I Remember Seeing Her Q1 Report...

And thinking that her burn rate looked awfully suspicious.

Here's my question--can either the firm or the candidate be prosecuted for fraud??

"You share your young with the wolves of the nation, there's nothing left til you pray for salvation."

--Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

"American X"

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by: Steve Singiser @ Wed Jul 02, 2008 at 19:29:50 PM UTC

High Priority

I'm sure it's high on the priority list for Bush AGs.  

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by: sicembears @ Wed Jul 02, 2008 at 19:42:12 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Fantastic Scam

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by: andgarden @ Wed Jul 02, 2008 at 19:44:50 PM UTC

Same treasurer

BMW direct uses the same treasurer for all its reports, a lawyer (and employee) named Scott McKenzie.  David Scott's treasurer is a local named Henry Aaron.  Since the former ball player is, in fact, active in Georgia Democratic politics I assume that's "Bad Henry", the home run king.  Make that "Bad Scott" and "Good Henry."  Incidentally, virtually all of Honeycutt's money comes from individual donors with 1,171 listed.  

The scheme is actually better than The Producers.  If the election is won (becomes an unexpected hit), no donors need to be paid back unlike the little old ladies who invested in The Producers.  They simply have a better argument for fleecing the public the next time.  Gee, they steal from the NRCC and from their own donors.  No wonder we are in a bad economy. Guess who is being fleeced when these folks are elected to office?

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by: David Kowalski @ Wed Jul 02, 2008 at 19:53:30 PM UTC

I'm torn

On the one hand, it's unfortunate that so many people are being scammed out of their money.  On the other, Republicans are losing money that would otherwise go to serious candidates.  

I'm hoping these guys get prosecuted AND that some of those donors decide they don't want to give to the GOP anymore.  That would be the best of both worlds.

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by: WestCoastMC @ Wed Jul 02, 2008 at 20:03:10 PM UTC

This is shocking

I don't care what end of the spectrum this is, it's wrong!  They're basically defrauding people by appealing to causes they strongly believe in.  I hope these folks are prosecuted to the full extent of the law.  If the law condones this kind of behavior, it needs to be changed.

While I'm sure they're above board, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea for this site to publish the percent of contributions that actually go to the candidates from organizations like Act Blue, and the national Democratic committees.  A lot of folks who read sites like this one are moved to contribute, so anything that can be done to protect folks from fraud should be.  If scumbags take advantage of the right like this, there's probably someone out there who'll try to take advantage of folks with strong feelings on the left, too.

This reminds me of some of the fraudulent charitable groups that we've read about in recent years.

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by: LanceS @ Wed Jul 02, 2008 at 20:16:31 PM UTC

True

While that's true, one of the causes these people seem to believe in is "no gays in Congress."  

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by: brittain33 @ Thu Jul 03, 2008 at 14:36:57 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

ive been waiting for something like this

pardon my cynicsm.... or is it suspicious nature... but i cant help thinking that this is a way to wash (funnel?) missing $billions from iraq funding.

now i know there are (must be?) ways to track political funding... but i have never trusted the stories from iraq that huge sums simply were lost in the shuffle (press of war?). i still dont buy it.... somebody... (many bodies?) got rich from those unaccounted for billions..... it wouldnt take much... a tiny sliver  a small percentage of unaccounted for funds... could fund many republican races for decades.... we are talking cash... $10,000 bundles... pallets full... how to get it from iraq to the US i leave to the shadowy characters .... how to get it from underneath the bed... into a legitimate bank account... would require a clever ruse...

this shadowy gop fund raising group... seems like just the ticket... why pick a long shot candidate? less scrutiny is my guess....i would dearly love to see the contributions list... was it in cash? checks from deceased? checks from new bank accounts?

why wouldnt the candidate themselves be screaming bloody murder over this...  this money clearly was not used for their benefit.... it was passed right through  their organization...

somethings rotten in denmark

anyone else think  along these lines?

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by: azmike @ Wed Jul 02, 2008 at 20:41:06 PM UTC

Don't buy it at all

You'll find most people here won't put much past the Republicans, but also don't buy into crazy, far-flung conspiracy theories either.  So I think you either have to provide a little bit of evidence for this, or perhaps the tin foil hat's on a little too tight.

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by: IndianaProgressive @ Wed Jul 02, 2008 at 21:19:39 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

That money definitely went into something corrupt,

but there's no reason to think this was the avenue for it.  The peg doesn't fit the hole that cleanly.  

