Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Plays Scathing 'Corruption Game': 'It's Already Super Legal for Me t

[Brain357]

I haven't really followed her much yet, but she sure is right about our problems here. Now this is what we really need to fix. We need to vote out every politician who won't agree to fix this. Only way we will fix out corruption.

Watch: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plays scathing campaign finance "corruption game"

“Let’s play a lightning round game," Ocasio-Cortez began. "I’m gonna be the bad guy and I want to get away with as much bad things as possible, ideally to enrich myself and advance my interests, even if that means putting my interests ahead of the American people."

"So," the 29-year-old asked the panel, "if I want to run a campaign that is entirely funded by corporate political action committees [PACs], is there anything that legally prevents me from doing that?"

"No," one expert, Karen Hobert Flynn, the president of the government accountability watchdog group Common Cause, said decisively.

When someone's vocabulary relies on multiple uses of the words "awesome", "Like" and "Super" they are too young minded to be taken seriously.

Most of our current politicians are quite old. That doesn't seem to be working for us. They are just the most corrupt.

 

[Ambivalent1]

I haven't really followed her much yet, but she sure is right about our problems here. Now this is what we really need to fix. We need to vote out every politician who won't agree to fix this. Only way we will fix out corruption.

Watch: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plays scathing campaign finance "corruption game"

“Let’s play a lightning round game," Ocasio-Cortez began. "I’m gonna be the bad guy and I want to get away with as much bad things as possible, ideally to enrich myself and advance my interests, even if that means putting my interests ahead of the American people."

"So," the 29-year-old asked the panel, "if I want to run a campaign that is entirely funded by corporate political action committees [PACs], is there anything that legally prevents me from doing that?"

"No," one expert, Karen Hobert Flynn, the president of the government accountability watchdog group Common Cause, said decisively.

When someone's vocabulary relies on multiple uses of the words "awesome", "Like" and "Super" they are too young minded to be taken seriously.

Most of our current politicians are quite old. That doesn't seem to be working for us. They are just the most corrupt.

I don't deny that, I happen to be of the opinion that entire system is nothing but a show, a theatre.

 

[Brain357]

I haven't really followed her much yet, but she sure is right about our problems here. Now this is what we really need to fix. We need to vote out every politician who won't agree to fix this. Only way we will fix out corruption.

Watch: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plays scathing campaign finance "corruption game"

“Let’s play a lightning round game," Ocasio-Cortez began. "I’m gonna be the bad guy and I want to get away with as much bad things as possible, ideally to enrich myself and advance my interests, even if that means putting my interests ahead of the American people."

"So," the 29-year-old asked the panel, "if I want to run a campaign that is entirely funded by corporate political action committees [PACs], is there anything that legally prevents me from doing that?"

"No," one expert, Karen Hobert Flynn, the president of the government accountability watchdog group Common Cause, said decisively.

When someone's vocabulary relies on multiple uses of the words "awesome", "Like" and "Super" they are too young minded to be taken seriously.

Most of our current politicians are quite old. That doesn't seem to be working for us. They are just the most corrupt.

I don't deny that, I happen to be of the opinion that entire system is nothing but a show, a theatre.

Clearly it is. That's why we can only hope for new people to steer us in the right direction. I don't hear any other politicians really talking about this issue.

 

[Billy_Kinetta]

What has this stupid moron contributed in her entire life? I'm guessing not a damn thing, she should

How many times did she go bankrupt and screw 1000's like the moron in the WH now? It's not so much as to what she has contributed but what she hasn't like the vile racist pervert Trump has

Like most 10-year-olds, she's never had any money or business with which to go bankrupt. All she has are silly ideas that might suit ten-year-olds.

 

[edward37]

I haven't really followed her much yet, but she sure is right about our problems here. Now this is what we really need to fix. We need to vote out every politician who won't agree to fix this. Only way we will fix out corruption.

Watch: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plays scathing campaign finance "corruption game"

“Let’s play a lightning round game," Ocasio-Cortez began. "I’m gonna be the bad guy and I want to get away with as much bad things as possible, ideally to enrich myself and advance my interests, even if that means putting my interests ahead of the American people."

"So," the 29-year-old asked the panel, "if I want to run a campaign that is entirely funded by corporate political action committees [PACs], is there anything that legally prevents me from doing that?"

"No," one expert, Karen Hobert Flynn, the president of the government accountability watchdog group Common Cause, said decisively.

When someone's vocabulary relies on multiple uses of the words "awesome", "Like" and "Super" they are too young minded to be taken seriously.

How about Huge or really BIG ? Bigly?

 

[edward37]

They keep using her early stuff to discredit her. But she's not the starry eyed bambi anymore. She's a force to be reckoned with. In that clip, she was just plain brilliant. When she was leading that pack in the Senate looking for absent Mitch, it's too bad she didn't find him. She could have tied him to the front of her pickup and drove around Washington for a bit. I wonder if they have Game Tags for that?

She's a fucking imbecile and so is anybody still defending her, but as I've said before, even stupid people get representation.

I take it Taz you didn't like her game?

 

[edward37]

What has this stupid moron contributed in her entire life? I'm guessing not a damn thing, she should

How many times did she go bankrupt and screw 1000's like the moron in the WH now? It's not so much as to what she has contributed but what she hasn't like the vile racist pervert Trump has

Like most 10-year-olds, she's never had any money or business with which to go bankrupt. All she has are silly ideas that might suit ten-year-olds.

