"Dirty" Money

[Buster]

My girlfriend and I got into a heated argument the other day about a video she showed me that was attacking Barack Obama for accepting money from Code Pink, who the guy says gave money to terrorists (although this is not completely true; they gave $600,000 to the families of terrorists, whom they called "insurgents fighting for their homes").  Now, I didn't find anything wrong with this; to me, money is money, no matter who gives it to you.

My girlfriend, though, insisted that by accepting the money, he was somehow supporting them.  I then gave her this scenario:  If you were sitting in a restaurant and Barack Obama just happened to be in the same restaurant (she supports McCain), and he offered to pay for your meal, would you turn him down simply because you don't believe in the same things as he does?  Or would accepting the offer somehow make you accept his ideals?  She just got more pissed at me and gave me the "Fuck you" response.  I still don't see the the logic in her thinking, but she apparently thinks that I "have no sense" for not seeing things her way.

Also, if I remember correctly, Ron Paul accepted money from the KKK and pretty much said the same thing I said:  money is money no matter who it comes from.

So I wanted to ask you all, is it ok for politicians to accept funds from anyone no matter what views or beliefs they hold?  Or do they have some sort of obligation to only take funds from "respectable" organizations or people?

 

[Dissonance]

Depends.

If they're like "Hi I'm paying you now you'd better do what I want in office" then it's probably not a good idea.  Unless they're like "...sure I will", take the money, and do nothing.

People vote for Obama for OBAMA'S policies, not the policies of the people trying to shove their mind control alien eggs up his ass.

 

[___]

Sometimes it's simply not known to the donatee where the donator's money is coming from. It'd be naive to think the people who contribute to political campaigns do it for any reason except to buy themselves an ear (and maybe a mouth) in the government. Hilary took nearly a million bucks in contributions from the medical/pharmaceutical industry to agree to shut up about universal health care in the 90s. If you think she suddenly had a change of heart about that on her own, well, I just hope you don't think that.

The Code Pink donations to families of insurgents in Fallelujah seem controversial until you realize that they are peaceniks, and the money was spent to provide food and shelter to people, mostly women and children, who were deprived of a provider and often a home after their insurgent family members were killed or captured in conflict, not to support their insurgency effort. I don't see why civilians, family members of insurgents or otherwise, deserve to starve and suffer in military conflicts just because they were born or married into the wrong side of the fight.

That said, it's not like McCain doesn't have his fair share of dirty money and crooked friends. He's been constantly embroiled in controversy about the lobbyists in the top levels of his campaign. According to this article at the Huffington Post he's received at least 400k in contributions from lobbyist groups. Granted they're not extreme left-wing nut groups like Code Pink, instead they're right-wing nuts, like Jack Abramoff, a felon convicted of fraud and corruption of public officials.

We can't be sure what exactly Code Pink is going to want from Obama, most likely they'll be pressuring him to end the war in Iraq and stay out of future conflicts as they're peace activists. We do know what Abramoff and all of McCain's lobbyist buddies want from McCain: whatever they can get, as often as they can get, with no regard for the dignity of his office and zero respect for public interests. Obviously at least one of them has already been convicted for doing exactly that.

So tell your girlfriend she's got a choice between a guy who might be corrupted into demanding withdraw from armed conflict vs. a guy who might be corrupted into assisting in defrauding the american public out of millions of dollars and destroying people's lives (sort of like Bush & co. did with Enron and the mortgage market).