GREENSBORO, N.C. — In a federal criminal case that has the markings of sex, money, betrayal and a handsome politician’s fall from grace, former presidential candidate John Edwards’ trial for alleged campaign finance violations opens Monday in Greensboro, N.C.Guilty or not on the campaign finance charges, no doubt John Edwards is one of the left's biggest douchebags of recent years --- and it's a deep bench, so that's saying a lot.
Edwards is accused of accepting more than $900,000 in illegal contributions during his 2008 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination to pay the expenses of his mistress and hide the extramarital affair that, if revealed to voters, almost certainly would have derailed his campaign and shattered his public image as a devoted family man.
The former senator from North Carolina has pleaded not guilty to six criminal counts related to campaign finance violations. If convicted of all charges, Edwards faces up to 30 years in prison and $1.5 million in fines. Opening arguments are scheduled to begin Monday morning and the much-anticipated trial is expected to last at least six weeks.
Prosecutors contend that bills paid by two Edwards benefactors, Rachel “Bunny’’ Mellon, a banking heiress from Virginia, and the late Fred Baron, a Texas lawyer, actually were unreported campaign contributions designed to cover up his affair with Rielle Hunter, a campaign videographer who gave birth to his daughter.
“The charges against John Edwards in this case flow from his knowing and willful violation of the federal campaign finance laws during his campaign for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president,’’ prosecutors said in court filings.
Justice Department prosecutors contend this is a straightforward case of broken campaign finance laws:
“A federal candidate may only accept and receive a limited amount of money from any one individual during an election cycle, and he must truthfully report the money he accepts and receives,’’ the department said a trial brief.
Edwards’ defense team contends that the payments were not political donations, but gifts from wealthy friends to help address a personal issue unrelated to the campaign. His lawyers suggest that Edwards did not know about the money from Mellon and Baron.
“The government assumes that Mr. Edwards knew about the monies; the evidence will prove otherwise,’’ his attorneys said in a court filing.
Edwards’ lawyers contend that the government's case requires the jury to accept a novel interpretation of a campaign finance law that “has never been the basis of criminal or even civil liability in the statute's history.’’
WASHINGTON — President Obama is signaling to wealthy Democratic donors that he wants them to start contributing to an outside group supporting his re-election, reversing a long-held position as he confronts a deep financial disadvantage on a vital front in the campaign.Freakin' asshats.
Aides said the president had signed off on a plan to dispatch cabinet officials, senior advisers at the White House and top campaign staff members to deliver speeches on behalf of Mr. Obama at fund-raising events for Priorities USA Action, the leading Democratic “super PAC,” whose fund-raising has been dwarfed by Republican groups. The new policy was presented to the campaign’s National Finance Committee in a call Monday evening and announced in an e-mail to supporters.
“We’re not going to fight this fight with one hand tied behind our back,” Jim Messina, the manager of Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign, said in an interview. “With so much at stake, we can’t allow for two sets of rules. Democrats can’t be unilaterally disarmed.”
Neither the president, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., nor their wives will attend fund-raising events or solicit donations for the Democratic group. A handful of officials from the administration and the campaign will appear on behalf of Mr. Obama, aides said, but will not directly ask for money.
Mitt Romney's plastic and philosophically vapid campaign secured an easy victory in Florida on Tuesday night. Sunshine state GOP voters swallowed his "electability" argument whole, according to the exit polls.Continue reading.
It appears that country club Republicans have succeeded again in duping the GOP electorate into crowning a "centrist" Republican. Never mind that "centrist" Republicans rarely win the center. They usually lose the center while sapping the spirit of the party's conservative base.
Out of Bob Dole's and John McCain's tattered Big Tent steps another "reformed" RINO, Mitt Romney, who will receive, should he win the nomination, a similar thumping from the Democrats.
But let's say that he is "electable," for the sake of argument. Who cares? The purpose of politics in a republic is not simply to win but to win on sound principles. A party that pursues victory by scrapping or sidelining its platform will have no truth left with which to govern once it does.
If "electability" is the goal, why don't the politically correct plutocrats of the GOP just call for a one-party state? That way they could win every time.
The "electability" argument is bankrupt on both philosophical and practical grounds. It destroys the party's soul and guarantees defeat.
Even though Romney paid for this Florida win on his debit card -- outspending Newt by millions -- he still couldn't nail down the rank-and-file vote. Seven out of ten self-described conservatives didn't vote for him. This foreshadows the boredom and disgust that will keep conservatives home in the fall.
