Buying the election
Sen. Barack Obama's campaign raised $150 million last month. By the time the last check clears and the campaign goes into slumber mode until the next election (should he win), Obama will have spent more money than George W. Bush and John Kerry spent in 2004 combined. How this is supposed to "save" public financing is a point on which I'm unclear.
Sunday morning on CNN's "Reliable Sources," Time magazine's Mark Halperin noted the media's curious lack of outrage on the issue.
HOWARD KURTZ: Mark Halperin, we learned this morning that Barack Obama in the month of September raised $150 million, the early estimates had been about $100 million. They always kind of leak a lower figure so they can exceed it.
If a Republican had not taken public financing and had raised all that money, and the Democrat was struggling financially, wouldn't we see a lot of stories about one candidate essentially trying to buy the election?
HALPERIN: We would. We'd also see a lot of stories about his going back on his word saying that he would accept the public money and would reach out to Senator McCain to try to work out a deal. So I think this is a case of a clear, unambiguous double standard, and any reporter who doesn't ask themselves, why is that, why would it be different if it's a Republican? I think is doing themselves and our profession and our democracy a disservice.
But that's not all the media is ignoring. There's increasing evidence that the Obama campaign's refusal to release the names of donors making contributions of less than $200 is cover for massive campaign finance fraud.
Bloggers are discovering that Obama has apparently disabled what is known as the Address Verification System (AVS) on his Web site for accepting donations. What does the AVS do? It ensures that the credit card number given matches the name on the credit card. It's why if you're purchasing something online the merchant wants not only the credit card number, but also the name and billing address.
It's supposed to prevent credit card fraud. It's also supposed to prevent this.
I may have just uncovered how the Obama campaign is facilitating massive donation fraud.
I’ve read recent reports of the Obama campaign receiving donations from dubious names and foreign locales and it got me wondering; how is this possible?
I run a small internet business and when I process credit cards I’m required to make sure the name on the card exactly matches the name of the customer making the purchase. Also, the purchasers address must match that of the cardholders. If these don’t match, then the payment isn’t approved. Period. So how is it possible that the Obama campaign could receive donations from fictional people and places? Well, I decided to do a little experiment. I went to the Obama campaign website and entered the following:
Name: John Galt
Address: 1957 Ayn Rand Lane
City: Galts Gulch
State: CO
Zip: 99999
Then I checked the box next to $15 and entered my actual credit card number and expiration date (it didn’t ask for the 3-didgit [sic] code on the back of the card) and it took me to the next page and… “Your donation has been processed. Thank you for your generous gift.”
This simply should not, and could not, happen in any business or any campaign that is honestly trying to vet it’s [sic] donors. Also, I don’t see how this could possibly happen without the collusion of the credit card companies. They simply wouldn’t allow any business to process, potentially, hundreds of millions in credit card transactions where the name on the card doesn’t match the purchasers name.
If this was a stolen credit card, then the fraudulent charge would show up on the person's bill, they'd discover it and the Obama campaign would have to return the money.
But there's a nefarious flip side to this sort of practice. If someone wants to give more than the $2,300 general election limit to Barack Obama without detection, then the Obama campaign has made it easy. Simply donate $199 -- just under the threshold required for reporting -- and change your name each time you do it. Unlike a stolen credit card, the Democratic true believer running this scam isn't going to complain to his credit-card issuer, so the money goes through with no alarm bells.
Obama's not releasing the names to the public of small donors, so he won't have any bloggers checking for suspicious names. Even if he did release the small donors names, it could be difficult to identify illegal donations because the only common thread would be the credit card number -- which for obvious reasons can't be released publicly.
If a Republican candidate had reneged on his promise to take public financing and then deliberately took down the most basic safeguards against fraudulent donations in order to fund his campaign the press would be all over him. Yet there's not a peep of this in the mainstream media.
We're seeing Chicago-style politics writ large with how the Obama campaign is operating. This should be a scandal that leads off the major networks evening newscasts and runs on the front page of every newspaper. It won't be.
The media have sold their credibility and their very souls to see this happen. They shouldn't be surprised when people stop watching, listening and reading them.
UPDATE!
The New York Times has reported this on its blog with its characteristic restraint when it comes to things that cast the one in a bad light.
To be fair to the Obama campaign, officials there have said much of their checking for fraud occurs after the transactions have already occurred. When they find something wrong, they then refund the amount.
That is Bolshevik Storytelling.
But let's climb out of the tank holding the rest of the mainstream media for a second and look at even that claim just a bit of skepticism. These fraudulent and illegal donations could easily reach into the millions of dollars. You can bet at the very least these are earning interest for the Obama campaign -- more money for their ever larger warchest.
We also have this informative post by Patrick Ruffini on exactly what the Obama campaign had to willingly and consciously do to enable this sort of fraud.
The end result? "Donors" like "Doodad Pro" can submit tons of donations totaling well above the $2,300 limit using different bogus addresses (this does clarify how donations from "Palestine", or PA, got through). And the campaign has no way to reliably de-dupe these donations, besides looking at the last four digits of the credit card number, which with 3.1 million donors is an identifier that could be shared by literally hundreds of donors, and is not as easy to eyeball like a common name or address would be. The ability to contribute with a false address, when the technology to prevent it not only exists but comes standard, is a green light for fraud.
One could understand the oversight if prior to the bogus donor story breaking. But you'd think they would have taken measures to step up their donor security in the aftermath of the revelations. Having AVS turned on would have stopped or significantly deterred the fraudulent donations (or, at a very minimum, made them easily detectable). By turning this basic setting off, the Obama campaign invited this kind of fraud and has taken no steps to correct it.
Obama's making Clinton's Chinese money debacle from 1996 look like church bingo.
And the media isn't interested.
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I'd like to know if the Obama camp returned the contributions that Bart Simpson, Family Guy, Daffy Duck and King Kong gave to his campaign. He says after the transactions have been completed, they are checked and money is returned. How is he able to receive so many foreign donations? Obama is just like those lying, thieving, liberal illuminatis who would use any means to get him elected.