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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   29967 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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You can spend it on more political campaigns. Pocketing it is a federal crime that everyone who does it gets prosecuted for.

Everyone? This list looks very short considering how much cash is involved and the kind of person attracted to a career in politics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_people_convicted_of_campaign_finance_violations

It looks like campaign money can also go into charities/foundations and PACs. You seem more confident in the sanctity of these funds than I am, especially when it's in the hands of a family associated with over 20 shell companies. Maybe the Clintons can tutor them on how to run a completely above-board Foundation.

It looks like campaign money can also go into charities/foundations and PACs.

I wondered if this was the case and looked it up just before reading your comment. I'm now also wondering if this is more common than we know. The analogy I have in mind is Wikipedia. At some point, someone was the first person to publicly point out that Wikipedia takes in vastly more donations than they need to actually run the site, and oh by the way, much of the extra money seems to get funneled into leftist causes. I don't know how widely spread that piece of information is (and frankly, I haven't checked into it, so I'm hoping I'm not falling into Scott's "too good to check"). But has anyone done a broad look at what percentage of campaign funds actually get spent on the campaigns, themselves? What, in practice, often happens with the leftovers? I imagine plenty of it gets recycled into future campaigns, but how much? How much gets rolled into 'charitable organizations'? How many of those are, like, actually spending the money on real charitable things, rather than being a hiring/holding location for party operatives, as a way to keep a bench of folks on some sort of payroll? Do the different parties have different mixes of how their funds get used? Etc.

Yeah at a minimum the campaign funds could go to some sort of Biden PAC which pays a healthy salary and expenses to the family.

It’s not like Biden is going to be drawing hefty speaking fees post presidency like Obama.

I doubt that money is Biden’s motivation but saying this can never happen is silly.

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