Palin Options

[UNDEAD 1]

wow ! i just printed this one!

[Robert]

Regarding the KOS article you linked to.
As with most of their stuff, it's written in a way which craftily hides the underlying bias of the article.
Peppering it with just enough facts to give it a feeling of honest investigative reporting not the hack piece it actually is.
Short list of my problems with the article.

"In 1982, the same year John McCain entered the Senate, a bill was put forward that would substantially deregulate the Savings and Loan industry. The Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act was an initiative of the Reagan administration, and was largely authored by lobbyists for the S&L industry -- including John McCain's warm-up speaker at the convention, Fred Thompson."
An initiative of the Reagan Administration? They point out it was a Reagan Initiative, to try an lay the blame on him. What they forget to mention is.
President Carter made the initial call to do something to help the S&L's as they were heading for financial disaster as early as 1978
The bill was originated by a Democrat
The Act was passed by a democrat controlled house
Was finally passed with a super majority.
While the GSDI Act played a part in the S&L crisis, it was only 1 of a dozens factors.
People also forget thru the 70's an up until the early 80's, close to 90% of the S&L's showed a loss. This is what the GSDI Act tried to help. It didn't directly cause the S&L meltdown but it did make it worse since it allowed them to carry more high risk debt then they previous could. ( 5% increased to 10% )


"However, many savings and loans -- among them Lincoln Savings & Loan Association of Irvine, CA, which was headed by a fellow named Charles Keating -- promptly ignored these rules. A quintet of senators, among them John McCain, began having meetings with both the management at Lincoln and the regulators at the loan board. "
Of course they have to tie McCain to Keating. after all he was part of the Keating 5.
Let just skip right over the fact the only reason he's even part of the Keating 5 is because the Democrat chairmen of the investigation turned down the recommendation of the lead investigator who concluded McCain wasn't involved. The democrat chairmen of the investigation insisted on keeping McCain's name on the list because he was the only Republican, otherwise it would have been a solely Democrat problem.
The Senate Ethics Committee found McCain completely innocent of any wrongdoing. Not only that but during the investigation, one of the other Senators testified Keating an McCain had a falling out because McCain refused to interfere with regulators investigating Keating.

Even so, by 1999 Phil Gramm -- who had entered the Senate two years after McCain and quickly become the economic guru of the Keating Five maverick -- put forward the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. This Act passed out of the Senate on a party line vote with 100% Republican support, including that of John McCain.
Again has to bring up the Keating 5 even though McCain was found not to have done anything wrong.
The they feel the need to point out how the GLB act passed with 100 Republican support, in a painfully obvious example of their bias. BTW they do really shitty research on this because it didn't pass with 100% Republican support as they claim.
Richard Shelby ® of Alabama voted againt the bill.
John McCain ® of Arizona didn't vote, yet they imply that he not only supported the bill but also voted for it.
So the final tally is 95% of the R's and 85% of D's supported the Act.
Apparently KOS was in such a hurry to put out their newsest political hack peice they couldn't take 60 seconds to verify the details of their article. Maybe it's some of the new Math, 95% equals 100% if helps them lay the blame for something at the feet of the Republicians. I'm surprised they didn't find some way to make excuses for the 85% of the Democrats who also supported it. They could always fall back on how Bush lied to them, as that has worked for them in the past.

Gramm-Leach-Bliley reversed those rules, allowing not only more bank mergers, but for banks to become directly involved in the stock market, bonds, and insurance. Remember the bit about how S&Ls failed because they didn't have the regulations that protected banks? After Gramm-Leach-Bliley, banks didn't have that protection either. Blatant misrepresentation about the effects on banking regulations.


Gramm wasn't done. The next year he was back with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which was slipped into a "must pass" spending bill on the last day of the 106th Congress. This Act greatly expanded the scope of futures trading, created new vehicles for speculation, and sheltered several investments from regulation.
A few things of interest here. This was actually the 2nd time the Commodity Futures Modernization Act was introduced. The 1st one which Gramm wrote, did NOT include what became know as the "Enron Loophole".
The 2nd bill did include the Enron Loophole but there is nothing saying who out of the 5 sponsors of the bill included the new addition ( may have been Gramm but maybe not ). This does point to one of the issues KoS bring up which is a huge problem. This important piece of legislation was not debated in the House or Senate. Then again that doesn't matter, lets just blame it on Gramm.
This is one of a dozen reasons I would support a presidential Line item veto.
To much crap gets added to bills which have nothing to do with the original legislation.

