Churches campaigning for State?

There's so much about this that I have issue with: 

 #1. Separation of church and state, right? Why would pastors be campaigning for a specific candidate in their church? But whatever, they want to preach the word of POTUS, I guess they have the right to. 

 #2. Why is the Attorney General, the head of the US Department of Justice, anywhere near this? 

 #3. Why is the Internal Revenue Service, anywhere near this? #4. And I'm sorry, I do find it terribly ironic that preachers are going to be campaigning for the man that has turned out to be the most secular and religiously opportunistic President in recent memory. I'm sorry, but does anyone really believe that this is a faith based voting, rather than a race based vote? Either way, read the original here.

Holder to brief black pastors on campaign 2012
byJoel Gehrke Commentary Staff Writer

Attorney General Eric Holder, the IRS, and the liberal lawyers at the ACLU will brief several hundred pastors in the African American community on how to participate in the presidential election -- which the Congressional Black Caucus chair expects will help President Obama's campaign.

"We will have representatives from nine denominations who actually pastor somewhere in the neighborhood of about 10 million people, and we're going to first of all equip them with the information they need to know about what they can say and what they cannot say in the church that would violate their 501c3 status with the IRS," Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., told MSNBC today.

"In fact, we're going to have the IRS administrator there, we're going to have the Attorney General Eric Holder there, we're going to have the lawyers' organization from around the country, the ACLU -- all giving ministers guidance about what they can and cannot do," he noted.

Cleaver said they would not tell pastors which candidate to support. They will let them know who to regard as the bad guys, though (hint: not Democrats). "We're going to talk about some of the draconian laws that have cropped up around the country as a result of the 17 percent increase in African American votes," Cleaver said, describing voter ID laws as a form of Jim Crow-style "poll tax" on seniors and black voters.

The CBC chairman is confident that "President Obama is going to get 95 percent of the [African American] vote," and wants to keep that turnout high. "We want to let them know that there is a theological responsibility to participate in the political process, at least in the Judeo-Christian tradition," he said.

I'm sure there's nothing bad about this....

Why does the Obama administration continue to try and get people to tattle to them when they disagree? Read the original here.

Attack Watch, new Obama campaign site to ‘fight smears,’ becomes laughing stock of conservatives
By Elizabeth Flock
As the 2012 presidential campaign heats up, President Obama’s campaign team has set up a new Web site, AttackWatch.com, to challenge negative statements about the president made by Republican presidential candidates and conservatives.

Obama for America national field director Jeremy Bird told ABC News that the site’s goal is to offer “resources to fight back” against attacks. Mostly, that means fact checking statements from the likes of GOP presidential contenders Mitt Romney and Rick Perry and conservative commentator Glenn Beck and offering evidence to the contrary. The site is designed in bold red and black colors, and uses statements like “support the truth” and “fight the smears.”

The response to the site has been less than stellar.

On Twitter, where the Web site has anaccount to help Obama supporters submit evidence of “attacks” on the president using the hashtag #attackwatch, nearly every tweet about the site — mostly from conservatives — has ridiculed it.

“There's a new Twitter account making President Obama look like a creepy, authoritarian nutjob,” an Arizonan tweeted. “In less than 24 hours, Attack Watch has become the biggest campaign joke in modern history,” a contributor to conservative blog The Right Spherewrote. The contributor linked to the following parody commercial for Attack Watch:

Tommy Christopher of Mediaite noted sarcastically of the site, “Great. Sounds like a terrific content-generating resource for right-wing bloggers, too. Everybody wins!”

While the initiative is reminiscent of a similar online effort launched during the 2008 campaign, called Fight the Smears, the intimidating design and language of the new site seems to be what’s causing a bigger ruckus.

Fight the Smears looked and felt far less scary, quoting Obama at the top of its page in a classic hope-change statement: “What you won’t hear from this campaign or this party is the kind of politics that uses religion as a wedge, and patriotism as a bludgeon — that sees our opponents not as competitors to challenge but enemies to demonize.”

Attack Watch, on the other hand, uses the shorter tag­line, “Get the Truth. Fight the Smears.”

It’s safe to say that in its 24 hours of existence, Attack Watch has already backfired, becoming a tool for conservatives to use against Obama 2012. A tweet by conservative author Brad Thor summed up the critics’s argument: “Wow, not only are Obama & Co. incredibly thin-skinned, they're paranoid.”


Update, Wednesday, 5:11 p.m.
Obama 2012’s press office just returned an earlier request for comment. According to deputy press secretary Katie Hogan, 100,000 people signed up for the site in the first 24 hours.

“This site is a tool providing our supporters with the facts they need to fight back against lies and distortions about the President’s record,” Hogan said.

Debt Crisis Talks update...no real update

Read the original here.

Obama Kills Bipartisan Deal, Then Reid Resorts To Smoke And Mirrors - Right Turn
Jennifer Rubin - Washington Post

As I reported earlier, the president rejected a bipartisan congressional deal that would have calmed the markets, resolved the debt-ceiling crisis and restored faith in Washington politicians. President Obama was having none of it, demonstrating once and for all that the problem is NOT the House Republicans, but the election-obsessed White House.

So then the parties begin to devise separate congressional plans. The Post reports, “Senate Democrats are preparing to introduce legislation that would avert a national default on Aug. 2 and achieve $2.7 trillion in deficit savings over the next decade without raising taxes.”

But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is devising a sham that will never pass muster in the House. A Capitol Hill source with knowledge of the plan tells me: “It includes $1.2 trillion in OCO [Overseas Contingency Operations] savings . . . which was assumed anyway, $1.2 trillion (over $1.1 trillion less than [Majority Leader Eric] Cantor identified in the Biden talks) and $300 billion in interest savings.” A Senate aide says dryly that Reid “has about a trillion in ‘savings’ from ending the war in Iraq that’s already going to end.” And a disgusted House adviser bluntly tells me that Reid’s plan “isn’t real.”

We shouldn’t be too harsh on Reid. HE DID reach a bipartisan deal with the House. But the president squashed it. (Note to Congress: Next time don’t ask, just pass it and leave town.) Now we are back to gamesmanship.

It is extremely telling, however, that Reid’s plan contains NO tax hike. As I suspected, Obama doesn’t have enough support even in his own party (and particularly from Senate Democrats facing reelection) to pass the massive tax increases that he and his liberal base demand. And yet Obama at the last minute in negotiations with the speaker of the House last week threw in $400 billion in more taxes. There could only have been one purpose for that, since the Senate is as tax-hike-averse as the House: to create a crisis. We have finally found the president’s strong suit.

More on this topic in PostOpinions

Democratic Rep: Debt Crisis Has Been ‘Manufactured By House Republicans’

Question 1. Do Democrats just say whatever they want and see what sticks in the media? Question 2. How'd spending that $800,000,000,000 work out? 

Read the original here.

Democratic Rep: Debt Crisis Has Been ‘Manufactured By House Republicans’

(CNSNews.com) – Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) released a statement Monday saying the “debt crisis” has been “manufactured by House Republicans” who are “attempting to advance an extremist agenda.”

“The current, so-called ‘debt crisis’ has been completely manufactured by House Republicans attempting to advance an extremist agenda. This should be a simple vote to allow the US Treasury to fund all of the programs and obligations of the entire federal government that are already in the law,” said Rep. Lee in a statement handed out to reporters before a Democratic press conference on jobs at the Capitol.

Rep. Lee has called for Congress to increase the debt limit with no strings attached like spending cuts.

“Enough is enough,” she said. “We should immediately pass a clean bill to raise the debt ceiling so that we can work on the real crisis in this country – the jobs crisis.”Congressional leaders are currently working on a deal to increase the debt limit – currently at $14.3 trillion – by the Aug. 2 deadline

Sen. Sanders: "I think it would be a good idea if President Obama faced some primary opposition."

Read the original here.

