NY Times Editor Jill Abramson Links 2010 GOP Giving to Nixon, Watergate Era of Illegality
On the front of the New York Times Sunday Week in Review, Managing Editor Jill Abramson tried to link anonymous pro-Republican donors of the 2010 election cycle to illegal campaign donations made to Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign: “Return of the Secret Donors -- In 2010, corporate cash, anonymous contributions and other echoes of Watergate.” Enforcing the link, the top half of the section was dominated by a collage of photos of Nixon and his secretary Rose Mary Woods, circa 1972.
It's clear that the Times hates the idea that corporations may have a say, however indirectly, in democracy. But one would at least think that a journalist comparing the perfectly legal corporation donation tactics of today to illegal fundraising by past political campaigns would look for the most recent examples. Perhaps the Clinton administration’s corrupt 1996 fundraising from China, or the indelible image of Al Gore raising money in a Buddhist temple.
Instead, Abramson traveled all the way back to 1972 to link the anonymous corporate donations of 2010 to that quintessential example of Republican corruption, Richard Nixon.
Even as Abramson briefly admits today’s allegedly Nixon-style fundraising is legal, she strained to set up a parallel between this pro-Republican election cycle and the illegal donations of 1972, specifically the Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CREEP), and handily exploited a single loose link from the past to the present, one Fred Malek. Abramson began with Nixon:
To old political hands, wise to the ways of candidates and money, 1972 was a watershed year. Richard M. Nixon’s re-election campaign was awash in cash, secretly donated by corporations and individuals.
Fred Wertheimer, a longtime supporter of campaign finance regulation, was then a lawyer for Common Cause. He vividly recalls the weeks leading up to April 7, 1972, before a new campaign finance law went into effect requiring the disclosure of the names of individual donors. “Contributors,” he said, “were literally flying into Washington with satchels of cash.”
The Committee for the Re-Election of the President was also illegally hauling in many millions of dollars from corporations, many of which felt pressured into making contributions.
The record of donors was so tightly held that it was kept in a locked drawer by Rose Mary Woods, Nixon’s secretary. The list -- which came to be known as “Rose Mary’s Baby” -- wasn’t released until Mr. Wertheimer forced the issue through a lawsuit. Among those on the list were William Keeler, the chief executive of Phillips Petroleum, who pleaded guilty, during the post-Watergate prosecutions, to making an illegal corporate donation.
Rose Mary’s Baby itself, now an artifact of the nation’s biggest political scandal, sits in the Watergate collection of the National Archives.
In this year’s midterm elections, there is no talk of satchels of cash from donors. Nor is there any hint of illegal actions reaching Watergate-like proportions. But the fund-raising practices that earned people convictions in Watergate -- giving direct corporate money to a campaign and doing so secretly -- are back in a different form in 2010.
This time around, the corporations are still giving secretly, but legally. In 1907, direct corporate donations to candidates were legally barred in a campaign finance reform push by President Theodore Roosevelt. But that law and others -- the foundation for many Watergate convictions -- are all but obsolete. This is why many supporters of strict campaign finance laws are wringing their hands.
Abramson spent a paragraph admitting Democrats have previously used money from outside groups illegally and that Democratic-affiliated groups “substantially outspent Republican groups” in the last three campaign cycles. Yet Abramson pardoned the Dems, since at least they “were required to disclose donors’ identities.” Then she made the Nixon-2010 GOP link explicit, or so she appeared to think.
Still, some players shaking the corporate money trees for nonprofit groups this year cut their teeth in the Nixon re-election campaign. There is Fred Malek, a founder of the American Action Network, whose members include many well-known Republicans, like former Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota. Mr. Malek was the White House personnel chief in 1972 and helped dispense patronage for major Nixon donors as well as serving as deputy director of Creep.
Abramson linked the illegality of some of Nixon’s fundraising to that of pro-Republican donations of 2010, where no illegality has been shown.
With so many different Republican groups spending so much, he said, no desk drawer is big enough to hold the 2010 list of secret donors, like the one that held his hard-fought-for Rose Mary’s Baby.
So where was the Times' s concern over anonymous campaign donors when the beneficiary was Barack Obama? When the paper did deign to cover the story, on October 6, 2008, the Times ran this nothing-to-see-here headline: “G.O.P. Query Involves 1% of Giving to Obama.”