Just maybe if she hangs out in congress long enough she can make millions like the swine there now?

 

[edward37]

I haven't really followed her much yet, but she sure is right about our problems here. Now this is what we really need to fix. We need to vote out every politician who won't agree to fix this. Only way we will fix out corruption.

Watch: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plays scathing campaign finance "corruption game"

“Let’s play a lightning round game," Ocasio-Cortez began. "I’m gonna be the bad guy and I want to get away with as much bad things as possible, ideally to enrich myself and advance my interests, even if that means putting my interests ahead of the American people."

"So," the 29-year-old asked the panel, "if I want to run a campaign that is entirely funded by corporate political action committees [PACs], is there anything that legally prevents me from doing that?"

"No," one expert, Karen Hobert Flynn, the president of the government accountability watchdog group Common Cause, said decisively.

When someone's vocabulary relies on multiple uses of the words "awesome", "Like" and "Super" they are too young minded to be taken seriously.

Most of our current politicians are quite old. That doesn't seem to be working for us. They are just the most corrupt.

I don't deny that, I happen to be of the opinion that entire system is nothing but a show, a theatre.

Clearly it is. That's why we can only hope for new people to steer us in the right direction. I don't hear any other politicians really talking about this issue.

Reminds me of the joke about an owner catching a salesman stealing and says you're fired Salesman says WHY? I already have 3 homes diamonds a yacht ,,why fire me and hire someone that doesn't have all that

 

[Ambivalent1]

I haven't really followed her much yet, but she sure is right about our problems here. Now this is what we really need to fix. We need to vote out every politician who won't agree to fix this. Only way we will fix out corruption.

Watch: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plays scathing campaign finance "corruption game"

“Let’s play a lightning round game," Ocasio-Cortez began. "I’m gonna be the bad guy and I want to get away with as much bad things as possible, ideally to enrich myself and advance my interests, even if that means putting my interests ahead of the American people."

"So," the 29-year-old asked the panel, "if I want to run a campaign that is entirely funded by corporate political action committees [PACs], is there anything that legally prevents me from doing that?"

"No," one expert, Karen Hobert Flynn, the president of the government accountability watchdog group Common Cause, said decisively.

When someone's vocabulary relies on multiple uses of the words "awesome", "Like" and "Super" they are too young minded to be taken seriously.

How about Huge or really BIG ? Bigly?

Sorry, I'm not a Trumpkin. Try again.

 

[edward37]

I haven't really followed her much yet, but she sure is right about our problems here. Now this is what we really need to fix. We need to vote out every politician who won't agree to fix this. Only way we will fix out corruption.

Watch: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plays scathing campaign finance "corruption game"

“Let’s play a lightning round game," Ocasio-Cortez began. "I’m gonna be the bad guy and I want to get away with as much bad things as possible, ideally to enrich myself and advance my interests, even if that means putting my interests ahead of the American people."

"So," the 29-year-old asked the panel, "if I want to run a campaign that is entirely funded by corporate political action committees [PACs], is there anything that legally prevents me from doing that?"

"No," one expert, Karen Hobert Flynn, the president of the government accountability watchdog group Common Cause, said decisively.

When someone's vocabulary relies on multiple uses of the words "awesome", "Like" and "Super" they are too young minded to be taken seriously.

How about Huge or really BIG ? Bigly?

Sorry, I'm not a Trumpkin. Try again.

10 points for you Gotta give you credit for that

 

[Ambivalent1]

I haven't really followed her much yet, but she sure is right about our problems here. Now this is what we really need to fix. We need to vote out every politician who won't agree to fix this. Only way we will fix out corruption.

Watch: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plays scathing campaign finance "corruption game"

“Let’s play a lightning round game," Ocasio-Cortez began. "I’m gonna be the bad guy and I want to get away with as much bad things as possible, ideally to enrich myself and advance my interests, even if that means putting my interests ahead of the American people."

"So," the 29-year-old asked the panel, "if I want to run a campaign that is entirely funded by corporate political action committees [PACs], is there anything that legally prevents me from doing that?"

"No," one expert, Karen Hobert Flynn, the president of the government accountability watchdog group Common Cause, said decisively.

When someone's vocabulary relies on multiple uses of the words "awesome", "Like" and "Super" they are too young minded to be taken seriously.

How about Huge or really BIG ? Bigly?

I am a Conservative and there is no home for a Conservative in either party.

Sorry, I'm not a Trumpkin. Try again.

10 points for you Gotta give you credit for that

 

[CrusaderFrank]

I haven't really followed her much yet, but she sure is right about our problems here. Now this is what we really need to fix. We need to vote out every politician who won't agree to fix this. Only way we will fix out corruption.

Watch: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plays scathing campaign finance "corruption game"

“Let’s play a lightning round game," Ocasio-Cortez began. "I’m gonna be the bad guy and I want to get away with as much bad things as possible, ideally to enrich myself and advance my interests, even if that means putting my interests ahead of the American people."

"So," the 29-year-old asked the panel, "if I want to run a campaign that is entirely funded by corporate political action committees [PACs], is there anything that legally prevents me from doing that?"

"No," one expert, Karen Hobert Flynn, the president of the government accountability watchdog group Common Cause, said decisively.

Government funding campaigns is how every Progressive Fascists dictatorship does it

 

[Hellokitty]

It will be interesting to see if she calls out all the democrats running in

I haven't really followed her much yet, but she sure is right about our problems here. Now this is what we really need to fix. We need to vote out every politician who won't agree to fix this. Only way we will fix out corruption.

