Obama’s dinner party a few weeks back…the one hosted my Will and Jada Smith? FOr some reason it IS public knowledge that the plates cost 36,000…but where did all that money end up? I mean, was it donated to charity? Helping to feed the homeless? I have googled this every which way I can and the info is just not there…help? please…
Odds are it was a fund-raiser for his re-election campaign. It sounds cynical, but it costs hundreds of millions to run a presidential campaign. Flying all over the country on a large cahtered jet, offices in prime space in dozens of cities, millions of brochures and posters, thousands of full-time employees… oh, and television ads. You don’t do this with volunteers and bake sales. Those “top advisors” expect to pull down a salary of hundreds of thousands, after all, they have mortgages too. A senate seat is worth tens of millions in campaign expenses, and even congressional seats cost millions to get elected. Why do you think politicians are notorious for sucking up to special interests for donations?
Even someone like Bachman or Gingrich was in the news a few months ago for running so low on cash they had to close offices and may withdraw from the race.
A president might fly a few places and make speeches because “he’s president” but for blatant campaign expenses, even the president needs an election fund, not the taxpayer’s dollars.
Everyone does it. The measure of a candidate’s popularity is whether he can *actually sell *plates for $36,000.
Ever hear of a “fundraiser?” That what it was - for his re-election campaign.
To be exact, attendance at the dinner cost $35,800 per person. It was at the home of James and Mai Lassiter, not Will and Jada Smith, although they were among the attendees. It was the usual high-level fundraiser for Obama’s 2012 Presidential campaign and that’s what the money went for. It’s pretty standard for Presidential candidates (and candidates for many lower-level positions as well) to have dinners where the cost of attendance goes to their campaign funds. This cost was about average, I think:
http://news-briefs.ew.com/2011/10/25/obama-fundraiser-celebrity/
$36,000 is, IIRC, above the donation limit.
So I’m stumped.
The current limitations on campaign donations include $2,500 to a specific candidate for each election (primary and general elections count separately) and $30,800 to a party’s national committee.
It would seem that the guests would have been making the legal limit contribution to the Democratic National Committee and two candidates – presumably one is Obama, and I’m not sure who the other would be.
Biden?
The could of also been donating to a PAC in which case they don’t need to disclose anything.
Maybe it was a really really good dinner.
President I am on the Side of the Little Man Without Bootstraps & I don’t take Contributions from Special Interests Obama has more than one face.
I ASSUmed it woud go there…just could not find the right link to the right story I suppose…
Yes, I have heard of a “fundraiser”…It just seems to me “fundraisers” are supposed to go to needy people etc…this “greatest land in the world” of ours doesn’t seem to great to me…
You’ve never heard of “campaign funderaisers”?
This kind of fundraiser is standard operating procedure for both parties. It’s not new.
Haven’t we been hearing that even people who have six figure annual incomes aren’t rich? I’m guessing it was working class people like that who were attending this fund raiser.
Don’t think so. Biden doesn’t collect contributions since nobody runs for Vice President, and he’s not collecting any cash according to the FEC. My guess would the other candidate would be running for Congress.
I doubt it’s a PAC thing, because it would seem that it would be a remarkable coincidence that the amounts add up to the legal limits on national party contributions plus two candidate contributions.
And job creators.
Considering that Obama opted out of the publicly-financed presidential campaign system in 2008 so that he could raise more funds than would have been allocated to him under the taxpayer-funded voluntary system, anyone who is surprised by Obama raising large amounts of cash probably hasn’t been paying attention for the last four years.
THIS. Can you actually believe that he said that with a straight face? The only thing that changed was the name said after “President”.
You sound remarkably naive about politics for someone throwing opinions around. It sounds like you WANT the candidate not-of-your-choice to appear a hypocrite. Here’s a news flash - EVERYONE in politics does this. For every celebrity who goes to Darfur and adopts an orphan and gives to the Democrats, there are a dozen rich industrialists and rich doctors and lawyers who give to the Republicans.
As I said in my earlier post, it takes millions, hundreds of millions, to run for president. The rules are written so that they can accept these donations, and obviously they are (all) milking the rules to the limit. It is necessary to raise this money. It is how it has been done since bribery became more difficult to accomplish. It is how it has been done since it was necessary to become a candidate, you had to woo actual voters instead of a bunch of guys in smoke-filled rooms, ever since you could no longer buy the presidency for your son by bribing the Chicago political machine. It’s the way the system works.
The Republicans have been doing this since January - it’s just that when Hollywood celebrities buy a dinner, it makes the news. When the biggest car dealer in Podunk buys a $10,000 plate for dinner with Bachmann or Romney, it does not make national news.
If you have a better idea, occupy a park and get people to accept your idea of how elections should work. To quote a good politician, “enough of the phony outrage.”
WAG, but I’ve always figured that these sorts of dinners are perhaps just a way of getting around that limit. You’re not donating $36,000 to the campaign, per se, you’re just buying a dinner that happens to cost $36,000 (and that happens to be hosted by the campaign).
You don’t magically get around campaign donation limits with some legal fiction about “buying a dinner.” The extra money goes to the DNC and sometimes to affiliated PACs.
Will Smith is not a special interest.