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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jim-thompson who wrote (15572)	9/24/2007 1:02:38 PM
From: Ann Corrigan	Respond to of 224748

Obama admits Dems "sin" with campaign financiing. An internet search would've revealed Hsu's fugitive status >Bundlers and sinners chicagotribune.com, September 24, 2007 Norman Hsu is a big-time Democratic fundraiser and a convicted felon. He has now become an embarrassment for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Hsu was arrested on Aug. 31 in Colorado on a 15-year-old bench warrant. He pleaded guilty to grand theft in an early 1990s investment fraud case, but he went on the lam before he was sentenced. On Thursday, he was charged by federal authorities in a new and massive fraud case. The complaint says he used some of the money to reimburse people who made political contributions at his request. Now here's the problem for Clinton: Hsu raised $850,000 for her presidential campaign by collecting money from scores of people. The practice is called "bundling." Federal law allows individuals to give up to $2,300 to a candidate for the 2008 primary elections and another $2,300 for the general election. Now, $2,300 doesn't make a presidential candidate your friend. So some people doggedly raise money from other people and bundle the cash, providing large sums to candidates. Yes, sending over $850,000 is likely to get noticed. Once word of Hsu's sketchy past became known, Clinton decided to return the money he raised to some 260 individual donors. The campaign is cooperating with the federal investigation. Clinton's campaign aides say they conducted a background check on Hsu, but one wonders how careful it was. A routine Internet search would have turned up news stories about his connection to the fraud case, which cost investors $1 million. By the time the Clinton campaign returned the money collected by Hsu, he was being questioned by the FBI. Does all this benefit Clinton's chief rival, Sen. Barack Obama? Well, Hsu gave $7,000 to Obama's Senate campaign and his Hopefund PAC. Obama has donated that money to charity. The Obama presidential campaign is checking into $19,500 from contributors who have been associated with Hsu. All this has prompted a lament by Obama. "Money is the original sin of politics," he said in a recent online forum. "And when you're running for president you're going to do some sinning when it comes to raising money because otherwise, you can't compete." It is expected that candidates will spend a combined $1 billion on the 2008 presidential campaign. The Hsu affair demonstrates how campaign contribution limits have created alleys and byways that make it more difficult to track who is putting money into campaigns. The Hsu story started to come to light when The Wall Street Journal reported that $200,000 in political contributions made since 2004, including $45,000 in donations to Clinton, came from six people in a small bungalow outside San Francisco. The donations closely followed contributions made by Hsu, who gave that California house as a former address. The Los Angeles Times later reported that Hsu had been a fugitive for 15 years and may have strong-armed people into giving to Clinton. How to deal with this problem? A provision in an ethics bill that President Bush signed last week requires campaigns to disclose who is collecting and bundling contributions when the activity is done by lobbyists. That's a modest start.