Crossroads GPS is taking aim at President Obama over his administration’s $535 million loan guarantee to failed solar company Solyndra with a new national television advertisement.More at the link.
In the new ad, the nonprofit group created by Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie paints the Solyndra loan guarantee as a corrupt deal aimed at benefiting the president’s campaign donors.
“Laid-off workers forgotten. Tell President Obama we need jobs, not more insider deals,” the $500,000 ad, which will run on cable for a week, says.
It’s the latest attempt by conservative groups to punish Obama politically over the loan guarantee. Americans for Prosperity — a group partially funded by the billionaire Koch brothers — has spent more than $8 million on two advertisements that hit Obama over the loan guarantee.
Trevor Potter is an unlikely repeat guest for a late-night comedy show. As the former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, the courtly Washington lawyer is a leading expert on campaign finance law — not the kind of material that generates a lot of laughs.Well, I kind of like all the ads actually.
So the fact that he's appeared seven times on "The Colbert Report" in the last year, helping host Stephen Colbert set up his own "super PAC" as part of a mischievous political parody, underscores an unexpected development in the 2012 presidential race:
Super PACs have seized the zeitgeist.
An indirect outgrowth of the Supreme Court ruling in the 2010 Citizens United case, the independent political groups have mushroomed in the last year. They are now dominating not just the action in key primary states such as South Carolina, but the political conversation. In the last month, the number of Google searches for the term "super PAC" was about five times higher than the last year's monthly average.
Spending by such organizations has exceeded $27 million already this year, according to the FEC, much of it going to biting television ads. Pummeled by super PACs aligned with their rivals, the Republican presidential contenders are now loudly denouncing their influence.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said in recent days that all of the candidates wished the outside organizations would disappear and that their outsized sway was "a very bad idea."
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was forced to disavow an error-riddled documentary aired by a super PAC run by his former aides, while he and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum have had to defend themselves against attacks by Restore Our Future, a pro-Romney super PAC. At a campaign stop in Columbia, S.C., this week, Santorum accused Romney of sending "his henchmen" to spread disinformation.
The complaints mark a sharp turnabout for Republicans, who had largely heralded the Citizens United decision, which allowed unlimited corporate and union spending on campaigns. (The campaigns themselves remain under strict fundraising limits.)
The candidates are not opposed to unlimited fundraising but, once confronted with how the decision is playing out, have blamed one another, not the court.
The procession gets under way at the corner of Alton and Harvard:
There were more "End the Fed" types than "End Israeli Apartheid" activists, but this guy was clearly of the latter variety:
At the information tents:
Now walking West on Alton toward Jamboree:
The Democrat-Socialists:
Lots of anti-Federal Reserve protesters:
Protesters were chanting: "You. Are. The 99 Percent! You. Are. The 99 Percent!"
I'm seeing more of this, anti-work ideologies: "Jobs Are Not the Answer." Seriously?
People before profits, ad nauseum:
Heading back over to Harvard, there's the encampment on the corner. You've got the suburban vibe:
Sitting on the corner is this old-timer with the "Remember Wisconsin" sign. He's holding forth on how Occupy Wall Street is the country's last chance to save democracy:
He's a dreamer:
Now moving over by the information table:
As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.
As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known...
WASHINGTON — A new series of political advertisements on behalf of an embattled Nebraska senator could open the door to a flood of similar ads financed by outside groups and even businesses working directly with political candidates — a sharp departure from past practice.Interesting.
The ads are innocuous enough on their face: Senator Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat up for re-election next year, is featured on television and radio commercials discussing Social Security, the national debt, war veterans and other hot-button issues. What is remarkable, campaign finance lawyers and political operatives say, is that the ads were produced and paid for by Democratic Party officials in Nebraska and Washington — with the senator’s close involvement as their star.
Federal campaign rules restrict politicians from “coordinating” their advertisements with outside groups except under certain circumstances. Politicians — worried about tripping over the legal restrictions — have usually shied away from working directly with outside groups on ads. Instead, “issue” ads paid for by outside groups will typically hit on broad themes without focusing so squarely on a single lawmaker.
The Nebraska ads, which have cost Democrats more than $600,000 to run so far, could change that practice in a way that has wide implications for the 2012 elections, when 33 Senate seats and all 435 House seats will be up for grabs.
Barely three months before the first votes are cast, the Republican race for president is up for grabs, complicated by the absence of a clear front-runner and the rules that have guided the GOP's selection process for the past several decades.Continue reading.
The rise of the "tea party" movement, with its contempt for convention, has undermined the tradition of bestowing the nomination on the candidate presumed next in line, who usually paid their dues through long service or a previous White House try.
