From Politico –
The Federal Election Commission has fined one of the biggest liberal political action committees $775,000 for using unregulated cash to boost Democratic candidates during the 2004 elections.
America Coming Together (ACT) raised $137 million for its get-out-the-vote effort in 17 states in the 2004 elections, but the FEC found most of that cash came through contributions that violated federal limits or were otherwise barred by campaign rules.
The group?s big donors included George Soros and the Service Employees International Union.
The settlement, which the FEC approved unanimously, is the third-largest enforcement penalty in the commission?s 33-year history.
Forget bundlers! SEND MONEY TO THE CANDIDATES – red or blue.
And once again – THANKS, American Unions, for demonstrating why you’ve lost the ability to deliver votes from your captive members, who must appreciate their deducted dues going to pay your fines for unethical conduct.
This doesn’t reflect on unions at all, Peter, and you know it.
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But your general point is taken, give to candidates and parties.
Did you know many telemarketers who claim to be collecting for the local police, or other organizations, remit maybe 15%?
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I am most comfortable giving directly to a candidate, and very occasionally, to the party of my choice. I don’t give to PACs or vague “cause” coalitions as too often, in my long, no longer youthful experience, it was money thrown into a dark pit.
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So I consider this good advice about “charitable giving” – be sure! Or political giving, and almost without a doubt nonpolitical.
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“Of course” Mme. Porcupine could not be union bashing, just giving wise advice, right?
So Peter, if ACT is paying the fine how is it union members dues that are an issue in your post. Even if you are trying to make some point that of the $137 million a percentage is union money and that will go to the fine, you are really grasping at straw to unionbash.
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So in your deep reseach on this how much did SEIU give? How much was hard money and how much was soft money. Union members sign a voluntary checkoff to donate to their union’s PAC – that’s hard money Pete, so maybe these union members actually support what SEIU was doing to elect candidates and register voters.
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Note to self – file law requiring corporations to get written permission from customers to use their profits from customers’ purchases to lobby. That should even the playing field.
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BTW, union members vote in higher percentages then the norm and 62-68% vote for the candidate the union endorsed. You can find the survey info on the AFl-CIO’s website (they poll after each election cycle with Peter Hart)
BTW – I wonder how much the SEIU voluntary checkoff total was? As much as/more than the amount of the fine on a per stirpes basis?
OK, first the AFL-CIO survey. I will believe it if they actual publish the methodology. That being said, there are several things that just show the schizophrenia of the unions at the polls. For example, the top voting issue was the economy and jobs, but 47% said that the dems didn’t have a plan to fix the economy. Then, in the “what are you saying with your vote” almost all of the answers given were self preservation, in other words, they voted for the dems because of their pro-union position primarily. They in my favorite slide, entitled “Union Information: House Vote”, it’s shown that the more union pro-dem propaganda they receive the more they vote for dems. Way to think for yourselves unions.
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Second, the comparison of customers’ of a corporation to union members is bullshit. A customer has no say over the corporations leaders, who decided where the money goes. The union members do. Unless you are saying the union members are mindless sheep that have no say in what the union does with their money. Second, union members choose to be part of that organization, well kinda, that’s a talk for another day, and pay for it. Customers are often purchasing the product through a third, fourth, fifth, etc. party and have little knowledge of the original corporation. This is not really a good excuse for purchasing products from a corporation with motivations different they your own but certainly more understandable then a union member not knowing what the union supports.
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Now, lets talk about the union PAC sign offs. How voluntary are they really? I have been around unions enough to know they will apply strong arm tactics to so called voluntary programs. How long until the calls stop coming for jobs if the member refuses to sign off?
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I also find it funny that your defense of this is, “well it was ACT that committed the bad act (no pun intended)”. Seems to me that from a review of the various union websites including the SEIU and AFL-CIO, they understand better then most the limits of campaign contributions. The AFL-CIO web page has about 900 articles involving campaign finance. So to try and pass it off that the union leadership didn’t know they were doing anything wrong is just bullshit. I would like to see a full investigation of what the union and Soros knew about the donations they gave because if they knowingly gave above the limit, they should be fined as well.
I have an idea. Let’s investigate every corporation who gave to Duke Cunningham, because clearly they KNEW (by your logic) that he was a crook.
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Mind you, I’m not equating ACT with Cunningham, just wondering about the logic that donors should understand entirely what’s been done with their money.
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But these two have considerably deep pockets and likely knew they were braking the law.
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Oh and for clarification, I am saying investigate every donor who’s donation violates the law to see if they know they were breaking the law.
It may even be true for all I know, but again, this is an impossibly high standard. ACT broke the law, and was punished. SEIU did nothing wrong by donating to ACT — no more than I would have, had I donated to ACT (I didn’t).
and I am asking that it be investigated. I am not sure if what SEIU and Soros did was not against the law but I would like to know.
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Are you sure that the donor holds no responsibility to know if the donation he gave is legal?
But I see two different issues.
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1) Whether SEIU knew its money was being illegally used; you assume they knew, I assume they did not. (Soros, as one of ACT’s principal backers, has a shakier case, but I would still give him the benefit of the doubt.) Since this seems to have been handled as an accounting matter, I think it ends there, but I’m guessing.
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2) Whether the nature of donations is illegal. There, I assume the donor bears some responsibility. For example, if a donor gives cash, they may be knowingly breaking the law. By the same token, if someone taped Andy Stern saying “Yeah, I know you’re over the limit, but here’s the check,” SEIU might be liable. But in general, I think primary liability falls to the person/organization who collects the cash. Otherwise, as you can see, you’d have a massive enforcement problem.
HR’s Kevin, I am curious; why the 4? What is it that you think “needs work”?
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Thanks
Note to self – file law requiring corporations to get written permission from customers to use their profits from customers’ purchases to lobby.
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Actually, they should get written permission from their sharehlders to use their profits to lobby. And, actually, for the shareholders who say nay their dividends should be increased accordingly.