Apparently, winning sucks and we have to destroy our candidates.

Fuck these guys.

Link to tweet

As far as I can tell, he did not say Trump is a progressive. He said Bernie won the primary, and in a second separate statement, said Trump won the general. The attacks on him are utter nonesense.

Link to tweet

How is her having a super pac without repkrting donors and being called out for it "utter nonesense or disingenuous?"

for himself.

...e exactly?

how that for exact. I will be talking with someone who is going to a meet and greet tomorrow with Wittmer and they do have that question to ask that Abdul alleges. So stop with the Our Revolution BS. Nothing but divisive in these perilous times where beating repthigliKKKanss is the priority. All the other shit will sort out. Why so much rancour and BS from the Our Revolution crowd? Seems I remember it didn't do us any good in the recent past. We got trump with the help of the Russians, voter suppression, also.

I'm tired of sugarcoating the BS whether from the right or left. It is truly dismaying that many people here didn't learn from 2016 and continue to try to divide and weaken our party. To what end, to whose benefit? The bashing of Democrats only helps republicans and Russian oligarchs, not the people who are being harmed by this maladministration.

527s are advocacy groups. They are required to disclose donor information to the IRS, but not to the FEC.

It is 501(c)(4)s that are considered to be dark money groups because they are not required to disclose their donors to either the IRS or the FEC. (They can raise unlimited amounts of cash from individuals and organizations alike — without having to disclose who contributed that money.) Examples of 501(c)(4)s are the NRA, Crossroads GPS, and Our Revolution.

https://www.opensecrets.org/527s/index.php

https://www.opensecrets.org/527s/basics.php

https://sunlightfoundation.com/2016/08/26/bernie-sanderss-new-political-group-wont-have-to-disclose-its-donors/

https://sunlightfoundation.com/2016/02/17/a-glossary-of-campaign-finance-in-the-u-s/#501(c)(4)

https://sunlightfoundation.com/2016/02/17/a-glossary-of-campaign-finance-in-the-u-s/#501(c)(4)

FEC?

There are disclosure requirements for pacs.

Whoever set up Our Revolution did it in a very clever way. It is not a pac or a superpac, so its members can claim a non-existent moral high ground based on public misconceptions like the one el-Sayed tried to exploit: "We're not an evil pac!"

Yet 501(c)(4)s provide the best opportunity to raise money is the least transparent of all the ways possible.

https://sunlightfoundation.com/2016/08/26/bernie-sanderss-new-political-group-wont-have-to-disclose-its-donors/

It was Jeff Weaver's idea apparently, one of Bernie's inner circle.

It cost Bernie some good people - more than half his starting staff:

organization has reported donors. So when one is "calling out" absolute lies because one is either too ignorant or too dishonest to grasp what a 527 is and you pretend that they didn't disclose their donors and the amounts they donated, (the super pacs that are endorsing you, for instance), it's both complete and utter bull shit and disingenuous in the extreme.

It's also the GOP playbook and a pretty clear indication that your 3rd place in the polls is completely deserved.

Zero negative ads against you, the frontrunner you keep lying about, who is being attacked by shady GOP fauxgressive groups amplifying your message, national media attention and sympathetic coverage by the local media, etc. etc. etc, all that whining about polls and the online one your campaign pays for still puts you behind? You might have some problems with your candidacy and your appeal.

NB: "you" refers to the dishonest candidate Abdul ElSayed here.

so one wonders what his priority is, destroying a good Democrats chance to beat repthugs or smear a person that has a better chance outstate in white Michigan to carry a lot of votes. Better get real Abdul.

Gretchen is a Team Player and puts her state, country, and Planet first.

and the rich get richer......damn.

Of course, "dark money" is a pejorative term with no set legal definition AFAIK. But as long as we're cataloging organizations that don't have to disclose their donors, we should note that Clinton's group follows the same policy, according to CNN.

notwithstanding the currently inaccurate, early CNN report you cite from May 2017. (CNN, the NYT, and all the right-leaning news sources made the same mistake. Only Vox got it right when they noted that the organizational structure was still undetermined at the initial announcement in May 2017.)

If HRC and Howard Dean had organized as a 501(c)(4), it would not have been problematic in the same way as Our Revolution's troubling decision.

Clinton and Dean are private citizens and haven't spent the last two years bleating nonsense and sowing seeds of doubt about fellow Democrats with "good money" versus "bad money" narratives.

