for a total of $445 through the end of February.

The only problem? There is no Leroy Avenue in Wilmington. And Jockim Alberton, who listed his employer and occupation as “Fdsa Fdsa,” does not show up in a search of public records.

The New York Times found nearly 3000 donations with apparently fictitious donor information.

Despite these red flags, it’s unlikely that the Federal Election Commission is going to audit the Obama fundraising campaign.

Obama is expected to escape that level of scrutiny mostly because he declined an $84 million public grant for his campaign that automatically triggers an audit and because the sheer volume of cash he raised and spent minimizes the significance of his errors. Another factor: The FEC, which would have to vote to launch an audit, is prone to deadlocking on issues that inordinately impact one party or the other – like approving a messy and high-profile probe of a sitting president.

So that’s it.  No Presidential candidate is ever going to go with public financing ever again.  One can raise a lot more money and not get audited.

It’s not as though there isn’t already a lot of red meat for the accountants at the FEC.

Obama’s campaign admitted it initially mis-categorized the purpose of an $832,598 payment for get-out-the-vote efforts to a consulting firm affiliated with ACORN, the community organizing group that became a top target for Republicans alleging voter fraud.
And FEC analysts over the course of the campaign have written more than a dozen letters to Obama singling out hundreds of contributors for whom the campaign either didn’t supply adequate information or from whom he accepted donations exceeding the $4,600 limit.

Amazingly, the sheer scale of Obama’s fundraising effort helps protect him from triggering an audit. The formula the FEC uses to determine whether a campaign should be audited takes into account the amount of money that campaign raised.

“So if a House campaign makes a $100,000 error, that’s huge and they’re likely to get audited,” he said. “If a campaign the size of the Obama campaign has a $100,000 error, then maybe not. It would depend on what the error is, obviously,” he said, explaining that mere accounting snafus are unlikely to prompt an audit. More serious and systemic problems, such as illegal contributions, result in campaigns getting tagged with more “audit points,” Mason explained. “If you get enough audit points, you get audited,” he said, adding “nobody outside the commission would know how many audit points the Obama campaign has.”

Even if the Obama campaign was to trigger an audit recommendation, an audit wouldn’t be authorized unless a majority of the three Democrat and three Republican commissioners voted for it, which is extremely unlikely.

So there you go.  Why bother following campaign finance laws at all?  It appears that the Obama campaign has already followed that question to its logical conclusion.

Switch Continues

Having setting a successful "bait", the Obama campaign is continuing it’s "switch", attempting to "tamp down what his aides fear are unusually high expectations among his supporters".

Mr. Obama’s advisers said they were startled, if gratified, by the jubilation that greeted the news of Mr. Obama’s victory in much of the United States and abroad. But while the energy of his supporters could be a tremendous political asset as Mr. Obama works to enact his agenda after taking office in January, his aides said they were looking to temper hopes that he would be able to solve the nation’s problems or fully reverse Bush administration policies quickly and easily, especially given the prospect of a deep and long-lasting recession.

There was no word from the Obama camp as to what might have created there "unusually high expectations".

Be Careful What You Wish For

When California voters went to the polls this week, they did so overwhelmingly for Barack Obama.  Along the way, though, they managed to pass Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage.

Ironically, it appears that high turnout among African-Americans is what helped take Proposition 8 over the top. White Democrats overwhelmingly opposed the measure.

It’s quite probable that if the Democrats had nominated Hillary Clinton, they would have won the election, without African-American turnout making up 10% of the vote (up 4% from 2004).  Instead, the Far Left(where a large portion of the gay population can be found) handed the nomination to Obama…leading to a defeat for gay rights.

Ironic also, is that African-Americans took the opportunity of what many think is their greatest triumph to oppress another minority.

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