More than eight months after President Barack Obama won the White House, the remnants of his campaign organization is struggling to deal with some unfinished business: returning about $669,000 in tainted or illegal campaign contributions to a motley assortment of donors, among them a convicted murderer, Washington lobbyists and a number of foreign nationals, including his own aunt.
Their intensive effort to refund problem contributions has involved detailed research into lobbying records and passport information, an elaborate accounting system that cancels and reissues stale-dated refund checks and phone calls and letters urging donors to cash their refunds. The effort is unprecedented in modern politics, according to election law compliance experts, and underscores both the logistical challenges of processing so much contribution data and the Obama team’s hypersensitivity to anything that could sully the president’s carefully honed image as a crusader against special interests and a champion of ethics and transparency.
But the 11 Chicago-based staff members still on the campaign’s payroll are finding it was a lot easier to rake in a record-shattering $750 million than to identify and return donations that ran afoul of federal election laws or Obama’s own strict fundraising standards.
I think it fair to say the first and perhaps only place this was reported was in my blog post of Saturday. I dug the recipient’s links to Gates out via Google after seeing their names on Joe’s documentation that made me aware of them and we were both pursuing the story together, and individually at that point. It appears to have gotten someone’s attention. Via ProPublica. Many thanks to Joe Culligan at Web of Deception for his work that made it possible. Joe also contacted ProPublica directly at some point. And $6,000 to his fiancee?
This is a public, non-profit charity required by law to place its financials in public view for inspection. That disclaimer is right on the official tax form.
A charity headed by star Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. is filing an amended 2007 report to the Internal Revenue Service because $11,000 it paid to foundation officers as compensation was mischaracterized as being for research grants.
ProPublica inquired about Inkwell after receiving an e-mail from Joseph Culligan, a private investigator who makes public on his Web site documents about prominent people, from Ann Coulter to Sonia Sotomayor. The e-mail spotlighted a $10,000 grant made to Joanne Kendall, the foundation’s treasurer, pointing out that she is also Gates’ assistant at Harvard.
Does POTUS know anyone who does not cheat on their taxes?
YouTube removed this video. I wonder why? It’s back.
**Update** It seems Jeanne Devon issued a dmca on this video and squelched our first amendment rights … thats how MARXISTS WORK!!! YouTube even suspended the channel this video came from: NakedEmperorNews.
Suck it Nancy. Do it. You won’t have the cosmetic surgeons hunt you down. It will be their armies of patients.
Face-lifts, tummy tucks and hair transplants could be hit with a new tax to help finance the trillion-dollar healthcare overhaul plan, according to sources familiar with the Senate talks.
The Senate Finance Committee has discussed imposing a 10 percent excise tax on cosmetic surgery deemed unnecessary for medical purposes. The idea was broached in a meeting with OMB Director Orszag in mid-July, after which Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus told reporters he had heard some “interesting,” “creative,” and “kind of fun” ideas.