Oh but, these were personal matters. This is just an effort to tear the party down. It’s a vast right wing conspiracy. :wally
The Democrat party broke the law, corrupting the political system further with cash from foreign interests. Since this is pretty clear guilt, I’m curious how the Democrats of the board will respond.
Protestations of innocense are ludicrous; saying the Republicans are just as bad is merely a distraction.
This further tells me that reform of the process is useless if corrupt pols will break existing laws to keep power. The corrupt pols in question did this time and time again.
IIRC this story is about a year old, and the GOP was fined a similar amount. And it happens every campaign cycle.
The issue is whether ‘soft’ money is spent to benefit specific candidates (illegal) or for party building (legal). Both the pubs and dems push the limits and get caught and spanked every year.
So, Moto, since soft money is going to be banned, wouldn’t you say that that ‘reform process’ would help curtail misuse of soft money, since it won’t exist any longer?
(And I’m sure any fine to the GOP has nothing to do with GWB, but a fine to the dems absolutely must, must be the work of the dastardly ClintonGores. Feh.)
Actually the story was in today’s paper. And, the Democratic fine was called a “record” in the article, so the GOP wasn’t fined the same amount.
In this case, a big part of the problem was donations from abroad, which have long been illegal. And, the Democrats were lucky that the fine wasn’t significantly higher:
This wasn’t pushing the envelope on what constitutes soft money. This was dummy operations to get blatantly illegal contributions. Heaven only knows what the Democrats did to reward these foreign donors.
As I said, this was blatant law-breaking, and the penalty was rather small – financially and Public Relations-wise. People who broke the current laws with impunity will break the new laws with impunity.
God forbid that you go to any major news site and take a look. That would almost be like real work, and why bother doing that when you can just sit here and whine for cites?
Because it’s not my thread. The person who starts the thread and makes assertions is responsible for cites. God forbid the person who started this rant should at least follow common courtesy (although quite obviously courtesy, common or otherwise, is not a procedure you’re familiar with).
Brutus not everyone wants to register on cites, it’s a valid criticsm. Frankly I prefer it when folks indicate it, too “sorry you have to register”, 'cause then I don’t bother to click on it.
So, why are you jumping all over me? I didn’t start the thread. I was simply repeating the OP’s cite.
BTW are you sure that WaPo requires free registration? Maybe I registered and forgot doing so. I recommend that you take the bit of effort to register. It’s a very good paper, with the best editorial page of any (liberal) newspaper in the country. Participating in GD wihtout access to WaPo is like fighting with one hand tied behind your back. While you at it, I recommend you get your free registration for the NY Times.
Maybe the real reason you served this fine whine about the cite is to distract the SDMB from Clinton’s illegal fund-raising.