Occam's Razor suggests that all these Republican moron small donors DO exist, rather than that they're fakes to launder money into a republican operative's bank account.

On the other hand, thieves do get lazy when they think no one's looking, so if all the donor names were repeating themselves, or the towns or addresses, from campaign to campaign, then you might be on to something.  It'd take a lot of database work or just eyeballs on spreadsheets to find, but it could be there.

Then again, it could not.  If you're sniffing around for those billions, there might be more promising places to look.  

28, gay guy, Democrat, CA-08

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by: texas dem @ Wed Jul 02, 2008 at 22:32:00 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

well i guess you could call it sniffing around

yes... id like to know better places to look for lost billions... unaccounted for... even a measley $1 billion could do a lot in the wrong hands...

where would i look? ive got the time to look at spreadsheets ad nauseum.. im pretty rational... i have no evidence at all... that much is acknowledged... but i have been mighty angry about unaccounted for billions.... that could have done some good here in the states.

if anyone has an idea of where/how to track suspect donations.... or magically appearing wealth ... id like to know about it. make good use of my time.

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by: azmike @ Wed Jul 02, 2008 at 22:50:09 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Hm. I wish I knew what to tell you.

The big picture is this: most of those "missing" billions obviously weren't lost, they were just used for things that the various arms of the government didn't want to admit they were spending money on.  So, payoffs to Iraqis, to Iranians, to Saudis, to more Iraqis, to Kuwaitis, to Blackwater, to Halliburton, to other defense contractors, to Turks, Kurds, Israelis, foreign or domestic news orgs, high-ranking US military personnel, you name it.

Some of it probably did make it back to this country and back to the GOP.  To the winners go the spoils, etc, and I have no doubt that a Rove would authorize the diversion of tax dollars from a massive military special appropriations into the bowels of his political party.  No doubt.

This is, conceivably, one way it could show up.  These BMW guys were direct mail workers for real movement conservatives -- Rep Jim Ryun, Newt Gingrich -- for whom I assume they did real work, and then on the side they made money off of fake candidates.  If they really couldn't raise millions for no-name challengers to Kennedy and Kerry, then maybe they did fake those donors.

The problem is, you're asking a really hard question: which is greater, the stupidity of the Republican base, or the mendacity of the Republican operative class?

----------------------------

If you're looking for meaningful research opportunities, then unfortunately there's not a really excellent structure set up to help you make good use of your time.  If you have a lot of time, you could always contact the TPM muckraker guys and volunteer to help them out, and also Open Left has hired a researcher, and you could contact and volunteer to help him.  There's also E Pluribus Media, although I don't know that they've done anything significant lately.

Meanwhile, I'm doing a tiny bit of digging over in my own diary, on the subject of the two Democrats in South Carolina who have been raising shitloads of cash for no obvious reason.  However, I've just about already hit the limits of my knowledge, so I can't really direct you to help, since I already don't know what else to do.

If you really want to do something, you could head over to my diary and thence the FEC, and find out what the typical ratio of itemized donations to total individual donations is.  These two Democrats look vaguely shady to me, because their itemized individual donations are only around 10% of their total individual donations, so it's impossible to tell where their money is coming from.  But I don't know if that 10% number is really unusual or not, because I don't have the campaign finance background to know.  Instead of waiting for someone to tell me though, you could just go figure it out pretty easily.  The FEC website is easy, just go compile the numbers for a bunch of candidates (I could give you a list), and see what the itemized percents are.  It's not the most productive thing on earth you could do, necessarily, but it would help, and it is something you could do right now.  

Wish I could help you more.

28, gay guy, Democrat, CA-08

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by: texas dem @ Wed Jul 02, 2008 at 23:10:45 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

youre on

can you provide a link... and general instructions for finding the individual donors%  to money raisers%... on FEC site?

im pretty good at spinning my wheels.. just give me a little traction and im good to go.

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by: azmike @ Wed Jul 02, 2008 at 23:41:30 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

click on my username to see my email

then send me one, if you're still at your computer today

28, gay guy, Democrat, CA-08

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by: texas dem @ Thu Jul 03, 2008 at 00:54:25 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Nah, it's not Iraq money

I don't think GOP operatives are smart enough to launder money in that fashion.  The missing Iraq money is probably in the hands of Iran, Iraqi extremists and other terrorist groups affiliated with the Iraqi government.