If you have a problem with LLC fundraising, take it up with Brand New Campaign.
If you have a problem with 527s, take it up with Act Blue.
If you have a problem with 501(c)(4)s, take it up with Our Revolution.
If you have a problem with pacs, take it up with Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress.
If you have a problem with superpacs, take it up with National Nurses United.



https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/15/15643356/clinton-funding-resistance-onward-together

https://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/detail.php?cmte=C00638874&cycle=2018

https://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/detail.php?cmte=C90017005&cycle=2016

https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00630665&cycle=2018

https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00613810&cycle=2018

https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00490375

El-Sayed's shameful slander yesterday was a perfect example.

Here's the link: https://secure.onwardtogether.org/page/contribute/default

That's still the status in 2018. You seem to be implying that this is outdated information from 2017, but that implication is not consistent with this news report from April 2018 in the Seattle Times: "One Seattle man’s quest to cancel his $10.48 monthly donation to Hillary Clinton’s nonprofit". An excerpt from the article:

This sounds like the same type of misunderstanding of the complexities of political financial management that led the unfortunate Dr. El-Sayed to lodge a libelous “money laundering” criminal accusation (which he later back peddled into a mere “legal money laundering” smear) against his opponent.

The Onward Together noncharitable, not-for-profit, membership organization exists as a 501(c) (4) for fundraising purposes. This is fully disclosed and clearly stated if you donate via a disclosure link on the donation page.
https://www.onwardtogether.org/disclosure/

Onward Together CMTE also exists as a committee pac.
https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00640490

Finally, the third entity under this umbrella is the Onward Together PAC, structured as a superpac. https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?cycle=2018&strID=C00638874

As I stated earlier, I have no problem with the way Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean structured the fundraising apparatus for their political activism. They have not spent the better part of three years slandering other Democrats concerning donations. I trust them.

Our Revolution, on the other hand, identifies itself as a “501(c)(4) corporation”, but the information is not contained at their “disclosure” link.
https://ourrevolution.com/disclosure-policy/

If you want “transparency”, you might find it serendipitously by seeking out and scrolling through the Our Revolution corporate bylaws. None of this information is available on or through the donation page; it takes a bit of digging or luck. If you click on the “about” tab, scroll down to the bottom, bypass the useless “disclosure” link, and read the bylaws of the corporation, you can find the information. It can also be found in the fine print at the very bottom of the “about” page.

On the "donation" page itself, there is a whole new level of opacity. You cannot donate directly to Our Revolution. You must donate to “Act Blue Civics" a registered charitable organization formed to democratize social welfare giving” which then disperses the money back to OR.

I was distressed to read the tale of poor Mr. Koscielniak’s struggle to cancel a recurring donation. Perhaps next time he should simply do what most adults would do: call the credit card company.

It woud have quick and easy, but Mr. Koscielniak would not have gotten his picture in the newspaper and Common Cause would not have had the opportunity to make speculative accusations while linking Hillary, Barack, and Karl Rove together all the while ignoring the elephant in the room: the remarkably opaque Our Revolution which preaches what it doesn’t practice.

As I stated earlier, I trust Citizen Activist Hillary Clinton; “Senator” Nina Turner is another matter altogether.

pushing.

First of all it's not legal to accept corporate donations to your campaign.

Second, they're basing this lie on the fact that HER FATHER was once at BCBS over a decade ago and that this makes his contributions to a 527 organization proof of her "accepting corporate money".

The FEC requries that all donations to a candidate include the employer and industry in which they worked. So when donations are calculated, it's reported as money from that company. Abdul accepts the same "corporate money" that Whitmer does, he's just been found funneling this through a separte PAC that bypasses campaign finance laws. Abdul is not "refusing" anything, he's happy to get all the corporate pac money airing ads that attack Whitmer and amplify HIS attack lines.

He's being dishonest and he's desperately attacking her and setting his online out of state supporters to harass her and her supporters. He made false accusations the other day and got his rear handed to him when his financial disclosures showed that he is getting PAC money and that PAC is taking in "corporate" money and also helping evade FEC regulations about maximums. Also, he's been caught doing shady things like trying to make the pac money he does get seem like it's just coming from an individual.

The level of toxicity coming from this candidate is atrocious, he's gone full racist, pointing to the make up of the ads an unrelated 527 organization ran, called her a birther when he got into trouble for not getting his voter registration straight after failing to vote in the last election (IN MICHIGAN IN 2016, which is the height of irresponsibility) and then lying about why he couldn't vote. (The place he claimed to try to vote in is not even where he's registered, and he seemed to be really clueless about how this whole voting things happens).