At the same time, a new way of awarding delegates has largely eliminated the winner-take-all system that hastened selection of a nominee and forced the party to quickly close ranks.
The rise of so-called super PACs, independent political financing organizations unfettered by spending limits, also means that a candidate can stay competitive long after their campaign's donor base taps out, potentially extending the race beyond the first few contests.
The upshot is a GOP nominating race that is at least as unsettled as the competition four years ago, when Sen. John McCain of Arizona rose from the political graveyard and rallied to claim the nomination.
"We knew from the beginning this was going to be one of the most competitive nominating fights we've had," said Dick Wadhams, a Republican strategist who is neutral in the race. "We thought we had one back in 2008, but this one has already taken on more twists and turns than anything that happened in '08."
President Obama's reelection team has launched an invigorated effort to draw money from wealthy donors, buttressing the campaign against a potential decline in contributions from the everyday supporters who helped fuel his massive take in 2008.Yeah. "Dinner with Barack." And with Joe "Big Effin' Deal" Biden. Losers:
A new program called Presidential Partners asks supporters to commit $75,800 to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint project of the campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
That would put Democratic contributors at the maximum they are allowed to give national party committees for the entire 2012 cycle — leaving then unable to donate to the party's congressional fundraising entities.
The effort to court deep-pocketed backers comes amid uncertainty about whether Obama will be able to reproduce the level of small donations that were estimated to have made up about half of the $745 million he raised in the 2008 campaign.
The Obama campaign has not given up on recharging that source of support: A recent email solicitation offered four supporters a chance to have "Dinner with Barack" for as little as a $5 donation.
But the increased emphasis on major fundraisers — including those who gathered money for Hillary Rodham Clinton's competing presidential bid — carries some risks. While Obama continues to woo supporters at low-dollar fundraisers, his meetings with high rollers — including a $35,800-a-plate dinner Thursday night with Wall Street executives in a posh Manhattan restaurant — could undercut the image he has tried to craft.
Palin's two biggest goals can be summed up thus: Iowa and New Hampshire. Politically, Palin needs money. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama raised $100 million in 2007, the year leading into the primaries. The "entry fee" for the 2012 primaries will probably be twice that.I expected Palin to be a blockuster fundraiser, and it's happening. See Jay Newton-Small (via Memeorandum):
Sarah Palin raised $469,000 between Oct. 13 and Nov. 22 bringing her total for the year to over $3 million, Tim Crawford, SarahPAC's treasurer, told TIME exclusively. Crawford attributed the surge of funds to energy surrounding the midterm elections, Palin's endorsements and her TLC reality show “Sarah Palin's Alaska.” Her second book, America By Heart, came out Nov. 23.
The PAC spent $64,000 buying advance copies of her books, “just as we did last year” with her first book, Going Rogue, Crawford said. “They're a great fundraising tool for us.” Palin is in the midst of a two-week cross-country book tour.
Overall the PAC spent $581,000 between Oct. 13 and Nov. 22. ...
RELATED: "The Obligatory Olbermann Suspended Over Donations Post." Plus, "TV Newser: “Insiders” say Olbermann won’t be back."
LOS ANGELES - Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina and Linda McMahon had a lot in common.More at the link.
All sharp, successful businesswomen who made millions as executives in the private sector, they identified 2010 as an apt historical moment for a Republican candidate with no political experience to break into politics. In pursuit of higher office, each committed considerable resources - more than $200 million combined - to challenge seemingly vulnerable Democrats.
Each risk taker came up far short of her goal.
Whitman, the 54-year-old former chief executive of eBay, burned through more than $140 million of her own money in a colossal loss in the California governor's race to a former governor, Attorney General Jerry Brown. Also in California, Fiorina, 56, the former Hewlett-Packard leader, spent about $7 million of her own funds in a bitter Senate loss to the incumbent, Barbara Boxer. And McMahon, 62, who with her husband built the smackdown empire called World Wrestling Entertainment in Connecticut, spent $50 million in seeking an open Senate seat, losing to Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.
The question isn't so much why three savvy businesswomen threw so much good money after bad in losing ventures to win political office. In a year when voters overwhelmingly registered their dissatisfaction with Democrats and the unemployment-riddled economy, the candidates had every reason to consider the millions a sound investment. Instead, the question is how they failed so resoundingly.
"It's in some ways like a highly underdeveloped country that suddenly strikes oil and they don't know what to do with the money and start spending it unwisely," said Ross Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University. Baker said that money is a threshold requirement in politics, "but above a certain amount you don't get a dividend for every extra dollar."