New Polls Confirm Obama's Democratic Base Crumbles
LA Times Blog

With all of the spotlights on the high-stakes debt maneuverings by President Obama and Speaker John Boehner the last few days, few people noticed what Vermont's Sen. Bernie Sanders said:

"I think it would be a good idea if President Obama faced some primary opposition."

This is political treason 469 days before a presidential election. Yes, yes, this is just a crusty old New England independent for now, albeit one who caucuses loyally with Harry Reid's Democratic posse.

But while most of the media focuses on Republican Boehner and the tea party pressures on him to raise the debt limit not one Liberty dime, Sanders' mumblings are a useful reminder that hidden in the shadows of this left-handed presidency are militant progressives like Sanders who don't want to cut one Liberty dime of non-Pentagon spending.

Closely read the transcript of Obama's Monday statement on the debt talks stalemate. The full transcript is right here. And the full transcript of Boehner's response is right here.

An Unbalanced Approach to a Balanced Approach

Using political forensics, notice any clues, perhaps telltale code words that reveal to whom he was really addressing his Monday message? Clearly, it wasn't congressional Republicans -- or Democrats, for that matter.

The nation's top talker uttered 4,526 words in those remarks. He said "balanced approach" seven times, three times in a single paragraph.

That's the giveaway. Obviously, David Plouffe and the incumbent's strategists have been polling phrases for use in this ongoing debt duel, which is more about 2012 now than 2011. "Balanced approach" is no sweet talk for old Bernie or tea sippers on the other side.

Obama is running for the center already, aiming for the independents who played such a crucial role in his victorious coalition in 2008. They were the first to start abandoning the good ship Obama back in 2009 when all the ex-state senator could do was talk about healthcare, when jobs and the economy were the peoples' priority.

Democrats lost the New Jersey and Virginia governor's offices largely as a result of that and Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts. And then came last November's midterms when voters chose the approach of that historic pack of House-bound Republicans.

Republicans have their own poll problems in some areas. But even without an identified GOP presidential alternative, we've had a plethora of recent polls showing Obama's fading job approval, especially on the economy.

Now, comes a new ABC News/Washington Post poll with a whole harvest of revelations, among them, strong indications that Obama's liberal base is starting to crumble. Among the nuggets:

Despite those hundreds of billions of blown stimulus dollars and almost as many upturn promises from Joe Biden, 82% of Americans still say their job market is struggling. Ninety percent rate the economy negatively, including half who give it the worst rating of "poor."

Are You Better Off Today Than Jan. 20, 2009?

A slim 15% claim to be "getting ahead financially," half what it was in 2006. Fully 27% say they're falling behind financially. That's up 6 points since February.

A significant majority (54%) says they've been forced to change their lifestyle significantly as a result of the economic times -- and 60% of them are angry, up from 44%.

To be sure, 30 months after he returned to home cooking, George W. Bush still gets majority blame for the economy.

But here's the breaking news for wishful Democrats: George W. Bush isn't running for anything but exercise.

"More than a third of Americans now believe that President Obama’s policies are hurting the economy, and confidence in his ability to create jobs is sharply eroding among his base," the Post reports.

Strong support among liberal Democrats for Obama's jobs record has plummeted 22 points from 53% down below a third. African Americans who believe the president's measures helped the economy have plunged from 77% to barely half.

Obama's overall job approval on the economy has slid below 40% for the first time, with 57% disapproving. And strong disapprovers outnumber approvers by better than two-to-one.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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WSJ on Obama Debt talks...

Read the original here.

Wall Street Journal
BEST OF THE WEB TODAY
JULY 12, 2011
Raise Taxes or Granny Gets It
The liberal media's idea of a grown-up.
By JAMES TARANTO

President Obama is pulling out the big guns and pointing them straight at your grandmother. "Obama on Tuesday said he cannot guarantee that retirees will receive their Social Security checks August 3" absent an agreement with Congress to raise the debt ceiling, CBS News reports:
"I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven't resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it," Mr. Obama said in an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley, according to excerpts released by CBS News.

At a press conference yesterday, Obama demanded that Republicans not only authorize trillions of dollars in new borrowing,which at this point seems unavoidable, but agree to what he called "massive, job-killing tax increases" effective in 2013--i.e., after what he expects will be his re-election.Obama's news conference.

For this he drew plaudits from what used to be called the mainstream media. "Obama Grasping Centrist Banner in Debt Impasse" read the New York Times headline. The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza dubbed him "Dad-in-Chief," explaining: "Boil Obama's message down and you get this: Adults sometimes have to do things that they don't want to do. This is one of those times. So, let's get it done."

The kids are acting up, so he threatens to starve Granny to death. That's just how a strong father behaves.

It looks to us as if Obama may once again be overestimating his persuasive powers by relying for feedback on journalists who, for a combination of ideological, partisan and personal reasons, are predisposed to take his side. NewsBusters.org has a useful compilation of what it calls the "softballs" reporters lobbed at yesterday's press conference. Some of them were actually a bit adversarial, but only from the left.

Our favorite is from Rich Wolf of USA Today: "You keep talking about balance, shared sacrifice, but in the $4 trillion deal that you're talking about roughly, it seems to be now at about 4 to 1 spending to taxes; we're talking about $800 billion in taxes, roughly. That doesn't seem very fair to some Democrats." Mr. President, your massive tax hikes aren't nearly massive enough!

We sometimes forget just how in the tank much of the press is for Obama, especially since they've tended to tone it down a bit now that he is actually president. So we're grateful to Esquire for publishing a piece this morning by one Stephen Marche titled "How Can We Not Love Obama?" You may want to pop a Dramamine before reading this passage, which brings back memories of 2008:
Can we just enjoy Obama for a moment? Before the policy choices have to be weighed and the hard decisions have to be made, can we just take a month or two to contemplate him the way we might contemplate a painting by Vermeer or a guitar lick by the early-seventies Rolling Stones or a Peyton Manning pass or any other astounding, ecstatic human achievement? Because twenty years from now, we're going to look back on this time as a glorious idyll in American politics, with a confident, intelligent, fascinating president riding the surge of his prodigious talents from triumph to triumph. Whatever happens this fall or next, the summer of 2011 is the summer of Obama.

Though it's possible this is another one of Esquire's satirical misfires.

Astute political strategy or Wishful Thinking?

What do you think? Is Plouffe right on the money or out of his mind? Read the original here.

Top Obama adviser says unemployment won't be key in 2012
By Ian Swanson - 07/07/11 08:25 PM ET

President Obama’s senior political adviser David Plouffe said Wednesday that people won’t vote in 2012 based on the unemployment rate.

Plouffe should probably hope that’s the case, since dismal job figures aren’t expected to get any better for Obama and the economy on Friday.


Most economists expect a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to show that the nation added about 100,000 jobs in June. That’s not enough to keep up with population growth, let alone lower the unemployment rate or make a dent in the 9 million jobs lost during the so called Great Recession.

It’s looking more and more like Obama will have to do something no president has done since Franklin Roosevelt: Win reelection with unemployment around 8 percent.

Ronald Reagan, another president Obama is sometimes compared with, was reelected in 1984 when unemployment was 7.2 percent. Obama isn’t likely to see a number that low.

Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, predicts the nation will have added 110,000 jobs in total in June, with 125,000 added in the private sector. Hiring by the public sector will continue to fall.

The economy would have to add 350,000 jobs every month between now and December 2014 to get back to the pre-recession low of 5 percent unemployment, last seen in December 2007, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

Reagan saw that kind of growth after the recession of the early 1980s, and it helped him win reelection by a comfortable 18 points. He also faced Walter Mondale, a weak opponent, from the opposing party — a bit of history Obama hopes to repeat in 2012.

The economy hasn’t seen such high-octane growth since August 1993 to February 1995, when it last averaged 350,000 jobs created per month. Even during the tech boom in the latter half of the 1990s, the economy didn’t average that many jobs, according to Heidi Shierholz, an economist with EPI.

The Obama campaign’s hope is that voters will feel the economy is improving in the fall of 2012, just as they did when Roosevelt and Reagan were reelected.

