Throughout this campaign Barack Obama has run on the mantra of change, change, change. For example, he changed his views of earmarks after it became politically inconvenient. However, that didn’t stop him from making sure that his closest friends and supporters were taken care of:
Sen. Barack Obama, who vows to change Washington by trimming wasteful spending and disclosing special-interest requests, wrote the Bush administration last year to seek a multimillion-dollar federal grant for a Chicago housing project that is behind schedule and whose development team includes a longtime political supporter.
Mr. Obama’s letter, however, was never disclosed publicly. In fact, the letter was ghostwritten for him by a consultant for the Chicago Housing Authority, which wanted the money – a practice ethics watchdogs have frequently criticized.
The housing project through July had completed fewer than one-sixth of the 439 public housing units it had planned, court records show.
The Bush administration obliged Mr. Obama’s request, awarding a $20 million competitive grant last month from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). It called the project a “shining example” of urban revitalization. The Washington Times learned of the letter from Republican operatives.
As Mr. Obama campaigns for president as an agent of change who promises to clean up Washington’s money game, his role in the Stateway project raises questions about the appearance of a conflict of interest and whether he has been participating in the very system he criticizes, watchdogs say.
Now some say that earmarks and similar state funds can be very helpful for communities. I think there may be some logic to that, but certainly not in these kinds of situations:
A charity being probed after it was handed $100,000 of taxpayers’ money by Barack Obama is headed by an “opportunist” whose own family wouldn’t trust him with a dime, The Post has learned.
Chicago Better Housing Association boss Kenny Smith is so desperate for cash, he launched a bitter courtroom battle with his 73-year-old disabled mom in an unsuccessful bid to take control of her $1,400-a-month pension and Social Security payouts, according to court papers and relatives.
His family last week told The Post they were amazed that Smith – a former volunteer for Obama who has donated $550 to his various campaigns – was trusted with the hefty state grant to build a botanic garden in his blighted South Side Chicago neighborhood.
Land earmarked for the plan is still overgrown and covered in garbage – eight years after then-state Sen. Obama steered the pork-barrel funds to the program.
The Illinois attorney general last month launched an investigation to find out what the Chicago Better Housing Association did with the cash.
“I wouldn’t go as far as saying Kenny’s an out-and-out crook, but he’s an opportunist,” said his brother-in-law, Robert Thomas.
Then, finally, Roll Call reveals that pro-Obama lobbyists have figured a work-around to the Senator’s famous ban on donations from their “ilk.” From Roll Call:
Obama has pledged to forgo lobbyists’ political contributions and minimized their role within his campaign. Yet, for the past two years, many lobbyists have found creative ways to stay involved, volunteering on policy committees or having spouses contribute to the campaign.
More recently, Washington-area lobbyists and lawyers have looked across the Potomac to the battleground state of Virginia to put their dollars and volunteer hours to use.
While lobbyists are also prevented from contributing to the Democratic National Committee, they can donate to Democratic state parties.
Last month, more than two dozen Democratic lawyers, lobbyists and political insiders did just that, holding a major fundraiser for the Democratic Party of Virginia.
The fundraiser’s primary purpose was to raise money for get-out-the-vote efforts, which would help all Democratic candidates on the ballot in Virginia.
The Sept. 16 event at Hogan & Hartson’s Washington office raised more than $125,000.
Headlined by a pair of Virginia Democrats, Gov. Tim Kaine and Senate candidate Mark Warner, it also included a number of early Obama supporters and longtime Democratic operatives.
Co-hosts included Stan Fendley of Corning, Tom Walls of McGuireWoods Consulting, Mike House of Hogan & Hartson, John Buscher of Holland & Knight and Dwight Fettig of Arnold & Porter, among others.
Virginia Democratic Reps. Bobby Scott and Jim Moran were also in attendance.
Virginia Democratic Party spokesman Jared Leopold said the state party has more than 2,000 new donors both within Virginia and across the Potomac.
“We’ve seen a dramatic increase in volunteers here in Virginia,” Leopold said. “It doesn’t matter to us if you are a lobbyist or a college kid. The point is to get out there and knock on doors.”
While the Virginia Democratic Party was the only beneficiary of the event, it was nonetheless an outlet for those frustrated by Obama’s strictures against lobbyists contributing to the greater Democratic Party cause, said one Democrat at the event.
Many Democrats have been blowing off the McCain campaign’s attempts to bring to light Barack Obama’s true relationship with Bill Ayers, head of the left-wing terrorist organization Weather Underground in the 1960’s. They say that Obama was 8, he had nothing to do with the attacks, Ayer’s is just an old reformed radical.
And there is some truth to that. Obama cannot be held morally responsible for Ayer’s actions. That would just be irresponsible for Republicans to make that claim. The larger, and far more important issue, is Ayer’s current work, and his vision for American education. From Investor’s Business Daily:
“School reformer” is how Brokaw identified the co-founder of the Weather Underground, the radical organization that, among other activities, bombed government buildings, banks, police departments and military bases in the early 1970s.
Yeah, right: Ayers is a school reformer in the same sense, as City Journal’s Sol Stern put it, as Joe Stalin was an agricultural reformer.
