[UPDATED above.]
Jake Tapper ponders Team Obama's creepy canvassing drive in support of the President's "economic plan." Organizing for America, the Obama campaign's "successor organization" marshals an ironically White House driven "grass roots cavalry":
Partisan voices and special interests are showing real resistance to President Obama's call for making the necessary reforms and investments in energy, health care, and education. That's why we need to bring the conversation back into homes and communities across America.
It's absolutely crucial that Americans hear from you about this plan -- we can't leave this important debate up to a Washington establishment that doesn't welcome change.
It's up to you to show Washington that Americans are demanding this new direction and won't stand on the sidelines while our country's future is at stake.
OFA's website supplies a virtual Canvassing for Dummies with everything from pep talks to videos to talking points, but if you've read Political OCD, you'll know Qb is only interested in one thing.
Lo and behold! You won't be seeing your Daddy's name & address sheet on these troopers' clipboards. This is not a petition, this is a "pledge project." You'll get to fill out your own personal data sheet which, oddly enough, includes the usual political gold: your email address and the cell phone number that is the modern bane of pollsters and politicians alike. The forms do not, however, include a signature of assent line. Just as well, we think, since Obama Central shows no interest in where the paper pledge sheets themselves end up.
[click for full size image]
When your friendly neighborhood canvasser returns home from the recommended victory party, he will hit the online sanctum sanctorum where he will enter his own information and yours into the Obama databank. Gotcha! Qb declined to provide our personal particulars in order to inspect the data entry page itself, but if someone else feels so inclined, we'd be interested in a screenshot of that destination.
Qb is concerned about the propriety and the legalities of such White House data collection. No matter how carefully parsed the relationships between incestuous Obama organizations may be, Organizing for America is clearly a White House creature. It owes its life to the President and it exists for his benefit alone. While OFA Director, Mitch Stewart's officially signed off on Monday's email, Jake Tapper can hardly be blamed for mistakenly saying what virtually everyone takes for granted [emphasis Qb]:
Today the president sent out an email to the 13 million-strong email list compiled during Obama's presidential campaign to drum up support for the president's budget.
We cast our cynical, though unlawyerly, eye on the Pledge Page disclaimer for enlightenment:
PAID FOR BY ORGANIZING FOR AMERICA, A PROJECT OF THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE — 430 SOUTH CAPITOL ST. SE, WASHINGTON, D.C., 20003. THIS COMMUNICATION IS NOT AUTHORIZED BY ANY CANDIDATE OR CANDIDATE’S COMMITTEE.
Whether or not election law recognizes any difference between an office holder and a candidate, we're confident that no one would be running operations from a site called barackobama.com without being authorized to do so by Barack Obama. The advisory states that the Pledge Project was paid for by OFA. Does it carefully avoid saying that the OAF is funded by the DNC (it's an amorphous project!),while deliberately implying that it is? We sought more information, per the Pledge Sheet, at BARACKOBAMA.COM. After the obligatory close encounter with a solicitation for the DNC, we ended up at back at the Organizing America "Organizing Blog" -- where we learn that it is .... a project of the DNC. We wonder, rhetorically, if such "projects" have any legal meaning. We note that the site still includes a link to the now-non-candidate-Obama's defunct campaign store, the last vestige, perhaps, of its previous incarnation.
Oh what a tangled web of redirects we weave, notably devoid of boundary lines between one organization and the next.
The DNC, itself, has been a wholly owned project of Barack Obama since the day he won the Democratic nomination. One of the first things he did was to move the DNC, and the purse strings, into his Chicago offices. He freely poached on genuine grass roots organizations by rerouting potential contributions directly into his own campaign coffers. Did MoveOn.org and their ilk share donor info too? Howard Dean was hung out to dry on the Bush Legacy Bus Tour of the American outback. We do not doubt that Obama functionaries immediately began the integration of DNC and Obama address books. It's money and control, stupid!
