Given we’ve been treated to some rather lame stories on Obama’s parking tickets and stock purchases, Lynn Sweet offers the best critique of the way the campaign handles fundraisers.
This sort of selective release of information about even what city Obama is visiting on a certain day raises questions about the credibility of Obama’s claim that “we are going to transform the political process.” Obama putting the kibosh on reports of his fund-raising travels is politics-as-usual. Not wrong. But not different.
That’s a really good take on it.
She also has a good take on the stock situation and the parking tickets based on things like facts which have been lacking in many of the reports. It also provides an interesting glimpse into how the campaign is doing it’s own oppo on Obama-something all campaigns should do.
Meanwhile, Obama’s research team — aware that every part of his life is under a microscope — turned up unpaid parking tickets from his days as a Harvard law student. In January, an Obama representative paid $400 in fines and penalties, according to the Somerville News.
What’s fascinating about the trust issue is here:
The ‘quasi-blind’ trust: “Now obviously the thing didn’t work the way I wanted it to,” Obama said.
The Senate Ethics manual has detailed rules about blind trusts and qualified blind trusts. Obama did not want to sign on to either of those options because he did not want to wash his hands of the responsibility of investments made in his name, attorney Robert Bauer said.
Because the off-the-shelf trusts were not satisfactory, “We tried to see if we could jigger it to make it work better,” Obama said. He signed papers on May 31, 2005, for the custom trust designed to shield him from knowing how his money was invested — but let him respond to media inquiries about potential conflicts. Obama realized his system was not working when he received some sort of shareholder letter in fall 2005.
Katten Muchin Rosenman attorney Michael Hartz in Chicago drew up the papers for and was the trustee of the “Freedom Trust.” Bauer said this particular kind of trust did not require any clearance from the Senate Ethics Committee because he did not ask to be relieved from any reporting rule. Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, said that if any kind of blind trust was created, “you should have the Ethics Committee sign off on it.”
The trust was revoked on Dec. 31, 2005. Obama put his money in cash and mutual funds.
Essentially, Obama wanted to be held to higher standards of reporting and tried to develop a trust that required him to report everything he owned in terms of conflict-of-interest reporting, but kept him largely in the dark. On second though, I’m sure he sees the essential problem here, but for all of the gnashing of teeth, if had followed the rules as they allow, he wouldn’t have been as accountable. While I think the fact based story that pointed out his purchase was legitimate, the dark overtones are hardly warranted since he followed all of the Senate rules and stopped the trust when it didn’t work as well as he liked. That’s what we should want from our politicians.
Now, as a married man, I would have hated to explain to my wife that I owed $400 in unpaid parking tickets….
One of the interesting things about Jared Abbruzzese’s contributions isn’t so much that he gave primarily to Republicans (not solely as some reports suggested), but he donated $2000 to Renew America, Alan Keyes’ PAC. It was 1997, but still quite amusing. He gave money to other Dems including Ed Markey and Ernest Hollings.