Watch: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plays scathing campaign finance "corruption game"

“Let’s play a lightning round game," Ocasio-Cortez began. "I’m gonna be the bad guy and I want to get away with as much bad things as possible, ideally to enrich myself and advance my interests, even if that means putting my interests ahead of the American people."

"So," the 29-year-old asked the panel, "if I want to run a campaign that is entirely funded by corporate political action committees [PACs], is there anything that legally prevents me from doing that?"

"No," one expert, Karen Hobert Flynn, the president of the government accountability watchdog group Common Cause, said decisively.

Wow she may have inadvertently stumbled on something that is not completely crazy. Unfortunately if she has her way there would be nothing left of the U.S. in two or three election cycles there would be no reason to worry about PACs or any other form of corruption in our political system.

AOC Doesn’t Let the Facts Get in the Way of a Good Story
February 7, 2019 • By Scott Blackburn • Blog • Disclosure, First Amendment and Campaigns
Share This Article: hearing on H.R. 1. Common Cause tweeted that “@AOC exposes just how much ‘bad guys’ can get away with under the shameful state of our campaign finance laws.” Roll Call credited Ocasio-Cortez for turning the hearing on its head by saying that “dark money was ‘shaping’ questions about [the] reform bill.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s storytelling may have been persuasive to the uninformed. But it was also wrong.

Presenting herself as the hypothetical “bad guy” trying to destroy democracy, Ocasio-Cortez spun a tale about how she could (among other things) “use my special interest, dark money-funded campaign to pay off folks that I need to pay off to get elected.”

This dystopic vision of how campaigns work in America bears little semblance to reality. Let’s work backward:

1) You cannot use campaign funds for non-campaign related expenses. That includes “paying off folks.” Here, Ocasio-Cortez appears to be referencing the Stormy Daniels scandal and the “greenlight for hush money” she claims it represents. But she has the argument exactly backwards. Those who believe Trump committed a campaign violation think that the hush money needed to be paid with campaign expenses, and that Trump’s failure to do so was the problem. As IFS Chairman Bradley A. Smith previously argued, IFS believes the opposite is true. The crime would be if you did “pay off folks” with campaign money. The real “folks you need to pay off to get elected” are voters, and it turns out they cannot be bought. As we have written about over and over again, money doesn’t buy elections. Ocasio-Cortez should know this better than most!

2) “Dark-money funded campaigns” are not a thing. The source of all donations to candidates over $200 are fully disclosed to the FEC, which then publishes that information online for the world to see. “Dark money” refers to spending from nonprofit groups making expenditures independently of any candidate to voice their support or opposition to candidates and their policies. These groups cannot give money to candidates, so it’s impossible for any candidate to run a “dark-money funded campaign.” These groups are limited in how much they can spend on such campaign speech. Additionally, many groups that Representative Ocasio-Cortez slanders with the “dark money” label are not nefarious or secretive organizations, but respected civic groups with a long history of involvement in public affairs. These groups include nonprofits like the ACLU, NAACP, and Planned Parenthood – hardly voices that should be silenced in debates surrounding elections.

3) “Special interest” money does not dominate campaign coffers, even of the candidates you don’t like. This ties in to Ocasio-Cortez’s earlier assertion that a campaign could be entirely funded by corporate PAC donations. That’s true in the abstract – there’s nothing in the law to stop a candidate from trying – but completely divorced from the reality of how campaigns are funded. Notably, Ocasio-Cortez did not name any examples of this sort of campaign, because there aren’t any. In reality, all congressional campaigns are predominantly funded by individual donors, not corporate PACs. This is one reason why anti-corporate PAC pledges are widely seen by those who are familiar with the system as grandstanding. Even ignoring this reality, corporate PACs have a contribution limit of $5,000 to any campaign, so a candidate looking to fund their effort solely with PAC funds would have to find a remarkably broad coalition of so-called special interests to fund their campaign. Finally, corporate PACs are funded exclusively with donations from employees, executives, and board members of the company, whose contributions to the PAC are limited and publicly disclosed.

Ocasio-Cortez, like most politicians, is a Manichaean. There are the good guys and the bad guys; the goal is to stop the bad guys and help the good guys. If someone disagrees with you about a bill or policy, the only reason must be that they are the bad guy, or at least paid for by the bad guys. It also must mean that your bill will hurt those bad guys! That’s why they’re opposing it, and that confirms that the bill is good!

The world doesn’t work that way. Opponents of H.R. 1 are not bought by the fossil fuel industry, or big pharma, or some other nonsense. There are manylegitimate gripes with how this 570-page monstrosity of a bill hurts the fundamental First Amendment rights of all Americans. Ocasio-Cortez and supporters of the bill may think that those costs are outweighed by the benefits, or that it is more important to cast the symbolic anti-corruption vote than to deal with the policy ramifications of their proposal.

But they should at least learn how the system actually works now before they become so certain of how to fix it.

 

[Brain357]

It will be interesting to see if she calls out all the democrats running in

I haven't really followed her much yet, but she sure is right about our problems here. Now this is what we really need to fix. We need to vote out every politician who won't agree to fix this. Only way we will fix out corruption.

Watch: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plays scathing campaign finance "corruption game"

“Let’s play a lightning round game," Ocasio-Cortez began. "I’m gonna be the bad guy and I want to get away with as much bad things as possible, ideally to enrich myself and advance my interests, even if that means putting my interests ahead of the American people."

