Politico Confirms: Hillary Clinton Has Kept 99% Of Funds Raised For State Parties
According to a new Politico report, the Hillary Victory Fund has kept 99 percent of approximately $60 million it was supposedly raising for state Democratic Parties.
Bernie Sanders’ accusations that Hillary Clinton is using her joint fundraising committee to skirt federal campaign finance laws are now proven.
According to a new Politico report, the Hillary Victory Fund has kept 99 percent of approximately $60 million it was supposedly raising for state Democratic Parties. Under the agreement signed by Democratic Party leaders in 33 states, the Hillary Victory Fund would solicit donations from super-wealthy donors for as much as $353,400.
The deal agreed to by state parties and the Clinton campaign allows for the first $2,700 raised by the Victory Fund to go to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The next $33,400 is earmarked for the DNC, and the remaining funds are meant for state Democratic parties. Under this agreement, it was assumed that the DNC would spend that money helping each respective state party win down-ballot elections.
However, after the original distribution, the Clinton campaign is the sole decider of what happens to the rest of the cash.
As such, state party organizations in solidly blue states that don’t have competitive US Senate elections this year are getting zero financial benefit from the agreement. As Politico reported, the DNC exploited Minnesota’s Democratic-Farm Labor Party (the state’s Democratic Party equivalent) to the tune of $214,100:
“…The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party received $43,500 from the victory fund on Nov. 2, only to transfer the same amount to the DNC that same day. The pattern repeated itself after the Minnesota party received transfers from the victory fund of $20,600 on Dec. 1 (the party sent the same amount to the DNC the next day) and $150,000 on Jan. 4 (it transferred the same amount to the DNC that day).
That means that Minnesota’s net gain from its participation in the victory fund was precisely $0 through the end of March. Meanwhile, the DNC pocketed an extra $214,100 in cash routed through Minnesota — much of which the DNC wouldn’t have been able to accept directly, since it came from donors who had mostly already maxed out to the national party committee.”
As the Wisconsin Citizens Media Cooperative reported last month, the Wisconsin Democratic Party was also used as a pass-through for over $200,000 as part of its agreement with the Hillary Victory Fund. These screenshots show that money donated to Wisconsin Democrats was given right back to the DNC the same day:
As of March 31, only eight of the participating state parties had received more money from the Victory Fund than was taken out by the DNC.
Moreover, the Hillary Victory Fund’s expenditures are overwhelmingly for the exclusive benefit of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Politico reports that the Victory Fund is spending $8.6 million on ads produced by Bully Pulpit Interactive, which has already been paid $9 million to produce ads for Clinton’s presidential campaign. These ads are supposedly tailored to appeal to small-dollar donors to contribute to the Clinton campaign, rather than for the DNC or state parties.
However, many of these ads by Bully Pulpit Interactive also seem to skirt finance laws, as funds from joint fundraising committees are not to be used for direct electioneering — in other words, they can’t tell voters to be for or against any specific candidate. The ads to “Stop Trump” would seem to break this rule, but Josh Schwerin, a Clinton spokesperson, claimed that “All of HVF’s activities, including online ads, are for fundraising purposes.”
This new report vindicates Sen. Sanders’ claims that Hillary Clinton was improperly using her joint fundraising committee to get around campaign contribution limits. Current campaign finance rules only allow a donor to contribute $2,700 to a campaign in a single election cycle.
However, the McCutcheon vs. FEC Supreme Court decision of 2014 raised the aggregate contribution limits on individual donors, allowing the Clinton campaign to solicit six-figure donations from the same oligarchs, like Alice Walton of the Walmart family, that already gave a maximum $2,700 donation this cycle. Sanders argues that by routing money raised by her joint fundraising committee to efforts that exclusively help her campaign, Clinton is flouting campaign finance regulations.
In a public statement, Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver said, “It is unprecedented for the DNC to allow a joint committee to be exploited to the benefit of one candidate in the midst of a contested nominating contest.”
I’m officially in my forties. I’m surrounded by teenagers. And I’m tired of fetuses on the internet telling me what to do.
The other day, there was some slideshow on the internet, yet another “Things Women Shouldn’t Do After 30”.