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Comments
I presume Abramson is saying this
Submitted by ThisnThat on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 8:20am.
...because she hasn't been "contaminated" by any outside process that exposes her to rational, fact-based thought processes, or by an urge to present reasonable findings to her audience.
Nope -- Abramson is a pure NYT writer -- spewing forth from her employer-enforced and comfortable cocoon, while the real world passes her by completely unnoticed.
__________
“Didn't win the Medal of Honor? Didn't even serve? Then lie about it. We'll support you." — 9th Circuit Court
Isn't the New York Times a Corporation
Submitted by libBuster on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 8:37am.
Isn't the New York Times a corporation. Abramson should be aghast at its spending on elections. For it serves as a political advocacy group just as sure as Karl Roves group.
While we are at it, why don't these Times people show true concern for the enviornment and save trees by doing away with their print edition?
It's a corporation, all right...
Submitted by ThisnThat on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 8:47am.
but since it doesn't make a profit anymore, it's not an evil corporation.
__________
“Didn't win the Medal of Honor? Didn't even serve? Then lie about it. We'll support you." — 9th Circuit Court
Give it time
Submitted by Franksam on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 10:41am.
It looks like they're working on that as hard as they can already.
Libs are always searching for a new Watergate
Submitted by motherbelt on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 8:50am.
Those were the "glory days" and they are constantly trying to recapture that feeling.
Regarding the linked 2008 NYT article, it had this to say about Obama's foreign donations:
Donations from overseas are legal if the donor is an American citizen or has a green card. But federal candidates are barred from accepting contributions from other foreign citizens.
The Republican National Committee was hard pressed to furnish definitive proof that this was occurring with Mr. Obama.
With that it was dismissed.
But, as I pointed out in Tim's thread, Byron Calame simply saying
I am sure News Corp. is giving money to Democrats, but nothing like those amounts
with ZERO proof, just that Calame is sure, is good enough. And for the record, Mr. Calame AND Ms. Abramson, here is OpenSecrets.org's breakdown of where NewsCorps money went this year (hover over the red/blue graph to see amounts:Nah. Abaramson and her
Submitted by HockeyKid on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 9:51am.
Nah. Abaramson and her cronies at the NYT are trying to HAVE a Watergate Moment. Woodward and Bernstein worked for the Washington Post--the NYT wiffed on Watergate. Poor widdle wibs.
"Beauty is only skin deep, but liberal's to the bone." - me
while she looks the other way
Submitted by spepper on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 8:33am.
Oh yes, according to her kind, ONLY Republicans are guilty of "illegal" campaign contributions-- whle she looks the other way and ignores the highly questionable (unindicted?) contributions of the 2008 Obama campaign.....
The media has covered up and
Submitted by mattm on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 9:54am.
The media has covered up and has been complicit with the systemic corruption of the Democrat Party for over 80 years. Watergate is one of the tricks they use to distract people from this fact.
Same old recycled sh*t...
Submitted by JLin on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 8:54am.
ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR, PBS, CNN, MSNBC.... Every election cycle the Liberal networks start up their disingenuous retrospectives. Camelot, Nixon, Watergate, Pentagon Papers, Iran Contra. It's like clockwork. It's a tired strategy that the Independents whom it's aimed at are now wise to.
De-legitimizing the victory
Submitted by KC Mulville on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 9:06am.
Knowing they're going to lose, they're trying to paint the victory as illegitimate. What else can they do?
Losers.
Exactly. With the president
Submitted by motherbelt on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 9:12am.
Exactly. With the president leading the way, saying that times are bad, the voters are scared, so they're not "thinking straight."
Poor, stupid Americans; they're about to vote against their best interests again.
Jill, you ignorant glut!
Submitted by Cool Arrow on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 9:09am.
Shall we mark you down as condemning Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the Norman Hsu, ChiCom bundling malfeasance?
Jill, you do know Hill and Barry's benefactor, Norman Hsu is serving time for their corruption, don't you?
Don't you love it?
Submitted by motherbelt on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 9:14am.
All those people, going back to B.C.....(Bill Clinton) doing time for illegally donating, while no one ever got in trouble for accepting those illegal donations.
And tell us
Submitted by hbnolikeee on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 9:12am.
What groups do you link to the 2008 BO election where 400 million dollars (at least) came from overseas either directly or through unions?
Let's dig in to that for a bit.
Watergate my butt!
