As the Sarah Palin wardrobe controversy fades, the AP reports that the would-be VP is not the only candidate for federal office to attract the ire of watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington:
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics said the campaigns of Democratic Reps. Loretta Sanchez of California and Rob Andrews of New Jersey, Republican candidates Bill Dew of Utah and William Breazeale of North Carolina and Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr each spent hundreds of dollars on clothing.
According to the group, “Barr aide Andrew MacPherson received a $500 clothing allowance from Barr’s campaign, an election commission filing shows.” The linked article states the Barr campaign holds it did nothing wrong. CREW has filed a complaint with the FEC in regards to these expenditures, characterizing them as personal use of campaign money. Previous analysis of Barr’s campaign spending by rival candidate George Phillies can be found here and here.
Here’s something for independent voters:
http://www.crossingwallstreet.com/archives/2008/12/a_healthy_democ.html
Total Democratic Presidential Votes Since 1932: 745,250,333
Total Republican Presidential Votes Since 1932: 745,219,199
Total Third-Party Presidential Votes Since 1932: 66,011,946
How’s that for parity? That’s a difference of 31,134 votes out of over 1.5 billion cast.
Source: uselectionatlas.org
See first link for source of above text.
There’s not necessarily any discrepancy. George writes of a reported debt, on 10/15. Given his proclivities, I would guess George saw that on an FEC report. Naturally, this does not mean that Barr could not have lent the campaign money in order to close it in the red. My guess is also that he neglected to mention the thousands of dollars owed to Angela O’Dell in his report of 10/15 – that money had been owed since the start of petitioning in West Virginia.
I guess the liar Shane Cory, who said that Angela would be paid, neglected to report the debt to Barr? Nah, that would be too much to believe.
https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2008/11/barr-campaign-50000-in-debt-after-the-election/
I thought it was like 50k…where did I see that?
The last reported debt, on 10/15, was $1000 that Barr owed to himself. Period. It must be really hard to wear that down.
As for the rest of what George wrote, I’ll stick to thermocouples. 🙂
Anyone know how Barr is doing on getting his campaign debt down?
Reading through what happened, it may be a technical vioaltion of BCRA (which as a libertarian I oppose anyway), but since it appears the expense was repaid and was a relative emergency situation, it should really be a non-issue. If anything it was a “loan” by the campaign.
In reading the following, which says that ‘authoring expenses’ are to be viewed as personal, not something that may be taken as a campaign expense and charged to your donors, note that for many politicians ‘writing’ means something different than it does to us. When I add to my current manuscript
“Electrophoresis and sedimentation should reveal similar information about polymer solution dynamics. In sedimentation, the enhancement of buoyant forces by the ultracentrifuge causes macromolecules to settle or rise. In electrophoresis, an applied electrical field causes charged macromolecules to migrate with respect to the solution. With either method, the drift velocity of the sedimenting molecules reveals their properties and properties of the medium surrounding them.
One reasonably expects that electrophoretic studies can in principle be done in complete parallel to sedimentation studies. In principle, one might observe the migration of monodisperse polymers at different concentrations. One might also observe the migration of probe particles or probe chains through solution solutions of a neutral, non-migrating, non-dilute polymer. Finally, just as one can observe probe sedimentation through a matrix species that sediments on the same time scale as the probe, so also might one study probe electrophoresis through a polyelectrolyte solution to examine direct and hydrodynamic interactions between the various migrating species.”
I actually had to decide what to say, and typed what was said. When many politicians ‘write’ a book, the writing process may stop with signing a memo approving an ‘authoring fee’. and now I note
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=news-000002993287
“Campaign finance laws prohibit the use of campaign funds to cover personal expenses, and the FEC has released two draft opinions suggesting costs associated with books would fall under that category. But there is a chance that the commission could decide this afternoon to allow lawmakers to use their political action committees to cover the costs associated with writing or promoting books. “
I agree. I kept seeing this one pop up in google news alerts and kept passing it up because it seemed too trivial. It was a close call though – it got reported a lot of places.
It’s one thing for Libertarians and/or Barr’s campaign donors to criticize Barr’s expenditures, but this is nothing but silly busybodying by people with absolutely no stake in the matter.
As a popular refrain goes here in NC: “Screw BCRA”
$500 is small potatoes, but I’d really like to know why MacPherson needed that money for clothes.
I agree, but as far as I know the AC, limos, etc never made it to the wire service.
I don’t think Barr would have gotten this one if he wasn’t sharing the complaint with 4 sitting congressmen.
What did Andrew MacPherson do for the campaign? A $500 allowance sounds like two suits and a pair of shoes. If he was appearing in public to represent the campaign, and was in danger of doing so naked, maybe his pay should have been stepped up a bit.
This amount seems small, compared to the Palin budget, or the Barr limousine services, or the big air conditioner for the Barr campaign offices. Watchdogging is a good thing, though. Good dog!