All's Fair For The Democrats

Obama Accepting Untraceable Donations

Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity, campaign officials confirmed.

Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged. Instead, the campaign is scrutinizing its books for improper donations after the money has been deposited.

The Obama organization said its extensive review has ensured that the campaign has refunded any improper contributions, and noted that Federal Election Commission rules do not require front-end screening of donations.

In recent weeks, questionable contributions have created headaches for Obama's accounting team as it has tried to explain why campaign finance filings have included itemized donations from individuals using fake names, such as Es Esh or Doodad Pro. Those revelations prompted conservative bloggers to further test Obama's finance vetting by giving money using the kind of prepaid cards that can be bought at a drugstore and cannot be traced to a donor.

The problem with such cards, campaign finance lawyers said, is that they make it impossible to tell whether foreign nationals, donors who have exceeded the limits, government contractors or others who are barred from giving to a federal campaign are making contributions.

"They have opened the floodgates to all this money coming in," said Sean Cairncross, chief counsel to the Republican National Committee. "I think they've made the determination that whatever money they have to refund on the back end doesn't outweigh the benefit of taking all this money upfront." [...]

Sen. John McCain's campaign has also had questionable donations slip through.

Dan Pfeiffer, Obama's communication's director, said that "no organization can fully insulate itself from these problems. The McCain campaign has accepted contributions from fraudulent contributors like 'A for You,' 'Adorable Manabat,' 'The Gun Shop,' and 'Jesus II' and hundreds of anonymous donors."

But R. Rebecca Donatelli, who handles online contributions for the McCain operation and the RNC, said security measures have been standard in the GOP nominee's fundraising efforts throughout the campaign. She said she was "flabbergasted" to learn that the Obama campaign accepts prepaid cards.

FYI, it is possible to require donors' names and addresses to match those on their credit card accounts. As usual for Democrats, it's "do as we say, not as we do." The liberal mantra.

• Reduce your "carbon footprint," so we can keep flying our private jets and leave our limos idling;
• Every criticism of our candidates is racist, only liberals can mention race (whenever we need a distraction from the issues);
• Mentioning religion makes you a wingnut freak, but it makes us pious and reverent;
• Paying high taxes is the patriotic duty of all the little people who, unlike us, can't stash money in the Caymans or Zurich;

Good grief. Who votes these people? Oh yeah, it's such upstanding citizens as "Dahsudhu Hdusahfd," "Doodad Pro," "Good Will," and "Derty Poiiuy."