One of the things? Wear big hoop earrings.
My response? A two fingered salute to the screen.
Seriously, fuck you and your “You’re too old for hoop earrings” noise. I’ve had a life-long love of hoop earrings. I just bought a pair of big-ass, to the shoulder, silver hoops. Because my inner free spirit pretends she’s a gypsy, hoop earrings, bangles, and all.
And yet some woman-child who thinks she’s all grown up is going to tell me what I can’t wear anymore because I’m too old?
Seriously – fuck that noise.
It’s partially because I am “old” that I’ve stopped caring about what’s socially acceptable for me to do or wear. I got my first tattoo at forty. This year, I had my hair dyed teal. And you know what? It looks fantastic. My favorite pair of shoes are my Doc Martin boots, and I dare any child on the internet who’s probably younger than some of the underwear I own to try to tell me I can no longer wear them.
You know what women shouldn’t do after the age of 30? They shouldn’t tell other women what they can and can’t do. They shouldn’t accept the bullshit that’s piled onto them by other women. They shouldn’t try to repress their true selves to fit into societal standards. They shouldn’t listen to anyone who says “You can’t do that.” They shouldn’t let complete strangers with less life experience then they have bully them into a corner.
How are we supposed to tell our daughters they can grow up to be whatever they want to be if we bow to the pressures of toddlers on the internet telling us we can’t wear hoop earrings after our thirtieth birthday?
Nope. Sorry. I reject your standards of how a woman over thirty should dress, should act, should style herself. I was never one for peer pressure, not before my thirties, and even moreso after my thirties.
Listen missy, here’s the deal. You’re too young to tell me what to do. Survive to my age and then you can make your own rules. Meanwhile, I’ll be wearing any length skirt I damn well please with my old Converse sneakers.
And for the record, you know who compliments my teal hair the most?
A huge door just opened for Bernie! Here’s something nobody in the media is talking about tonight: Trump locked down the Republican nomination. California is a semi-open primary worth about 500 delegates. California Republicans and Republican leaning independents will not need to vote since their nominee is already decided. If they decide they want to eliminate Hillary and turn out to vote for Bernie in large numbers, Bernie could win California by an enormous landslide and win the Democratic nomination June 7th! They have until May 23rd to register as a Democrat or Unaffiliated, then they will be allowed to vote. This is a real possibility and we have 20 days to make it happen! Let’s spread the word.
It’s a measure of Democratic Party panic that party leaders feel the need to run a despotic convention, autocratically ramming their preferred results through when there were only two national delegates at stake. Their fear of Bernie Sanders must run deep for them to follow this authoritarian performance with a smear campaign based on lies about the Sanders campaign. Establishment Democrats should be afraid, since almost half the voters allowed to vote in Democratic primaries reject establishment Democratic “values.” But their shamelessness, pusillanimity, and obtuse arrogance march on toward a possibly disastrous November that is wholly self-engineered.
Here’s what arrogant denial of reality sounded like on CNN May 19, inside the establishment Democrat echo-chamber: reporter Chris Cuomo tries a reality based question and Hillary Clinton meets it with almost absolute denial:
Cuomo (CNN): So you get into the general election, if you’re the nominee for your party, and —
Clinton: I will be the nominee for my party, Chris. That is already done, in effect. There is no way that I won’t be.
Cuomo: There’s a Senator from Vermont who has a different take on that —
Clinton: Well —
Cuomo: He says he’s going to fight to the end —
Clinton: Yeah, it’s strange.
Sanders still could pull a rabbit out of the hat for a “miracle ending”
First, let’s stipulate that the possibility of Bernie Sanders becoming the Democratic nominee for President is small. But it’s also real. Should he be able to get 85% of the California vote, he’d get ALL the California delegates. No wonder establishment Democrats want to pretend the game is already over. It’s close to over, to be sure. By analogy, it’s the fourth quarter and the Patriots are down by two touchdowns, but Tom Brady and his team have the ball at midfield with all their timeouts remaining. Let’s wait and see what the score really is when the game is really over. (In 2008, Clinton played out the game, losing 15 of the last 23 contests; this year, Sanders is winning down the stretch.)