"So," the 29-year-old asked the panel, "if I want to run a campaign that is entirely funded by corporate political action committees [PACs], is there anything that legally prevents me from doing that?"

"No," one expert, Karen Hobert Flynn, the president of the government accountability watchdog group Common Cause, said decisively.

Wow she may have inadvertently stumbled on something that is not completely crazy. Unfortunately if she has her way there would be nothing left of the U.S. in two or three election cycles there would be no reason to worry about PACs or any other form of corruption in our political system.

AOC Doesn’t Let the Facts Get in the Way of a Good Story
February 7, 2019 • By Scott Blackburn • Blog • Disclosure, First Amendment and Campaigns
Share This Article: hearing on H.R. 1. Common Cause tweeted that “@AOC exposes just how much ‘bad guys’ can get away with under the shameful state of our campaign finance laws.” Roll Call credited Ocasio-Cortez for turning the hearing on its head by saying that “dark money was ‘shaping’ questions about [the] reform bill.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s storytelling may have been persuasive to the uninformed. But it was also wrong.

Presenting herself as the hypothetical “bad guy” trying to destroy democracy, Ocasio-Cortez spun a tale about how she could (among other things) “use my special interest, dark money-funded campaign to pay off folks that I need to pay off to get elected.”

This dystopic vision of how campaigns work in America bears little semblance to reality. Let’s work backward:

1) You cannot use campaign funds for non-campaign related expenses. That includes “paying off folks.” Here, Ocasio-Cortez appears to be referencing the Stormy Daniels scandal and the “greenlight for hush money” she claims it represents. But she has the argument exactly backwards. Those who believe Trump committed a campaign violation think that the hush money needed to be paid with campaign expenses, and that Trump’s failure to do so was the problem. As IFS Chairman Bradley A. Smith previously argued, IFS believes the opposite is true. The crime would be if you did “pay off folks” with campaign money. The real “folks you need to pay off to get elected” are voters, and it turns out they cannot be bought. As we have written about over and over again, money doesn’t buy elections. Ocasio-Cortez should know this better than most!

2) “Dark-money funded campaigns” are not a thing. The source of all donations to candidates over $200 are fully disclosed to the FEC, which then publishes that information online for the world to see. “Dark money” refers to spending from nonprofit groups making expenditures independently of any candidate to voice their support or opposition to candidates and their policies. These groups cannot give money to candidates, so it’s impossible for any candidate to run a “dark-money funded campaign.” These groups are limited in how much they can spend on such campaign speech. Additionally, many groups that Representative Ocasio-Cortez slanders with the “dark money” label are not nefarious or secretive organizations, but respected civic groups with a long history of involvement in public affairs. These groups include nonprofits like the ACLU, NAACP, and Planned Parenthood – hardly voices that should be silenced in debates surrounding elections.

3) “Special interest” money does not dominate campaign coffers, even of the candidates you don’t like. This ties in to Ocasio-Cortez’s earlier assertion that a campaign could be entirely funded by corporate PAC donations. That’s true in the abstract – there’s nothing in the law to stop a candidate from trying – but completely divorced from the reality of how campaigns are funded. Notably, Ocasio-Cortez did not name any examples of this sort of campaign, because there aren’t any. In reality, all congressional campaigns are predominantly funded by individual donors, not corporate PACs. This is one reason why anti-corporate PAC pledges are widely seen by those who are familiar with the system as grandstanding. Even ignoring this reality, corporate PACs have a contribution limit of $5,000 to any campaign, so a candidate looking to fund their effort solely with PAC funds would have to find a remarkably broad coalition of so-called special interests to fund their campaign. Finally, corporate PACs are funded exclusively with donations from employees, executives, and board members of the company, whose contributions to the PAC are limited and publicly disclosed.

Ocasio-Cortez, like most politicians, is a Manichaean. There are the good guys and the bad guys; the goal is to stop the bad guys and help the good guys. If someone disagrees with you about a bill or policy, the only reason must be that they are the bad guy, or at least paid for by the bad guys. It also must mean that your bill will hurt those bad guys! That’s why they’re opposing it, and that confirms that the bill is good!

The world doesn’t work that way. Opponents of H.R. 1 are not bought by the fossil fuel industry, or big pharma, or some other nonsense. There are manylegitimate gripes with how this 570-page monstrosity of a bill hurts the fundamental First Amendment rights of all Americans. Ocasio-Cortez and supporters of the bill may think that those costs are outweighed by the benefits, or that it is more important to cast the symbolic anti-corruption vote than to deal with the policy ramifications of their proposal.

But they should at least learn how the system actually works now before they become so certain of how to fix it.

And yet every politician is owned by lobbyists and enter service with little and leave filthy rich. Sorry, but it's obvious they are all corrupt.

 

[Maxdeath]

It will be interesting to see if she calls out all the democrats running in

I haven't really followed her much yet, but she sure is right about our problems here. Now this is what we really need to fix. We need to vote out every politician who won't agree to fix this. Only way we will fix out corruption.

Watch: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plays scathing campaign finance "corruption game"

“Let’s play a lightning round game," Ocasio-Cortez began. "I’m gonna be the bad guy and I want to get away with as much bad things as possible, ideally to enrich myself and advance my interests, even if that means putting my interests ahead of the American people."

"So," the 29-year-old asked the panel, "if I want to run a campaign that is entirely funded by corporate political action committees [PACs], is there anything that legally prevents me from doing that?"