Please Include
Submitted by Caringwhiteguy on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 10:34am.
Clay - Whenever I think or speak about Jill I always include the following qualifier . . . Jill Abramson, "A face for radio and a voice for print". That should help put things in proper perspective for everyone.
During Watergate journalism
Submitted by Gat New York on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 10:03am.
During Watergate journalism was still a legitimate profession. Newspaper editors demanded facts and proof.
This now the era of yellow journalism where you can invent anything to support a position.
Obama and Axelrod have been hammered on their complete absence of evidence with their attacks on the Chamber of Commerce and Karl Rove. And voters do not care about this issue at all.
But to trump up a fabricated story and link it to Watergate is further evidence that mainstream journalism has sunk into an unethical abyss.
Campaign Fail
Submitted by Free Stinker on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 11:24am.
Looks like the "Hail Mary" play (falsely crying "racism!") didn't work, so now time to try a few more "trick" plays./// Sarah Palin Fan since July 11, 2007 /// خال
How about the political
Submitted by Chris Norman on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 12:11pm.
How about the political donations the media make to the Democrats each and every day through their lap dog/attack dog services? Priceless.
Good grief, what next? Will
Submitted by mnemosyne23 on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 12:11pm.
Good grief, what next? Will they link opposition to Bloomberg's name being floated for Treasury Secretary to the Burr/Hamilton duel in 1804?
"In echoes of the 1804 gun duel between sitting Vice-President Aaron Burr and former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, man on the street interviews have revealed that most Americans don't think Bloomberg knows the first thing about how to run the Treasury."
Completely unrelated, with absolutely no correlation whatsoever. But since when has that stopped the media?
----
"Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils."
~General John Stark, 1809
Teapot Dome and the mink coat in the White House...
Submitted by samhermanmd on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 1:50pm.
...are the next ancient scandals to be recycled.
These liberal relics are trying so hard to retain relevancy by reliving some imagined past glories. Every tactic they have tried has failed miserably and nobody is buying this time.
I hope she did some
Submitted by wiwf on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 12:29pm.
I hope she did some stretching before she did a REACH like this!Why Nixon - not Clinton. Revisting illegal campaign activities
Submitted by Gary Hall on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 1:23pm.
Revisting illegal campaign activities - Why Nixon - not Clinton? Why not these foreign nationals?
Jan. 2001 JAMES RIADY PLEADS GUILTY WILL PAY LARGEST FINE IN CAMPAIGN FINANCE HISTORY FOR VIOLATING FEDERAL ELECTION LAW
WASHINGTON, D.C. - James Tjahaja Riady will pay a record $8.6 million in criminal fines and plead guilty to a felony charge of conspiring to defraud the United States by unlawfully reimbursing campaign donors with foreign corporate funds in violation of federal election law, the Justice Department's Campaign Financing Task Force and the United States Attorney in Los Angeles announced today.
In addition, LippoBank California, a California state-chartered bank affiliated with Lippo Group, will plead guilty to 86 misdemeanor counts charging its agents, Riady and John Huang, with making illegal foreign campaign contributions from 1988 through 1994.
Riady is one of 26 people and two corporations charged by the Campaign Financing Task Force, which was established four years ago by Attorney General Janet Reno to investigate allegations of campaign financing abuses in the 1996 election cycle.
Under the terms of the plea agreement, filed today in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, Riady, a citizen of the Republic of Indonesia, will surrender himself to the jurisdiction of the court, despite the lack of an extradition treaty between the United States and Indonesia. Once he surrenders himself, Riady will then plead guilty to the felony charge contained within the information, enter a plea on behalf of LippoBank to the 86 misdemeanor charges contained within the information, pay $8,610,000 in fines levied against himself and LippoBank, and cooperate with the government's investigation.
The $8.6 million fine represents the largest sanction imposed in a campaign finance matter in the history of the United States.
Why would, when the national MSM is so focused on foreign contributions to the US election process as well as potenital corruption surrounding such, want to remember Bill Clinton, James Tjahaja Riady and LippoBank, John Huang, Pornipol "Pauline" Kanchanalak , David Chang, Cha-Kuek Koo, Yi Chu and Man Ho, Maria Hsia, Yah Lin "Charlie" Trie, Lawrence Penna, Howard Glicken, Mark B. Jimenez , Nora and Gene Lum, Johnny Chung, and others?
Just putting it out..
(;~/ gary
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