On 4/11/23 11:29 AM, ScottW wrote:
On Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 9:22:48 AM UTC-7, mINE109 wrote:
On 4/11/23 10:55 AM, ScottW wrote:
On Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 8:15:51 AM UTC-7, mINE109 wrote:
On 4/10/23 8:31 PM, ScottW wrote:
Dems continue to allow donors to use pre-paid credit cards
So why do they continue to allow transactions from pre-paid
credit and gift cards?
Simple....they're laundering money on a massive scale.
Typical Democratic flailing about. So much easier to make a
one-time huge contribution to a dark money PAC.
I thought that's what Act Blue was.
https://support.actblue.com/donors/about-actblue/why-is-actblue-considered-a-pac/
Organized as a PAC but also act as a Paid political fundraiser.
"Under federal law, these contributions are made by individuals; they
are not considered PAC donations."
Indeed.
https://support.actblue.com/donors/about-actblue/are-contributions-made-through-actblue-pac-contributions-hint-no/
There are real Democratic dark money PACs.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/democrats-used-rail-against-dark-money-now-they-re-better-n1239830
But apparently there are restrictions on what they can do with the
money if it exceeds limits. So they obviously find it useful to
lie about their contribution sources. Why?
Since it's so much easier to make large secret contributions, I
don't believe those small contributions are any kind of dodge.
You're just putting your head in the sand because you don't want to
see it.
No, it seems like a lot of trouble for no benefit as other avenues are available.
Look at their data and see hundreds or even thousands of donations
from the same people. People who deny doing it when asked. How do
you explain that?
Bad reporting, cherry-picking, fiction. The Take Back Action Fund has
been making claims for years but haven't provided credible facts. Here's
the "unemployed donors" claim:
https://www.ifs.org/blog/actblue-scandal-no-evidence/
WinRed, the Republican version of ActBlue, is the key basis for
comparison by the Action Fund and Fox News. The two bundlers appear to
account for a substantial portion of the funds raised by the Trump and
Biden campaigns.
I sampled a large portion of contributors from WinRed’s April 2020
quarterly report. Of the over 1 million earmarked (bundled) candidate contributions I reviewed, only about 2,000 listed “not employed” for occupation and employer. However, about 620,000 donors list their
occupation as “retired.” In all, about 61% of WinRed donors in the quarterly report didn’t list an employer or occupation. This isn’t very surprising, given that the GOP’s fundraising base is well known for
skewing older.
WinRed’s online contribution form allows a contributor to indicate
whether they are “retired.” Individuals that select this option appear
to be reported as “retired” (for their employer) and “not employed” (for
their occupation) on WinRed’s quarterly reports.
I also reviewed a large sample of bundled contributions from the July
2020 ActBlue monthly report. Of the sampled 850,067 donations, 414,226
were marked as “not employed” for both the employer and occupation
fields. Another 29,451 donors marked their employer as “None” and occupation as “None.” An additional 18,785 ActBlue donors listed their occupation as “retired.” So overall, a bit more than 54% of ActBlue’s donors appear to be retired or unemployed.
Unlike WinRed, ActBlue’s online contribution form forces donors to
answer the question “Are you employed?” The group does not offer a
checkbox for “retired.” So, I would imagine that most retired donors indicate they are not employed. After all, how else would a retiree
answer that question? A small number perhaps don’t like thinking of themselves as “not employed.” So those people, who appear to account for about one in every 25 of the retired contributors, manually fill in the occupation and employer boxes as “retired” after choosing the “Yes” answer to the “Are you employed?” question.
So the differences in reporting between ActBlue and WinRed appear to be
solely a function of how the two organizations prompt contributors to
provide their employer info – either by checking a “retired” box or answering, using a radio button, the question, “Are you employed?”
I think we can conclude, with confidence, that ActBlue is not hiding
anything. If there is any surprise in this data, it’s how many retired persons make contributions to candidates.
End quote.
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