Recently Fox News reported on President Obama echoing charges leveled by Minnesota Democrat Senator Al Franken that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is violating election law and using money from foreign corporations to fund political activities. "This is a threat to our democracy. During his speech, the President said, “The American people deserve to know who's trying to sway their elections." [1]
This is one time, as much as I hate to admit it; I have to agree with him. Yes, the American people need to know who IS funding various candidates. Particularly, who is funding the various democrats?
Before we really dig in, let’s take a look at Mr. Franken and his 2008 election. During his campaign received $22,502,124.00. These contributions came from many sources, PAC contributions totaled $589,866 (3%), individual contributions, $17,822,723 (79%), Franken’s own self-financing, $4,600 (0%) and of course the all popular OTHER, $4,084,935(18%) [2]
Now, Mr. Franken, maybe the American people would like to know where / who donated the $39,587 you received from Moveon.org [3]. An organization that has received funds George Soros's Open Society Institute. Not wanting to go into the full history of George Soros, we do know that he has earned his money from his international Hedge fund business. It is also known that following a September 17, 2003 meeting between Soros and Wesley Boyd, the founder, Soros and his associates these gave nearly $6.2 million to MoveOn over a period of six months including $2.5 million from George Soros personally. Now, Mr. Franken, can you tell the American people that all the money you received from MoveOn came from American donors? After all, informed Americans do know that Soros is still funding MoveOn.[4]
Mr. Franken, can you stand before the American people and tell them that the $21,945 you received from the Human Rights Campaign all came from American donors. After all, HRC has many partners that do business internationally. Partners like Bank of America, American Airlines, Microsoft, Lexus and many others. [5]
Mr. Franken, how about the $20,000 from the Service Employees International Union? Again, the American people have to ask, did all those contributions really come from American donors? After all, Andy Stern, who was head of SEIU when you were running for the Senate, did say “Workers of the world unite.” Does that mean, workers of the world contribute as well?
I have discussed some of the “smaller” donors to Franken’s 2008 senate run, let’s talk about the largest donor to Franken, ActBlue.
The largest amount, $102,832, the Franken campaign received was from ActBlue [3]. ActBlue allows people to easily and quickly contribute money, with the mere click of a computer mouse, "to any Democratic candidate for Federal Office — and for lots of state offices, too." From 2004 to July 2010, ActBlue raised $137,536,892 from 1,058,620 contributors; this money was then apportioned to some 3,200 political candidates and committees. ActBlue emphasizes that these donations were made with a median contribution of only fifty dollars. [6]
Now, Mr. Franken would please explain how a number of the individual donors, who gave 451 large ($200+) contributions to this PAC in 2007-2008, were students and unemployed? [7].
Unfortunately, I agree with Mr. Franken when “ he had asked the Federal Election Commission to look into the matter” and while we are looking into matter, lets look into the contributions he and other Democrats have received from ActBlue and other contributors that have international ties.
One final question, if I can find this information, why can’t the press do their job and ask the important question? Just who is funding the Democratic Party, besides George Soros, who has is heavily involved in MoveOn.org and as MoveOn PAC director Eli Pariser, to declare; 'Now it’s our party. We bought it, we own it…'" [8]