Scott Walker Rents Out Email and Donor Lists To Pay Campaign Debt (wisconsingazette.com) 113
An anonymous reader writes: In an effort to pay off his hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt racked up from his failed presidential run, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is renting out his email and donor lists to other candidates. Wisconsin Gazette reports: "The campaign owed $1.2 million at the end of 2015 and has paid off about $308,000 since then, according to campaign finance records. The bulk of those payments have been made possible by income from Granite Lists, a New Hampshire-based company that rents out Republican donor lists. Granite Lists has paid more than $172,000 to Walker's campaign since it ended in September. In April alone, Granite Lists brought the campaign nearly $50,000, comprising most of the total $70,930 the campaign brought in that month. In addition to flat-rate charges, candidates can set up revenue-sharing agreements, where some of the proceeds they obtain from donors are diverted back to the list owner. Candidates can also pay a flat rate of $10,500 to email Walker's entire 675,000-person email list and $7,000 to email the 225,000 donors and presidential sign-ups, according to Granite Lists website. [Granite Lists] calls Walker's donor file 'one of the hottest donor lists to hit the market in years.'"
I was young and stupid once. (Score:5, Funny)
And sent Ron Paul $10.
In return, to this day, I'm still getting batshit ramblings in my inbox from all over the Republican spectrum.
Never again.
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I sent $27 to Bernie. No regrets.
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I sent $27 to Bernie. No regrets.
dot dot dot for now.
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My only regret would be if hillotrumpery became president. They're like that beast from the movie The Thing.
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Vote Johnson?
https://garyjohnson2016.com/ [garyjohnson2016.com]
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I sent $27 to Bernie. No regrets.
I sent him $10 bucks. Also no regrets.
It was the first time I ever donated to a political campaign, and possibly the last.
Re: I was young and stupid once. (Score:1)
charity helping people... obviously you're not from the USA
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more like throwing money in a trash fire and declaring it money well spent.
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If Bernie is voted in, Americans will suffer under our crushing national debt.
Re: I was young and stupid once. (Score:3)
Are you really operating under the easily discredited illusion that the president gets to write and pass legislation?
Bernie would be the most stymied president ever. Besides, his political positions and socialist agenda are not why you elect him.
You elect him to increase the political IQ of every voter in the US through the way he frames the issues, specifically not in terms of bolstering entrenched corporate and wealthy interests. You elect him for the things he would obstruct, namely the further enrichme
Re:I was young and stupid once. (Score:5, Insightful)
Granted I will fully admit that its a bit of a Marxist view, But you can't give with the right hand, what you toke with the left hand, its a fundamentally uneven exchange.
Sure I could take that $27 dollars and feed a couple homeless people for a day, or I could spend that on changing the system that created the inequality that created those homeless people in the first place.
Government provided access to health care/mental health care, low education jobs, Education, and housing programs will do much more then a single food/money donation ever could.
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But you can't give with the right hand, what you toke with the left hand, its a fundamentally uneven exchange.
Who takes in a democracy? Only the government has that power legally. Everyone else has to trade and offer something in exchange.
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But you can't give with the right hand, what you toke with the left hand, its a fundamentally uneven exchange.
You add on the remarkably dense observation that there are corporations and lobbyists who can use the power of this government to their own ends. As I said and you confirm, the government remains the only party legally taking from anyone. But sure, let's give them more power to rob us b
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But you can't give with the right hand, what you toke with the left hand, its a fundamentally uneven exchange.
What if you toke with both hands? Sounds good to me.
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As a person who saw what St. Jude did for my family, I can assure you money given to them is well-spent.
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$22,000 Average cost of policing each homeless person per year
$45,000 Average cost per person placed in prison per year
$75,000 Average cost per person found dead with no family, savings, or estate to auction, when funeral/cremation is left to be paid for by local government
$130,000,000,000 Yearly cost of uncompensated health care at emergency rooms shifted onto your health care insurance premiums, a
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https://support.catholiccharit... [catholiccharitiesusa.org]
https://www.habitat.org/cd/giv... [habitat.org]
I am sure there are more, but those are off the top of my head.