"Not coincidentally, Senator Gramm, the second largest recipient of campaign contributions from Enron, was also key to legislating the deregulation of California's energy commodity trading."
KOS tries to lead people to the conclusion, Gramm was in Enron's pocket due to he was the 2nd largest recipient of campaign contributions. I guess they just want everyone to completely ignore the fact Enron was based in Texas so the majority of their campaign contributions automatically go to Texas politicians. This is a simple universal fact, not proof of some conspiracy. Undoubtedly during the time it was previously based in Omaha, the recipients of their campaign contributions would have been the leading Nebraska politician regardless of if they were D or R.

The part concerning the electricity trading in California would be one of the few parts of the story I agree with. BUT, I don't agree with their attempt to lay the blame with Gramm. I guess they think it's fair to skip right over the fact Enron was breaking several State an Federal laws. The part of the story which was accurate would be the effect of "credit default swap". What I don't agree with is their implication it was a foreseeable problem when the CFMA legislation was passed nor would I agree with KOS's characterization that CFMA was meant to block regulatory scrutiny. They purposefully take out of context what Greenspan said about them. It originally was a good thing because it did allow risk to be shared by several companies. It only became a problem when those same companies started cooking their books via credit swapping to enable them to take on more risk then allowed by law.
May as well mention while they condemn Greenspan for his initial approval of credit swapping. KOS purposefully fails to give him credit for early warning about Fannie an Freddie who enabled our current financial disaster.
Greenspan said in 2005
"If Fannie and Freddie continue to grow, continue to have the low capital that they have, continue to engage in the dynamic hedging of their portfolios, which they need to do for interest rate risk aversion, they potentially create ever-growing potential systemic risk down the road. We are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.''


Overall the article is just as dishonest as the view deregulation is what CAUSED the S&L crisis. The truth is the deregulation involving the S&l's was done in an attempt to SAVE the already failing S&L's.

So besides the obvious political bias, near constant misuse of facts an worse fact checking than a high school newspaper, it was a decent article.

[Robert]

I just noticed the article Hamma linked to is referenced on the KOS front page as
It's likely the single best piece of writing ever to grace this site
Yet it only took little 'ol me 60 seconds to show they didn't even bother to check the so called facts in their story.
LOL

[HammaTime]

Robert, you disappoint me. You must be busy with other things, as your usual outstanding research has fallen short. You failed to provide links to back up your counter-claims, so I'm left having to piece together where you were getting your data

Regarding the Gramm-Leach-Biley Act: the Senate debate and subsequent vote occurred May 6, 1999. McCain voted "Aye," along with 43 other Republican Senators for 100% of the Republican vote. One, repeat, one Democratic Senator voted "Aye", that was Senator Ernest Hollings of South Carolina. I base this statement on this accounting at the govtrack.us site.

Perhaps you were referring to the conference vote on the bill that combined the House and Senate versions. McCain did miss this vote.

You dismiss McCain's role in the Keating 5, yet you seem to overlook an awful lot of damning evidence. Keating was convicted in January 1993 of 73 counts of wire and bankruptcy fraud and served more than four years in prison before his conviction was overturned. In 1999, he pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud and was sentenced to time served.

In John McCain's biography, he called his meetings with Keating and regulators "the worst mistake of my life." He has said his involvement in the scandal "will probably be on my tombstone." McCain accepted at least NINE trips from Keating and didn't disclose those gifts until the scandal was revealed. At that point, he had to pay Keating $13,434 for those flights. Keating donated $112,000 to McCain's campaigns, and yes, he also donated a total of $300,000 to the five senators - the rest Democrats. But, this underlines my point. Both houses are corrupt. We need to clean up our government and drive this corrupt money out of Washington.