That seemed to be at the root of Plouffe’s remarks on Wednesday, as quoted by Bloomberg.

“The average American does not view the economy through the prism of GDP or unemployment rates or even monthly jobs numbers,” Plouffe said, according to Bloomberg. “People won’t vote based on the unemployment rate, they’re going to vote based on: ‘How do I feel about my own situation? Do I believe the president makes decisions based on me and my family?’ ”

The remarks will likely irritate Democrats who think Obama and his political team have taken their eye off jobs.

There’s some reason to think Obama could get a boost from the economy in the second half of the year, particularly given signs that the White House and congressional Republicans are moving closer to a deal that would lift the nation’s debt ceiling and cut trillions from annual deficits.

There’s no doubt such a deal would boost confidence in the economy and the political system. It could also boost hiring.

Layoffs have basically stopped since the recession, said Shierholz, but employers aren’t hiring even though corporations are expected to announce huge profits for the first half of the year.

“We are still treading water at the bottom of a deep hole,” said Shierholz.

The only real improvement in the labor market since the recession ended is with workers who have decided to sit out the slow economy and not look for a new job. That’s helped keep the unemployment rate low, Shierholz said.

Zandi argues the economy was sidetracked for the first half of the year by a number of shocks that he hopes are temporary.

They include the devastating tsunami in Japan that wreaked havoc on manufacturers around the world; turmoil in the Middle East; the ongoing conflict in Libya that sent crude oil prices to summer highs in the spring; and the debt talks, which Zandi said appear to have led the Treasury to slow outlays to avoid breaching the debt ceiling.

“The ill effects of these shocks are or will soon fade and even add to growth during the second half of the year,” Zandi said in an email. He expects payroll employment gains to be back near 200,000 by the end of the year.

If Zandi’s right and those gains continue through 2012, Plouffe might be proven right, too, as voters could be pleased with their position.

But there isn’t a lot of room for Obama to maneuver when it comes to the unemployment rate.

Daniel Strauss contributed to this story.

9.2% unemployment; April & May figures corrected...

Read the original here.

Jobs barely rise, dashing hopes of economic revival
On Friday July 8, 2011, 8:34 am
By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. employment growth ground to a halt in June, with employers hiring the fewest number of workers in nine months, dampening hopes the economy was on the cusp of regaining momentum after stumbling in recent months.

Nonfarm payrolls rose only 18,000, the weakest reading since September, the Labor Department said on Friday, well below economists' expectations for a 90,000 rise.

Many economists raised their forecasts on Thursday after a stronger-than-expected reading on U.S. private hiring from payrolls processor ADP, and they expected gains of anywhere between 125,000 and 175,000.

The unemployment rate climbed to 9.2 percent, the highest since December, from 9.1 percent in May.

The government revised April and May payrolls to show 44,000 fewer jobs created than previously reported. The report shattered expectations that the economy was starting to accelerate after a soft patch in the first half of the year.

The private sector added 57,000, accounting for all the jobs created, with government employment shrinking 39,000 because of fiscal problems at local and state governments.

Economic activity in the first six months of the year was dampened by rising commodity prices and supply chain disruptions following Japan's devastating earthquake in March.

WHITE HOUSE HEADACHES

Signs the labor market is struggling is a major blow for the Obama administration, which has struggled to get the economy to create enough jobs to absorb the 14.1 million unemployed Americans.

The economy is the top concern among voters and will feature prominently in President Barack Obama's bid for re-election next year. So far, the economy has regained only a fraction of the more than 8 million jobs lost during the recession.

At the same time, the Federal Reserve -- which wrapped up a $600 billion bond-buying program last week designed to spur lending and stimulate growth -- appears unlikely to take any further steps to boost the economy.

The economy needs to create between 125,000 and 150,000 new jobs a month just to absorb new labor force entrants.

Details of the report showed widespread weakness, though factory payrolls rebounded 6,000 after contracting in May for the first time in seven months, with the recovery reflecting a step-up in motor vehicle production.

Construction employment fell 9,000 last month after declining 4,000 in May. Government employment declined for an eighth straight month as municipalities and state governments continued to wield the axe to balance their budgets.

The report also showed the average workweek fell to 34.3 hours from 34.4 hours. Employers have been reluctant to extend hours because of the uncertainty surrounding the recovery.

Average hourly earnings slipped a penny, more evidence that wage-driven inflation is not a risk. (Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Neil Stempleman)

Campaigning from the White House?

Is this a thing? Does the administration's defense hold up? Should this be a thing? Or is this just a perk of being the incumbent? Should anyone be making a big deal of this to see if it is a thing? Read the original here.

White House says Obama Fundraising Appeal not Illegal
RealClearPolitics - Articles - Print Article
By Alexis Simendinger - June 28, 2011

President Obama appealed to supporters and donors in a videotaped message emailed by his campaign team to millions of people Monday -- a message filmed with the president inside the White House by a crew from the Democratic National Committee, according to a White House official who responded to RCP questions about the solicitation.

In the video, Obama tells supporters they can join him and Vice President Joe Biden for dinner if they win a contest offered by his campaign. "We're both really looking forward to it. Hope to see you soon," Obama says on camera. The script was written by the DNC.

The president's video is accompanied by a donor solicitation form in which supporters of the administration can check boxes donating from $5 to $700 to the Obama-Biden re-election effort. This may, or may not, constitute fundraising by a federal employee in a federal office building, a practice that is generally prohibited. Even if it is fundraising, the statutory barriers regarding the White House itself are vague.

In response to questions about whether the president and his political team had stayed safely on the legal side of the relevant statutes, White House officials made three arguments. First, they said, an open process for small donors to essentially win a raffle is not the kind of fundraising prohibited under the law -- and the president didn't make a direct appeal for donations, anyway. Second, they pointed to a longstanding advisory opinion from the Justice Department that differentiates between the residence portion of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. -- where the aide said Obama had been filmed -- and official rooms in the White House. Third, they said, Obama's approach is in keeping with the practices of his predecessors.

"It's no different than what happened under eight years of George Bush and eight years of Bill Clinton," the official explained, speaking on background.

This assertion appears to be half-true. Although the news accounts cited by White House officials do show that George W. Bush filmed political ads in the White House, they were not overt fundraising efforts. But directly raising money in the White House was indeed the context of the bitter controversy President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore provoked in 1995 and 1996 by aggressively raising millions of dollars in campaign funds during activities expressly designed to use the White House as a hook to attract donor interest.

Congress subsequently investigated Clinton's Pennsylvania Avenue courtship of donors, which included using the Lincoln Bedroom for donor sleepovers and offering intimate meetings and briefings with Clinton and other top officials inside the White House for the donors who could -- and did -- write big checks. Republican lawmakers, joined by some good-government advocates, howled that the president had sold White House access to raise money for his re-election.

Gore, who admitted that he solicited campaign cash from a telephone in his vice presidential office, famously argued during a West Wing briefing for reporters in 1997 that he had been operating within the law because there was "no controlling legal authority."

The Obama campaign video is a small part of an aggressive fundraising effort[1] being undertaken by Team Obama. It also comes on the heels of criticism that the president, who campaigned to change the way Washington works, was instead participating in some of its more questionable rituals, including a March 7 meeting with Obama arranged by the DNC in the Blue Room of the White House residence. The meeting, first described in a June 24 Politico story[2] about a list of attendees released by the White House, took place with business leaders who were former or current donors or fundraisers. White House press secretary Jay Carney told Politico the meeting was not "a fundraiser."

In the email message[3] that accompanies Obama's Monday video, however, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina explains to supporters that a minimum $5 donation is required to enter the campaign contest: "Make a donation today and be automatically registered for a chance to have dinner with President Obama and Vice President Biden together. We'll cover your airfare and the meal -- all you need to bring is your story and your ideas."