Not the AC, but I don't understand this pessimism, there are good charities that work to help poor people out there.
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What I was pointing out was the utter stupidity of what the AC was saying, who decides what charities help people more? There are charities which provide medical aid or housing or legal aid or food or an education or a myriad of other services/products to the u
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I did the same thing, and got a million e-mails starting with 'Dear Patriot!'
Never again.
Campaign reform may be in order (Score:2)
It would, at least, afford large donors the opportunity to bribe their politicians the old fashioned way.
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I'm getting kind of sick of going into the office every day... instead under your system I think I will 'campaign' for public office... from the beach, from my back yard, from the local amusement park with my kid... and let you and the other tax payers pick up some good portion of the tab.
Sound good?
Re:Campaign reform may be in order (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, as long as you get the X signatures required to be recognized as an official candidate.
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That's exactly the way it works. With enough signatures, anybody can get on the ballot. The money angle is bullshit. Money has more influence on the voter than the politician. It's being spent to convince everyone to vote 'correctly' to make sure the *right lizard* gets in. And with 98% compliance, it is an outstanding success. It is the voters who give power to money. You could vote for, say, the Greens, and turn all the other guy's money into confetti. The choice is yours, not theirs.
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Do you know how many signatures it takes to get on a statewide ballot? I don't think "some friends" is going to cut it. For you.
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You mistakenly assume acquiring signatures is hard.
Even in a state like Washington where they keep on file your 'official' signature to validate your signature on a ballot or petition there are trivial ways around it.
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Come to www.campaignlife.com and sign for me and a thousand others, we all sign for each other, won't take long to reach critical mass that way.
You were saying it was hard how, exactly?
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Online signatures are not valid for the purpose of getting on a ballot. Online petitions are not valid for the purpose of getting on a ballot.
What about the ones faxed in? (Score:2)
Create online petition.
Provide a print_out-sign-fax_in form.
???
Profit.
Also, shouldn't stuff like GPEA make sure that electronic signatures are treated equally as ones made on paper?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
SEC. 1707. ENFORCEABILITY AND LEGAL EFFECT OF ELECTRONIC RECORDS.
Electronic records submitted or maintained in accordance with
procedures developed under this title, or electronic signatures or other
forms of electronic authentication used in accordance with such
procedures, shall not be denied legal effect, validity, or
enforceability because such records are in electronic form.
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It's been tried. The only kind of signatures currently allowed for ballot access are the old-fashioned kind that you write with a pen on paper.
Except in Utah, where along with signatures, local officials will accept an "X", as well as road kill (as long as it's fresh). In Utah, they are trying electronic signatures, but to be fair Utah really doesn't matter.
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Well... that's clearly discriminatory against roadkill jerky.
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Status quo has a half-life of a generation.
Voter demographics changes completely every 18 years, with yearly changes taking place as people age into it and die out of it.
The whole voter registration shenanigans that Republicans are pulling to keep brown people from voting and the enthusiasm of Bernie Sanders fans - and even Trump and his supporters are a living sign of those two forces clashing.
So were the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements.
Even Hillary ended up promising to get the big money out of
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The whole voter registration shenanigans that Republicans are pulling to keep brown people from voting
Looks like you bought that whole controversy...
No, no one is trying to prevent anyone from voting, Texas even offered people free IDs, though living in today's society is nearly impossible without ID, so they should have already had one.
AND, many Democrat controlled states already have voter ID laws that are roughly the same as the Texas Voter ID law from last election season.
https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_... [ballotpedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
But let's play the party line, it was all about racism and preventi
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I'm getting kind of sick of going into the office every day... instead under your system I think I will 'campaign' for public office... from the beach, from my back yard, from the local amusement park with my kid... and let you and the other tax payers pick up some good portion of the tab.
Sound good?
Like you can't do that right now anyway.
All you need to do is get enough existing people to believe in YOUR cause.
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Yeah, non-existing people are known to vote liberal anyhow.
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You misunderstand my desire to campaign... I don't want to have to spend time asking for money, I just want to 'campaign' in nice to be places... sometimes with other people around.
