Former First Lady Hillary Clinton is the current darling of the liberal media and the front-runner for Democratic nomination for the 2016 presidential election. However, a new video could destroy her political career, giving her a term in a jail cell rather than the Oval Office.
“I am a socialist and everyone knows that.”
After Bernie Sanders was first elected to the house in 1990, that was his response to an ad that linked him to Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Most people would agree that profit hating, self describe democratic socialist, does not seem like an authoritarian when compared to someone like Adolf Hitler. However, nonetheless it is possible that Bernie Sanders may be a very dangerous man. In this article, i will explain why he is, and also why he is most likely the establishment’s choice for president.
(USNEWS) -Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has been fined $375,000 by the Federal Election Commission for violating federal disclosure laws, Politico reports.
An FEC audit of Obama for America’s 2008 records found the committee failed to disclose millions of dollars in contributions and dragged its feet in refunding millions more in excess contributions. The resulting fine, one of the largest ever handed down by the FEC, is the result of a failure to disclose or improperly disclosing thousands of contributions to Obama for America during the then-senator’s 2008 presidential run, documents show.
The FEC says the Obama campaign failed to disclose the sources of 1,300 large donations, which together accounted for nearly $1.9 million. Election Commission rules state campaigns must report donations of $1,000 or more within 20 days of Election Day.
Obama for America was also fined for “untimely resolution of excessive contributions,” according to the conciliation agreement, FEC says. The campaign accepted more than $1.3 million in contributions that came from donors who had already given $46,000—the maximum allowed by FEC rules. The campaign eventually refunded the excess cash but did not do so within the 60-day window allotted for resolving such cases, FEC said.
In addition to failing to report big donors and excess donations in a timely manner, the Obama campaign incorrectly dated the filings dealing with $85 million in funds, the FEC claims. This error appears to have been primarily the result of one transfer to the campaign committee from the Obama Victory Fund, a fundraising group that includes money raised by the Democratic National Committee that is earmarked for the presidential race.
The fines were a result of complaints filed with the FEC by the Republican National Committee. The Obama campaign has been quick to point out that the errors constitute a small portion of the more than $750 million it raised during the 2008 election cycle.
“The 2008 campaign was a record breaking campaign with over 3 million grassroots donors,” Obama for America spokeswoman Katie Hogan said in an email to U.S. News. “The very few outstanding questions have now all been resolved.”
The results of the audit were released in April of 2012, but the letter detailing the fines the FEC planned to levy was not sent until December.
(Washington Times) -A new poll shows that Congress is less popular than carnies, root canals and colonoscopies, but more popular than the ebola virus, meth labs and gonorrhea.
Those findings are in a Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey released Tuesday showed that 9 percent of the respondents held a favorable opinion of Congress, while 85 percent held an unfavorable view. “We all know Congress is unpopular,” said Dean Debnam, PPP president. “But the fact that voters like it even less than cockroaches, lice and Genghis Kahn real shows how far its esteem has fallen with the American public over the last few weeks.”
On the bright side, Congress came out of the survey in higher standing than North Korea, the Kardashian family, and actress Lindsay Lohan, as well as Cuba’s Fidel Castro and former Sen. John Edwards.
On the not-so-bright side, it lost out in the popularity contest to the rock band Nickelback, real estate magnate Donald Trump, NFL replacement refs and France.
The survey of 830 voters was performed between Jan. 3 and Jan. 6 and has a 3.4 percent margin of error. The results of the poll can be found here.
(OpenSecrets) - Abiding by all the rules and regulations involved in running for federal office can be laborious. Maybe that’s why several newly-elected lawmakers have fallen down on the requirement to identify their donors not just by name and address but also by occupation and employer.
The Center for Responsive Politics calculates each candidate’s quality of disclosure according to whether a campaign’s filings to the Federal Election Commission provide all the required information about their contributors. Most do quite well.
But there are a couple of outliers among the newly-elected members.
Of the freshmen congressional members, Texas Republican Steve Stockman maintains the worst quality of disclosure with just 50.5 percent of his donors fully identified.
Federal election law requires candidates to list each donor’s name, address, occupation and employer in their filings of itemized contributions above $200. If campaign contributions are accompanied by incomplete information — often having vague or no responses for occupation or employer — the campaign must send a notice informing the donor the information is required by law. However, not successfully obtaining complete donor information does not affect the contribution.
So for Rep.-elect Stockman, complete forms exist for just half of his donors of more than $200 — although they were responsible for about $109,000 of his total $354,500 raised.
Although Stockman’s disclosure quality is rated the lowest, others aren’t far behind him. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), who also will be sworn in in January, submitted complete information on just 69.2 percent of his more-than-$200 donors. PAC contributions played a role in Collins’ fundraising, but 60 percent of his $762,000 raised came from large individual contributions.
Other new House members did far better. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), for instance, clocked in at 99.1 percent; Carol Shea-Porter (D-N.H.), 98.3 percent; Dina Titus (D-Nev.), 88.3 percent; and Dan Kildee (D-Mich.), 86.9 percent.
But newly-elected House members Donald Payne Jr. (D-N.J.) and Chris Stewart (R-Utah) also have disclosure rates that fall well below average at 74.9 percent and 75.3 percent, respectively.
The Center ranks the best and worst lawmakers in terms of quality of disclosure among all House and Senate members who raised at least $200,000 from contributions greater than $200. Collins is the only new House member on the “worst” list, earning the third lowest percent disclosed. (Other new members with a poor disclosure quality raised more than $200,000 total, but less than that when small-dollar donations were subtracted out.)
Of the six newly-elected senators, Tim Kaine (D-Va.) has full disclosure on 98.3 percent of his donors, the best of the pack. Two others have disclosure quality percentages above 96 percent. Sen.-elect Elizabeth Warren is at the bottom of the group with 76.7 percent of her donors fully identified. She also is ranked third on the list of worst disclosure in the Senate. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is second worst after Warren, at 80.5 percent.
Warren raised $42 million in one of the most expensive elections this cycle, and people who donated more than $200 accounted for $22.3 million of it, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.