"And when it's your own money, you cast aside some of the restraints and keep spending, to the point where you cast aside certain other aspects of the campaign that might be deficient," he said.
A revitalized Republican Party began looking toward the 2012 presidential election with renewed optimism about its prospects but uncertainty about who was best positioned to lead the charge.More at the link.
Republican Sarah Palin was drawing especially close scrutiny from some in the GOP for signs of her viability as front-runner. Ms. Palin emerged from Tuesday's elections as a champion of the tea party movement that helped spur a Republican wave. But losses Tuesday by Ms. Palin's hand-picked candidates in Nevada and Delaware showed the limits to her powers, while preliminary results in her home state of Alaska showed her favored candidate, Joe Miller, was trailing.
"Sarah Palin is a beloved figure in the Republican Party, but now we shift gears—and, in the party, ideas are going to matter," said Katon Dawson, former chairman of the South Carolina GOP. He said Ms. Palin would "get fully vetted on her service in Alaska."
Ms. Palin's active media presence and endorsements in the midterm campaign have maintained her high profile as a spokeswoman for her party. In a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll in mid-October, Republicans cited her most often as the "most important leader or spokesperson'' for the GOP. Ms. Palin was named by 19% of Republicans in the survey, ahead of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, at 16%, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, at 14%, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, at 13%.
Independent voters also cited Ms. Palin as the "most important'' GOP leader, but they listed Mr. Romney second most frequently, with Mr. Huckabee a more distant third.
Other potential candidates include Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, South Dakota Sen. John Thune and Rep. Mike Pence (R., Ind.).
Matt Kibbe, president of the conservative tea-party group FreedomWorks, said Wednesday he would add a new name to the list: Florida Sen.-elect Marco Rubio, a 39-year-old Cuban-American who is a tea party hero and could help Republicans expand their reach to Hispanics and younger voters.
"The American people are looking for new blood," he said.
And with the sleazy passel of grifters currently running the criminal enterprise misnomered the “Democratic” Party, that’s saying something. But my God, the balls on our sorry excuse for a Pee-resident, and his henchmen too.“Karl Rove, Ed Gillespie: They’re Bush Cronies. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce: They’re Shills for Big Business,” the ad’s narrator says. “And they’re stealing our democracy. Spending millions from secret donors to elect Republicans to do their bidding in Congress. It appears they’re even taking secret foreign money to influence our elections.”
The president leveled a similar charge while on the campaign trail last week in Maryland, saying, “Just this week, we learned that one of the largest groups paying for these ads regularly takes in money from foreign corporations.”
“Have these people no shame?” Rove said of the attacks leveled at him and the Chamber. “Does the president of the United States have such little regard for the office he holds that he goes out there and makes these kind of baseless charges against his political enemies? This is just beyond the pale. How dare the president do this?”
“This is a desperate and I think disturbing trend by the President of the United States to tar his political adversaries with some kind of enemies list, without being unrestrained by any facts or evidence whatsoever.”
The punchline here, of course, is that one of the means by which the jug-eared son of a bitch hijacked American democracy and stole the ’08 election — aside from vote-suppression efforts by his pet goons in the New BlacKKK Fascist Party, and who even knows how many hundreds of thousands of instances of vote-fraud by his ACORN sneak-thieves — was via a long list of all kinds of financial chicanery up to and including…wait for it…accepting secret, illegal foreign campaign contributions. You were supposed to have forgotten all about that by now, assuming you’re among those who penetrated the Zombie Media blackout and knew of it at all. But Doug remembers, presenting a recounting of the shocking jiggery-pokery that helped put this swindler in the office he’s so manifestly unfit for. Glenn hasn’t forgotten, either.
Time to do more than just pay Democrat Socialist-style lip service to draining that swamp. Too bad this November we won’t have the opportunity to give it the good, thorough, top-down scrubbing it so desperately needs.
And there's an update at the blog, "The Bottom of the Barrel":
I could’ve attached this as an update to the “New low” post below, but it’s just too delicious to languish away down there. Come for the exposure of the sleazy lie, stay for the groveling-coward backpedaling:White House officials acknowledged Friday that they had no specific evidence to indicate that the chamber had used money from foreign entities to finance political attack ads.
“The president was not suggesting any illegality,” Bob Bauer, the White House counsel, said. Instead, he said Mr. Obama’s reference to the chamber was meant to draw attention to the inadequacies of campaign disclosure laws in allowing groups to spend large amounts of money on politics without disclosing their donors.