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But any campaign funds can only be used for the campaign. So save those peanuts from coach class if you go hungry. You will still need to borrow against your mortgage if you quit your day job to go campaigning.
Oh, add a proviso to the bill that politicians only get paid when they're at work, with only 10 vacation days a year for campaigning purposes or travel, anything beyond that comes out of their pockets. Any political party meetings will have to happen after hours.
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Um, exactly who is going to write these provisos? I mean, if we are going run the country by referendum, let's fire all the politicians and save a buckets of money. And also, if reformist politicians can win elections, "campaign reform" would be a moot issue.
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You don't know how public financing of elections works, do you? You just typed what you thought would be a "real talk" comment without having a single clue as to the mechanism by which public financing of campa
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Care to enlighten me then?
Nope, not a fan. In fact I voted for Sanders on Tuesday (not that it matters in Washington)... come November Johnson or McAfee will get my vote (given how hard blue Washington is).
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I live to serve.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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So your 'enlightenment' is... a lengthy Wikipedia article?
Again, I'm claiming to be lazy, I want to campaign from my backyard for higher office and have the government pay for it... where exactly (at least link to an anchor section) which say I can't do that under the proposed systems?
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You've made your point on that count.
You have to get on the ballot to get public funds. How are you going to collect enough signatures to get on the ballot from your back yard?
Let's start there. Once you crack that code, get back to me and we'll move on to the next point.
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See my reply to another comment: https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
Here in Washington, we have perennial candidate (ands self described extraterrestrial) who manages to get onto the ballot just about every time, so clearly there is a way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
There are many ways it can be done, per my reading of state law, I can't at this time share the method
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The threshold for local elections is much lower. Also, don't assume the candidate is as lazy as you just because he's an extraterrestrial.
That's funny.
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If you end up discovering a major vulnerability in an entire states electoral system which could be maliciously used to sway local or state wide elections, and be done from ones basement without any official support (though a campaign level org having even more money to dedicate to such trickery would be able to exploit it in an even wider way)... what do you do?
Report it? Given the political leanings in this state it would be dismissed, despite each individual compo
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Sound good?
No but it does sound like you are already well on the way to becoming a politician.
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The simplest way to reform the American political process would be to fund campaigns with tax money.
There are two ways to do this, and neither is acceptable:
1. Give most of the funding to incumbents and major parties, which helps lock-in the status quo.
2. Give equal money to challengers, which means David Duke gets funded with tax dollars, along with every other kook who registers to run.
Currently we have a hybrid system where candidates get matching funds for what they raise privately. There is little political will to go any further.
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Yes, if Duke met the prerequisite requirements for funding, he would get it: that's your representative republic.
Your democracy can be (sort of) all inclusive and flawed or, if you prefer, muddled with nonelected candidate selectors. [wikipedia.org]
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Or how about
3. Use polling data to determine the candidates popularity. Release funds weekly where a candidates given share of the pot is equal to their polling percentage.
No parties, no money for David Duke, but plenty of money for popular independents.
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3. Use polling data to determine the candidates popularity. Release funds weekly where a candidates given share of the pot is equal to their polling percentage.
Which polls are included? Who gets to run the polls? Who decides who gets to run the polls? Who pays the deciders? Can the deciders accept contributions?
If you're wondering about Democrats (Score:5, Interesting)
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee rented the Obama for America list twice in April, services valued at $135,000, according to an FEC report.
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Exactly.
Anyone shocked that Scott Walker is doing this is either (a) too naive to be allowed to breed, or (b) grossly partisan for the other side. (Anyone want to bet how naive that reporters from the Wisconsin Gazette are?)
Besides, he's paying off his debt by doing something completely legal.
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(Anyone want to bet how naive that reporters from the Wisconsin Gazette are?)
The publication's tagline is "Progressive. Alternative." I don't think it's naivete.
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[grin]
And the people who read it and are genuinely shocked?
OR... does their bias blind them, causing the naive shock and rage?
Re: If you're wondering about Democrats (Score:2, Insightful)
Note however that fact doesn't make Scott Walker a scumbag - because he is - he's just not a scumbag for this.