Back in the early days of the Obama campaign, John Kerry briefly looked like an inside player. He contributed his mailing list, said to be worth millions, to the cause, and soon disappeared from sight. Questions about the identity of Obama's under $200 donors almost reached a revelatory crest, when the election itself stemmed that tide, but QB doesn't doubt that Team Obama could have documented those donations for the FEC -- and could supply that information right now -- if it were in their interests to do so. We all remember the sticking point in Hillary Clinton's road to the State Department, don't we? That would be the Clinton Library donor list.
And thus, we arrive at Qb's central question: Who owns the Obama database?
Are there any restrictions on how, or by whom, or for what purposes it can be used? The controversy over the legalities of John McCain using his mailing list as collateral for a campaign loan makes it clear that such collections are a material asset. Every particular which is fed into Obama's database incrementally increases the value of that asset. Every man hour spent on collection and input contributes to that appreciation.
Presidents have never washed their hands of fundraising, but the institutionalization of Obama's "grass roots cavalry" and the conflation of Obama-centric organizations and their operations -- regardless of how carefully the niceties of using White House offices are observed -- strikes us as something new and disturbing. Information warfare is not confined to international fronts, and the new White House architect knows where you live.
See Cavalry UPDATE above.
Via JOM, Qb, thought I'd just drop the comments here as they will be more useful:
In re: the operation
Straight forward, the sort of "grassroots lobbying" campaign the President has announced is probably a violation of 18 USC 1913; however, the Lobby[ist] Disclosure Act (which amends 18 USC 1913) seems to not include "grassroots lobbying" activities although relevant IRS regulations do. My guess is that the administration's safe harbor is "no controlling legal authority" because the campaign would be conducted by members of the White House Office or Executive Office of the President as part of their duties and my bit of google research indicates that there has never been an charges brought on this statute and punishment under the LDA appear to be civil in nature.
the law-
Rove has mentioned the illegal nature of Obama's permanent campaign before and I've hoped someone with better skills than I have would have researched it and written it up.
Moreover, this campaign is the sort of casual lawlessness that I've come to expect of the Obama Administration and portends poorly for how they will account for the 3 600 000 000 000 dollars they'd like to see pass through their hands in the next budget.
Rove op-ed in which illegality is mentioned: here.
With this disclaimer "PAID FOR BY ORGANIZING FOR AMERICA, A PROJECT OF THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE"- this would probably indicate that it is another shadow 501c (probably 4) hqed at the DNC which would allow some coordination with the DNC but not the White House. The other fly in the ointment is that Obama is turning the National Security Council into a platform for Alinsky organizing based on the ACORN organization model.
Hope this helps-I'll take a look see at the rest of the links and the data entry page when I get sometime later in the week.
Posted by: RichatUF | March 18, 2009 at 12:10 AM
Seems I was too quick to comment:
Obama is on YouTube launching the thing so proving coordination doesn't seem to be an issue.
Sourcewatch page with newspaper links to discussion. Found these points interesting:
The New York Times reported that "there will be clear coordination between this independent operation at the Democratic National Committee and a communications arm being set up at the White House, under Macon Phillips, the “new media” director for Mr. Obama’s administration. Mr. Phillips was an Internet strategist with Blue State Digital, a private firm closely tied to Mr. Obama’s campaign. His team signaled the new direction Mr. Obama is bringing with a redesigned White House Web site that was introduced shortly after Mr. Obama was sworn in and is modeled after his campaign site.
They aren't even trying to hide and with Geithner running the IRS they don't need to. Coordination among the White House, the DNC, and this Organization is a violation of FEC and IRS rules. This sort of coordination is what sent FBI officials into orbit when investigating Clinton-Gore 1996 (which was turned over to the FEC for an eventual fine of 750k, but the lead investigator wanted-and should have gotten-an independent counsel).
Pretty busy Qb, but I hope to have more for you to write up by weeks end. Hope it helps.
Posted by: RichatUF | March 18, 2009 at 12:38 AM