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by: ChadInFL @ Wed Jul 02, 2008 at 22:55:59 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

prolly right

ive read enough about iraq pacification to assume a bunch of it went to sheiks to buy a little info.. or keep the peace for a few days... and ive seen first hand how assets get used / abused/ abandoned etc in war.... that much i expect... im jsut suggesting... as someone mentioned.. that a rovian operative... would have seen big opportunity  when huge massive war budgets were approved without any oversight.

no doubt more than a few E-6s, E-7s etc.. passing out $10k bundles saw no problem in 1 little bundle going into his duffle bag...

its a skummy situation regardless of who is doing it... but im concerned that with lack of oversight... it could have found its way back here for gray ops

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by: azmike @ Wed Jul 02, 2008 at 23:48:05 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Funny thing is, the bribes worked at the outset of the war

Our easy drive to Baghdad at the outset of the war was in large part due to the U.S. paying off high ranking Iraqi generals to pack it up and not fight.  It worked great.

I think the Pentagon just got too cocky and thought they could keep buying off key Iraqis and it would be a peaceful occupation.  That didn't quite happen.

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by: ChadInFL @ Thu Jul 03, 2008 at 00:05:23 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

This gets perhaps sleazier, as there seems to be a racial element to it

A lot of these groups seem to use black uber-conservatives as their (perhaps somewhat unwilling) spokespeople.  I remember in 2004 when Evan Bayh was running for re-election here, his opponent was Marvin Scott.  Scott is an ultra, ultra-conservative black college professor from Indy who has ran unsuccessfully for a ton of different offices.  It was a little suprising to see that Scott raised and spent over 2.2 million (almost all in individual donations) on a race where no one ever (to my knowledge) saw a TV commerical of his, saw any yard signs, really any mailings, radio ads -- really no presence at all.  It turns out he basically spent like 2 million dollars to raise 2.2 million, and almost nothing was spent on the campaign itself.

I wonder if some of this was going on with that loon Vernon Robinson in his run for Congress in North Carolina as well.  It's a great potential hook to fleece people of their $250 or so -- support a black candidate who upholds extremist rightwing views.  I mean, take a look at Honnycutt's website -- she talks about God and socialism in the first paragraph!!

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by: IndianaProgressive @ Wed Jul 02, 2008 at 21:05:47 PM UTC

Blast.

I started a diary about this two days ago, got 90% of the way through, then crashed and fell asleep.  

Not that my diary would really have pre-empted yours, cause you have a different take on it anyway.  Still, here's mine.

The fact that Marvin Scott in Indiana had the same pattern play out makes my spidey sense tingle much more.  I wonder how much of this there really is, and on which sides.

28, gay guy, Democrat, CA-08

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by: texas dem @ Wed Jul 02, 2008 at 21:32:38 PM UTC

I should make it clear

I should make it clear I'm not accusing Marvin Scott of this necessarily.  He's a serious guy (batshit crazy and out in right field even by Indiana Republican standards) who has been involved in politics for a long time.  But as I was reading this diary, I was thinking "This sounds really familiar/where have I heard this before" (back to the spidey sense!).

It shows how sleazy an industry this can become, and when SO MUCH MONEY exists in it, there is the possibility of it all being a shell game to pay administrators and consultants who get paid to raise money to pay their own salaries.  

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by: IndianaProgressive @ Wed Jul 02, 2008 at 21:38:53 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

By the way, my diary went over the outlines of the Republican con game,

and then asked if any of the surprise fundraisers on our side this cycle might have any similar games going on.

The two that I was actually mildly curious about, the no name South Carolinians -- well, I went digging a bit through the FEC, and they do look just a tiny bit suspect, in that they are raising lots of money from individuals, spending exactly what they have raised from others, making large loans to their own campaign, but carefully making sure not to spend any of that money.  Their cash-on-hand tracks their debt-to-self very cleanly, and their disbursements track their raised-from-individuals very cleanly.  And, their itemized donors only account for 10% of their total fundraising from individuals.  

I don't have the experience to know if that even should smell funny or not, but if someone who is more familiar with campaign finance practices wants to duck over, my diary and ensuing comment thread is here.

28, gay guy, Democrat, CA-08

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by: texas dem @ Wed Jul 02, 2008 at 22:26:38 PM UTC

[ Parent ]