The Multinational Takeover of American Elections
July 31, 2012
(Photo credit: kevindean)
Mitt Romney’s overseas trip has been fodder for the press and media as quite a source of humor and more example of fumbling and mumbling we have seen from the candidate since the primary season kicked off. Something that has been noted is that his trip was in reality a visit with potential donors for funding his silk stocking presidential campaign. The question I ask is when did this become ok for politicians in the US to seek campaign funding overseas?
The bundlers who put together funds for campaigns such as Romneys will expect to have favorable access to their candidate should he win. What happens when the bundlers are foreign and in direct competition with the interests of Americans? Can we trust Mitt to keep the interests of Americans in mind when his fund raising may come directly from foreign competition? If Mitt accepts money from mainland Chinese interests, can we trust him to represent American’s best interests if they are in direct competition with those of China? I believe his presidency is up for auction to the highest bidder.
International fundraising is done under the rubric of collecting donations from expatriate Americans. Expatriate Americans who happen to host $10k per plate dinners for their foreign friends to meet candidate Romney, for example. If the host is American, no problem if he puts the 1-2 mil collected from his foreign guests under his name, right?
Under current law, anyone with citizenship or a green card may donate to a campaign, but let us be clear: that is a very low hurdle for huge bundles of money to jump on it’s way from one nation to the candidate in the pursuit of undeserved favor and alliance. It is tantamount to bribery by a foreign entity. Funny how times change. A hundred years ago, that was considered a high crime. Make no mistake, the US has excelled at this practice with buying its own puppet dictators over the years, but now the game could be played on the American people, where we elect a puppet president obedient to a dark multinational financier.
I’m not an authority on the history of campaign funding, but I do remember a time in my life when international funds for campaigning were strictly forbidden. Later the rules changed so that there were strict limits placed on funding so that no one donor could become the sole recipient of the benefits of their elected candidate’s authority. Also, sources for campaign funds had to be disclosed so that voters could see who the candidate would likely favor in office. My sense of things is that the funding from international sources has grown over the years and instead of trying to stem the tide or at least disclose the extent to which the monies flow in from over seas, we have just opened the floodgates and declared all money from overseas to be just fine. (No thanks to the SCOTUS decision on Citizens United)
It may well be that allowing unlimited funding from foreign sources essentially puts our country up for auction to the highest bidder for the next four years. I think Americans deserve a president who does not bend over for his British and Israeli banking benefactors. When it comes to the American people or his rich friends, which side do you think Mitt will take?
The lack of controls over campaign funding continues to be the single most powerful factor contributing to the disconnect of the federal govt with the will of the American People. The escalation of international funding of campaigns only widens the gulf between the will of the American people and the choices made by their leaders.
Related articles
- There’s No Hiding It: Citizens United Wasn’t About Speech, It was About the Takeover of Democracy (garyalanfinkelstein.newsvine.com)
- ‘Dark Money,’ Secret Donors Behind Half Of Independent Election Spending (huffingtonpost.com)
- Candidates look overseas for campaign cash (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
- EXCLUSIVE: Romney Bundler A Registered Foreign Agent For Hong Kong (thinkprogress.org)
- Mitt bundler was ‘go-between’ in Plame outing (politico.com)
- Companies Bigger than Countries: Transparency needed for all (one.org)
liberaltalkingpoints 
July 31, 2012 at 11:28 pm
We’ve got to remember that there are two different sets of rules! There is one for Republican’s and one for everyone else. While they throw a fit over insignificant things like ‘ObamaCare’ and Birth Certificates and eliminating potential Democrat votes by purging electoral rolls they turn a blind eye to major offenses by their own party.
I had to spent and hour today listening to a bigot ‘teaparty’ lady spew forth about how Obama is a Muslim and that all Muslims are the devil and that Democrats are the Devil and they are taking away her Social Security and Medicare Benefits.
I just stood there and smiled, not a grinning smile, a little upturn to the corners of my mouth and then when she finally stopped I just carried on with my work and laughed in side, in fact I chortled so much in my head at the blinkered hateful comments she made that I had to run to a bathroom.
I guess we just have to get used to the rise of the double standards and in the event of a win for Mittens then I will have to listen for another hour and a half to the same person griping about how times are so hard.
Personally if Mittens wins I hope that they do take both the Senate and Congress. Then it will be all the fault of the Republican Party and they won’t be able to lay the blame anywhere else. It will be interesting trying to see where they put the blame for all the screw up’s in this scenario.
August 1, 2012 at 5:08 am
I think this was my attitude after the start of the war in Iraq and what do you know, in 2004, the GOP held both houses of congress and the white house. You would think that the general public would get the picture because that is the beginning of things in our economy going from bad to worse. We have a massively short collective memory and have not learned, unless you are fighting as a liberal for every dog catcher and city council seat in America.
When I see the outcome of the Citizens United decision on tipping the election scale away from fairness and toward domination by a new aristocracy, I know that the make up of the Supreme court is paramount above all other considerations for what a president can do. The next president could appoint as many as 3 new judges to the scotus. If you let Romney in, he will put in 3 more Scalia right wing nut jobs who think we should let the rich rule, just as long as the poor can have their rocket launchers.
So, whether it seems they have it locked up or not, the point is don’t give up on speaking your mind. I don’t think it is ok that the GOP ran up our national debt over the Bush years only to lay it at Obamas feet. Folks who want to blame Obama for the crappy economy are simple people looking for overly simple answers. You’ll never convince someone around the water cooler on this, but maybe around the dinner table, you might get a real conversation. It is awesome that you can listen to an angry Fox deluded GOP zombie whine. I do not have much patience for someone who does not think about things, but only repeats what they heard.