In trying to paint Gramm as an innocent Texas Senator who just happened to receive the second highest donations from Enron (Kay Bailey Hutchinson received the most), you chose to completely ignore Gramm's wife's key role in all of this. As chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1988 to 1993, she pushed through a key regulatory exemption in 1993, just as she was about to leave office which exempted Enron and a group of other oil and gas companies from federal regulation on some of their commodities trading. Five weeks later, she joined Enron’s board of directors and served on the board’s audit committee. I'm sure you'll recall that the board of directors were forced to pay $13 million to settle claims of insider trading. So, despite your assertions that Gramm's relationship was only one of physical proximity, I think we can see that the relationship ran much, much deeper than that.

As a side note here, I covered Gramm and his wife as he ran for President in 1996. She was clearly the brains behind the operation. It was the first time I had seen such hands-on work by a future first lady. From my time with them, I would say she is the one who calls the shots in that relationship! She is a very bright woman. As another side note, Gramm was a Democrat until four or five years into his marriage to Wendy.

And now we learn that Gramm's Swiss Banking giant, UBS is seeking the same relief that American banks are getting, and given the relief package that Bush is pushing forward, he is the guy who might end up with the no-strings attached control over the $700 Billion as Treasury Secretary! Unbelievable!!!

You'll recall that when he left the Senate, Gramm was hired as Vice-Chairman of UBS's Investment Banking division. UBS had paid $120,000 to a lobbying firm to lobby in support of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. And, surprise, surprise, UBS was the company that acquired Enron's energy trading operations - no, I'm not making this up!!

I agree with you that the article was slanted. And I expressed my reluctance to put it forward simply because of the source, but I don't think their obvious bias negates the facts as they present them. If you are willing to dig a little deeper into these financial relationships, one begins to see a picture where certain people are taking specific steps to enrich themselves to the detriment of the country.

This post has been edited by HammaTime: 09/22/08 3:59pm

[Robert]

I now understand the confusion. The Gramm-Leach-Biley bill went thru twice.
Once in April-May of 1999 but nothing happen with it because of difference between the house an senate versions. It was then re-introduced in Nov where it was re-voted on by the House an Senate.
record of the senate vote
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll...&vote=00354
1 Rep voted no and McCain abstained. Not the 100% republican support the KOS article claims.
record of the house vote
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h1999-570

I guess KOS can claim they weren't wrong since they based their story on the vote that didn't count in stead of the vote which actually did count.

As I already said, I don't like Gramm nor am I trying to portray him as innocent.
I was only making the obvious distinction that he received such high donations from Enron because it was a Texas based company an he was a leading TX politician. If you want to argue his campaign donations were tainted, then you have to ignore the fact the highest donations went to the other leading TX politician, who did nothing wrong.


I'm not claiming McCain is perfect, I just don't agree with all the Keating 5 B.S.
1) After the preliminary investigation, the lead investigator recommended McCain be removed from the list because he did nothing unethical or illegal. The Dem chairmen refused, otherwise it would have been a purely Democrat scandal.
2) During testimony of the Senate probe, one of the people actually involved stated McCain an Keating had a falling out because McCain REFUSED to act on behalf of Keating an run interfernce with the regulators.
3) Even after the senate investigation found McCain innocent of any unethical or illegal wrongdoing, he donated all campaign donations from Keating to the US treasury.
Yet, the Libs desperately bring up the Keating 5 every chance they get when the reality is there was only a Keating 3. Only 3 were found guilty, McCain an Glenn were cleared.


I'm not disagreeing with you that there is a lot dirty dealing in Washington.
What I do disagree with is biased political hatchet job such as this article which didn't even get their facts rights. Not to mention the numerous misrepresentations in the article.

Here is a hack job biased more to the right but at least the facts are correct in it
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=new...id=aSKSoiNbnQY0

My real problem with how politicized this issue has become an all the Monday morning quarterbacks with their 20/20 hindsight pointing to this or that being the problem.
Show me someone who said this at the time an I would be more inclined to listen. The closest anyone has been to being proactive versus reactive would be MCain an the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act he introduced in 2005. The same bill shot down by the Dems who claimed Fannie an Freddie were financially sound.

As I've already said, I don't like Gramm. I wish McCain would drop him. So my question for you is what's your opinion of Obama's connection with Raines, A guy who made 90 million by defrauding Fannie May. The same guy who Obama now claims isn't any type of advisor even though Raines is who he had vetting his VP pick?

