“If even one of these Democrats had remained in Wisconsin, the state police would have forcibly brought them to the state Capitol and the bill would have passed. So now they are holed up in another state playing a high stakes game of chicken over which side will cave first. That’s why we absolutely must back these Senators up today.” ~ Jim Dean e-mail
Jeffrey Lord
The American Spectator
2/22/11
You can call them “Dean Dollars.”
Former Vermont Governor and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, a one-time presidential candidate, is the founder of a group that by mid-day of President’s Day had raised over $100,000 in a slush fund to “back” the on-the-lam Wisconsin Democratic State Senators.
The Dean Dollars are being specifically funneled to the Wisconsin State Senate Democratic Committee (SSDC) — an apparent violation of Wisconsin election law that pointedly says, according to the Wisconsin Election Board’s Legal Counsel in a 2005 decision, that the “SSDC may not accept a contribution of more than $6,000 from a single committee in a calendar year.” (Note: the Election Board is now called the “Wisconsin Government Accountability Board.”)
The money, requested in an e-mail obtained over the weekend by The American Spectator, is being solicited in $14 dollar contributions through the Dean-founded million-member “Democracy for America” grassroots organizing group chaired by Dean’s brother Jim. There are no prohibitions on more generous donations of any amount. The funds are being collected through the left-wing “Act Blue” fundraising website, which identifies itself as “the online clearinghouse for Democratic action.”
The $14 dollar solicitation is symbolic — as in one dollar for every one of the fourteen Democrats in the Wisconsin State Senate. All of whom have now fled the state in a political battle royal over budget cuts and collective bargaining rights for public employees with the newly elected Republican Governor. On Monday, the Huffington Post quoted Senator Tim Carpenter, one of the fourteen, as saying of the decision to remain out of state: “We’ll be here until Gov. Walker decides that he wants to talk.”
Carpenter made no mention of who was paying his expenses…
…Ironically, it is one of those hiding senators, Jon Erpenbach — reported by Chicago’s ABC affiliate to be hiding in a Chicago hotel — whose over-limit contribution of $21,000 to the SSDC drew a 2005 rebuke from the Government Accountability Board’s predecessor, the Wisconsin Elections Board…
…So. The obvious question.
What are all the Dean Dollars to “back” the Wisconsin Democratic state senators through their own campaign committee being used for?
While the media is focusing on the fact that the senators are famously hiding out across the state line in Illinois, the question that is not being asked is simple: Who pays for this?…
Read the complete article at The American Thinker