He's even worse than the fake progressive who taped Bernie's platform and slogans onto his when he decided to run as a Dem (presumably due to his accent and foreignness, he thought he would not get far in the GOP).

The FEC doesn't regulate campaigns for state office, including governorships. Those are subject to state law. Different states have different rules, with different contribution limits. In a few states, even direct corporate contributions to candidates are legal, although they are prohibited in most states and in all federal races.

I don't know Michigan law on the point. I'm just cautioning against the mistake some people make, of failing to recognize that state races are sometimes subject to looser regulation than are federal races.

Just from this thread, I do know enough about the Michigan race to know that you are mischaracterizing El-Sayed's position when you write:

conducting himself. Mere hours after his awful tweet, and his new one after he deleted the old one, the filings came to light.

Abdul is receiving BCBS money via his buddy Hammoud's PAC, which had the money from his buddy at Columbia and his sister in law.

A request for an investigation has been filed with the Secretary of State's office and Abdul has been backing away from his belligerent lies. I think that the weakness might be a bit in Crain's coverage.

My point about the issues with his voting history is that he has a history of lying, has a history of accusing Whitmer of false things he cannot back up and a history of being just incredibly sloppy about basic things.

I believe that a candidate who is getting national media should be evaluated fairly and he's been behaving in a manner that is upsetting Michiganders.

No one was asked for an endorsement, you simply got into a discussion and the issues were addressed, I'm not really interested in the opinions or endorsements of people with insufficient knowledge of the topic at hand, the personalities at play or the facts that are involved.

It would be nice if all the extraneous forces that have thrust themselves into this race would take a seat. That goes for Abdul's online army of foreign boosters, the guests from outside of the state that think any one cares about their opinions based on prior performance (with no attention paid to any factor actually involved in that performance), or the PR firm receiving dark money contributions who endorsed him, who provide non fact based Fox like propaganda for him or any other forces that are at play here.

The campaign finance issues raised by Abdul's dishonest tweets and his shenanigans need to be understood as part of the fuller picture, or not at all.

This is the relevant part of what I wrote:

1) no proof of an alliance
2) no proof of any organizational arrangmements
3) no proof of any corporate money
4) no answer from the enttite

So no proof, just speculation, that's not what we who know what accuracy means, consider to be accurate.

Crains made general, negative unsupported statements, you admit and acknowledge that they have no proof, they indulge El-Sayed's equally baseless speculation, and conclude that I'm somehow at fault for pointing out that the lack of proof of baseless speculation that isn't backed up by anything is inaccurate?

The weakness of baseless speculation based on poor research and zero facts, and the amplifying of baseless speculation by a guy who has a habit of lying is evident in and of itself. There was no balanced coverage here, this wasn't even handed, it was fully all about implication, speculation and not doing their basic homework.

Sorry that it's hard to figure out how "no proof' and baseless nonsense that is unconfirmed and not able to backed up reads to you as "balanced even handed coverage", it's literally the exact opposite of that.

They also told you outright that they had no evidence to back up anything they were saying, it pointed out that a loop hole existed, not that anyone used it, they implied that she did, because Abdul said she did.

To me, and anyone else who actually read it for comprehension and not for confirmation of their own bias, it's pretty plain that Abdul was implying something he had no evidence to back up, and that Crain's was indulging the speculation and also failed to back up anything, which is the issue here.

What we did have was proof that the loophole was used by Abdul, and his buddy and dark money pacs who channeled money into amplifying his baseless speculation.

Suppose that Abdul or Crains had said something they had evidence of, rather than rank speculation of something they could not back up, which was intended to smear Abdul's opponent and nothing more.

Imagine if integrity, journalism or critical thought was engaged here! Sadly, we have to because neither party actually did anything but spread propaganda and smears they could not back up to try to take out the woman whose record proves that she wasn't treating BCBS any more favorably than any other company or entity, her voting record was against them in many cases.

I know, asking a desperate politician working on a negative smear campaign of tired old attacks based on nothing because he was in 3rd place, and a media outlet that wasn't too great at doing their actual homework is just too much in this day and age.

Luckily, Michiganders were not fooled by this BS and voted in record numbers for the candidate who wasn't lying, who wasn't smearing and who has actually been on the ground fighting the progressive fight.

I'm sure Crain's will figure out how to do their damned job now they don't have to be elevating Abdul as the rest of the national media have been, while ignoring his tactics or pretending he had a point, when they missed that he was simply projecting. He was helped and helped the GOP with his incessant negative and baseless attacks, and this is a pattern we've seen quite a bit.