White House officials queried about the solicitation by RCP on Monday emphasized that the law permits Obama and Biden to conduct solicitations from select rooms inside the White House, including the residence, which is treated as the president's home and not his official workplace. That determination is based on an Office of Legal Counsel interpretation of the statute originating in the 1970s, a presidential spokesman told RCP before forwarding a copy of the opinion. A White House official repeatedly stated that the Obama dinner solicitation was filmed in the White House residence. If true, that would be a mitigating factor, but some observers who viewed the video believe it might be the Map Room[4], a venerated ground-floor office in the mansion that was used as a situation room for Franklin Roosevelt during the Second World War -- and where Obama himself often does official business[5]. A White House aide said Tuesday morning that he didn't think it was the Map Room, although he wasn't certain of the exact location.

The campaign's dine-with-Obama contest first began in mid-June and then added Biden to the prize this week. The campaign team is working intensively this week to solicit money from small-dollar donors to increase the size and composition of Obama's war chest prior to an important June 30, second-quarter deadline to report total campaign finance details to the Federal Election Commission.

"The web videos you're referencing don't ask for funds," the White House spokesman said. "However, even if we did it, the Office of Legal Counsel has determined that there are certain rooms in the White House in which you can do that."

He described Obama's campaigning from the White House as even more carefully scripted by the DNC than the filmed messages of Clinton and Bush. "We're going above and beyond what's required by law. The law would permit that in certain rooms. And we're not even doing what's permitted in certain rooms," he added.

To make the case that Obama acted in keeping with his predecessors, the White House sent RCP these references, as well as YouTube links:


2004: President Bush And First Lady Laura Bush Filmed Parts Of Their Campaign Ads In The White House Residence -- The Bush Campaign Pointed To 31 White House Images Used By The Clinton Campaign In 1996 For Precedent. "Bush and his wife filmed their parts of the ads last month in the White House residence. Campaign officials said both parties have used the executive mansion for political ads. By their count, President Clinton used White House images 31 times in 1996." [USA Today, 3/3/04]

2004: "The President's Reelection Campaign Filmed Mr. Bush In The White House During The Week Of Feb. 9 For Advertising To Be Aired In Swing States." "The president's reelection campaign filmed Mr. Bush in the White House during the week of Feb. 9 for advertising to be aired in swing states. Monday, it began the process of calling stations to inquire about purchasing ad time. The advertising campaign will emphasize President Bush's 'positive message' and present him as a man of 'steady leadership in the face of remarkable change,' Bush campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel said. He added that the advertising would show that the president has led 'with the strong leadership that challenging times demand.' " [CBS News, 2/11/09]

"This is not the Clinton coffees or the Lincoln bedroom," Obama's spokesman said. "This is something that was routinely done under Bill Clinton and routinely done under George Bush, so if you're going to start comparing this to those mega-scandals, you need to sort of back up and take a deep breath."

According to the advisory legal opinion on which Obama is relying as his re-election campaign begins, "Areas within the discrete private residence area included in the White House mansion, although not physically detached from areas formally given over to official office space or to areas used for ceremonial functions, may therefore reasonably be seen to fall outside the reach of the statute."

The statute governing campaign solicitations inside federal offices appears in Title 18, Section 607, of the U.S. Criminal Code and expressly includes the president and vice president. It states, "It shall be unlawful for an individual who is an officer of employee of the Federal Government, including the President, Vice President, and Members of Congress, to solicit or receive a donation of money or other thing of value in connection with a Federal, State or local election, while in any room or building occupied in the discharge of official duties by an officer or employee of the United States, from any person."

References
^ aggressive fundraising effort (www.washingtonpost.com)
^ Politico story (www.politico.com)
^ the email message (donate.barackobama.com)
^ Map Room (www.whitehousemuseum.org)
^ Obama himself often does official business (www.whitehouse.gov)

Soros involved in Sec. State Elections

aka the overseers of elections. Read the original here.

Soros and liberal groups seeking top election posts in battleground states

By Chuck Neubauer
The Washington Times
9:00 p.m., Thursday, June 23, 2011

A small tax-exempt political group with ties to wealthy liberals like billionaire financier George Soros has quietly helped elect 11 reform-minded progressive Democrats as secretaries of state to oversee the election process in battleground states and keep Republican "political operatives from deciding who can vote and how those votes are counted."

Known as the Secretary of State Project (SOSP), the organization was formed by liberal activists in 2006 to put Democrats in charge of state election offices, where key decisions often are made in close races on which ballots are counted and which are not.

The group's website said it wants to stop Republicans from "manipulating" election results.

"Any serious commitment to wresting control of the country from the Republican Party must include removing their political operatives from deciding who can vote and whose votes will count," the group said on its website, accusing some Republican secretaries of state of making "partisan decisions."

SOSP has sought donations by describing the contributions as a "modest political investment" to elect "clean candidates" to the secretary of state posts.

Named after Section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code, so-called 527 political groups — such as SOSP — have no upper limit on contributions and no restrictions on who may contribute in seeking to influence the selection, nomination, election, appointment or defeat of candidates to federal, state or local public office. They generally are not regulated by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), creating a soft-money loophole.

While FEC regulations limit individual donations to a maximum of $2,500 per candidate and $5,000 to a PAC, a number of 527 groups have poured tens of millions of unregulated dollars into various political efforts.

SOSP has backed 11 winning candidates in 18 races, including such key states as Ohio, Nevada, Iowa, New Mexico and Minnesota.

"Supporting secretary of state candidates with integrity is one of the most cost-efficient ways progressives can ensure they have a fair chance of winning elections," SOSP said on its website, adding that "a relatively small influx of money — often as little as $30,000 to $50,000 — can change the outcome of a race."

SOSP was formed in the wake of the ballot-counting confusion in Florida during the 2000 presidential election and a repeat of that chaos in Ohio in the 2004 presidential election. Democrats accused Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris and Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, both Republicans, of manipulating the elections in favor of GOP candidates — charges Mrs. Harris and Mr. Blackwell denied.

"Does anyone doubt that these two secretaries of state ... made damaging partisan decisions about purging voter rolls, registration of new voters, voting machine security, the location of precincts, the allocation of voting machines, and dozens of other critical matters?" SOSP asked on its website.

SOSP said it raised more than $500,000 in 2006 to help elect five Democratic secretaries of states in seven races.

The Commission on Federal Election Reform, co-chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, recommended in 2005 taking away the administration of elections from secretaries of state and giving it to nonpartisan election officers.

"Partisan officials should not be in charge of elections," said Robert Pastor, co-director of the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University. "Both Democrats and Republicans not only compete for power, they try to manipulate the rules to get an advantage.

"We want to make sure that those counting votes don't have a dog in that game," said Mr. Pastor, who served as executive director and a member of the commission.

One of the SOSP's financial backers is Mr. Soros, the billionaire hedge-fund operator who spent $27 million in 2004 in an unsuccessful effort to defeat President George W. Bush. Mr. Soros spent $5.1 million in the 2008 election supporting Democratic candidates and causes. In 2008, he gave $10,000 to SOSP.

A spokesman for Mr. Soros downplayed the financier's role in the project.

"He supports the organization," said Michael Vachon, who manages Mr. Soros' political donations. "He was in favor of electing Democrats secretary of state. George was not a founder of the project, and he never had an operational role or helped plan strategy."

But many of SOSP's founders and supporters have long-standing ties to Mr. Soros and the organizations he founded or helped fund, including Democracy Alliance, a liberal-leaning group whose membership includes some of the country's wealthiest Democrats. Created in 2005 with major financial backing from Mr. Soros and millionaire Colorado businessmen and gay-rights activist Tim Gill, Democracy Alliance has helped direct nearly $150 million to progressive organizations.

SOSP's founders include Michael Kieschnick, a Democracy Alliance member who also is president of a telecommunications company that donates to progressive nonprofit groups; James Rucker, former director of Soros-supported MoveOn.org, a stridently anti-Bush group known for its ads comparing Mr. Bush to Adolf Hitler; and Becky Bond, former director at ActBlue, a political committee that bills itself as "the nation's largest source of funds for Democrats," whose contributors include Mr. Soros.