[Robert]

Change of topic.
Biden's newest screw-up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SKjTqgjq8E
Criticizing Obama's ad about McCain,

Before you ask. Yes I think McCain ad's are just as dishonest.

[HammaTime]

So my question for you is what's your opinion of Obama's connection with Raines, A guy who made 90 million by defrauding Fannie May. The same guy who Obama now claims isn't any type of advisor even though Raines is who he had vetting his VP pick?

Robert, once again, you are muddling the issue and I'm really beginning to wonder where you are getting your information. Raines did not help Obama vet his VP pick. Obama claims to have only met with Raines once for five minutes. No one has stepped forward to refute that claim and a whole host of media watchdog groups have declared McCain's claim to be invalid.

This from this week's Newsweek magazine:

Never mind the fact that Raines never actually advised Obama on anything. The real problem here is that McCain's campaign is swarming with 26 advisers or fundraisers who have lobbied for Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac--including nearly a dozen who lobby right now. As the Washington Monthly's Steve Benen wrote last week, "one of McCain's top policy advisers, Charlie Black, was lobbyist for Freddie Mac for 10 years, while his campaign manager, Rick Davis, lobbied to help Fannie and Freddie steer clear of additional federal regulations [and earned $2 million in the process]... Tom Loeffler, who serves McCain's campaign co-chairman, also lobbied for Fannie Mae. Aquiles Suarez, a McCain economic adviser, was a Fannie Mae executive. Dan Crippen, a McCain adviser who helped craft the campaign's health-care policy, lobbied for Fannie Mae (and Merrill Lynch). Arthur B. Culvahouse, who helped lead McCain's VP search committee, also lobbied for Fannie Mae." According to former Fannie Mae executive William Maloni, "photographs of Sen. McCain's staff... loo[k] to me like the team of lobbyists who used to report to me." Without these ties--which are far more extensive than Obama's--McCain would have every right to say that associating with officials from troubled financial institutions is a sign of bad judgment. Again, it's not like Obama's hands are spotless. But with them, McCain offers Obama an otherwise unavailable opportunity to remind voters that McCain's own judgment--at least by McCain's own standards--is worse. So much for "no seat... at the table."


The Dallas Morning News reports under the headline "Fact check: Obama's economic "adviser":

A McCain campaign video that claims former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines gave Barack Obama economic advice is "exaggerating wildly," The Washington Post says.

It takes just a few minutes searching through Google News to find many, many news organizations who have corrected McCain's false assertions. Hell, even Raines has denied them.

The Street ran a story under the headline, "McCain's Attacks Misguided" that stated, "McCain continues to demonstrate bad judgment by making spurious attacks, and he may again place his reputation in harm's way. In fact, he has been making disingenuous attacks on Obama for more than a month. FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan organization, investigates the claims of the candidates. McCain's facts prove so far from the truth that FactCheck has starting using Ronald Reagan's line: 'There he goes again.'"

What now rises up to bite McCain in the ass is the revelation that his campaign staff is filled with people who profited from lobbying for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Hell, even McCain's chief of staff has earned nearly two million as a lobbyist according to a report in the New York Times. Say what you will about the New York Times, the McCain campaign has not refuted their reporting of the facts.

[HammaTime]

Change of topic.
Biden's newest screw-up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SKjTqgjq8E
Criticizing Obama's ad about McCain,

Before you ask. Yes I think McCain ad's are just as dishonest.

How is that a screw-up? I'm missing something here. Biden offers his opinion that he wouldn't have put up that ad. Of course the ad was factual. McCain is on the record stating that he is a computer illiterate.

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/1884558/6206369

Then in July, McCain blew your theory that he couldn't use a computer because of his war injuries right out of the water when he stated that he was learning how to use a computer, "But I am forcing myself ... let me put it this way, I am using the computer more and more every day."

But, this isn't the kind of ad that either campaign should be running.