He pledged to march in lockstep and do all he could to help her get elected, I'll take him at his word and observe his actions, to see how much integrity he's got. I was hopeful about his candidacy before I learned more about him, so I'm skeptical.

Also, you might wish to learn what Crain's bias is and why they were doing what they were doing.

A candidate in the primary made statements that the media reported. That's pretty standard practice.

As for what Crain's said, I did my best to figure out where any disagreement was. Here's what I wrote in #231:

of the structure of the Our Revolution Corporation.

https://ourrevolution.com/bylaws/

a room with 4-5 people brainstorming, assigning the one woman in the group to take notes.

When the notes were presented to the final arbiter for approval, he shook his finger at them and yelled, "I don't have time for this. Run it by Jane" Jane then told Weaver to look at it. He edited it, and when he presented it to the OR staff, the majority of them said, "WHAT? Bernie promised you weren't going to be involved in this at all! I quit!"

Then Jeff told the woman who took the notes to put his version on the website, and there you have it.

who was locked in a desperate struggle to cancel a monthly donation of $10.58 to Onward Together. He decided that his best option was to get a Seattle newspaper and Common Cause on the case.

I would have simply called my credit card company, but I would not have gotten my picture in the newspaper, and no one would have been able to pontificate on the troubling optics of Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean's troubling political activism.

to get the recurring donation cancelled!

Hillary must've gotten to the CC company and threatened them if they didn't keep on giving her that $10.58 a month... why else would he not have been able to stop the payments that way?

Clearly, Hillary needs to apologize for this personally.




And this statement from the man certainly doesn't make one wonder if he had an agenda to begin with....

“I don't expect [transparency] from anyone, corporation or not,” he told the Times. “But what surprised me is the Democratic Party is supposed to stand for other people and not be part of this larger industrial complex.”

If during the campaign, HRC had sent out repeated donation requests to individuals without monitoring when individuals passed the legal campaign limit for individual donations, and kept accepting donations from those individuals, that would have been totally understandable.... and really not worth any real scrutiny.

set political definition?

Actually, it does have a specific definition:

The information I gave about Onward Together was completely accurate, however much people may try to dance around it by "correcting" things I didn't actually say.

I didn't say that Hillary Clinton is a vile proponent of illegal money laundering who's in league with Karl Rove and who lies about it. I made a much simpler statement: Onward Together is a 501(c)(4) and doesn't have to disclose its donors. I cited a CNN report from 2017.

In #141, lapucelle responded that "Onward Together was organized as a superpac, not a 501(c)(4)" and that I was relying on a "currently inaccurate, early CNN report" that made a mistake. I don't know how Onward Togetehr was originally organized. My statement was that it is currently a 501(c)(4). Interestingly, lapucelle didn't come right out and expressly deny that, but post #141 would certainly leave most readers with the impression that my statement was false.

In reply, I provided up-to-date citations, including Onward Together's own website, where it admits that it's a 501(c)(4). Nothing in any subsequent post has contradicted that.

So, no, contrary to your charge, I did not provide any "misinformation" about Onward Together.

Unable to contradict what I posted, lapucelle embarked on a campaign of distraction. To that end, post #141 mentions six organizations that are not Onward Together. Post #173 denounces Our Revolution in general and Nina Turner in particular. Does this refute anything I wrote? No, it does not. You could present unimpeachable evidence that Our Revolution is running a child sex ring out of a Washington pizzeria and it wouldn't change one simple fact: Onward Together is a 501(c)(4) and doesn't have to disclose its donors.

You then jump into the game, though admittedly to a lesser extent, by brilliantly refuting something else that I didn't say.
* What I wrote: "Of course, 'dark money' is a pejorative term with no set legal definition AFAIK."
* Your purported refutation: "You mean like 'establishment Democrat' is a perjorative term with no set political definition? Actually, [the term 'dark money'] does have a specific definition...."

Do you see the difference? You refuted a statement about a "political definition" (a statement I didn't make) and a statement about a "specific definition" (another statement I didn't make). I wasn't saying that the term "dark money" is meaningless. I said it had no "legal definition" -- which is different. As an example of a legal definition, the Securities and Exchange Commission's Rule 10b-5 bars insider trading, but only "in connection with the purchase or sale of any security." Therefore, citizens (and courts) must be able to tell what a "security" is, and that term is in fact defined in detail in the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. I'm not aware of any comparable legal definition of the term "dark money".

who has to read your overwrought missives to me.

My apologies to everyone else on this thread.

And my sympathies to anyone who has had the experience to dealing with this irl.

