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He's not even in office and he's already crooked.
Topic Started: Oct 29 2008, 01:12 AM (648 Views)
Dwayne
Profanity deleted by Hoss
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that in the final analysis it is going to be discovered that the democrats and Obama purposely broke and/or evaded numerous campaign laws via online donations.

Quote:
 
Obama Accepting Untraceable Donations
Contributions Reviewed After Deposits


By Matthew Mosk
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 29, 2008; A02



Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity, campaign officials confirmed.

Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged. Instead, the campaign is scrutinizing its books for improper donations after the money has been deposited.

The Obama organization said its extensive review has ensured that the campaign has refunded any improper contributions, and noted that Federal Election Commission rules do not require front-end screening of donations.

In recent weeks, questionable contributions have created headaches for Obama's accounting team as it has tried to explain why campaign finance filings have included itemized donations from individuals using fake names, such as Es Esh or Doodad Pro. Those revelations prompted conservative bloggers to further test Obama's finance vetting by giving money using the kind of prepaid cards that can be bought at a drugstore and cannot be traced to a donor.

The problem with such cards, campaign finance lawyers said, is that they make it impossible to tell whether foreign nationals, donors who have exceeded the limits, government contractors or others who are barred from giving to a federal campaign are making contributions.

"They have opened the floodgates to all this money coming in," said Sean Cairncross, chief counsel to the Republican National Committee. "I think they've made the determination that whatever money they have to refund on the back end doesn't outweigh the benefit of taking all this money upfront."

The Obama campaign has shattered presidential fundraising records, in part by capitalizing on the ease of online giving. Of the $150 million the senator from Illinois raised in September, nearly $100 million came in over the Internet.

Lawyers for the Obama operation said yesterday that their "extensive back-end review" has carefully scrubbed contributions to prevent illegal money from entering the operation's war chest. "I'm pretty sure if I took my error rate and matched it against any other campaign or comparable nonprofit, you'd find we're doing very well," said Robert Bauer, a lawyer for the campaign. "I have not seen the McCain compliance staff ascending to heaven on a cloud."

The Obama team's disclosures came in response to questions from The Washington Post about the case of Mary T. Biskup, a retired insurance manager from Manchester, Mo., who turned up on Obama's FEC reports as having donated $174,800 to the campaign. Contributors are limited to giving $2,300 for the general election.

Biskup, who had scores of Obama contributions attributed to her, said in an interview that she never donated to the candidate. "That's an error," she said. Moreover, she added, her credit card was never billed for the donations, meaning someone appropriated her name and made the contributions with another card.

When asked whether the campaign takes steps to verify whether a donor's name matches the name on the credit card used to make a payment, Obama's campaign replied in an e-mail: "Name-matching is not a standard check conducted or made available in the credit card processing industry. We believe Visa and MasterCard do not even have the ability to do this.

"Instead, the campaign does a rigorous comprehensive analysis of online contributions on the back end of the transaction to determine whether a contribution is legitimate."

Juan Proaņo, whose technology firm handled online contributions for John Edwards's presidential primary campaign, and for John F. Kerry's presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee in 2004, said it is possible to require donors' names and addresses to match those on their credit card accounts. But, he said, some campaigns are reluctant to impose that extra layer of security.

"Honestly, you want to have the least amount of hurdles in processing contributions quickly," Proaņo said.

Sen. John McCain's campaign has also had questionable donations slip through.

Dan Pfeiffer, Obama's communication's director, said that "no organization can fully insulate itself from these problems. The McCain campaign has accepted contributions from fraudulent contributors like 'A for You,' 'Adorable Manabat,' 'The Gun Shop,' and 'Jesus II' and hundreds of anonymous donors."

But R. Rebecca Donatelli, who handles online contributions for the McCain operation and the RNC, said security measures have been standard in the GOP nominee's fundraising efforts throughout the campaign. She said she was "flabbergasted" to learn that the Obama campaign accepts prepaid cards.

"Yes, a gift card would go through the same process as a regular credit card and be subject to our same back-end review," the Obama campaign said in its response to questions about the use of such cards.

Campaign finance lawyers said there is a long history of debate within the FEC about how to ensure that donors use their own credit cards.

Election lawyer Brett Kappel said the FEC has never grappled with the question of cash cards. "The whole system is set up for them to accept the payment, then determine whether it is legal or not. And if it's not, send it back. That's what the statute requires," he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/28/AR2008102803413.html
Edited by Dwayne, Oct 29 2008, 01:15 AM.
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Minuet
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Fleet Admiral Assistant wRench, Chief Supper Officer
Is there any reason that this article was not put in the "Following the Money" thread that Dwayne already started?

Multiple threads on the exact same topic are what some would call spam.
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somerled
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Admiral MacDonald RN
I agree , spam it is.
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Admiralbill_gomec
UberAdmiral
Spam? Hardly. Sounds like a few have a little bias problem.

This at worst needs to be merged with the other thread. That's all.