This post has been edited by HammaTime: 09/22/08 9:28pm

[HammaTime]

For our international friends:

How We Became the United States of France - Time Magazine

[Robert]

It was a screw up on Biden's part for being so quick to criticize Obama's ad. He's a 30 year politician, you would think he would be able to be a little more diplomatic about it. Then again, this is something Biden is known for.
McCain certainly didn't blow my theory out of the water as to why he doesn't use a computer.
It's due to a lack of dexterity, which is a result of injuries received during the war.
Same as why he always does his stupid looking thumbs up gesture, because he can't raise his arm to wave.
Much the same as Dole an the famous pen he always carried in his right hand to prevent people from try to shake his hand which was paralyzed from injuries received during WWII.
I wouldn't expect someone who's tone deaf to learn to play the guitar and I wouldn't expect someone who lacks the dexterity to easily use a keyboard to use a computer.
The Obama ad was just as stupid as if it complained about a blind man not being able to drive, thereby showing he's out of touch with the modern world.

As for the negative ads, it's done by both sides.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...8092101207.html

I think it's rather funny the change in attitude by Obama people.
1st they down played th excessive donations he received from Fannie & Freddie
Not they are jumping all over lobbyist working for McCain for receiving money from Fannie & Freddie.
Direct association via campaign contributions is okay while while indirect association via a paid lobbyist is a big deal.

Have you read the piece of shit energy bill passed by the House?
That's the kind of junk I'm very afraid Obama will sign because of his past which shows he's always willing to walk the party line.

I do agree with many points in the Time article. The quick bailout seem is little more than socializing business. I understand the need for the bailout, I just don't believe it should have been so quick an all encompassing. I completely disagree with the assertion in the article the current financial mess is solely the blame of the Republicans. The dollar was already down, we now cut it's value even more in what I expect will be a failed attempt to prevent the crash coming.

[Hellfighter]

Dear Robert and Hamma,

I'm watching the Legislation hearings going on and would like to know when the two of you will be both speaking to clear up the mess of those Wall St./legislator amateurs that clearly need your MIGHTY joint steering on course to stability !!!!




This post has been edited by Hellfighter: 09/23/08 2:05pm

[Robert]

I know you're kidding but sadly you are not that far off.
I've been watching a lot of C-span over the last few weeks plus catching about an hour of it everyday at work depending upon whats being discussed in the house or senate. I've found it almost as entertaining as prime time television. Which is really sad because entertaining is the one thing C-span shouldn't be.

Every once an a while they do a historical re-broadcast, such as tonight with Kennedy-Nixon debate from 1960. It can be very interesting to see what were the problems of the day an each candidates solution. Not something something I would watch start to finish but may tune into for 10-20 minutes.

[HammaTime]

I think it's rather funny the change in attitude by Obama people.
1st they down played th excessive donations he received from Fannie & Freddie
Not they are jumping all over lobbyist working for McCain for receiving money from Fannie & Freddie.
Direct association via campaign contributions is okay while while indirect association via a paid lobbyist is a big deal.

Once again, you put forth a talking-point that doesn't hold up to additional scrutiny. Delving into the issue of contributions/cash from Fannie and Freddie makes for an interesting study on how journalism is played today.

If you or I were to try to research the contributions made to the campaign, we'd undoubtedly head over to OpenSecrets and punch in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to see the contributions from those two firms. This is what John Gibson of Fox News did for a recent piece. Unfortunately, that is all he did. Mysteriously, his piece didn't even bother to list the total contributions to Obama, perhaps that was just too much of an effort for him to make for his weak-ass story. I'm certain that you would have filled out your lede with the precise dollar figure, I know I would.

Well, that piece caused quite a stir, and if you do a search on Google News, you'll find the right-wing blogs jumped all over the story.

But, wait a minute. Does the premise of this story even make sense? A search of OpenSecrets turns up contributions by any employee, so that tally lists the contributions made by secretaries, janitors and all the other low-level employees as well as upper management. Obama has been drawing the majority of his fundraising from individual donors, so I would bet a search on most any New York based firm would reveal that he receives more contributions from their employees than McCain.

Well, the New York Times took this amateurish approach to the professional level as they went directly to the records on file with the Federal Election Committee and then cross matched the donor list with a list of Fannie and Freddie's directors, officers and lobbyists. A $50 donation from a low-level employee at the firm says one thing, a $70,000 donation from a Director says something completely different.

What the NYTimes discovered is a fascinating contrast to the hysteria that John Gibson created. Here is the story that the NY Times published, but the attached graphic really tells the tale.