"No," one expert, Karen Hobert Flynn, the president of the government accountability watchdog group Common Cause, said decisively.

Wow she may have inadvertently stumbled on something that is not completely crazy. Unfortunately if she has her way there would be nothing left of the U.S. in two or three election cycles there would be no reason to worry about PACs or any other form of corruption in our political system.

AOC Doesn’t Let the Facts Get in the Way of a Good Story
February 7, 2019 • By Scott Blackburn • Blog • Disclosure, First Amendment and Campaigns
Share This Article: hearing on H.R. 1. Common Cause tweeted that “@AOC exposes just how much ‘bad guys’ can get away with under the shameful state of our campaign finance laws.” Roll Call credited Ocasio-Cortez for turning the hearing on its head by saying that “dark money was ‘shaping’ questions about [the] reform bill.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s storytelling may have been persuasive to the uninformed. But it was also wrong.

Presenting herself as the hypothetical “bad guy” trying to destroy democracy, Ocasio-Cortez spun a tale about how she could (among other things) “use my special interest, dark money-funded campaign to pay off folks that I need to pay off to get elected.”

This dystopic vision of how campaigns work in America bears little semblance to reality. Let’s work backward:

1) You cannot use campaign funds for non-campaign related expenses. That includes “paying off folks.” Here, Ocasio-Cortez appears to be referencing the Stormy Daniels scandal and the “greenlight for hush money” she claims it represents. But she has the argument exactly backwards. Those who believe Trump committed a campaign violation think that the hush money needed to be paid with campaign expenses, and that Trump’s failure to do so was the problem. As IFS Chairman Bradley A. Smith previously argued, IFS believes the opposite is true. The crime would be if you did “pay off folks” with campaign money. The real “folks you need to pay off to get elected” are voters, and it turns out they cannot be bought. As we have written about over and over again, money doesn’t buy elections. Ocasio-Cortez should know this better than most!

2) “Dark-money funded campaigns” are not a thing. The source of all donations to candidates over $200 are fully disclosed to the FEC, which then publishes that information online for the world to see. “Dark money” refers to spending from nonprofit groups making expenditures independently of any candidate to voice their support or opposition to candidates and their policies. These groups cannot give money to candidates, so it’s impossible for any candidate to run a “dark-money funded campaign.” These groups are limited in how much they can spend on such campaign speech. Additionally, many groups that Representative Ocasio-Cortez slanders with the “dark money” label are not nefarious or secretive organizations, but respected civic groups with a long history of involvement in public affairs. These groups include nonprofits like the ACLU, NAACP, and Planned Parenthood – hardly voices that should be silenced in debates surrounding elections.

3) “Special interest” money does not dominate campaign coffers, even of the candidates you don’t like. This ties in to Ocasio-Cortez’s earlier assertion that a campaign could be entirely funded by corporate PAC donations. That’s true in the abstract – there’s nothing in the law to stop a candidate from trying – but completely divorced from the reality of how campaigns are funded. Notably, Ocasio-Cortez did not name any examples of this sort of campaign, because there aren’t any. In reality, all congressional campaigns are predominantly funded by individual donors, not corporate PACs. This is one reason why anti-corporate PAC pledges are widely seen by those who are familiar with the system as grandstanding. Even ignoring this reality, corporate PACs have a contribution limit of $5,000 to any campaign, so a candidate looking to fund their effort solely with PAC funds would have to find a remarkably broad coalition of so-called special interests to fund their campaign. Finally, corporate PACs are funded exclusively with donations from employees, executives, and board members of the company, whose contributions to the PAC are limited and publicly disclosed.

Ocasio-Cortez, like most politicians, is a Manichaean. There are the good guys and the bad guys; the goal is to stop the bad guys and help the good guys. If someone disagrees with you about a bill or policy, the only reason must be that they are the bad guy, or at least paid for by the bad guys. It also must mean that your bill will hurt those bad guys! That’s why they’re opposing it, and that confirms that the bill is good!

The world doesn’t work that way. Opponents of H.R. 1 are not bought by the fossil fuel industry, or big pharma, or some other nonsense. There are manylegitimate gripes with how this 570-page monstrosity of a bill hurts the fundamental First Amendment rights of all Americans. Ocasio-Cortez and supporters of the bill may think that those costs are outweighed by the benefits, or that it is more important to cast the symbolic anti-corruption vote than to deal with the policy ramifications of their proposal.

But they should at least learn how the system actually works now before they become so certain of how to fix it.

And yet every politician is owned by lobbyists and enter service with little and leave filthy rich. Sorry, but it's obvious they are all corrupt.

There are a few that have entered public life rich to start with.
JFK, LBJ, Trump all come to mind immediately.

 

[Brain357]

It will be interesting to see if she calls out all the democrats running in

I haven't really followed her much yet, but she sure is right about our problems here. Now this is what we really need to fix. We need to vote out every politician who won't agree to fix this. Only way we will fix out corruption.

Watch: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plays scathing campaign finance "corruption game"

“Let’s play a lightning round game," Ocasio-Cortez began. "I’m gonna be the bad guy and I want to get away with as much bad things as possible, ideally to enrich myself and advance my interests, even if that means putting my interests ahead of the American people."

"So," the 29-year-old asked the panel, "if I want to run a campaign that is entirely funded by corporate political action committees [PACs], is there anything that legally prevents me from doing that?"

