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Reform Groups Push Reformers McCain and Obama to Initiate New Reform
June 25, 2008 4:39 PM
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, will meet with top fundraisers of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, tomorrow night and will walk out with checks figuratively in his inside jacket pocket as surely as a bar mitzvah boy in full post-luncheon kvell.
And yet his campaign insists the meeting is a "get together" and not a "fundraiser" and thus your humble press corps will be denied access to what will surely be a most intriguing meeting.
Today the Campaign Finance Institute, Center for Responsive Politics, Common Cause, Democracy 21, League of Women Voters of the United States, Public Citizen, Sunlight Foundation and U.S. PIRG wrote to Obama and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., asking both self-styled reform candidates to disclose specific information about such big-shot fundraisers, or "bundlers" – the money raisers who collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in checks from colleagues and pals so as to contribute, legally, more than one individual is permitted to donate.
Specifically the eight groups want to know the "precise amounts bundled for the campaign and joint fundraisers, as well as more detail about the bundlers themselves – and additional data about their small donors – total number of donors, as well as total amount raised, by ZIP code and country."
You can read the letters HERE and HERE.
If this becomes, like the series of town hall meetings and public financing, yet another issue where McCain steps up and Obama checks out, one wonders whether these reform groups will ever start to argue that one candidate practices what the other candidate preaches.
- jpt
June 25, 2008 | Permalink | Share | User Comments (10)
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They will both find a way to half step this issue. As long as money makes the world go round, our elections will always be bought and sold. Why else would we call it "playing politics"?(definition)-to deal with people in an opportunistic, manipulative, or devious way, as for job advancement.
Posted by: smartypants | Jun 26, 2008 3:55:25 PM
Don't Obama and McCain have day jobs? Instead of telling us what they would do a year from now if elected, I'll vote for which ever of them uses their power as their party's candidate to get things done in the senate today.
Posted by: X marks the spot | Jun 26, 2008 11:46:18 AM
Buford, That's highly debatable about the equal opportunity smack downs.
Posted by: kat | Jun 25, 2008 8:27:16 PM
Go, Jake! Take a whack at each one of them. Yours is the only mainstream site I visit with any regularity. You are an equal opportunity smack down guy.
Posted by: Buford Gooch | Jun 25, 2008 8:20:00 PM
What good would it do us?
The news would love it and make hay out of who was supporting who, but when it comes to the issues you guys are ignorant, don't bother to check, and ask the very supporters you seems against for their view.
In other words press, you guys are big corporations now and the only thing you really care about is what sells.
The press is as phony as our politicians.
Posted by: Thinking | Jun 25, 2008 6:22:32 PM
I hope people wake up in time, that's all I can say.
Posted by: al | Jun 25, 2008 6:20:32 PM
Obama is just another political huckster. one hopes reporters like jake love this country enough to continue to point these things out so we are not stuck with another 8 years of more bush different party.
Posted by: al | Jun 25, 2008 6:15:39 PM
Obama is a liar! Plain and simple.
Posted by: Nobama | Jun 25, 2008 5:33:27 PM
hoosiersue
do you know who charlie black is?
do you know who he lobbied for?
do you know who mccains top fund raiser is?
i didnt think so otherwise you wouldnt have posted your silly post
Posted by: bhrandon | Jun 25, 2008 5:24:49 PM
Fat chance of Obama being forthcoming about the countries from which donations are coming.
Posted by: HoosierSue | Jun 25, 2008 5:18:11 PM
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