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Or (c) from a different country and shocked at how unprincipled that bunch is now. I think even Nixon would blush.
That's code for "I'm grossly partisan against Walker."
Short attention span (Score:2)
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Clue that it is not the case is at the start of the first sentence.
Not if you're a big fan of the Wisconsin Gazette but don't realize your naivete.
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As for naive - US politics certainly looks like that at the moment. A fucking insane autocrat is attempting to lead a party with "republic" in that name as if George Washington didn't revolt to form a republic after getting out from under the rule of an insane autocrat - and people don't seem to notice! How fucking naive is that? A casino
More than once (Score:2)
I've thought it would be an unbelievably valuable idea to start a fake conservative blog to farm email lists of gullible dopes. I see that Scott Walker was ahead of me on this count. Well played, Herr Walker... well played.
Going in to debt (Score:1)
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It's not. The idea is to hold fundraisers and such to get others to pay for your campaign. You're not supposed to use your own money, silly.
Where is your sponsors Scott? (Score:2)
Republican Financial Acumen (Score:5, Funny)
"The campaign owed $1.2 million at the end of 2015 and has paid off about $308,000 since then, according to campaign finance records."
Did anyone expect anything else from an erstwhile rising star of the "party of fiscal responsibility?"
Or are they not even bothering to try to push that bullshit anymore?
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Why is this comment marked funny? Paying of 1/4 of a million-plus dollar debt in about nine months is (a) nothing to sneeze at, and (b) fiscally responsible. The campaign is repaying its loans. How is that not good? How is that not the right thing to do?
I'm not arguing whether it is right or just or ethical to go into debt to campaign for public office (from my naive understanding, nearly all major campaigns operate under a deficit spending model), but there's no way you can argue that making efforts to
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So making an attempt to pay off a debt somehow "erases" the irresponsibility of running up the debt in the first place?
You're saying that, not me.
I'm not arguing whether it is right or just or ethical to go into debt
BUT YOU JUST DID
Nope, I didn't. I argued about whether it is right or just or ethical TO PAY OFF ONE'S DEBTS.
And, should anyone else get all huffity, plenty of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, including our current sitting president, have racked up massive campaign debts. I make no judgement on whether going into debt to finance a campaign is good or not -- I accept it as the current standard behavior. Paying off one's debts (which seems to be a long-term problem for De
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You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. We won the mid-term elections, this is our due.
-- Dick Cheney (to Paul O'Neil)
Most budgets as given by Republican candidates would have blown up the deficit. As much as Trump has a budget (he's very fuzzy on specifics) would also blow up the budget.
Clinton cut the deficit. Obama has shrunk government (many who see Democrats only as spenders can not see that) and has shrunk the deficit a lot since his first year and the Great Recession. Eco
This is nothing new, and everyone does it... (Score:1)
Two methods of list-pimping (Score:2)
There are two different versions of list-pimping that are going on regarding e-mail lists:
It can be sold/rented for a fixed amount ($X).
OR
It can be sold/rented for a fixed percentage of the incoming donations (Y%).
An older article on Politico (Dec 2015) details the issue, where the candidate on the e-mail may not receive any of the money being donated.
http://www.politico.com/story/... [politico.com]
Rents out? (Score:3)
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One way to do it -- I have no idea if this is actually what they are doing -- would be to not actually give them the email list but instead to give them access to send messages to it via an intermediary. They'd never actually see who exactly they are contacting, and access can be revoked by blocking access to that intermediary.
Mailing list rental (Score:1)
Posting anon because I'm at work and work for a commercial mailer.
A lot of charities do this, and based on other comments, other politicians/parties to this. As for how it's done, the lists are usually rented for a limited number of mailings, usually one or two, and contain seeds to detect re-use. If a company uses a list again without paying for it, it will get noticed and they will basically get blackballed and be unable to rent a list again. There are several companies that handle this, and often a renta
Translation (Score:3)
"Scott Walker Rents Out Email and Donor Lists To Pay Campaign Debt"
Translation:
"Scott Walker Is A Scumbag Who Doesn't Give A Shit About Your Privacy"