So, it doesn't surprise me that the Obama campaign is comfortable downplaying the "excessive" donations that employees of a New York firm made to his campaign because when you look at the bigger picture, well the writing is on the wall.

Tonight, we learn of new revelations published separately by the New York Times and Newsweek magazine that allege that McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, was receiving $15,000 per month from Freddie Mac through his lobbying firm, Davis Manafort until last month when the government took over the company. McCain had just denied openly that Davis was receiving money. What I find amazing is that their explanation is that Davis "wasn't doing anything" for the money. I don't know about you, but that sounds like graft to me. Perhaps that is too strong, but here is the money quote from the Times' article, "No one at Davis & Manafort other than Mr. Davis was involved in efforts on Freddie Mac’s behalf, the people familiar with the arrangement said."

Here is my point in all of this. I don't care if someone has an R or a D after their name. If they claim to represent the "people," then they damn better be representing the people and not working for their own financial gain. This country needs to clean house and get the stench of a corrupt system out of Washington. We can do that by demanding more transparency in our government and by encouraging open and honest debate.

This post has been edited by HammaTime: 09/23/08 9:32pm

[Robert]

Actually I got the list off CPR site
http://www.campaignmoney.com/political/com...pr.asp?cycle=08
Which is about as non partisan as you can get. So I don't know where you get the idea it was from talking points. Speaking of talking points, after CPR published campaign donation numbers, Obama's camp had to pull back from their earlier suggestions MOST of his campaign donations came little average Americans giving $20-50. The truth is the majority comes from people donating over the $200 break limit for anonymous donations. Yes Obama is King of the presidential fundraisers, his total right now is about .3 billion. Which to me is just one more example of how screwed up out political system is.
Does it matter the Fannie money wasn't directly from the PAC fund, No. Bundling donations has been a part of politics for a while now an is done by both sides. All it requires is the upper management to pull their "private" donations, then present it to whoever. Corps do this all the time to hide buying political favors. You can go to Obama's site an view a partial list of his private bundler's.
Partial list of campaign donation bundler's
As I said, this is done by both sides. McCain has been the worse of the two as far as updating his list of bundlers. My point is just because money comes from private individuals doesn't necessarily make it any less tainted than money coming directly from Corporate PAC's.
Similar to how Obama denounced PAC funding as evil once he got the nomination but had no problem taking PAC money for his two senate races an to start his presidential bid.
BTW your NYT story is rather lacking.
They apparently didn't bother to go down the long list of VP's who all gave $1000 to Obama's or any other high ranking individuals at Fannie & Freddie.
They are all listed at CPR if you want to take the time to do some searching.
url=http://www.campaignmoney.com/political/committees/citizens-for-progressive-representation-cpr.asp?cycle=08



Speaking of talking points, give me your onion of this.
Why is Gramm the only name constantly brought up in regards to McCain;s economic advisor's?
There are actually 35 people on the list
Actually only 34 since Gramm was dropped near the end of July , after his America whinnier remark.
Kind of strange that Gramm was dropped almost 2 months ago but Obama's newest ad released yesterday refers to Gramm as "McCain lead economic adviser"


PS.
I missed your earlier post about Raine's. You're right he's not on the list of Obama's advisors.
He was originally contacted about acting as a mortgage and housing advisor but failed to get the 2nd casting call when Freddie & Fannie went down the drain. The ex Freddie & Fannie CEO who did advise Obama on his VP pick would be Johnson not Raines as I previously said.

[HammaTime]

Insightful questions, as usual.

I'm off on a two-day trip and will be back at it on Friday.

I too have wondered about Gramm. Of course, the main reason he is mentioned so predominantly is that McCain has put forward his name as his next Treasury Secretary, but now that you've mentioned this, I can't honestly say if that actually came from McCain's lips. That will be an interesting issue to look into.

Perhaps you could look at some other New York based companies and see how their ratio of donations compares with the Fannie/Freddie mix. My guess is that the donation ratio will be very much the same. I agree that bundling is a problem, but there are a hell of a lot of problems in our elections. That said, I'd much rather see a campaign raise cash by encouraging small donations from many people. It is a Federal crime to donate money that isn't yours, I wonder if anyone has ever been successfully prosecuted for doing so.