"No," one expert, Karen Hobert Flynn, the president of the government accountability watchdog group Common Cause, said decisively.

Wow she may have inadvertently stumbled on something that is not completely crazy. Unfortunately if she has her way there would be nothing left of the U.S. in two or three election cycles there would be no reason to worry about PACs or any other form of corruption in our political system.

AOC Doesn’t Let the Facts Get in the Way of a Good Story
February 7, 2019 • By Scott Blackburn • Blog • Disclosure, First Amendment and Campaigns
Share This Article: hearing on H.R. 1. Common Cause tweeted that “@AOC exposes just how much ‘bad guys’ can get away with under the shameful state of our campaign finance laws.” Roll Call credited Ocasio-Cortez for turning the hearing on its head by saying that “dark money was ‘shaping’ questions about [the] reform bill.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s storytelling may have been persuasive to the uninformed. But it was also wrong.

Presenting herself as the hypothetical “bad guy” trying to destroy democracy, Ocasio-Cortez spun a tale about how she could (among other things) “use my special interest, dark money-funded campaign to pay off folks that I need to pay off to get elected.”

This dystopic vision of how campaigns work in America bears little semblance to reality. Let’s work backward:

1) You cannot use campaign funds for non-campaign related expenses. That includes “paying off folks.” Here, Ocasio-Cortez appears to be referencing the Stormy Daniels scandal and the “greenlight for hush money” she claims it represents. But she has the argument exactly backwards. Those who believe Trump committed a campaign violation think that the hush money needed to be paid with campaign expenses, and that Trump’s failure to do so was the problem. As IFS Chairman Bradley A. Smith previously argued, IFS believes the opposite is true. The crime would be if you did “pay off folks” with campaign money. The real “folks you need to pay off to get elected” are voters, and it turns out they cannot be bought. As we have written about over and over again, money doesn’t buy elections. Ocasio-Cortez should know this better than most!

2) “Dark-money funded campaigns” are not a thing. The source of all donations to candidates over $200 are fully disclosed to the FEC, which then publishes that information online for the world to see. “Dark money” refers to spending from nonprofit groups making expenditures independently of any candidate to voice their support or opposition to candidates and their policies. These groups cannot give money to candidates, so it’s impossible for any candidate to run a “dark-money funded campaign.” These groups are limited in how much they can spend on such campaign speech. Additionally, many groups that Representative Ocasio-Cortez slanders with the “dark money” label are not nefarious or secretive organizations, but respected civic groups with a long history of involvement in public affairs. These groups include nonprofits like the ACLU, NAACP, and Planned Parenthood – hardly voices that should be silenced in debates surrounding elections.

3) “Special interest” money does not dominate campaign coffers, even of the candidates you don’t like. This ties in to Ocasio-Cortez’s earlier assertion that a campaign could be entirely funded by corporate PAC donations. That’s true in the abstract – there’s nothing in the law to stop a candidate from trying – but completely divorced from the reality of how campaigns are funded. Notably, Ocasio-Cortez did not name any examples of this sort of campaign, because there aren’t any. In reality, all congressional campaigns are predominantly funded by individual donors, not corporate PACs. This is one reason why anti-corporate PAC pledges are widely seen by those who are familiar with the system as grandstanding. Even ignoring this reality, corporate PACs have a contribution limit of $5,000 to any campaign, so a candidate looking to fund their effort solely with PAC funds would have to find a remarkably broad coalition of so-called special interests to fund their campaign. Finally, corporate PACs are funded exclusively with donations from employees, executives, and board members of the company, whose contributions to the PAC are limited and publicly disclosed.

Ocasio-Cortez, like most politicians, is a Manichaean. There are the good guys and the bad guys; the goal is to stop the bad guys and help the good guys. If someone disagrees with you about a bill or policy, the only reason must be that they are the bad guy, or at least paid for by the bad guys. It also must mean that your bill will hurt those bad guys! That’s why they’re opposing it, and that confirms that the bill is good!

The world doesn’t work that way. Opponents of H.R. 1 are not bought by the fossil fuel industry, or big pharma, or some other nonsense. There are manylegitimate gripes with how this 570-page monstrosity of a bill hurts the fundamental First Amendment rights of all Americans. Ocasio-Cortez and supporters of the bill may think that those costs are outweighed by the benefits, or that it is more important to cast the symbolic anti-corruption vote than to deal with the policy ramifications of their proposal.

But they should at least learn how the system actually works now before they become so certain of how to fix it.

And yet every politician is owned by lobbyists and enter service with little and leave filthy rich. Sorry, but it's obvious they are all corrupt.

There are a few that have entered public life rich to start with.
JFK, LBJ, Trump all come to mind immediately.

And I suspect trump will be much richer after.

 

[Hellokitty]

It will be interesting to see if she calls out all the democrats running in

I haven't really followed her much yet, but she sure is right about our problems here. Now this is what we really need to fix. We need to vote out every politician who won't agree to fix this. Only way we will fix out corruption.

Watch: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plays scathing campaign finance "corruption game"

“Let’s play a lightning round game," Ocasio-Cortez began. "I’m gonna be the bad guy and I want to get away with as much bad things as possible, ideally to enrich myself and advance my interests, even if that means putting my interests ahead of the American people."

"So," the 29-year-old asked the panel, "if I want to run a campaign that is entirely funded by corporate political action committees [PACs], is there anything that legally prevents me from doing that?"

"No," one expert, Karen Hobert Flynn, the president of the government accountability watchdog group Common Cause, said decisively.

