Saturday, February 23, 2013

$500,000 Gets You ObamaAccess

NYT reports:

President Obama’s political team is fanning out across the country in pursuit of an ambitious goal: raising $50 million to convert his re-election campaign into a powerhouse national advocacy network, a sum that would rank the new group as one of Washington’s biggest lobbying operations.


But the rebooted campaign, known as Organizing for Action, has plunged the president and his aides into a campaign finance limbo with few clear rules, ample potential for influence-peddling, and no real precedent in national politics.

In private meetings and phone calls, Mr. Obama’s aides have made clear that the new organization will rely heavily on a small number of deep-pocketed donors, not unlike the “super PACs” whose influence on political campaigns Mr. Obama once deplored.

At least half of the group’s budget will come from a select group of donors who will each contribute or raise $500,000 or more, according to donors and strategists involved in the effort.

Unlike a presidential campaign, Organizing for Action has been set up as a tax-exempt “social welfare group.”[...] contributions will also translate into access, according to donors courted by the president’s aides. Next month, Organizing for Action will hold a “founders summit” at a hotel near the White House, where donors paying $50,000 each will mingle with Mr. Obama’s former campaign manager, Jim Messina, and Mr. Carson, who previously led the White House Office of Public Engagement.

Giving or raising $500,000 or more puts donors on a national advisory board for Mr. Obama’s group and the privilege of attending quarterly meetings with the president, along with other meetings at the White House. Moreover, the new cash demands on Mr. Obama’s top donors and bundlers come as many of them are angling for appointments to administration jobs or ambassadorships.

“It just smells,” said Bob Edgar, the president of Common Cause, which advocates tighter regulation of campaign money. “The president is setting a very bad model setting up this organization.”

5 comments:

  1. Sounds like a dirty bribery network.

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  2. it sounds a bit like the Inca system of government where even dead emperors where paraded with all their old authority, around by different factions attempting to make stuff happen.

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  3. What? They didn't have a tax-exempt category for "community organizer group"?

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  4. So brazenly open. Amazing they can just come out with this sort of stuff and most people don't bat an eye.

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  5. For sake of all let's hope we can point and laugh at this idiot in 6 years. If there is any justice in this world people will have to blame obama for how f'd up the health care system will be about the time he leaves office.

    Rarely predictions come true but this healthcare bill is completely absurd

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