Mr. Kieschnick, Mr. Rucker and Ms. Bond did not respond to emails and telephone messages seeking comment.

Democracy Alliance members who gave to SOSP include furniture company heir John R. Hunting; computer company executive Paul Rudd; medical-supply firm heiress Pat Stryker; venture capitalist Nicholas Hanauer; ex-Clinton administration official Rob Stein; Tides Foundation founder Drummond Pike; real estate developer Robert Bowditch; charitable foundation co-chairman Scott Wallace; clothing executive Susie Tompkins Buell; real estate developer Albert Dwoskin; child psychologist Gail Furman; and Taco Bell heir Rob McKay.

Ms. Furman also is president of the Furman Foundation, a major donor to the Soros-backed Tides Center, which has provided more than $300 million to "progressive" causes.

Mr. Dwoskin also is chairman of Catalist, a Soros-funded political consultancy in Virginia that, according to its website, "brings easy to use web-based tools and a high quality voter database of all voting-age individuals in the United States to progressive organizations and campaigns."

Other SOSP donors include Daniel Berger, who helped create Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, whose donors include Democracy Alliance and Mr. Soros' Open Society Institute; and Chris Findlater, chairman of the Florida Watch Ballot Committee, whose funding comes from America Votes, a Soros-supported get-out-the-vote group.

The SOSP also used ActBlue to help raise funds for itself and its candidates from Democratic donors nationwide. ActBlue says it has raised more than $190 million online for Democratic candidates since 2004.

Mr. Soros and several SOSP contributors also are part of a small group of wealthy liberals who have been among the top donors to 527 organizations set up to mobilize Democratic voters in recent years.

In 2004, Mr. Soros was the largest individual donor to America Coming Together (ACT), a 527 group he helped create along with Mr. McKay, the Taco Bell boss, to defeat Mr. Bush. Mr. Soros gave $7.5 million. Mr. McKay, now chairman of Democracy Alliance, gave $245,000 to ACT, and he and his family foundation donated $35,000 to SOSP.

Alida Messinger, a Rockefeller heiress, gave $2.25 million to ACT and $25,000 to SOSP, according to records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group that monitors campaign finances. She and other top SOSP donors also were major donors to America Votes 2006, another Soros-backed liberal group that sought to elect Democratic candidates, records show.

Mr. Soros also gave $3.5 million and was the largest donor to a short-lived political group called the Fund for America, set up in late 2007 to do voter outreach and finance attack ads for the 2008 election. Four of the fund's nine donors who gave $200,000 or more also contributed to SOSP, including Mr. Soros, Mr. McKay, Mr. Hunting and Lee Fikes of Bonanza Oil, who gave $600,000 to the Fund for America and $22,500 to SOSP.

In addition to his SOSP donation, Mr. Soros in 2006 also supported the project's candidates in Ohio, Jennifer Brunner, to whom he gave $2,500, and in Minnesota, Mark Ritchie, who got $250. Both won.

In 2006, SOSP helped elect Democratic secretaries of state in Ohio, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada and Iowa while its candidates lost in Colorado and Michigan. In 2008, the group backed winning candidates in Montana, West Virginia, Missouri and Oregon. SOSP raised $280,316 and spent $278,224 in that two-year election period. It could not be determined how much the project raised additionally in donations for the candidate's individual campaign funds.

In 2010, just two of the group's seven candidates won in a Republican year — in Minnesota and California. It lost in Ohio, Colorado, Iowa, South Dakota and Michigan. The group said it raised $193,767 and spent $243,112. It could not be determined how much it raised in additional donations for individual candidates.

Minnesota is the prime example of the project's success. Helping to elect Mr. Ritchie in 2006 and 2010, Democrats had one of their own making key decisions when the extremely close U.S. Senate race between incumbent Norm Coleman, a Republican, and his challenger, former comedian Al Franken, went to a recount in 2008.

Mr. Ritchie headed the canvassing board that conducted the recount. Mr. Coleman initially had a lead of 206 votes out of 2.9 million cast, but after the recount, the board decided Mr. Franken had won by 225 votes. Republicans criticized Mr. Ritchie and the canvassing board, but the Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously upheld the finding.

Republican Mary Kiffmeyer, who lost to Mr. Ritchie in 2006, said SOSP's involvement contributed to her defeat.

"They absolutely had an effect," said Ms. Kiffmeyer, now a GOP state representative. She said she was leading by 17 percentage points the week before the election, when SOSP and its allies spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on targeted television ads and mailings. She said she had no time or money to respond to the last-minute attack ads, which linked her to Mr. Bush.

Ms. Kiffmeyer said she was limited to raising no more than $500 from an individual and spending just $250,000, but the SOSP had no such limits.

Mr. Soros, who lives in New York, did not donate directly to SOSP in 2006, but he was a serious donor to other important groups in Minnesota during the 2006 campaign. He gave $200,000 to America Votes-Minnesota, which led a get-out-the-vote drive just before the election — more than half of what it raised in 2006. He also gave $10,000 to the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party on whose ticket Mr. Ritchie ran.

"I want to thank the Secretary of State Project and its thousands of grass-roots donors for helping to push my campaign over the top," Mr. Ritchie wrote. "Your wonderful support — both directly to my campaign and through generous expenditures by the strategic fund — helped me get our election reform message to Minnesota voters. And the voters overwhelming cast their ballot to protect our democracy on election day."

© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

Remember the DNC sponsored secret meeting in the White House?

Read the original here.

Politico.com
W.H. releases DNC meet names
By: Josh Gerstein and Matt Negrin
June 24, 2011 07:24 PM EDT

Former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, former technology executive Bernard Schwartz and banking executive James Staley were among 30 well-connected figures in the business and finance world who met with President Barack Obama at the White House in March for an unusual economic discussion organized by the Democratic National Committee.

The White House released the names on Friday under a policy Obama instituted in 2009 to disclose nearly all White House guests approximately three months after they visit.

The March 7 meeting in the Blue Room of the residence has drawn attention and criticismbecause most of the attendees were donors or fundraisers and the session was arranged by the DNC. Good-government advocates said hosting the event at the White House was ill-advised.

“There’s a pretty clear line — or there should be a clear line,” Meredith McGehee of the Campaign Legal Center, which presses for tighter controls on campaign finance, recently told POLITICO. “I don’t have a problem with the president inviting Wall Street people to the White House to discuss policy, but why does it need to be DNC-sponsored? I think that’s what raises the eyebrows. Even if it’s not a fundraiser, it’s a cultivation.”

In addition to the Wall Street financiers and business executives, the session was attended by Andy Tobias, the DNC treasurer; Patrick Gaspard, the former White House political director and current DNC executive director; and Brad Thompson, a DNC fundraiser who works with high-dollar donors and bundlers in New York.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said last week the White House is “very transparent” about its DNC-sponsored events. White House officials have described the meeting as a chance for Obama to solicit supporters’ views on the economy. However, Obama aides have not responded to queries from POLITICO about which Obama aides accompanied him to the meeting.

At a House hearing this week, two Bush White House ethics lawyers said the session raised questions under the Hatch Act, the federal law limiting political activity on federal property and by government officials.

“It is unclear why the Democratic National Committee would have been used to organize a meeting to solicit advice on the economy. Indeed, this meeting seems to walk a fine line between official and political with all of the attendant Hatch Act concerns,” Scott Coffina, who served as an ethics adviser to the Bush White House, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

“I would never have agreed to having such a meeting going on in the White House itself, in any room of the White House,” said Richard Painter, who also served as an ethics counsel under Bush. “I know there’s controversy about that. But I would not want to see those meetings, quite frankly, going on on federal property. What the legal restrictions are is somewhat more ambiguous.”

Carney has said that the Blue Room meeting “was not a fundraiser” and that the DNC picked up the $68 tab for the event.

In addition, Obama aides note that the Democratic and Republican parties have sponsored events at the White House over the years. At least one of the annual Christmas parties is usually paid for by the DNC or Republican National Committee and attended by political guests, including donors. And in 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney hosted a reception on the lawn of his residence for top Republican fundraisers.