As one of you has said, no one forces you to read these threads...
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somerled
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Admiral MacDonald RN
Admiralbill_gomec
Oct 30 2008, 12:34 AM
Spam? Hardly. Sounds like a few have a little bias problem.

This at worst needs to be merged with the other thread. That's all.

As one of you has said, no one forces you to read these threads...
:rotfl: Bias problem - that's rich coming from you :rotfl:
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Dwayne
Profanity deleted by Hoss
Admiralbill_gomec
Oct 29 2008, 07:34 PM
Spam? Hardly. Sounds like a few have a little bias problem.

This at worst needs to be merged with the other thread. That's all.

As one of you has said, no one forces you to read these threads...
Some have an ideological incentive to keep this stuff out of the news and the public eye.
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RTW
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Dwayne
Oct 29 2008, 10:44 PM
Some have an ideological incentive to keep this stuff out of the news and the public eye.
That might explain why citizens would complain.

:headscratch:
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Franko
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Shower Moderator
Admiralbill_gomec
Oct 29 2008, 07:34 PM
Spam? Hardly. Sounds like a few have a little bias problem.

This at worst needs to be merged with the other thread. That's all.

As one of you has said, no one forces you to read these threads...


I'll allow it. There's no need to merge anything. There's only three threads started by Dwayne on page 1 of this forum at the moment.


We're pretty close to voting day, and it's natural to see a lot of issues talked about. It's not Dwayne's fault that we don't have a busy liberal member starting a lot of threads. Besides, attendance is up.


Continue.... :news:
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Dwayne
Profanity deleted by Hoss
^^^ Are you drawing a correlation between my posting here and an increase in attendance?
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somerled
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Admiral MacDonald RN
Please don't dwayne a swollen head ....
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Franko
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Dwayne
Oct 29 2008, 11:23 PM
^^^ Are you drawing a correlation between my posting here and an increase in attendance?


Sure, Dwayne. Sort of like why everyone shows up at a bad car accident...........



I'm kidding. :lol:



No, you've juiced the forum in recent times. I notice lately we're branching out into other discussions other than just stuff about the election.






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somerled
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Admiral MacDonald RN
Goes with the territory , ie being a senator or congressmen or governor in the USA.
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Admiralbill_gomec
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somerled
Oct 30 2008, 01:11 AM
Goes with the territory , ie being a senator or congressmen or governor in the USA.
Um, what?? :headscratch:
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Dwayne
Profanity deleted by Hoss
Franko
Oct 30 2008, 12:23 AM
No, you've juiced the forum in recent times. I notice lately we're branching out into other discussions other than just stuff about the election.
mmmm... Juice.
Edited by Dwayne, Oct 30 2008, 07:26 AM.
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Dwayne
Profanity deleted by Hoss
Back on point... Obama is crooked... He will get impeached...
Quote:
 
Common Web Tools Make Tracking Donors Doable
A Wealth Of Information Is Available On Even The Smallest Contributors


by Neil Munro
Friday, Oct. 31, 2008

Amid criticism for failing to identify the hundreds of thousands of low-dollar donors who have boosted his $600 million presidential campaign, Barack Obama has responded that it "would be a pretty hard thing for us to be able to process."

But there is much widely used and inexpensive technology that allows Republican and Democratic campaigns to sort and identify millions of donors and to highlight or exclude overseas contributors. The technology is offered by companies that complete credit card transactions, by banks that provide credit cards to customers, by telecommunications companies that maintain digital networks, and by a variety of smaller firms that track Internet activity.

Over the past week, the lack of information regarding Obama's online donations has been highlighted by John McCain's campaign and by prominent media outlets, including the Washington Post, Slate and ABC news anchor Charles Gibson. On Oct. 24, NationalJournal.com reported that Obama's campaign computers do not verify the addresses claimed by online donors.

The lack of a computerized address-verification system would allow the Obama campaign's computers to accept online donations from U.S. citizens above legal limits, and to accept donations from foreigners who are barred by law from contributing at all. Under federal law, campaigns are not required to release the name of individuals who contribute less than $200.

Asked by Gibson on Oct. 29 if he would disclose the names of his many unidentified donors, Obama said, "Look, you know, 3.1 million donors would be a pretty hard thing for us to be able to process. And we have done everything that's been asked of us under the FEC guidelines.

"These are small donors. They're ordinary folks. And the idea behind all campaign finance reform is to make sure that the public official is not bought and sold.... I may come into the White House with fewer strings attached to me than just about any presidential candidate in history."

There are few technical obstacles to sorting and identifying small-scale donors. Obama's campaign is using two of the nation's largest financial companies to process online donations, according to a New York Times story in July. They are, according to the Times, American Express, which processes daily transactions by almost 90 million cardholders worldwide, and Bank of America, which processes 3 million credit card transactions every 16 minutes, according to its 2007 annual report [PDF].

However, a five-minute phone call to Bank of America's merchant-services department showed how a campaign could sort transactions to identify the credit cards used in donations. The campaign could download transaction data from the bank's Web site and transfer the file into a database, such as Excel, said the Bank of America employee. "Then highlight all your transactions and click your sort button," the employee said.