An idea of what Ayers has in mind for America’s schools was provided in his own words not 40 years ago when Obama was eight years old, but less than two years ago in November 2006 at the World Education Forum in Caracas hosted by dictator Hugo Chavez.
With Chavez at his side, Ayers voiced his support for “the political educational reforms under way here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chavez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution. . . . I look forward to seeing how . . . all of you continue to overcome the failures of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane.”
Ayers told the great humanitarian Chavez: “Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions large and small. La educacion es revolucion.” It is that form of socialist revolution that Ayers, and Obama, have worked to bring to America.
Ayers, now a tenured Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago, works to educate teachers in socialist revolutionary ideology, urging that it be passed on to impressionable students.
As Stern points out, “Ayers and his education school comrades are explicit about the need to indoctrinate public school children in the belief that America is a racist, militarist country and that the capitalist system is inherently unfair and oppressive.”
If Ayers was just another nutty professor, we’d be lucky. But he wields great influence in academic circles and has had Obama’s ear. He’s the author or editor of 15 books. Chicago’s current mayor, Richard M. Daley, has employed Ayers as a teacher trainer for Chicago’s public schools and consulted him on the city’s education-reform plans.
Look closer. Ayer’s agenda remains a radical one, even if he has embraced the pragmatism of Saul Alinksy’s world view in his old age. Insiders have repeatedly admitted that Ayers served as the “guiding light” of the Chicago Annenberg Foundation, and Ayers’s own projects have recieved funding. One such project:
One of Ayers’ descriptions for a course called “Improving Learning Environments” says a prospective K-12 teacher needs to “be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and . . . be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, teaching for social justice and liberation.”
I’ll let that speak for itself.
Much has been made about the near “miraculous” fundraising totals that Obama has pulled in throughout the campaign. However, about a week ago, some major media outlets started seeing just who it was that donating to the Senator’s campaign. What they found was as disturbing as it was interesting. From the Washington Post:
The Republican National Committee wants the Federal Election Commission to investigate the source of thousands of small contributions to the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama, a committee lawyer said yesterday.
The RNC’s chief counsel, Sean Cairncross, said that there is mounting evidence that the Obama campaign was so hungry for donations it “looked the other way” as contributions piled up from suspicious donors, and possibly even from overseas, which would be illegal.
“We believe that the American people should know first and foremost if foreign money is pouring into a presidential election,” Cairncross said.
He pointed to a report in the current issue of Newsweek magazine that documents a handful of instances in which donors made repeated small contributions using fake names, such as “Good Will” and “Doodad Pro.” FEC auditors told the campaign that Good Will gave a total of more than $11,000 and Doodad Pro $17,130 — far above the maximum allowable individual contribution of $2,300.
Newsweek also reported that earlier this year, two Palestinian brothers in the Gaza Strip paid $33,000 for a bulk order of T-shirts from the campaign’s online store. (Those purchases count as contributions.) The brothers had listed their address as “Ga.,” which the campaign took to mean Georgia rather than Gaza. The campaign later returned the money.
And the New York Times (yes, THAT New York Times):
The donations included thousands of dollars in excess donations, made in increments of $25, from someone named Good Will in Austin, Tex., who listed his employer as “Loving” and his occupation as “You.” It also cited another donor named Doodad Pro, from “Nunda, N.Y.,” with the same employer and occupation.
Both donors were flagged by the commission in warning letters sent to the Obama campaign by August. The campaign was supposed to have responded within 30 days. But its campaign finance filing in September showed it had failed to refund more than $10,000 in donations from each, although Obama officials say all of the money has now been returned. A campaign has 60 days from when it receives an excess contribution to address it.
Republican officials asserted that if the Obama campaign had missed such obviously questionable itemized contributions, there could be much more in the form of fraudulent donations in the amounts below $200 that do not have to be reported.
The Democratic candidate’s donors also include “Derty Poiiuy,” an individual with a scatological sense of humor who has given $950. “Mong Kong” has contributed $1,065 and lists an address in a nonexistent city. “Fornari USA” gave $800 and listed the address of an apparel store of that name near San Francisco.
The Republican National Committee filed a federal complaint this week, alleging that some of Obama’s small donations are illegal because they come from foreign nationals or exceed the limit.
Obama’s contributions have also exposed a loophole in the law, which does not require disclosure of the identities of donors who give $200 or less, making it impossible to determine whether they are legitimate without a federal audit.
Lawrence Norton, a former Federal Election Commission general counsel, noted that the law was written when “no one conceived that a candidate could raise millions” in such small amounts. “It certainly is a case where the 1970s law is not in step with current campaign fundraising practices,” he said.
Exactly why a donor would use a name like Derty Poiiuy is not clear. “It’s part of phenomenon that we’ve never seen before,” FEC spokesman Bob Biersack said. People who make up names when donating to federal candidates violate laws against making false statements, but Biersack could not recall anyone being prosecuted for such a crime.
Biersack said the FEC cannot conduct an audit unless there are significant questions about a candidate’s fundraising. “Odd names by themselves aren’t enough. A lot of people have odd names,” Biersack said. “I have certain sympathy for that.”