Cuomo’s first question is precisely right, despite the “conventional wisdom,” which is a somewhat desperate attempt at self-fulfilling prophecy. That’s what Clinton counters with, the self-fulfilling prophecy gambit, and yet even she can’t escape that shred of uncertainty when she says, “in effect.” “In effect” is not a done deal, and wishing won’t make it so.
On CNN, Clinton deflects whatever Cuomo was originally intending to ask. He takes the Sanders bait and, in mealy-mouthed fashion, says Sanders is going to fight to the end. Clinton cuts him off and calls that “strange.” The candidate’s talking point has silenced the reporter, but it hasn’t changed reality: Clinton’s nomination, however likely it may seem, also hangs by a thread. That’s a much more interesting story than most of the mainstream garble. Why would Clinton think her arrogance will help her? Why do Democrats think running a Potemkin convention in Nevada is necessary to secure two delegates? Why are Democrats resorting to blatant smears of the Sanders campaign if the nomination is already secure? If establishment Democrats actually believe that party unity is important, why have they ramped up their divisiveness?
On CNN, his reality-based question, Cuomo switches to the false narrative of Nevada that goes unexamined: “his supporters have become more aggressive…. We saw what happened in Nevada…. Did you feel that Sanders responded in the right way?” That is profoundly dishonest and unprofessional: Cuomo assumes a false reality, while ignoring the reality of the rigged convention, and then tosses Clinton a softball question. She affirms the false narrative (“what we saw there was disturbing”) and slides past the question (“I have every confidence we’re going to be unified”) andspeaks falsely about 2008 (“I won 9 out of the last 12 contests”). Clinton goes on and on with a false analogy about 2008, talking about how she and Obama worked for unity AFTER all the primaries were over. Cuomo just smiles and nods, as if he believes Clinton’s nonsense is relevant, when it’s obviously not.
Revolution is hard, non-violent revolution is much harder
Bernie Sanders is fighting for a political revolution. He is doing it with nonviolence, working within the two-party system. The Democratic Party is not a revolutionary party, and hasn’t even been close since the Johnson years in the sixties. Establishment Democrats like the Clintons are fundamentally counter-revolutionary, which is a problem for a party with ten million voters favoring the political revolution candidate. The Republican party is so intellectually corrupt that it fell apart facing the Trump challenge, and is now falling in line with it. Democrats still have enough party discipline (or top-down undemocratic hierarchy) that they can muster the ugly pushback that featured a convention with no meaningful participation followed by a vicious attack on the victims who have had the temerity to challenge authority.
Two days after having had their way with their rigged convention, Nevada State Democratsformally complained to the National Democratic Committee that Sanders supporters had tried to disrupt and change the pre-ordained decisions the state committee had made in closed session and imposed on the convention. Writing for the state party, general counsel Bradley S. Schrager dropped the poison pill that has distorted the Nevada narrative ever since. Schrager’s May 16 letter reeks of fearmongering and falsehood. Shrager’s central charge is an Orwellian fabrication that would seem hilarious if it hadn’t been taken seriously by so many credulous, agenda-driven people in the party and the media. Schrager was widely misquoted as saying the Sanders campaign has “a penchant for violence.” What Schrager actually wrote to the Rules Committee was much nastier and more hysterical, apparently designed to inflame enough fear in the party hierarchy to panic it into adopting draconian rules to stifle dissent at the convention (thereby mimicking the Nevada convention):
“We believe, unfortunately, that the tactics and behavior on display here in Nevada are harbingers of things to come as Democrats gather in Philadelphia in July for our National Convention. We write to alert you to what we perceive as the Sander Campaign’s penchant for extra-parliamentary behavior – indeed, actual violence – in place of democratic conduct in a convention setting, and furthermore what we can only describe as their encouragement of, and complicity in, a very dangerous atmosphere that ended in chaos and physical threats to fellow Democrats.”