Wow she may have inadvertently stumbled on something that is not completely crazy. Unfortunately if she has her way there would be nothing left of the U.S. in two or three election cycles there would be no reason to worry about PACs or any other form of corruption in our political system.

AOC Doesn’t Let the Facts Get in the Way of a Good Story
February 7, 2019 • By Scott Blackburn • Blog • Disclosure, First Amendment and Campaigns
Share This Article: hearing on H.R. 1. Common Cause tweeted that “@AOC exposes just how much ‘bad guys’ can get away with under the shameful state of our campaign finance laws.” Roll Call credited Ocasio-Cortez for turning the hearing on its head by saying that “dark money was ‘shaping’ questions about [the] reform bill.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s storytelling may have been persuasive to the uninformed. But it was also wrong.

Presenting herself as the hypothetical “bad guy” trying to destroy democracy, Ocasio-Cortez spun a tale about how she could (among other things) “use my special interest, dark money-funded campaign to pay off folks that I need to pay off to get elected.”

This dystopic vision of how campaigns work in America bears little semblance to reality. Let’s work backward:

1) You cannot use campaign funds for non-campaign related expenses. That includes “paying off folks.” Here, Ocasio-Cortez appears to be referencing the Stormy Daniels scandal and the “greenlight for hush money” she claims it represents. But she has the argument exactly backwards. Those who believe Trump committed a campaign violation think that the hush money needed to be paid with campaign expenses, and that Trump’s failure to do so was the problem. As IFS Chairman Bradley A. Smith previously argued, IFS believes the opposite is true. The crime would be if you did “pay off folks” with campaign money. The real “folks you need to pay off to get elected” are voters, and it turns out they cannot be bought. As we have written about over and over again, money doesn’t buy elections. Ocasio-Cortez should know this better than most!

2) “Dark-money funded campaigns” are not a thing. The source of all donations to candidates over $200 are fully disclosed to the FEC, which then publishes that information online for the world to see. “Dark money” refers to spending from nonprofit groups making expenditures independently of any candidate to voice their support or opposition to candidates and their policies. These groups cannot give money to candidates, so it’s impossible for any candidate to run a “dark-money funded campaign.” These groups are limited in how much they can spend on such campaign speech. Additionally, many groups that Representative Ocasio-Cortez slanders with the “dark money” label are not nefarious or secretive organizations, but respected civic groups with a long history of involvement in public affairs. These groups include nonprofits like the ACLU, NAACP, and Planned Parenthood – hardly voices that should be silenced in debates surrounding elections.

3) “Special interest” money does not dominate campaign coffers, even of the candidates you don’t like. This ties in to Ocasio-Cortez’s earlier assertion that a campaign could be entirely funded by corporate PAC donations. That’s true in the abstract – there’s nothing in the law to stop a candidate from trying – but completely divorced from the reality of how campaigns are funded. Notably, Ocasio-Cortez did not name any examples of this sort of campaign, because there aren’t any. In reality, all congressional campaigns are predominantly funded by individual donors, not corporate PACs. This is one reason why anti-corporate PAC pledges are widely seen by those who are familiar with the system as grandstanding. Even ignoring this reality, corporate PACs have a contribution limit of $5,000 to any campaign, so a candidate looking to fund their effort solely with PAC funds would have to find a remarkably broad coalition of so-called special interests to fund their campaign. Finally, corporate PACs are funded exclusively with donations from employees, executives, and board members of the company, whose contributions to the PAC are limited and publicly disclosed.

Ocasio-Cortez, like most politicians, is a Manichaean. There are the good guys and the bad guys; the goal is to stop the bad guys and help the good guys. If someone disagrees with you about a bill or policy, the only reason must be that they are the bad guy, or at least paid for by the bad guys. It also must mean that your bill will hurt those bad guys! That’s why they’re opposing it, and that confirms that the bill is good!

The world doesn’t work that way. Opponents of H.R. 1 are not bought by the fossil fuel industry, or big pharma, or some other nonsense. There are manylegitimate gripes with how this 570-page monstrosity of a bill hurts the fundamental First Amendment rights of all Americans. Ocasio-Cortez and supporters of the bill may think that those costs are outweighed by the benefits, or that it is more important to cast the symbolic anti-corruption vote than to deal with the policy ramifications of their proposal.

But they should at least learn how the system actually works now before they become so certain of how to fix it.

And yet every politician is owned by lobbyists and enter service with little and leave filthy rich. Sorry, but it's obvious they are all corrupt.

And AOC will be no different.

 

[Daryl Hunt]

They keep using her early stuff to discredit her. But she's not the starry eyed bambi anymore. She's a force to be reckoned with. In that clip, she was just plain brilliant. When she was leading that pack in the Senate looking for absent Mitch, it's too bad she didn't find him. She could have tied him to the front of her pickup and drove around Washington for a bit. I wonder if they have Game Tags for that?

She's a fucking imbecile and so is anybody still defending her, but as I've said before, even stupid people get representation.

She made a bunch of Congress Critters lookl like a bunch of greedy corrupt criminals that they really are. The Federal Congress is exempt from the various antitrust acts. If the same things were done by the civilian businesses, there would be a whole bunch of fines and a whole lot of managers cooling their heels in Prisons. We need to make Congress and the President as accountable as we do the civilians. But we have the fox guarding the henhouse.

 

[Crepitus]

I'm astonished at the number of folks who seem to be ok with and actually even pleased with the corrupt processes.