This thread did indeed correct you. Here it is again, in case you need to review:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/100210951655#post141

a 501(c)(4) membership organization that collects funds from donors and members, a CMTE pac, and a superpac, both of which raise and spend or disburse funds.

There are no disclosure requirements for 501(c)(4) organizations, but there are disclosure requirements for CMTE pacs and superpacs. It is a complex system set up by two adults experienced in setting up such entities: Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean.

You are absolutely correct in saying that the membership organization component of Onward Together was founded as a 401(c)(4), and I do sincely apologize for being incorrect about that particular arm of Onward Together. However, as I stated in my original post:

The membership organization of the tripartite entity Onward Together is a 501(c)(4). Its CMTE pac and superpac are not.

The corporation Our Revolution is exclusively a 501(c)(4). It exists in no other way.

Howard Dean and Hillary Clinton are running (among other things) a dark money membership organization!

Corporate board chair "Senator" Nina Turner exclusively runs a dark money entity organized as a corporation! The corporate bylaws contain some weaselly language concerning maximum donations!

Neither Howard Dean nor Hillary Clinton has made an industry of slurring the way Democrats raise money. "Senator" Nina Turner has. "Disclosure for thee, but not for me," is dicey policy, at best.

And none of them were involved in Pizzagate. Pizzagate didn't happen.

As far as I know the outside PACs that are involved are Justice Democrats and Our Revolution, and the only ones using the "dark money" as a pejorative are the people who openly benefit from actual dark money.

Can we note that Clinton isn't the one establishing purity about dark money, didn't make a platform of it, and didn't attack her democratic opponent on this topic? Abdul has done all these things, and when it's clear that he's clearly a dark money candidate who benefits greatly from many dark money groups, it's odd to be speaking of Clinton and groups she established to help
Democrats and not hurt them.

What is the purpose of ths post?

or "attacks"?

Literally all he has been doing is launching nonsensical attacks on the front runner because he's not polling well despite not being attacked, and getting all sorts of help from national media figures, PACs from out of state, lots of donations funneled through various pacs, and the GOP amplifying his attacks via dark money organziations.

He chose to make really disgusting and false accusations on twitter, to go dirty before the primary and got caught, then it came out that he's literally guilty of the false accusation he made against his opponent.

He should be called out for what he's doing, that's the GOP playbook and it's not how progressives work.

How do we know anything about the source of Bernie's campaign contributions when he won't release his tax returns? Are you aware that he's currently campaigning? His Our Revolution group sends me solicitation emails all the time.

The Hypocrisy of the accusers is shocking.. not shocking.

The fact that the target is a woman increases the virulence. I hope Whitmer kicks the absolute shit out of him next Tuesday.

and tulsi gabbard is still dodging them.

Sorry, that's all I've heard. I see gabbard signs but no signs for Sherry around where I live. The primary is August 7th.. I'm hoping for a miracle that tulsi isn't too entrenched.

Mahalo for asking, Blue_true

will he count that as a victory?

Michiganders?

Link to tweet

Im curious -how is he doing that?

No explanation generally means no real reason to believe it. I think there are also a fair enough number of people who can see through the blatant smears as well.

Everybody knows trump won Michigan.. why did El Sayed even bring trump into it by stating the obvious?

Of El Sayed.

attempt to smear Gretchen Whitmer.

Link to tweet

so far there is nothing to say that is the case. All I can see is whitened people desperate after recent polls show el Sayed neck and neck with her.

Link to tweet

Super pacs are legal. Just not transparent.

Link to tweet

The answer is there is none. El-Sayed committed defamation. Either he's an idiot who doesn't understand what SuperPacs are or he's willfully spreading disinformation and defamation because he's desperate. And that new poll is a joke.

(Citation needed)

Link to tweet

He might still be able to inflict some damage, though.

I will concede he should have never accused her of money laundering and it seems as though he agrees. I don't think that disqualifies him from the position or makes him a worse candidate, but I surely understand why you would disagree. I will be contributing and volunteering for the candidate that wins the primary directly to their campaign, but have made no financial or volunteer commitments to either one yet. Hopefully as democrats we can move past damaging attacks like this either way.

in the closing days of an election campaign "disqualifies him from the position or makes him a worse candidate"?

He's either an impulsive hothead or a calculating pol who will say anything to win. Such a person does not belong in government.

Link to tweet

That's my guess.

changing "money laundering" to "legal money laundering". He's desperately back pedaling, and Twitter is having a field day.

Oh, and that first tweet was libel per se. He can edit, but he can't unring a bell.

or is that also non existent like any basis for most of the desperate attacks on him?

Thank you.