Outrageous....

[Capitol Shock II]

http://www.wnd.com/2012/10/obama-accepts-osama-bin-laden-donations/

We are quickly finding out that there are no referees in the political process. You are allowed to break the law as long as the majority of American people agree with it.

What happened to the rule of law in this nation?

[Aargh]

Did you even read the article - or just the headline? The donations to Obama made in the name of "Osama Bin Lden" were actually made by staff of the outlet reporting that Obama accepted donations from Bin Laden.

Or are you complaining that someone would donate to a political campaing under a false name in order to write a headline stating "Obama Accepts 'Osama Bin Laden' Donations".

[Capitol Shock II]

Sure I read the article....they are just proving what many outside the Democratic Party and the media have been saying all along, that the Barack Hussein campaign has accepted millions in foreign donations which is a violation of the law!

I also read that the Romney campaign has implemented safeguards to insure they don't violate the law so what you have is a campaign being financed by and large by American's with American dollars and one that has decided to take money from foreign sources, many not friendly to America in violation of the law. Why do you suppose these foreign sources are giving money to Barack Hussein, because they love America or because they believe American will be cut down to size with another Barack administration for the next four years?

[1979Shocker]

You do realize that World Net Daily is a right wing web site? So they are going to make it look back for Obama and good for Romney.

[Kung Wu]

Except that this was reported on the 21st by this news site, and it's still possible to send funds as a foreigner today. And Romney has been rejecting them from day 1 per U.S. law.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/bam_blind_eye_to_illegal_donors_8SWotytr1RvbhyDCRyyrEL

Edit: Accept --> Except LMAO .. they actually both work in a weird way.

[Capitol Shock II]

Let me present it this way. Regardless of political affiliation, how would you feel about any candidate who willingly accepted cash from foreign sources when it is AGAINST THE LAW, not to mention questionable for a variety of reasons?

I personally believe it's cause for disqualification of my vote no matter who it is. The law is the law. Period. Barack is not above it though he apparently thinks he is.

If this story was true and reported on CNN about Mitt Romney would it be a big deal?

[GoShockers89]

This thread is utterly retarded.

The Obama website requires the donor to check affirmatively that they are a citizen of the United States in the Terms of Agreement before donating.

This is extraordinarily similar to the form I affixed my signature to when attending a Romney fundraising dinner in the recent past. They did not ask me to present a birth certificate nor proof citizenship. How on earth did they know I wasn't a lying foreign national when they took my check and cashed it?

And if you are suggesting that they block donations from any and all foreign IP addresses, this is equally stupid. The number of Americans abroad are disproportionately wealthy and you would be preventing them from donating to either party if you did this.

Lastly, the whole idea is pretty pointless anyway in the age of Citizens United and Super-PACS.

[60Shock]

I'll tell you what is OUTRAGEOUS!. The amount of monies spent by both parties on this presidential campaign is OUTRAGEOUS! We are talking $2.5 BILLION!

For the 2016 presidential campaign, excluding the three televised debates, both candidates should be limited to $5 million total. And if there is an incumbent president running, his opponent should be alloacated an additional like dollar figure to take into account the POTUS's use of AF One, and associated accommodations, etc.

[Kung Wu]

I'll tell you what is OUTRAGEOUS!. The amount of monies spent by both parties on this presidential campaign is OUTRAGEOUS! We are talking $2.5 BILLION!

For the 2016 presidential campaign, excluding the three televised debates, both candidates should be limited to $5 million total. And if there is an incumbent president running, his opponent should be alloacated an additional like dollar figure to take into account the POTUS's use of AF One, and associated accommodations, etc.

I have seen you make a similar argument before and wanted to ask you about it. What is your specific concern about the parties spending that much money?

[60Shock]

I have seen you make a similar argument before and wanted to ask you about it. What is your specific concern about the parties spending that much money?

Sorry to take so long getting back to you. My wife and I have been taking care of our 6 and 4 year old grand daughters while their parents attended an out of town wedding. And we have had our hands full. But, we loved and enjoyed every minute.

Influence (or perhaps a stronger, but truer definition would be bribery) is probably the ultimate goal of a significant part of the large sums of dollars that flows to presidential, congressional, state, and local political campaigns. There can be little argument (and the new figure is now projected to reach as high as $5.8 billion for 2012), that extremely wealthy individuals, corporations, labor unions, and various large and small industry groups provide these billions of dollars to gain access to and to influence politicians at all levels. And later on payback (support for them) will be expected and forthcoming.

Everybody is on the take and a candidate would stand little chance of successfully competing against his opponent without these large, generously provided contributions with perhaps certain questionable strings attached.

This is certainly not knew. It has been going on probably as long as we have had politicians and the politicians of both parties are definitely controlled by these actions.