The number of fake names attached to Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign contributions continues to inch up as news outlets and political researchers page through thousands of pages of donor listings.
Turns out, they’re not that hard to come by. New discoveries from a cursory review of the listings include Edrty Eddty, who donated $250 in July 2008 and Es Esh, who gave $325 in July. Esh hailed from this unusual address: “fhdfhdfh, Erial, NJ 08081″ Eddty listed his, or perhaps her, employer as “Poiuyttrrewe / Qwertyuio” — the letters, more or less in order, found on the top line of standard computer keyboards.
…..
The AP contacted 123 of those donors — in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, South Africa, Spain and Switzerland — and interviewed them about their citizenship and donations. The review found that Obama’s campaign accepted contributions from at least three foreigners.
And the NY Times has even more:
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.
An analysis of campaign finance records by The New York Times this week found nearly 3,000 donations to Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee, from more than a dozen people with apparently fictitious donor information. The contributions represent a tiny fraction of the record $450 million Mr. Obama has raised. But the questionable donations — some donors were listed simply with gibberish for their names — raise concerns about whether the Obama campaign is adequately vetting its unprecedented flood of donors.
Interesting things going on in the lead up to the Election. Some people have gone so stir crazy that they’re arguing if you should be able to wear your McCain-Palin button in the voting booth:
The ACLU of Virginia today urged the State Board of Elections to allow voters to wear T-shirts with political messages when they vote Nov. 4.
Electioneering is prohibited within 40 feet of the polling place, and some registrars have interpreted this to mean a ban on wearing T-shirts and lapel stickers that promote a candidate.
I’m sort of torn on this. On one hand, I can’t really see how it makes sense when we’re going to express ourselves via the ballot why we can’t express our other right to free speech. I can see why they would want to create a perimeter around the polling place where no persuasive messages can be, but the campaign’s logo? Still, I’m sure there’s someone out there who votes by the logo……at any rate, the State Board of Elections said no:
Virginia voters won’t be allowed to wear clothing featuring John McCain or Barack Obama when they head to the polls on Nov. 4.
The State Board of Elections on Tuesday voted to ban clothing and hats as well as buttons and other paraphernalia that directly advocate the election or defeat of a specific candidate or issue.
The American Civil Liberties Union argued that the ban violates the First Amendment’s right to free speech. The board, however, said it has to weigh that against the right to vote free of undue influence or the tension that candidate advocacy might create.
I’m glad that they got that one figured out, but a recent report seems to indicate that their may be more serious problems waiting for voters at the polls on Election Day:
The Advancement Project, which advocates the need for voters to vote efficiently, specifies Fairfax County and Alexandria as being among the worst resourced and ill-prepared jurisdictions in the seven battleground states examined.
“We are concerned that they do not have enough polling place resources,” says Jim Freeman of the Advancement Project. “There may not be enough machines, enough privacy booths, enough poll workers.”
The report says that the Virginia jurisdictions may face extremely long lines, and may not be able to accommodate all voters in the allotted 13 hours. The report also says the jurisdictions lack an adequate number of poll workers to compensate for the potential increase in turnout.
The lack in resources is expected to have a disproportionate affect on high-minority precincts, where the numbers were lower than low-minority precincts. The report states that a mis-allocation of resources could violate the Voting Rights Act.
Closer to home, registrars are trying to assuage fears of corruption at the polls:
Virginia Board of Elections Deputy Secretary Valerie Jones said the commonwealth has not experienced major issues mostly because of the tight scrutiny officials apply in approving the registrations.
“In Virginia, once we get an application, we have to verify that the Social Security number on the application matches with one of our databases,” she said. “We also look at the date of birth, if it has a legitimate address and if that person has been convicted of any felonies.”
Jones said she was not aware of any recent issues of mass registration fraud in Virginia, and said if officials suspect anything, they report the incident immediately to the authorities.
As local registrars’ offices continue sorting though the hundreds of applications submitted before Monday’s deadline, they too say they don’t see registration fraud as an issue here.
Mary Alice Downs, the registrar in Waynesboro, said while there were indications a few weeks back that some people were creating a small number of fraudulent applications, their system of cross-checking the information kept them from going through.
“We even have duplicate checks that make sure someone’s Social Security number isn’t used multiple times,” she said. “That was a problem in Ohio when people were registering more than once.”
Staunton Registrar Amanda DiMeo said the relatively small size of the locality is one of the reasons she has not seen any indication of registration fraud.
“I’ve heard some issues in areas like Norfolk where groups have to meet quotas in registering people and it’s easier to make up an address,” she said. “But here, we really haven’t had any issues fortunately because we are not targeted like that.”
Still, vigilance will definitely be needed in securing the ballot this fall, not just from seasoned election officials but also from concerned election officials. Go to our volunteer page to sign up to be a poll watcher or click here to get involved with the McCain-Palin campaign’s Election Day Operation effort, particularly if you legal training. People are needed around the country, but with Virginia at ground zero, I’m sure opportunities are available here.
Come meet Congressman Goodlatte tonight at the final Debate Party at the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Republican Headquarters on Neff Avenue. Food starts at 7 p.m.