Polarizing Democrat lawyer blames the silenced as divisive – seriously
Lawyer Schrager complains of “extra-parliamentary behavior” at a convention that allowed no meaningful parliamentary behavior. The slippery lawyer speaks of “actual violence,” attributed to no one and for which there is not one specific example in his three-page single-spaced letter full of ranting accusations (“threats to her life,” “obviously criminal in nature,” “sparking a street-fight,” “an atmosphere of impending eruption,” “screams from bullhorns,” “profiting from the chaos,” “shock troops,” “inciting disruption,” “incendiary, inaccurate, and wholly unauthorized,” “inflammatory charge,” “irrational minority,” “lack of conscience,” or “the glee with which they engaged in such destructive behavior.”) This is not a carefully argued legal brief, with specificity and context – it is essentially a hate letter, apparently intended to provoke further hatred and repression of free speech within the Democratic Party. Most media ran with Schrager’s version of events, unquestioned (as in The New York Times May 17, with this provocatively false lede: “Thrown chairs. Leaked cellphone numbers. Death threats spewed across the Internet.”). Schrager’s demonization is not an argument, but it is an ad hominem emotional appeal that other Democrats (and pundits) have already reacted to without reasoning. Schrager’s letter is also in apparent clear violation of the state party’s Anti-Bullying Policy.
All this has about it some of the stench of 1968, although the parallel is inexact. But then, as now, a large part of the electorate was incensed at the party hierarchy – then over the party’s obdurate support of the Viet-Nam war, now over the party’s adamant resistance to social change desired by most of the country. Then as now, the Democratic Party was unresponsive to its anti-establishment dissenters, then preferring a police riot to silence dissent over any rational effort at accommodation, now choosing a rigged convention (with the hint of worse to come). Then as now, the party hierarchy was rigid and intellectually corrupt. Then the Democratic hierarchy managed to get Richard Nixon elected. Now … well, we’ll see.
Besides the generalized victimization of a raucous convention, the only actual victim was also one of the victimizers. Convention chair Roberta Lange, the enforcer for the state committee’s secret decisions, held the first vote on the rules before all the delegates had arrived. The state committee had secretly given her absolute control over the convention and sole authority to rule on challenges to her own rulings. Given the brewing controversy over Nevada delegates since February, Lange’s dictatorial running of the convention was clearly disruptive of the democratic process, as well as a catalyst for further disruption in response. Lange is not known to have addressed her exercise of authoritarian style, but she has widely complained of being a victim of electronic hate mail and hostile phone calls. She has claimed death threats, but one alleged threat that was published had a callback number and an offer to discuss what went down at the convention. She plays the pity card: “I feel threatened everywhere I go.” Of course Lange should not be harassed, but many of the communications to her are actually political criticism of her actions as a public official. She may be a victim, but she is in no way an innocent victim.
Bernie Sanders made a cogent response, largely ignored
In a May 18 statement, Sanders first reminded the ostrich-like Democratic hierarchy of a real world condition they continue to try to deny:
“… that the political world is changing and that millions of Americans are outraged at establishment politics and establishment economics. The people of this country want a government which represents all of us, not just the 1 percent, super PACs and wealthy campaign contributors.”
He suggested that the Democratic Party faces an existential choice between opening its door to people fighting for “real economic and social change,” or it can choose to maintain its closed-door, corporate, big-money, service-the-rich current posture. (That’s what the state party in Nevada chose.) Next, Sanders addressed the traducing letter from lawyer Schrager:
“Party leaders in Nevada, for example, claim that the Sanders campaign has a ‘penchant for violence.’ That is nonsense. Our campaign has held giant rallies all across this country, including in high-crime areas, and there have been zero reports of violence. Our campaign of course believes in non-violent change and it goes without saying that I condemn any and all forms of violence, including the personal harassment of individuals.” [emphasis added]
Sanders then mentioned actual violence against his campaign in Nevada – a victimless shooting and a break-in/ransacking of staff quarters – that have not made news. For the remainder of the brief statement, Sanders addressed behavior of the Democratic Party, especially at the state level, with a detailed, brief critique of the Nevada convention.