When I retired from the Army, I went to work for a very senior, high level politician, who will remain, nameless. He was a gentleman, well respected, a hard worker, a man who, for the most part, tried very hard to do what was right. But, when the chips came down between supporting two proposals for an extremely important and expensive weapons system, against the advise of his entire subordinate staff, he supported the much inferior system. Why? Because this was the company which had provided him a terrific sum of money. And he was facing re-election in two years. Needless to say, this system was a failure at a great expense to the taxpayer. And anyone who thinks for a moment that this is the rarity, you are sadly mistaken.

This is the terrible price we pay for allowing politicians to accept these huge contributions.

.

[RoyalShock]

There was a candidate the past two elections who wasn't beholden to corporate interests. One who had a "No lobbying" sign hanging from his Congressional office door. He set records for raising money from the grassroots (real people, not corporations) for his campaign. But that's not what voters want. They want a charismatic empty suit with puppet strings.

The people get the government they deserve.

[SB Shock]

Reminds me as a undergrad my freshman year I had to take a class called "American Hero" - it would have been comical if it wasn't so sad what my fellow classmates thought were "American Heroes".

[Kung Wu]

@60Shock: what a great and well thought out post. I think people from both sides of the aisle would definitely agree with you that politicians being bought off is real and dispicable. And you are right, large sums of money is the root of the evil.

I may be reading between the lines here, but I think your $5,000,000 cap is just a number you threw out there that seems reasonable in your mind, but it really isn't the point. You want SOME cap, regardless of what the actual figure is, right?

Here are some counter arguments to setting such a tiny cap (I know, I know, you are thinking "tiny?"):

1) The older you are, the bigger $5,000,000 sounds. If you were a youngster in the 50's or 60's then $5,000,000 sounds high. If you were young in the 70's or 80's then $50,000,000 sounds high. If you were young in the 90's and "aughts", then $500,000,000 seems high. But these are the teens and $5,000,000,000 is now the number. Adding a magnitude every 20 years seems like exponential inflation. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, I am too lazy to calculate it. But the point is, $5,000,000 is a very small amount of money in 2013.

2) The country is now taking in way over $2 TRILLION in revenues each year. The most powerful man in influencing the expenditures of $2,500,000,000,000 per year is the POTUS. This guy will have veto power over that budget for 4 years. That's over $10T the POTUS is guaranteed to influence over a 4 year period. Let's remove some zeros and look at it this way: Would you risk spending $5 (five dollars) for a 50/50 proposition to have veto power and ultimate influence of over $10,000,000? That's absurd, right? If it only took $5 to control that amount of money. That's essentially what you proposed though -- it's the exact same ratio. The real ratio is currently that they are spending $5 to have a 50/50 for veto power over $10,000. Still not a bad bet in anybody's book.

3) As the politicians keep creating spending monsters, we have to keep increasing revenues to feed the monster. And that ballooning is causing the stakes for the POTUS position to become fiscally more critical. It also increases the opportunity for the cronyism you are concerned about.

I don't know if I believe my own arguments above, but those are what immediately came to mind both times I read your comment about setting a $5,000,000 cap.

[60Shock]

Kung Wu, you are absolutely right. $5 million was a number I pulled out of my weather beaten golf hat.

Another thing to consider would be reducing the total amount of time for campaigning. Understand, we are not the Brits, but they limit their's, from start to finish, to 6 weeks. Perhaps we can come up with a more reasonable, limited period of time, as to when they can begin.

Interesting article today by MDoyle McManus, Columnist,Los Angeles Times, entitled, "Ohio swamped by deluge of spin. "More than 58,000 presidential campaign ads ran in the state during the last month, according to a Bloomberg News study." That's 1,870 a day. Another area to be looked into for a massive reduction. Yea gads! It is a wonder both of them are even allowed in the state! It is even more of a wonder they both escaped alive.

Let me throw the following out to everyone for comment. Obviously it needs a lot of work. I sat down and rattled this off in 15 minutes. But the thing it does do is to eliminate the influence and the "bribes" that are buried in our present system.

Why not come up with a reasonable amount of monies (to be adjusted every 4 years for inflation) that would be allocated by the federal government to each final presidential and congressional candidate (a much less figure). No other campaign donations nor monies would be permitted period. Any offer of or acceptance of monies from an outside source would result in a criminal charge.

There would be a number of ways the monies could be collected singularly or in combination such as:

a. Add an annual federal campaign income tax to corporations (amount or percentage to be worked out).

b. Or perhaps, better yet, perhaps we should just start with the amount of monies each corporation, union, business, or individual donated to the 2012 campaign, and tax them accordingly for the 2016 campaign.

c. And, only if all others fail, add a REQUIRED, but minimum, annual, federal individual income tax of say $5 - $10 (Ok, Kung, I pulled these numbers out of my hat, too) to pay for the campaign funds.

d. States, which collect state income taxes could follow generally the same above procedures for local state campaign personnel. States which have no income tax - well I'm sure they can figure out a way to collect the monies.