However, President Bill Clinton sparked controversy when he and Vice President Al Gore hosted dozens of DNC-sponsored policy discussions — often called “coffees” — at the White House with Democratic donors and other supporters. At least some of the guests were told they could attend if they gave a specific amount, such as $50,000, to the Democratic Party. The so-called coffees were part of a broader flap involving donors being hosted overnight in the Lincoln Bedroom.

Several participants in the March 7 session declined to comment publicly when contacted by POLITICO. However, attendees who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the meeting was entirely or almost entirely devoted to discussion of the sluggish economy.

“There was a lot of concern about the markets and how so far we’ve avoided disaster, but we’re really not out of the woods here,” one participant said Friday. “All I remember was very substantive stuff about what to do with economy [and] markets, how to get jobs growing — good solid policy stuff.”

The Blue Room event, first reported last week by The New York Times, was not on Obama’s public schedule. Obama aides have noted that the public schedule does not list every meeting Obama has and that he is the first president to pledge to disclose the names of nearly all White House visitors.

Here’s a partial guest list for the meeting (POLITICO added the affiliations and descriptions):

Thomas Bernstein, co-founder of Chelsea Piers, L.P., and chairman of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington (appointed by Obama in September 2010); and his wife,Andrea Bernstein

Jon Corzine, former Democratic governor of New Jersey and former CEO of Goldman Sachs

James Dinan, founder of York Capital Management

Glenn Dubin, CEO of Highbridge Capital Management

Mark Gallogly, co-founder of Centerbridge Partners and a member of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board

Jeffrey Gural, chairman of the real estate firm Newmark Knight Frank

Michael Kempner, CEO at MWW Group and a member of the White House’s Council for Community Solutions

Sarah Kovner, longtime Clinton supporter and prominent New York liberal

Marc Lasry, co-founder and CEO of Avenue Capital Group

Margo Lion, of Margo Lion LTD, co-chairwoman of the Obama’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities

Brian Mathis, co-managing member of Provident Group Ltd. and co-managing partner of Longship Capital Management, LLC

Richard Richman, runs real estate/investment banking/property management conglomerate The Richman Group; and his wife, Ellen Richman, a philanthropist and Pace University marketing professor

William Rudin, chief executive of the real estate company Rudin Management

Rick Schifter, partner at TPG Capital, formerly Texas Pacific Group

Bernard Schwartz, former CEO of Loral Space & Communications, philanthropist and backer of the Democratic Leadership Council

Jay Snyder, Democratic Party activist and philanthropist

James Staley, head of JPMorgan Chase’s investment bank

Zachary Abrahamson contributed to this report.


© 2011 POLITICO LLC

Ending Business as usual in DC...

Oh wait. Maybe, by "ending" the President meant "continuing". Also, it looks like if you can bring money to the President, you can get a pretty cushy gig. That's what the millions of unemployed should do. Gather money for Barack Obama, and then cash in with sweet government job. Read the original here.

Top Barack Obama Donors Net Government Jobs - Fred Schulte, John Aloysius Farrell And Jeremy Borden -- IWatch News via Politico.com
Telecom executive Donald H. Gips raised a big bundle of cash to help finance his friend Barack Obama’s run for the presidency[1].

Gips, a vice president of Colorado-based Level 3 Communications, delivered more than $500,000 in contributions for the Obama war chest, while two other company executives collected at least $150,000 more.Continue Reading[2]

After the election, Gips was put in charge of hiring in the Obama White House[3], helping to place loyalists and fundraisers in many key positions. Then, in mid-2009, Obama named him ambassador to South Africa. Meanwhile, Level 3 Communications, in which Gips retained stock, received millions of dollars of government stimulus contracts for broadband projects in six states — though Gips said he had been “completely unaware” that the company had received the contracts.

More than two years after Obama took office[4] vowing to banish “special interests” from his administration, nearly 200 of his biggest donors[5] have landed plum government jobs and advisory posts, won federal contracts worth millions of dollars for their business interests or attended numerous elite White House meetings and social events, an investigation by iWatch News has found.

These “bundlers[6]” raised at least $50,000 — and sometimes more than $500,000 — in campaign donations for Obama’s campaign. Many of those in the “Class of 2008” are now being asked to bundle contributions for Obama’s reelection, an effort that could cost $1 billion.

As a candidate, Obama[7] spoke passionately about diminishing the clout of moneyed interests. Kicking off his presidential run on Feb. 10, 2007, he blasted “the cynics, the lobbyists, the special interests,” who had “turned our government into a game only they can afford to play.”

“We’re here today to take it back,” he said.

But just like other presidential aspirants, Obama relied heavily on megadonors to propel his campaign across the finish line, and many fundraisers have shared in the spoils of victory.

The White House insisted its appointees are eminently qualified. “In filling these posts, the administration looks for the most qualified candidates who represent Americans from all walks of life,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said. “Being a donor does not get you a job in this administration, nor does it preclude you from getting one.”

The iWatch News investigation found:

• Overall, 184 of 556, or about one-third of Obama bundlers or their spouses joined the administration in some role. But the percentages are much higher for the big-dollar bundlers. Nearly 80 percent of those who collected more than $500,000 for Obama took “key administration posts,” as defined by the White House. More than half the 24 ambassador nominees who were bundlers raised $500,000.

• The big bundlers had broad access to the White House for meetings with top administration officials and glitzy social events. In all, campaign bundlers and their family members account for more than 3,000 White House meetings and visits. Half of them raised $200,000 or more.

• Some Obama bundlers have ties to companies that stand to gain financially from the president’s policy agenda, particularly in clean energy and telecommunications, and some already have done so. Level 3 Communications, for instance, snared $13.8 million in stimulus money.

The Obama administration has tightened restrictions on hiring lobbyists[8], but the deference shown major donors contradicts its claims to have changed business as usual in Washington.

“Any president who says he’s going to change this is either hopelessly naive or polishing the reality to promise something other than can be delivered,” said Paul Light, a New York University professor and an expert on presidential transitions. “At best, it’s naive and a little bit of a shell game.”

Bundling is controversial because it permits campaigns to skirt individual contribution limits of $2,500 in federal elections. Bundlers pool donations from fundraising networks and, as a result, “play an enormous role in determining the success of political campaigns,” according to government watchdog Public Citizen.

When the new administration set up shop in the White House on Jan. 20, 2009, the money raisers soon followed. Visitor logs[9] show about 800 bundler visits during the formative early months of the administration, and overall, the top-tier bundlers tended to visit far more often than those at the bottom rung.Continue Reading[10]

Some are longtime friends of the first family, such as Chicagoans Cindy Moelis and her husband, Robert Rivkin, who as a couple bundled at least $200,000. Obama appointed Moelis to direct the Presidential Commission on White House Fellows. Her husband was appointed general counsel of the Department of Transportation and special adviser to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. Rivkin, who worked as a lawyer with a Chicago risk management and insurance firm, had once served as general counsel to the Chicago Transit Authority.

Moelis told iWatch News that she and her husband were “highly qualified” for their jobs and that they “took pay cuts and made considerable sacrifice” to enter public service. “We truly believe in it,” she said.

Harvey S. Wineberg, a certified public accountant from Chicago who raised at least $100,000 and is Obama’s personal accountant, said his fundraising had “nothing to do” with his appointment to the President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability in December 2010. Wineberg said he called a White House staffer, whom he declined to name, to ask about serving. “I thought I’d be good,” he said. He has since resigned.

The bundlers often went to the White House to see David C. Jacobson, then a special assistant for presidential personnel. Jacobson, a Chicago lawyer and himself an Obama bundler, served as the 2008 campaign’s deputy finance director. Jacobson, who departed in September 2009 to become ambassador to Canada, scheduled about 90 meetings with bundlers, according to an iWatch News analysis of visitor logs. Two-thirds of them had each raised at least $200,000.