Pundit nonsense is exemplified by the usually cogent Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, whose May 19 column began: “Bernie Sanders is playing a dangerous game. If he and his campaign continue their scorched-earth attacks against the Democratic Party, they will succeed in only one thing: electing Donald Trump as president.” Wait, who’s scorching whose earth? Which Debbie Wasserman Schultz of the Democratic National Committee has scorched as much of Sanders’ earth as she could, while also spending her time supporting the payday lenders who shamelessly exploit the poor and contribute to her campaign? (Bill Moyers sees Wasserman Schultz as a primary source of Democratic divisiveness.) What planet has Eugene Robinson moved to? He concludes that Sanders “and his campaign must stop attacking the Democratic Party in a way that might discourage voters in the fall.” He would be more persuasive and in touch with reality if he warned the Democratic Party to stop attacking Sanders in a way that will alienate his ten million primary voters. But the party may achieve that alienation anyway, just by sticking too closely to the status quo. And surely Robinson knows that.
Another pundit atrocity comes, apparently unintentionally, from Joan Walsh who describes a number of media Sanders-backers who have backed off after uncritically accepting the false narrative of Nevada. Then Walsh goes into conspiracy mode, hinting that the false narrative was not only a true narrative, but that the Sanders people staged the events (that didn’t happen) with a nefarious purpose: “that the point wasn’t the actual delegates—he trails her by about 280 at this point—but creating the appearance of a rigged system.” Besides rejecting the reality of numerous elections irregularities (to put it nicely) in this primary season, Walsh goes on to explain her bias against “male entitlement”: “ I don’t accept the presumption of moral and ideological superiority from a coalition that is dominated by white men, trying to overturn the will of black, brown, and female voters or somehow deem it fraudulent.”
Top Democrats reacted without bothering to fact check
Nevada senator Harry Reid, the Democratic minority leader, had already taken Sanders to task on May 17, based on the false reports of the Nevada convention – “The violence and all the other bad things that has happened there,” Reid falsely told reporters. The New York Times reported that Reid said that Sanders faced “a test of leadership” over the behavior of his supporters, and that Reid said he urged Sanders to “do the right thing.” Neither the Times nor Reid, apparently, explained what “the right thing” was, nor did they mention the draconian nature of the convention itself. (The “test of leadership” meme was picked up with equal parrot-like vacuity by Politico, the Washington Post, The Hill, the LA Times, Daily Kos, the Chicago Tribune, and the Drudge Report. The media nadir was reached by the Times with such baldly biased front page headlines as “Sanders Is Urged to Quell Threats by His Backers – Chairs Fly in Nevada” (May 18) and “Bernie Sanders, Eyeing Convention, Willing to Harm Hillary Clinton in Homestretch” (May 19) – since it was actually Clinton’s Nevada supporters who were harming Clinton with their thuggish takeover of the convention.)
What does Harry Reid know about tests of leadership? He can’t even lead his 43 fellow Democrats in an effective effort to make the full Senate vote on the current Supreme Court nominee. Harry Reid has called the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff “incompetent,” but during the Viet-Nam war, which he did not oppose, Harry Reid led from behind as a capitol cop guarding the House and Senate. Under Harry Reid’s leadership, the Democrats’ Senate majority became a minority. Harry Reid called the Iraq War “the worst foreign policy mistake in the history of this country,” but he voted for it. Bernie Sanders has characterized Iraq the same way, but he voted against it. The only significant test of leadership that comes to mind with Harry Reid is that he managed to keep nuclear waste from being buried in his Nevada backyard at Yucca Mountain. But he’s done nothing to keep anyone else safe and nothing to stem the production of nuclear waste. Harry Reid is the Democratic establishment personified, and you can count on him for pretty much nothing.
Senate Democratic whip Dick Durbin of Illinois chimed in based on the false narrative, as did Senator Chris Coons of Delaware. Coons shot his foot into his mouth, lecturing Sanders on “the importance of respecting the process,” numb to the notion that in Nevada the process was the problem. Senator Barbara Boxer of California was at the convention to give a keynote speech for Hillary Clinton, but when she lit into the Sanders disrupters she was booed and attacked the crowd, making the booing worse. Boxer claimed she feared for her safety. By contrast, Democrat Nina Turner, an Ohio State Senator who was supposed to speak before Boxer but was bumped to later, used her speaking time to calm the audience: “we got to be calm but committed.” Turner, who was at the convention for almost eight hours, attests that there was no violence (“nobody tried to do anything violent whatsoever”) and that reports that she was booed were false, even when she said Bernie Sanders was going all the way to the convention “to make the impossible possible.” Rather tepidly, Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California semi-praised Sanders as “a positive force in the Democratic Party.” She said she was glad to see the energy of Sanders supporters, but warned that “there are rules that exist.” She didn’t mention the way Nevada treated rules as a variable, but she did reject comparisons between 2016 and 1968 as “ridiculous.”
