Barack Obama’s word is worthless
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Matt Walton
Published: June 23, 2008
Recently, Sen. Barack Obama broke a promise he made to the American people. He refused to take part in public financing for the general election. This contradicted a signed promise he made to all
Americans. Instead, Senator Obama has decided to opt out of his pledge and put politics above the most important thing he has to offer the American people — his word.
This decision by the freshman senator from Illinois proves that his word is worthless and that what he is saying now on the campaign trail is as good as dirt. This choice by Senator Obama begs us to ask
what promises will he break to the American people should he be elected President of the United States. It’s clear to me now that Senator Obama is not for the “change” in Washington he talks about,
but just a lot of potential broken promises.
MATT WALTON
Bridgewater
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Reader Reactions
Posted by ( jVA ) on June 27, 2008 at 12:49 pm
“The FEC doesn’t make contribution claims for the candidates. Most folks are too lazy to check the claims of the candidates or the campaigns”
Riiiiiiiiiiiight.
Its really likely that the Obama campaign could lie about their numbers of donors and escape scrutiny from the FEC and both the Clinton and McCain campaigns.
Yeah, that’s likely.
I’d stick with complaining about the Rev. Wright. Its easier to make a lot of gut level arguments on that subject without having to address pesky facts.
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Posted by ( RonCharest ) on June 27, 2008 at 12:40 pm
willow703,
Sure
Gun-control is always good fun, and there’s a great column up today on the topic of immigration. But with Cobra still on vacation, I suspect the immigration thread will be a little quiet.
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Posted by ( willow703 ) on June 27, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Ron,
The FEC doesn’t make contribution claims for the candidates. Most folks are too lazy to check the claims of the candidates or the campaigns. If illegal aliens can lie on job applications, well, to the victors go the spoil & freedom from prosecution for their misdeeds.
Whoever wins in November, I have no doubt that we’ll have better government
after January 20, 2009.
This subject is no longer fun, think I’ll go tweak the gun-control nuts.
Care to join me?
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Posted by ( jVA ) on June 27, 2008 at 11:48 am
HILARIOUS, Ron. Well done.
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Posted by ( RonCharest ) on June 27, 2008 at 11:33 am
Willow703,
For your comment on writing multiple checks - your are now officially dense. And apparently ignorant of FEC campaign financing regulations. I learned some of the more basic regs running house parties and acting as a bundler for Howard Dean back in 2004.
Anyone contributing to a federal election campaign must provide detailed personal information, which the FEC tracks through a thing called a “database,” which is an electronic thing-a-magigy which records all the information provided. The “database” will track subsequent donations by the same person and combines the multiple donations using a thing called “addition,” which is part of “math,” which databases managed by things called “computers” do quite well now-a-days.
The combined records are made publicly available through another electronic thing-a-magigy called the “Internets,” which people such as Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska called “Tubes, not a truck.” These records show the combined totals of each person, by name and other identifying informaiton.
keep laughting. The joke’s on you.
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Posted by ( jVA ) on June 27, 2008 at 11:28 am
“My tummy still hurts from the laughter, but I’m sufficiently recovered to tear apart Obama’s small donor fraud.
I could write 20 checks to Obama, all for under $200, totaling $2300 & Obama could & would count me as 20 contributers of less than $200 & also as 20 contributors of less than $1000. I could write 100 checks of $23
& be counted as 100 contributors of less than $25. “
Yeah that would be hilarious if it were remotely true. Your “donor fraud” theory just doesn’t hold any water at all.
Go pull up a list of apolitical contributions. The FEC doesn’t track donations the way you’re describing. Whether I donate once or ten times, I am still one person who can contribute up to X dollars. End of story. Where is the fraud?
I’m not sure if you’re being intentionally dense or you’re just not as smart as you think you are.
Apparantly you’re willing to believe that while you are smart enough to unravel Obama’s clever donation scheme, John McCain just hasn’t figured it out yet. Quick! Get FoxNews on the phone and let them know about this fraud you’ve uncovered!
Give me a break.
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Posted by ( RonCharest ) on June 27, 2008 at 10:45 am
Willow703,
You’re really acting dense on this issue. Of course they hope to gain something by working for Obama’s campaign as unpaid supporters. But, they are not professional lobbyists working to influence laws for the highest bidder. They are private citizens, fairly well-connected and locally influential, and obviously successful in their chosen line of work.
Republicans have designations for bundlers based on how much they bundled for the RNC/individual campaign. In the current administration, the top levels of bundlers were rewarded by plush ambassadorships and political appointee jobs in various federal agencies - whether they had any qualifications for that job or not. This gave us such wondrous appointments as “Heck of a Job Brownie” running FEMA during Hurricane Katrina, whose background solely consisted of breeding and selling Arabian Horses. Those of us who lived through Katrina know just how well that worked out.
I don’t know how future President Obama’s bundlers will be rewarded. I expect that they will receive appointments and advisory positions commensurate with their backgrounds. If not, you can be sure I’ll be way more critical of Obama than I currently am of Bush on this issue.
More critical, because I expect Republican’s to be corrupt. I hold Democrats to higher standards.
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Posted by ( willow703 ) on June 27, 2008 at 10:44 am
Ron,
My tummy still hurts from the laughter, but I’m sufficiently recovered to tear apart Obama’s small donor fraud.
I could write 20 checks to Obama, all for under $200, totaling $2300 & Obama could & would count me as 20 contributers of less than $200 & also as 20 contributors of less than $1000. I could write 100 checks of $23
& be counted as 100 contributors of less than $25.
If this seems burdensome, not to worry; there are check writing programs on the net that will allow you to do this, with ease, in less than 10 minutes.
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Posted by ( willow703 ) on June 27, 2008 at 10:13 am
Ron,
Those nearly 200 Clinton bundlers Obama met with have no interest in influencing Obama?
You know, it is hard for one to type when one is doubled up with laughter.
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Posted by ( jVA ) on June 27, 2008 at 9:32 am
You’re not going to get an argument from me over the need for campaign finance reform. But the rules are what they are, and they are not going to change between now and November. If you really believe McCain is running a more “pure” campaign untainted by special interests, then by all means go vote for him.
And since you are bringing up the amount of money that can be donated to the PARTIES, it should be noted that while Obama might be able to raise more money than McCain, the RNC has a huge cash advantage over the DNC right now. I’m not writing to my local newspaper crying about it. The Republicans are playing the game according to today’s rules. More power to them.
“How many $200 donors do you think will be there? “
None. The donors will each give the maximum of $2300. What’s your point? Obama is raising money from individual private donors whether they give $200 or the maximum of $2300.
“I have watched both of the candidates make speeches on network & cable television. I saw no notation that any of the speeches were paid for by anyone. What is the value of that airtime? “
A better question is what’s your point? You saw candidates speeches covered by the news. Um, so?
We have something called the equal time rule in this country. “ a station which sells or gives one minute to Candidate A must sell or give the same amount of time with the same audience potential to all other candidates for the particular office. “
Sounds like a wash to me.
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