Here’s a post by subir, a respected (I think?) writer here: www.dailykos.com/...
First, money laundering has a specific definition:
Money laundering is the generic term used to describe the process by which criminals disguise the original ownership and control of the proceeds of criminal conduct by making such proceeds appear to have derived from a legitimate source.
www.int-comp.org/…
Pretty clearly, nothing the HRC campaign has done fits that definition — there were no crimes involved in getting that money; nor were there crimes involved in dispensing it. Since subir works in the financial industry, and since I’m assuming he has the same compliance responsibilities as most people who work in the industry do, he had to know , when he tossed his definition out there, and then started talking about whether crimes were committed and saying, "maybe,” that he was uttering a falsehood. Why he chose to do so, I don’t know. Perhaps he’s so wrapped up in primary fever that his judgment is impaired, perhaps he has some other motivation — I really don’t know. But cherry-picking a definition to suggest shadiness on the part of Hillary’s campaign, and then using it to claim Clinton was money laundering even though the transactions in question pretty plainly didn’t meet the standards of “moneylaundering” his own definition set, is a pretty blatant example of … we’ll call it a lapse of judgment. That was one of the interesting things about his post. Go ahead, look at it, and then decide if the JFC was trying to “confuse” anyone with its series of transactions. Using the campaign finance laws as they are is hardly “confusing,” unless you possess a pretty simple mind. If I’m wrong about this, if subir really thinks this was money laundering, then I would like to suggest he have a heart-to-heart with his firm’s compliance officer, before he gets himself and his firm in some serious trouble, or at the least, causes some major embarrassment.
Moving beyond the bogus “money laundering” accusation, he, and others, have suggested there is something nefarious about transferring money to the DNC from state party organizations. What that is, no one ever quite explains. What does the DNC do? In the actual world of party politics, the DNC dispenses money and expertise to Democratic candidates. In 2012, for example, here are some of the expenditures the DNC made:
Democratic Party of Ohio |
$14,493,915 |
200 |
US Postal Service |
$12,978,965 |
202 |
Democratic Executive Cmte of Florida |
$12,554,906 |
290 |
Democratic Party Of Virginia |
$8,890,907 |
203 |
Democratic Party of Colorado |
$7,390,406 |
181 |
North Dakota Democratic-Nonpartisan League Party |
$7,287,959 |
146 |
Democratic Party of Pennsylvania |
$6,747,222 |
69 |
Democratic Party of Nevada |
$6,347,451 |
199 |
Democratic Party of Iowa |
$6,128,486 |
246 |
Democratic Party Of Wisconsin |
$4,649,353 |
169 |
Telefund Inc |
$4,233,908 |
408 |
Democratic Party of New Hampshire |
$3,810,958 |
192 |
The complete list is here: www.opensecrets.org/…
I’m not privy to the inner-workings of DNC operations, but it looks to me like the DNC takes in money, and then allocates it to battleground states, along with hiring research and consultant firms and so on, to do its job: help Democrats win elections. It makes sense to me — Democrats don’t need to spend money on senate races in, say, Vermont, but they sure as hell need to spend money on races in Ohio, and Florida, and Colorado, and Wisconsin, and Nevada, and New Hampshire, and … yeeeah!
Is it more efficient for a centralized body, like the DNC, with an established bureaucracy of people who’ve been doing this for years to spend the money than it would be to leave it to the state parties, many of them operated by volunteers who only work part of the year anyway, and many of them in places where it simply makes no sense to spend money at all? It seems to me it is. Would you rather the DNC spent money in a winnable battle to get rid of Kelly Ayotte, or see the state Democratic Party apparatus of Alabama flush money down the toilet on the pot activist who’s running against Richard Shelby? Isn’t the answer obvious, unless you’re really, really passionate about pot?
Instead of having each state be responsible for hiring its own consultants and pollsters, you get the advantage of scale and expertise by having the DNC do it, and then giving the information directly to the states and candidates where it would do the most good. This seems to me to be pretty obvious, and it ought to be obvious to anyone who took the time to think through what a political party is and does, and what we all expect a well-run party to do. But this is primary season, and what was once obvious is suddenly the sign of corruption.
Much of the money the JFC raised will go to help downballot Democrats. How much of it, I don’t know. But in 2012, the DNC spent hundreds of millions, directly and indirectly, helping downballot candidates as well as Obama’s re-election, and people who are suggesting that it is somehow corrupt for them to do so would do well to brush up on just what it is political parties do.
Tuesday, May 10, 2016 · 3:26:23 AM +00:00 · Martin Gale
I wanted to point out something: in the table above, you’ll see that the DNC spent over $7 million in North Dakota in 2012. Heidi Heitkamp (D) won her ND senate campaign that year by 3,000 votes. Obama never stood a chance in the state — all that money was spent on Heitkamp.