Gips, who served as White House director of presidential personnel before taking the post in South Africa, saw more than a dozen bundlers. Other inner-circle White House officials, such as presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett, also a bundler, met with more than 50 bundlers, mostly the heavy hitters.

Obama met with at least two dozen bundlers either privately or with another person, according to the visitor logs.

Ambassadorships have been the traditional payoff for big bundlers. But it’s not just the posts in foreign capitals that are attractive. Light, the NYU expert on presidential transitions, said that in recent years many have sought jobs with deep reach into the federal bureaucracy — and found a receptive ear in the White House.

“When they get a résumé from a bundler, that is a real signal of seriousness,” Light said. “It’s also a thinly veiled quid pro quo,” and it “goes without saying they will get considered.”

Public Citizen found in 2008 that President George W. Bush had appointed about 200 bundlers to administration posts over his eight years in office. That is roughly the same number Obama has appointed in a little more than two years, the iWatch News analysis showed.

Some bundlers said in interviews that they called the White House to ask for a position, while others said they were called and asked to serve.

Ted Hosp, an Alabama lawyer who delivered more than $200,000 for Obama, said he had no expectation of a job when he signed on to the campaign finance committee. But he did ask to be considered and said he met with then-White House Counsel Gregory Craig, also a bundler, to discuss a position at the Justice Department. “I was interested in exploring [a job],” said Hosp, who did not get a job in the administration. “I would have been interested in helping him [Obama] if the right opportunity arose.”

The cluster of appointments among top bundlers suggests that the size of the donation may have been a factor at least in getting a foot in the door. Less than one in five at the $50,000 level got an administration position. Half of $200,000 bundlers were picked for some post; 80 percent of the $500,000 bundlers were appointed.Continue Reading[11]

Michael Caplin, a Virginia consultant who assists nonprofit businesses, raised $200,000 for Obama and was appointed to the Commission on Presidential Scholars, a board that selects and honors promising high school students. He said he was contacted by a White House staffer asking him if he wanted to serve, though he saw plenty of other big donors angling for jobs and positions.

“Clearly, if someone raised a million dollars for your campaign, you tend to get a phone call returned,” Caplin said. But he also believes that many big donors who took positions were well qualified. “If that person is truly excellent but also raised money for your campaign, should that disallow you to serve?’”

The appointment of George Washington University law professor Spencer Overton illustrates how the administration has rewarded many top fundraisers.

Overton wrote in 2003 that the influence big donors wield in elections means that an “overwhelming majority of citizens are effectively excluded from an important stage of the political process.” Yet Overton bundled at least $500,000 for Obama. He was named to the Obama transition team and in February 2009 was appointed principal deputy attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Policy. Overton visited the White House more than 80 times from January 2009 through the end of 2010 for events ranging from small meetings with high-level staffers to social and entertainment events, sometimes with his wife, records show. Overton resigned the $180,000-a-year job in July 2010. He declined to comment for this story.

Overton is one of seven campaign bundlers who took jobs at Justice, including Attorney General Eric Holder, who was a $50,000 bundler. Holder had been deputy attorney general in the administration of President Bill Clinton.

At the Department of Energy, four bundlers who together raised a minimum of $1.6 million have held staff jobs or advisory posts. Steven J. Spinner, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and venture capital adviser, took over responsibility at the department for parceling out more than $100 billion worth of stimulus grants and other energy-related loans. Spinner also has been a frequent White House guest, listed more than 40 times.

In March 2009, Obama appointed $500,000 bundler and law school pal Julius Genachowski to chair the Federal Communications Commission, an independent agency. Two other bundlers at the FCC are chief of staff Edward Lazarus, a litigator and former federal prosecutor, and William T. Lake, a lawyer specializing in communications and e-commerce issues who serves as chief of the media bureau.

Genachowski had previously served as chief counsel to the FCC chairman in the 1990s, but his close ties to Obama have raised eyebrows. He has turned up so often at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. that in March, congressional Republicans demanded an accounting of whom he has met with and what was discussed.

White House logs list Genachowski and his wife, Rachel Goslins, for more than 100 visits from early 2009 through March of this year. Goslins, a filmmaker, was appointed executive director of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

Some of the biggest fundraisers end up serving in foreign capitals. Obama made a nod to this long-standing practice in a pre-Inauguration news conference, saying, “It would be disingenuous for me to suggest that there are not going to be some excellent public servants but who haven’t come through the ranks of the civil service.”

About a third of Obama’s ambassadors have been political appointees as opposed to career foreign service officers — about the same as other recent presidents. Obama, however, has nominated 24 bundlers to ambassadorships to date. Of those, 14 each raised at least $500,000. Six others raised $200,000 or more. Jacobson, now ambassador to Canada, is the only one listed at the $50,000 minimum, and he played a pivotal finance role in the campaign.Continue Reading[12]

The Obama record has disappointed the American Foreign Service Association, which believes these appointments should mostly go to career diplomats. The organization cites the 1980 Foreign Service Act, which states that political contributions “should not be a factor” in picking ambassadors, a rule presidents of both parties have all but ignored.

Passing over career diplomats in favor of megadonors amounts to “selling ambassadorships,” said Susan Johnson, president of the American Foreign Service Association.

Thomas Pickering, who served as ambassador to Russia and several other countries during a diplomatic career spanning four decades, said turning to bundlers adds a “new dimension” to what he termed “buying offices” through aggressive fundraising. “An individual can multiply their chances by going out and soliciting a lot of contributions other than just their own,” said Pickering, who chairs the American Academy of Diplomacy.

But White House officials dispute that characterization, saying several top ambassadorships went to people who were neither Obama bundlers nor career diplomats but were uniquely qualified for the posts, such as National Security Council official Dan Shapiro (Israel), former Rep. and 9/11 Commission member Tim Roemer (India) and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman (China), a Republican who had earlier served as ambassador to Singapore and is now considering challenging Obama for the presidency.

Yet few stories illustrate more vividly how friendship, fundraising, business and politics can intertwine at the White House than that of Gips, Obama’s choice for ambassador to South Africa.

In the 1990s, he wrote a report that later formed a blueprint for AmeriCorps. In 1998, Gips left government, where he had supervised wireless spectrum issues for the FCC and served as Vice President Al Gore’s chief domestic policy adviser. He joined Level 3, a budding telecom company that has received more than $100 million in federal contracts in the past decade.

There, at a 2004 fundraiser, he met Obama, who was then running for the Senate in Illinois. The two grew close: Obama asked Gips to help edit his campaign book, “The Audacity of Hope.”

Gips collected more than $500,000 for Obama. James Crowe, chairman of the Level 3 board, was an Obama bundler, too, raising at least $100,000. The firm’s vice chairman, Charles Miller III, bundled more than $50,000.

At the White House, Gips was a powerful force to decide who got coveted jobs. Obama appointed Crowe in October 2010 to chair the presidential advisory committee on telecommunications and wireless issues.

And Level 3 was awarded some $13.8 million in federal stimulus contracts, to extend broadband connections in rural areas of states where it had networks.

In a statement, Gips said he was not involved in Crowe’s appointment, which occurred after Gips left the White House. As for the recovery money, Gips said, “I was completely unaware of stimulus contracts awarded to Level 3 and have not spoken to the firm about them.”Continue Reading[13]

The iWatch News investigation confirmed that at least 18 other bundlers have ties to businesses poised to profit from the president’s political agenda through stimulus money, government contracts or other spending to promote clean energy technology or green development.

Oklahoma billionaire investor George Kaiser is one. A longtime Democratic donor, he is a big financial backer of a company that in March of 2009 won a $535 million loan guarantee from DoE for a solar plant in Silicon Valley. He had multiple visits to the White House in the months before the company was awarded the contract. Kaiser did not respond to interview requests from iWatch News.

Steven Westly, a green energy entrepreneur who raised at least $500,000 for Obama, has seen four companies in his venture firm’s portfolio receive more than $500 million in loans, grants or stimulus money from the Energy Department under the Obama administration, iWatch News reported in March.