Obama's fundraising far outpaces that of previous campaigns. He raised $150 million -- including $100 million in online donations -- in September. McCain's campaign cannot raise additional money because it accepted $84 million in federal funds after the GOP convention. The campaign now directs would-be donors to other GOP-affiliated sites.

Obama's September take included money from many small donors, whose names have not been released. The McCain campaign Web site displays the names and home cities of all donors. The McCain database does show some fake names, such as "Jesus II," and hundreds of small-scale anonymous donors, although campaign officials say they accept online donations only from people who submit an address that matches the billing address for their credit card.

Every organization that accepts credit cards relies on a complex financial industry to complete transactions. For example, a customer must get a credit card from a financial firm, usually a bank, which verifies the customer's identity. These cards are actually managed by a network run by a credit card processing firm, which usually is a division of a large bank. When a customer makes a purchase, the card-processing firm either affirms the transaction or denies it -- for example, if it is fraudulent.

A very large number of transactions are made every day. For example, in 2007 Bank of America processed 180,000 transactions per minute from its 59 million customers. American Express is a distinct network, where transactions of its 90 million cardholders are watched, approved, and stored by the firm's own network.

Each transaction can be recorded -- and thus stored -- by multiple parties in databases for many years. For example, complete or partial data about online purchases can be stored by the credit card firms, the vendor's accounting and marketing departments, the customer, and sometimes the customer's bank. American Express, for example, stores transaction data for seven years.

Credit card numbers provide a wealth of information to Web site operators seeking to identify incoming customers, in part because the first seven digits reveal the financial firm that issued the card. Other numbers show the country where the issuer is located. Under federal rules, donations from overseas sources require extra scrutiny.

The Internet's inner workings provide another rich source of data that can be used to sort and identify online donations.

Every device that links to the Internet has its own Internet Protocol address. For example, the IP address of johnmccain.com is 64.203.107.149, according to the Web site selfseo.com. IP addresses are assigned en-bloc to five regional organizations, which then award small blocs to Internet firms and governments. The U.S. regional organization is the American Registry for Internet Numbers, based in Chantilly, Va.

When an Internet user visits a Web site, the site's operators can usually tell what Internet firm is providing the link and what part of the world the visitor is coming from. For example, nearly all IP addresses in Europe and the Western section of the Middle East begin with "88." The system "is not perfect, but it's pretty reliable," said one person who helps manage the addressing system. Some Web sites, such as find-ip-address.org, offer this location service for free.

This addressing system allows Web site managers to exclude visitors they don't want, he said. For example, vendors who do not want to sell to customers in Latin America, he said, can exclude all IP address beginning with "200." The task is accomplished by modifying the "Access Control List" functions on a Web site's routers and firewall, he said. Commercial firms, such as Boston-based MaxMind, provide similar services to companies such as IBM, Wal-Mart and eBay, to detect and exclude suspect IP addresses.

Software code on Obama's online donations page indicates that the site recognizes the IP address of everyone who gives money. It can be viewed by selecting page source from the "view" menu on most Web browsers. The code for donate.barackobama.com includes an "ip_addr" field, which records the visitor's IP address. There is no similar software code visible in the McCain Web site, or in the Web site operated by Sen. John Kerry in 2004, but those Web sites may still record visitors' IP addresses.

The quantity of overseas donations is unclear, partly because the Obama campaign has not released the names of the sub-$200 donors. But both the Obama and McCain campaigns collected money from overseas. For example, the Obama campaign's Web site includes a French-language page, where supporters champion their donations worth a total of $38,873.11. These donations from France are legal -- if they are made by U.S. citizens or U.S. residents. These donations were highlighted by pro-McCain bloggers, and by a new site, obamashrugged.com, which focuses on investing Obama's online contributions.

Internet service providers record the activities of their customers to better understand what their customers are interested in, to ward off hacker attacks, and to detect online traffic jams. Internet search firms also track Internet traffic to sell that information to others. For example, Google records all the search inquiries made on its Web site, and Alexa.com tracks movement through the Obama and McCain Web sites.

So far, according to San Francisco-based Alexa, 2 percent of visitors to Obama's Web site visited the donation Web page, but fewer than 1 percent of visitors to the McCain Web site opened up the campaign's donations page. Alexa also reports that 85 percent of Obama's visitors came from the United States, and 89 percent of visitors to johnmccain.com came from the United States.

However, Internet users can mask their online activities behind "anonymizers." These services provide misleading IP addresses to customers who wish to visit a Web site without being recorded. For example, on Oct. 17, this reporter hid his identity behind an anonymizer while making a $25 donation to the Obama campaign with a pre-paid gift card. The McCain Web site refused a similar donation because the gift card did not have a billing address that could be used to verify the address typed into the campaign's Web site.

Neither the McCain nor the Obama campaign responded to requests for comment for this story.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/no_20081031_4109.php


Edited by Dwayne, Nov 2 2008, 08:58 AM.
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