Another, excellent witness report of the convention, at variance from the false narrative of the party and the media, came from Dan Rolle, Democratic candidate for Congress in Nevada. Acknowledging that there was a lot of chaos, Rolle talks for ten minutes about why it happened: the state committee’s decision to take autocratic control of the convention and Chair Lange’s autocratic exercise of her authority.
By Friday, May 21, there were reports that Sanders was calling his fellow senators and assuring them of what he’d said all along: that he would support the nominee of the party, once there was a nominee as determined by the convention. There’s no report that anyone in the Democratic establishment is assuring him of similar support in the event, however remote, that he is the nominee. That would be a real test of leadership for Harry Reid and his ilk in the face of a popular political revolution to change this country in ways establishment Democrats fear because it threatens their cozy nests of inert but lucrative legalized corruption. Embracing real change for the rest of the country is a test of leadership Clinton Democrats act like they’re determined to fail by any means necessary, the consequences be damned.
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
King: Here is Why I Am Leaving the Democratic Party After This Presidential Election and You Should Too!
Many of you aren't religious, so please forgive me for recalling my roots as a preacher and starting us off with a simple verse of scripture.
"The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil."
- 1 Timothy 6:10, The New Testament of the Bible
While my practice and devotion to religion has waxed and waned across the past few years, I still very much believe that verse is true. When you find evil in the world, when you find corruption, when you find starvation and exploitation, when you find poverty and despair, when you find drugs, guns, and substandard housing, when you find evil — if you dig far enough, you will often discover the love of money at the root. Underneath so much of what is wrong in this country is the deep love of money and all that it brings. Sometimes the connection is obvious and undeniable - other times not so much, but like the huge glacier underneath the still water, it is there.
Right now, the Democratic Party, which I have called home my entire life, is deeply in love with money. Consequently, its leaders have supported and advanced all kinds of evil, big and small, in devotion to this love affair.
My sweet mother, who worked in a scorching hot light bulb factory for over 40 years of her life, introduced me to the party. While I'm not so sure it was ever really true, she taught me that Democrats were for the poor and working class of America. We waffled between those two groups ourselves, so for me, I chose to be a part of the party that represented us.
As a senior in high school, I attended my first political rally in 1996 as President Bill Clinton spoke at the University of Kentucky in his reelection bid. He was amazing.
In 1999, Atlanta's first black mayor, Maynard Jackson, whom I loved and revered, recruited me to campaign for Al Gore and encouraged me to get involved with the party. As student government president at Morehouse College, I spoke at campaign events alongside Vice President Gore and his family and fought hard as hell for him to win. How he lost stung as much as the fact that he lost.
I had never lost an election or contest in my life. I was student government vice president in middle school. I was elected President of the Future Business Leader of America in high school. I was elected dorm president my freshman year of college and student government president for all of Morehouse the following year.
Seeing Al Gore lose was a bitter pill to swallow. Three years later, Maynard Jackson had a heart attack and died suddenly. With George W. Bush as President, Al Gore out of politics, and my political mentor dead, I bowed out and decided that party politics just wasn't my thing anymore.
For me, and I think for millions of Americans, that all changed when we first heard Barack Obama. As a preacher, I actually loved that Obama came from Jeremiah Wright's church in Chicago. Dr. Wright was a legend in the Afrocentric and activist circles I walked in. When I learned that Obama was a bi-racial former community organizer with two young daughters, I was sold. At that time, I had two young daughters, was doing community work, and grew up as the mixed kid who never quite fit in.
I volunteered for his campaign in Atlanta, attended rallies and events, phone-banked for him, and began writing regular op-eds about his candidacy. On the night he was elected, I was in tears and spoke live on NPR about how monumental it was.
The optimism, hope and dedication to change that Obama campaigned with was authentic. To prove it, his transition team introduced what were called the "most far reaching ethics rules of any transition team in history."