Some bundlers limit their role in the administration to serving on commissions to support their pet causes and hobnobbing with celebrities. Obama has appointed 22 bundlers to the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities or to the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Others have served on advisory groups that make recommendations to the president on critical matters ranging from the economic stimulus to policies to spur job growth.

Hyatt hotels heiress Penny Pritzker, Wall Street titan Robert Wolf and financier Mark Gallogly, for instance, all served on the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Commission.

In late February, when he set up a new commission on job creation, Obama again turned to Pritzker, Wolf and Gallogly.

Pritzker, one of America’s richest women and a key fundraiser and adviser in the early days of the Obama campaign, has logged more than 50 visits to the White House, individually or with family members. Obama also appointed Pritzker to the Kennedy Center board and her husband, Chicago ophthalmologist Bryan Traubert, to the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships.

Pritzker told CNBC in May 2009: “I have no trouble having a spirited dialogue with the president, and that’s something that we do on a regular basis.”

When the reporter asked, “Do you get anywhere?” Pritzker replied, “Absolutely. The president is extremely open to hearing what people on his economic board have to say. And I think it’s absolutely informing some of his decisions.”

Fred Schulte, John Aloysius Farrell and Jeremy Borden are reporters for iWatch News.org[14], a website of the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based nonprofit focused on investigative journalism.

References
^ Barack Obama’s run for the presidency (www.politico.com)
^ Continue Reading (www.politico.com)
^ Obama White House (www.politico.com)
^ took office (www.politico.com)
^ biggest donors (www.politico.com)
^ bundlers (topics.politico.com)
^ Obama (topics.politico.com)
^ hiring lobbyists (www.politico.com)
^ Visitor logs (www.politico.com)
^ Continue Reading (www.politico.com)
^ Continue Reading (www.politico.com)
^ Continue Reading (www.politico.com)
^ Continue Reading (www.politico.com)
^ iWatch News.org (www.iwatchnews.org)

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0611/56993.html#ixzz1PMoXpeu2

What's the election about?

They're not trying to beat an incumbent Republican. So, I'll just let Gibbs take it from here. Because seriously, don't worry about it...no responsibility to see here.

Read the original here.

Gibbs: Election Not About Blaming Someone For The Economy

Robert Gibbs says this election is not about "affixing blame" to the economic crisis after he noted people still blame Bush more than Obama for the troubled economy.

Gibbs also responds to Obama's "bump in the road" comment that Romney pounced on in a web ad.

"This is not going to be and I'm not setting this up to be an election to blame George Bush, but what I'm suggesting is a series of decisions that got us into the mess is not a series of decisions we ought to make to get us out of it," Gibbs told CNN's David Gergen.

The very short...Bin Laden Bounce

Read the original here.

Obama Loses Bin Laden Bounce; Romney On The Move Among GOP Contenders

By Dan Balz[1] and Jon Cohen[2], Tuesday, June 7, 12:05 AM

The public opinion boost President Obama[3] received after the killing of Osama bin Laden has dissipated, and Americans’ disapproval of how he is handling the nation’s economy and the deficit has reached new highs, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The survey portrays a broadly pessimistic mood in the country this spring as higher gasoline prices, sliding home values and a disappointing employment picture[4] have raised fresh concerns about the pace of the economic recovery.

By 2 to 1, Americans say the country is pretty seriously on the wrong track, and nine in 10 continue to rate the economy in negative terms. Nearly six in 10 say the economy has not started to recover, regardless of what official statistics may say, and most of those who say it has improved rate the recovery as weak.

New Post-ABC numbers show Obama leading five of six potential Republican presidential rivals tested in the poll. But he is in a dead heat with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who formally announced his 2012 candidacy last week[5], making jobs and the economy the central issues in his campaign.

Among all Americans, Obama and Romney are knotted at 47 percent each, and among registered voters, the former governor is numerically ahead, 49 percent to 46 percent.

Overall, about six in 10 of those surveyed give Obama negative marks on the economy and the deficit. Significantly, nearly half strongly disapprove of his performance in these two crucial areas. Nearly two-thirds of political independents disapprove of the president’s handling of the economy, including — for the first time — a slim majority who do so strongly.

In another indicator of rapidly shifting views on economic issues, 45 percent trust congressional Republicans over the president when it comes to dealing with the economy, an 11-point improvement for the GOP since March. Still, nearly as many, 42 percent, side with Obama on this issue.

The president has sought to point to progress on the economy, particularly in the automobile industry, and to argue that the policies he put in place at the beginning of his term are working. But the combined effects of weak economic indicators and dissatisfaction among the public are adding to the political pressures on the White House as the president’s advisers look toward what could be a difficult 2012 reelection campaign.

Meanwhile, Romney emerges in the new survey as the strongest current or prospective Republican candidate in the 2012 presidential field. Although he is by no means in a secure spot, on virtually every measure, the former governor appears better positioned than any of his rivals.

In contrast, the poll brings more bad news for former Alaska governor Sarah Palin,whose bus tour along the East Coast last week[6] renewed speculation that she might join the race.

Almost two-thirds of all Americans say they “definitely would not” vote for Palin for president. She is predictably unpopular with Democrats and most independents, but the new survey underscores the hurdles she would face if she became a candidate: 42 percent of Republicans say they’ve ruled out supporting her candidacy.

More than six in 10 Americans say they do not consider Palin qualified to serve as president. That is a slightly better rating for the former governor than through most of last year, but is another indication of widespread public doubts about a possible presidential run.

The Post-ABC poll asked Republicans and GOP-leaning independents whom they would vote for if a primary or caucus were held now in their state. Romney topped the list, with 21 percent, followed by Palin at 17 percent. No one else reached double digits, although former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has suddenly shown interest in becoming a candidate, is close, at 8 percent. Without Palin in the race, Romney scores 25 percent, with all others in the single digits.

In another measure of the field, Republicans chose Romney as the only one of a dozen possible candidates they would “strongly consider” for the party’s nomination as opposed to stating that they definitely would not vote for him. He and Palin scored equal numbers of respondents who said they would strongly consider supporting them, but Palin has more than double the percentage who have ruled her out.

Other candidates fared poorly on this count, including former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.), whose campaign got off to a rocky start; Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.), a libertarian who has a passionate following but many detractors; and former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.), who announced his candidacy on Monday[7].

The Massachusetts health-care plan enacted under Romney remains a potentially serious problem in the former governor’s bid. By nearly 2 to 1, Republicans oppose the plan, with strong detractors far outnumbering solid supporters. But there is some potential for him to frame the matter: Almost four in 10 Republicans expressed no opinion about the state’s program.

Overall dissatisfaction with the GOP field remains high, with as many respondents saying they are unhappy with their choices as say they are satisfied. At this time four years ago, nearly seven in 10 Republicans said they were satisfied with their field of candidates.

In head-to-head matchups with Obama, Palin trails by 17 percentage points, the worst of the six possible candidates tested. The president leads Gingrich and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman Jr. by 10 points. He runs 11 points ahead of former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty and 13 points ahead of Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.).

Romney owes his relatively good standing against the president to support from independents. He and Obama garner roughly equal percentages from those in their own parties. But independents split for Romney 50 percent to 43 percent.

The president continues to receive positive marks as a strong leader, but the 55 percent rating marks a low point of his presidency. He gets mixed reviews on empathy and on sharing the same values as respondents.

The telephone poll was conducted June 2-5 among a random national sample of 1,002 adults. The results from the full survey have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Polling manager Peyton M. Craighill and polling analyst Scott Clement contributed to this report.

References
^ Dan Balz (www.washingtonpost.com)
^ Jon Cohen (www.washingtonpost.com)
^ President Obama (www.whorunsgov.com)
^ disappointing employment picture (www.washingtonpost.com)
^ formally announced his 2012 candidacy last week (www.washingtonpost.com)
^ whose bus tour along the East Coast last week (www.washingtonpost.com)
^ announced his candidacy on Monday (www.washingtonpost.com)