Barack Obama: taking money from 1 percenters compromised my politics

boing
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I like the Samurai version too.

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Hil Solo: “Look, I ain’t in this for your revolution. I’m not in it for you [American voting populace]. I expect to be well paid. I’m in it for the money.”

Corporate America: “You needn’t worry about your reward. If money is all that you love, then that’s what you’ll receive.”

Bernie Skywalker: “Okay. Take care of yourself Hil. I guess that’s what you’re best at, isn’t it?”

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Sanders strikes me as more of a Mugen than a Jin.

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She needs those mega-corp/mega-finance dollars so she can win to change the system.

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First, this was a campaign book. The passage cited was written specifically to appeal to those for whom politics and money don’t mix. And whatever truth there may have been behind it, it was highly mediated by the tactical concern to paint himsef as the clean-yet-not-naive candidate.

Second, what is true is that money is given with the intention of gaining influence by people who, for the most part, know how to get their own back in deals where the payout isn’t necessarily defined.

The whole “I took money and now my entire epistemological landscape has been crucially altered” line strikes me as a load of crap. It’s both self-justifying in the way it almost medicalizes the situation, and a blatant play to the purity and contamination obsessions of many on the left.

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So, what drew you to the GOP in the first place? I assume it was more than just money… but maybe it was money? Honestly curious.

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Obama was “corrupted” long before he ever took money from 1 percenters.

There’s a new 99 cent amazon kindle book called “1,202 well sourced examples of Barack Obama’s lying, lawbreaking, corruption, cronyism, hypocrisy, waste, etc.”

Item #4 states:

“Although Obama claims to support the Occupy Wall St. movement, the truth is that he has raised more money from Wall St. than any other candidate during the last 20 years. In early 2012, Obama held a fundraiser where Wall St. investment bankers and hedge fund managers each paid $35,800 to attend. In October 2011, Obama hired Broderick Johnson, a longtime Wall Street lobbyist, to be his new senior campaign adviser. Johnson had worked as a lobbyist for JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Fannie Mae, Comcast, Microsoft, and the oil industry.”

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The solution is simple: make donations anonymous, so the recipient has no idea where the money is coming from.

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Uggg. Because democracy is a franchise. Great analogy.

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Sounds legit.

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And, if we follow through, wealthy donor’s agendas almost never do anything but fuck the disenfranchised.

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Why are we still talking about this? Hillary ‘called out’ Wall St. a few years ago, it’s taken care of.

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You’d have to be more stringent than just saying that the donations are anonymous. You’d have to outlaw any mention of donations as well. It would be easy to get around otherwise. You just have a corporate donor say publicly (or at a party with a candidate’s staff standing nearby), “I’m donating $123,456.78 to candidate X’s campaign.” When the candidate sees that exact amount show up, they knew they received a donation from that corporate donor. The corporate donor could do the exact same thing to mention their quid pro quo wishlist. “Gee, I wish some politician would pass a law…”

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To be fair, friend of the show, Lawrence Lessig, who is trying to start a Constitutional Convention to create an Amendment to get money out of politics also has a Super PAC literally to end all Super PACs.

The sad fact is, while money doesn’t guarantee political victory, the bigger spender predicts the winner almost every time. I’m not sure if it’s more practical to wait for someone who can win a Presidential election without the use of large sums of money in order to stop the cycle. Can we really afford to wait?

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Then you’d be honestly curious about a lifelong Democrat from a family of lifelong Democrats . . . and pretty much a Wallace Democrat (as in Henry Wallace) if we want to get particular. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know what goes into a campaign autobiography. Or that I can’t perceive the rather odd phobias and obsessions of my political cohorts. Or that I assume anyone who disagrees with me in the slightest detail must disagree with me on everything. I leave all that to you. I am sure l’ve more than exceeded the limits of your curiosity.

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Yes, I need more clips of that where the subject at hand does not come off as a Dalek please.

Practice this phrase as if it were to convey surprise:
“Oh dear, the Devilman G potion has gotten all over me during this first bipartisan debate. What can I do to cope with its effects?”

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What’s surprising is that anybody would find her hypocrisy, ambiguity and lies surprising. She has a long history.

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That is an interesting twist, but it’s not quite as big a dilemma as you’re describing. First, I’d require all campaign funds to be held in escrow by a neutral third party. (Yes, there’s always the issue of somebody leaking the info, but let’s leave that issue aside for now.)

Second, I’d require the dollar amount of the fund be updated on, say, a monthly basis. That way, even if Corporate Donor XYZ claimed they donated $123,456.78, by the time the candidate saw the new total in their account, it would be more like $234,567.89, and they’d have no idea if the donation actually came from Corporate Donor XYZ or from Corporate Donor ABC. (Sort of like when a terrorist attack happens and several terrorist organizations take credit, you never really know which one it was because it could have been any of them.) In other words, anybody could claim to have donated $X at any time, and it would be virtually impossible to validate those claims, thereby making such claims all but useless.

Third, I’d round the amount reported to something like $50,000, so if a candidate had, say, $1,234,567.89, it would be rounded down to $1,200,000.00, thus further obfuscating the actual amount.

You’re welcome, America.