Yeah, right. Spoken like a truly greasy, squirming lawyer trying to defend a most un-presidential president, who just stepped in a pile of his own deceitful bullshit and fell in right up to his scrawny neck.
Dirtbags.
Forget whether the charge is correct or not. Ignore the fact that this is a desperate, xenophobic smear job by a party facing a massacre at the polls.It’s the hypocrisy that’s jaw-dropping, given that Obama’s own presidential campaign winked at foreign money. Michael Barone explains:
Glenn Reynolds nails this one: the Obama Democrats’ campaign riff against foreign donations to Democrats is bogus—and according to the New York Times, no less. This looks like a matter of projection, since it’s well documented that the 2008 Obama campaign did not put in place address verification software that would have routinely prevented most foreign donations. In effect they were encouraging donations by foreign nationals. Here’s the Washington Post on this back in October 2008: Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor’s identity, campaign officials confirmed. Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged.”
Go read the rest of the article and follow the other links back to reports from 2008 on the Obama campaign and odd donations. Here’s another. Obama and the Democrats engaged in rampant cheating regarding foreign donations, and now they have the gall to falsely accuse the Chamber of Commerce of doing what they themselves did?
More: "Axelrod: Chamber must prove foreign money allegations false." (Via Memeorandum.)
Meg Whitman is campaigning for governor as a political outsider, but behind the scenes she is playing classic political hardball in her quest for the Republican nomination.As I've said a couple of times, I wish we had Bob McDonnell in California:
She tried to push her chief GOP opponent, Steve Poizner, out of the primary contest with a consultant's threat to wage a negative ad campaign that would destroy his career. Her advisors have worked, with some success, to siphon away Poizner supporters, orchestrating calls by former Gov. Pete Wilson and others for the party to unite -- four months before the primary election -- behind her candidacy.
And Whitman's team warned labor leaders that if they gave money to Democratic operatives planning to attack her, the billionaire candidate would respond by spending millions to qualify a ballot initiative that would make it harder for unions to use dues for political purposes.
Observers say Whitman's embrace of rough-and-tumble politics should surprise no one, given her track record as the hard-nosed former chief executive of EBay.
"She's coming from a world that's absolutely a hardball world," said Thad Kousser, a visiting professor at Stanford University who specializes in state politics. "And anybody who thinks you don't become a politician being the CEO of a major corporation is crazy."
Asked about the tough moves by Whitman and her aides, her spokesman, Tucker Bounds, said her campaign "is committed to putting her in the most effective position" to explain her vision for improving California. He said talking to voters is her main focus.
Political analysts say Whitman's use of her wealth to intimidate her opponents -- she's moved $39 million of her own money into her campaign -- can backfire if voters believe she is trying to buy the election. Wealthy executives have won as political newcomers elsewhere but have largely failed in California.
The image of Whitman, 53, using her riches as a club was on display this month when Poizner -- himself a multimillionaire -- released an e-mail to his camp from her consultant, Mike Murphy. It said she could spend $40 million "tearing up" Poizner, also 53.
"It's arrogance," said K.B. Forbes, a GOP communications consultant who is not working in California at the moment. "It's going to turn off the electorate."
These small donations do not require public disclosure under FEC guidelines, and the Obama campaign refuses to make public its list of contributors. Obama earlier announced he’d accept public financing if the GOP nominee did the same (and then, of course, broke his pledge in June after realizing he’d far surpass previous fundraising records). So there’s a pattern. By keeping his donor list secret now, the Illinois senator has heightened speculation of financial impropriety. Not only can Obama’s inside operatives organize massive bundling operations outside the law, there are no safeguards against the new “fat cat” contributors who bundle their own cash. Hillary Clinton’s Norman Hsu scandal from late-2007 points to the kind of abuses possible under the current regime. A more serious breach of faith may be taking place right now in the Obama camp.There are rarely ever serious consquences to financial impropriety in campaign fundraising, and with "Mr. Chicago Boy" in the White House, it's common knowledge that this administration is the most corrupt in decades. So I had to literally shake my head in disgust upon reading this statement from the White House:
With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics. It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans. This ruling gives the special interests and their lobbyists even more power in Washington--while undermining the influence of average Americans who make small contributions to support their preferred candidates. That's why I am instructing my Administration to get to work immediately with Congress on this issue. We are going to talk with bipartisan Congressional leaders to develop a forceful response to this decision. The public interest requires nothing less.Also, just now at Pajamas, "Supreme Court Strikes Down Campaign Finance Laws: A Decisive Blow for the First Amendment."