 

[edward37]

It will be interesting to see if she calls out all the democrats running in

I haven't really followed her much yet, but she sure is right about our problems here. Now this is what we really need to fix. We need to vote out every politician who won't agree to fix this. Only way we will fix out corruption.

Watch: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plays scathing campaign finance "corruption game"

“Let’s play a lightning round game," Ocasio-Cortez began. "I’m gonna be the bad guy and I want to get away with as much bad things as possible, ideally to enrich myself and advance my interests, even if that means putting my interests ahead of the American people."

"So," the 29-year-old asked the panel, "if I want to run a campaign that is entirely funded by corporate political action committees [PACs], is there anything that legally prevents me from doing that?"

"No," one expert, Karen Hobert Flynn, the president of the government accountability watchdog group Common Cause, said decisively.

Wow she may have inadvertently stumbled on something that is not completely crazy. Unfortunately if she has her way there would be nothing left of the U.S. in two or three election cycles there would be no reason to worry about PACs or any other form of corruption in our political system.

AOC Doesn’t Let the Facts Get in the Way of a Good Story
February 7, 2019 • By Scott Blackburn • Blog • Disclosure, First Amendment and Campaigns
Share This Article: hearing on H.R. 1. Common Cause tweeted that “@AOC exposes just how much ‘bad guys’ can get away with under the shameful state of our campaign finance laws.” Roll Call credited Ocasio-Cortez for turning the hearing on its head by saying that “dark money was ‘shaping’ questions about [the] reform bill.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s storytelling may have been persuasive to the uninformed. But it was also wrong.

Presenting herself as the hypothetical “bad guy” trying to destroy democracy, Ocasio-Cortez spun a tale about how she could (among other things) “use my special interest, dark money-funded campaign to pay off folks that I need to pay off to get elected.”

This dystopic vision of how campaigns work in America bears little semblance to reality. Let’s work backward:

1) You cannot use campaign funds for non-campaign related expenses. That includes “paying off folks.” Here, Ocasio-Cortez appears to be referencing the Stormy Daniels scandal and the “greenlight for hush money” she claims it represents. But she has the argument exactly backwards. Those who believe Trump committed a campaign violation think that the hush money needed to be paid with campaign expenses, and that Trump’s failure to do so was the problem. As IFS Chairman Bradley A. Smith previously argued, IFS believes the opposite is true. The crime would be if you did “pay off folks” with campaign money. The real “folks you need to pay off to get elected” are voters, and it turns out they cannot be bought. As we have written about over and over again, money doesn’t buy elections. Ocasio-Cortez should know this better than most!

2) “Dark-money funded campaigns” are not a thing. The source of all donations to candidates over $200 are fully disclosed to the FEC, which then publishes that information online for the world to see. “Dark money” refers to spending from nonprofit groups making expenditures independently of any candidate to voice their support or opposition to candidates and their policies. These groups cannot give money to candidates, so it’s impossible for any candidate to run a “dark-money funded campaign.” These groups are limited in how much they can spend on such campaign speech. Additionally, many groups that Representative Ocasio-Cortez slanders with the “dark money” label are not nefarious or secretive organizations, but respected civic groups with a long history of involvement in public affairs. These groups include nonprofits like the ACLU, NAACP, and Planned Parenthood – hardly voices that should be silenced in debates surrounding elections.

3) “Special interest” money does not dominate campaign coffers, even of the candidates you don’t like. This ties in to Ocasio-Cortez’s earlier assertion that a campaign could be entirely funded by corporate PAC donations. That’s true in the abstract – there’s nothing in the law to stop a candidate from trying – but completely divorced from the reality of how campaigns are funded. Notably, Ocasio-Cortez did not name any examples of this sort of campaign, because there aren’t any. In reality, all congressional campaigns are predominantly funded by individual donors, not corporate PACs. This is one reason why anti-corporate PAC pledges are widely seen by those who are familiar with the system as grandstanding. Even ignoring this reality, corporate PACs have a contribution limit of $5,000 to any campaign, so a candidate looking to fund their effort solely with PAC funds would have to find a remarkably broad coalition of so-called special interests to fund their campaign. Finally, corporate PACs are funded exclusively with donations from employees, executives, and board members of the company, whose contributions to the PAC are limited and publicly disclosed.

Ocasio-Cortez, like most politicians, is a Manichaean. There are the good guys and the bad guys; the goal is to stop the bad guys and help the good guys. If someone disagrees with you about a bill or policy, the only reason must be that they are the bad guy, or at least paid for by the bad guys. It also must mean that your bill will hurt those bad guys! That’s why they’re opposing it, and that confirms that the bill is good!

The world doesn’t work that way. Opponents of H.R. 1 are not bought by the fossil fuel industry, or big pharma, or some other nonsense. There are manylegitimate gripes with how this 570-page monstrosity of a bill hurts the fundamental First Amendment rights of all Americans. Ocasio-Cortez and supporters of the bill may think that those costs are outweighed by the benefits, or that it is more important to cast the symbolic anti-corruption vote than to deal with the policy ramifications of their proposal.

But they should at least learn how the system actually works now before they become so certain of how to fix it.

And yet every politician is owned by lobbyists and enter service with little and leave filthy rich. Sorry, but it's obvious they are all corrupt.

There are a few that have entered public life rich to start with.
JFK, LBJ, Trump all come to mind immediately.

Doesn't trump bill himself as The King of Debt?