They effectively banned lobbyists and their money not only from his transition process, but also put in place a 12-month-ban on when they could serve in the administration after serving as a lobbyist.
Because he came into office with such momentum and a clear mandate, Obama also began to enforce similar restrictions on lobbyists with the DNC. If he could first change his administration, then change his party, he could change the entire game, he thought.
Did you know that Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was a co-chair of Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign against Obama, and is now the chair of the DNC, earlier this year did away with all of the restrictions on lobbyists that President Obama put in place?
According to the Washington Post,
"The DNC's recent, more sweeping reversal of the previous ban on donations from lobbyists and political action committees was confirmed by three Democratic lobbyists who said they have already received solicitations from the committee. The lobbyists requested anonymity to speak freely about the committee's decision, which has been otherwise kept quiet."
Unless you are a political insider, it would be hard to know that such a thing had ever happened. No doubt, that was their goal. Why? Are they ashamed? It certainly appears so.
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders addresses a primary night election rally in Carson, California, May 17, 2016.
(ROBYN BECK/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
The article continued,
"For the most part, they (the lobbyists) said, the DNC has returned to business as usual, pre-2008. The DNC has even named a finance director specifically for PAC donations who has recently emailed prospective donors to let them know that they can now contribute again, according to an email that was reviewed by The Washington Post."
Campaign watchdog groups were furious. This is a disgusting and unnecessary reversion, but it gives us a real clue into how the Democratic Party sincerely sees money in politics. They love it. They certainly didn't do this for Bernie Sanders. His campaign does not accept donations from SuperPACs or lobbyists and he's won 21 primaries and caucuses without it. The Clinton campaign, on the other hand, is awash in this type of money.
In essence, Hillary Clinton and the DNC each wants us to believe that lobbyists and SuperPACs don't expect anything from them in return for their money. This is the most basic, foolish, offensive lie they could ever tell. Of course they want something in return. That's the business they're in.
On April 18, the Sanders campaign wrote an open letter declaring that Clinton's campaign was violating campaign finance laws through an unethical joint arrangement with the DNC. The Clinton campaign's response was that she was actually raising money for down-ticket Democrats. Two weeks later, though, Politico released an amazing investigative report which found that out of the $61 million the Clinton campaign was raising for state parties, the parties were only allowed to keep 1% of it. You read that correctly. I'll spell it out so that you know a digit wasn't missing. They got to keep one percent of the funds she claimed she raised for them.
It appears to be a money laundering scheme. Do you remember when George Clooney said that Bernie Sanders and his supporters were right to be disgusted by the fact that some seats at the fundraiser cost $353,400 per couple, but that he could live with it because the money was mainly going to help smaller candidates win local elections?
He was wrong.
According to Politico, "The victory fund has transferred $3.8 million to the state parties, but almost all of that cash ($3.3 million, or 88%) was quickly transferred (back) to the DNC, usually within a day or two, by the Clinton staffer who controls the committee, POLITICO's analysis of the FEC records found."
Who really got the money? The Clinton campaign pocketed almost all of it and state parties were left with one penny on the dollar.
Democratic National Committee Chairwoman, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, is interviewed by Maria Bartiromo during her "Mornings with Maria" program, on the Fox Business Network, Monday, March 21, 2016.
(RICHARD DREW/AP)
The Politico report continued: "By contrast, the victory fund has transferred $15.4 million to Clinton's campaign and $5.7 million to the DNC, which will work closely with Clinton's campaign if and when she becomes the party's nominee. And most of the $23.3 million spent directly by the victory fund has gone toward expenses that appear to have directly benefited Clinton's campaign, including $2.8 million for ‘salary and overhead’ and $8.6 million for web advertising that mostly looks indistinguishable from Clinton campaign ads and that has helped Clinton build a network of small donors who will be critical in a general election expected to cost each side well in excess of $1 billion."
Of course, none of this is happenstance or coincidence. All of this is a well orchestrated plan. The American people are just now beginning to understand this ugliness. It's one of the primary reasons why 10 million people have voted for Bernie Sanders and why he has won 21 contests without even a smidgeon of support from the Democratic Party.
