Love him or hate him or lukewarm him, one must admit Obama is all stone-cold politician. His rise to fame is littered with questionable tactics and ethics. Offing his early opponents by line-item veto of petition signatures or digging up marital dirt and unsealing their privates, getting in bed with homegrown terrorists, caucus shenanigans..even downright caucus fraud, and causing the collapse of rule of order in U.S. campaign finance are all Obama distinctions. The man knows how to rise to power. But the most lasting issue is Obama’s serious flirt-on with illegal campaign donations.

Future generations will be saddled with Obama’s New $$$$$$$$$$$Paradigm. And yes, saddled is the word. $600 million to bring us Obama? Yes, $600 million.
So where do we go from here?

I see vast problems from Obama’s money machine. What this will mean for clean politics in my country? I don’t want Chicago-style politics or Tammany Hall to bring me my president.
I want to know just how legal this $600 million is. I want to know the $ amount that went into Obama’s coffers from illegal donors.
I want the dollar amount of cash the came from untraceable credit cards;
I want the dollar amount that came for illegal foreign donors;
I want the dollar amount from credit card donations that don’t match up with the address or name on that credit card;
I want the dollar amount that exceeds what an individual is able to give;
I want the list of all Obama’s donors--$210 or $5.

I want to know that my POTUS came to me legally. I don’t want a repeat in 2012 of donors living overseas giving to a candidate by an untraceable credit card; I don’t want donors like Doodad to give $17k in illegal $10 denominations any more than I want Mary K. Smith to give more than her legal allotted amount. I want to have faith in our civil society. When I travel to foreign countries and they marvel at America’s “civil society” I want to hold my head up as I did pre-Bush; when I travel to foreign countries holding precarious elections, I want to feel good about our civil elections.

I spoke today with the FEC about these problems. Currently there is much good faith in the way candidates raise $ for their war chests. For example, there is NO provision that foreign donors confirm their citizenship by faxing a copy of their passport. As it stands if a candidate gets $s that make him suspicious, then it is up the candidate to check this out. But what should make a candidate suspicious is hardly set in stone.

Also, there is no law that says contributions can not come from untraceable credit cards; there is no law that says that a candidate can’t disable the credit card and address matching security systems that retailers use.

During the election, Mr. Obama’s repeated claim to accomplishment was his cooperation on ethics work/reform in the Senate. This was gold-plated to him by male senators for a platform for his presidential run and Obama waved his ethics work up and down and round and round. Yet…. when we weren’t looking…Obama used very bad ethics in order to bring in $ to his coffers.

What is becoming more clear day by day is the Obama is getting a Big FAT pass on accountability for his $600 million. The Center for Responsive Politics was barely interested in my queries last June about potential fraud, and now says that even if 15K folks in fraud were discovered it would not amount to anything serious. (They also say that there must be clear and abundant indications of fraud for investigative actions…as if disabling a major check against illegal donations was not clear and abundant ideation.)
Of course there is the problem—indications vs. ideations. They want proof before they will investigate what seems like a clear and abundant ideations to garner illicit $s.

STOP AND THINK:
It would make no sense at all if a doctor waited until your toes turned gangrenous to test for diabetes. If you have the risk factors for diabetes the doctor would be negligent not to do a blood sugar test. Why then should we wait for a toe to fall off before we test the fat guy with high cholesterol, elevated blood pressure, couch potato habits, a basement level HDL, and family history of diabetes, for diabetes? No. That would never fly. Why? Because, aside from malpractice, the doctor would be saddling the rest of America with rocket-high price tag for treating an amputation, rather than a simple blood test.

Sadly, not investigating Obama’s donations in light of all his risk factors for fraud will cost Americans much in the future.

What’s the fix? Well as the FEC cheerfully points out, folks can go to their website and file complaints against the Obama campaign. But be forewarned, unless you quit your day job and spend 24/7 rooting about in documents you will not be able to access, little will come of this.
And as Politico pointed out, last week, even if any complaint,--followed by interminable back and forth btw the FEC and Obama’s campaign—did rise to the level of a vote by the FEC commissioners, political deadlock will still result. (Politico says the FEC commissioners are 3 Reds, 3 Blues; but the FEC told me that it is 3 Reds, 2 Blues and 1 Purple, but that works out the same in many ways!) Thus don’t count on the FEC for any audits anytime soon.
Congress designed this FEC oversight system before they could imagine how the Internet would change the whole campaign game. We need new Laws! We need laws that say no donations from untraceable credit cards; no donations from a credit card whose name and address don’t match; no passport, no overseas donations; and finally that all donors need be identified. If DooDad and WhoHA or Pee Wee can give $5 20K times and duck the system only because his name stood out as DooDO Ridiculous then what about all the Mary Smith’s or Jane Smith’s who look just about right?

The time for Change is now! Call your legislators and demand action before 2012.

Update:

I just spoke with Massie Ritsch of the Center for Responsive Politics. And at the Center there is feeling that b/c much of our disclosure rules for campaign finance are rooted in reality of the 70s (specifically 1976) there is need to update what is disclosed and how. For example, Mr. Ritsch says that the Center has informally asked the FEC for guidelines that call for documenting small donors to campaigns. (In June they asked both McCain and Obama for this as well—McCain partially responded, Obama did not respond at all.)
They are also advocating for increased transparency in other parts of the whole. But one idea floated by Mr. Ritsch—putting a widget on forms that allows donors to ID their country of origin—seems wholly naïve b/c it relies on the utter honesty of donors.
Nonetheless, the Center’s mood for reform towards greater transparency is a Baby Step we need!