The thing is, though, the Democratic Party isn't really very democratic. It's sincerely just a machine for Hillary Clinton.
Van Jones, a former Obama administration official, said earlier this week on CNN, "Debbie, who should be the umpire, who should be the marriage counselor, is coming in harder for Hillary Clinton than she is for herself. That is malpractice."
"I wish Reince Priebus was my party chair. He did a better job of handling the Trump situation than I've see my party chair handle this situation," Jones said.
"I'm ashamed to say that. Yeah, I said it."
Let that sink in for a minute. A man who has not endorsed a candidate, who worked for Obama, and is an award-winning leader said that he would rather the Republican Party chair be in charge of the DNC than Debbie Wasserman Schultz because of how hard she fights for Hillary Clinton. Forgive me for being repetitive, but please remember that Wasserman Schultz was a co-chair of Clinton's campaign in 2008. None of us should be surprised that she is so biased, but we should be disgusted that she is in charge of the entire party at a time when it required an unbiased presence.
I'll give it to her — Debbie Wasserman Schultz will say or do anything to get Hillary Clinton elected, even if it means completely ignoring the political reality that nearly half of the people who've voted in this primary have declared that they want to see lobbyists and SuperPACs out of politics. Her words and her deeds throughout this campaign have not only been unethical, but are out of step with the future of the party. Voters under the age of 45 prefer Bernie because they trust him and his principles. Wasserman Schultz and Clinton represent a brand of politics that they know well, but we're simply tired of it.Another op-ed was just released calling on her to be replaced.
Robert Reich, the famed economist who served as Labor Secretary under Bill Clinton, went so far on Thursday to suggest that a new party should be formed if Hillary wins the election.
Reich said, “Never, ever give up fighting against the increasing concentration of wealth and power at the top, which is undermining our democracy and distorting our economy. That means, if Hillary Clinton is elected, I urge you to turn Bernie's campaign into a movement — even a third party — to influence elections at the state level in 2018 and the presidency in 2020. No movement to change the allocation of power succeeds easily or quickly. We are in this for the long haul.”
Back in February, Michelle Alexander, the law professor and author of “The New Jim Crow,” made a similar declaration. Her words struck me to my core.
“The biggest problem with Bernie, in the end, is that he's running as a Democrat — as a member of a political party that not only capitulated to right-wing demagoguery but is now owned and controlled by a relatively small number of millionaires and billionaires,” she said.
“Yes, Sanders has raised millions from small donors, but should he become president, he would also become part of what he has otherwise derided as ‘the establishment.’ Even if Bernie's racial-justice views evolve, I hold little hope that a political revolution will occur within the Democratic Party without a sustained outside movement forcing truly transformational change. I am inclined to believe that it would be easier to build a new party than to save the Democratic Party from itself."
I am in full agreement with both Reich and Alexander. Whatever happens between now and the Democratic Convention - what's next is that we form a brand new progressive political party from scratch. It has never been more clear to me that millions and millions of us do not belong in the Democratic Party. Their values are not our values. Their priorities are not our priorities. And I'll be honest with you, I think too highly of myself, of my family, of my friends, and of our future, to stick with a party that looks anything like what Hillary Clinton and Debbie Wasserman Schultz are leading right now.
Clinton's refusal to release the transcripts of her speeches to Goldman Sachs was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. Her indignant and irrational excuses made no sense — particularly in light of the reports stating that the transcripts would ruin her campaign and made her sound like an executive at the company.
I'll start where I left off — the root of all of this is the love of money. In this campaign, Bernie Sanders, with a ragtag group of misfits, proved to the world that another way exists. He has created a blueprint for us on how we build a political movement without the money from billionaire class and their special interests.
In my heart, I believe we are on the brink of something very special. It isn't going to be the presidency of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump either. It's going to be what those of us who've seen a better way do next.
Don't believe what anyone tells you — the ball is in our hand and we have more power than progressive people have had in a very long time in this country. I will fight for Bernie Sanders until he is no longer running for president.
After that, this will be my last election as a Democrat. I'm moving on and hope you do, too.
y now, anyone paying the least attention knows that the dishonest Democratic establishment and
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