It’s hard to decide which is filthier: money or politics. Big money donors always get their moneys-worth whether it is a legislative favor or that plum job. Sometimes you don’t even need to use your own money to buy influence; such is the case with “bundlers.” Bundlers do just as the name suggests: they bundle together money from donors with deep pockets to give to political campaigns. This week the latest Obama payback came to light when it was announced that the president was nominating one of his top money bundlers to a diplomatic post.
When you scratch the president’s back you usually get your back scratched in return and it doesn’t really matter if you have the qualifications for a position or not. While us common folks were busily living our lives, distracted by the president’s death-to-Osama tour and Romney’s victory lap, President Obama nominated a top campaign bundler to be the next U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands.
Before you fault Obama, first realize that there’s a long tradition of presidents granting diplomatic posts to big-money fundraisers; it didn’t start with Obama and surely won’t end with him. Because we sit back and accept this kind of political money payback we get what we deserve.
The latest back-scratching beneficiary is Maryland lawyer Timothy Broas nominated to become the next Dutch ambassador. It doesn’t matter if Mr. Broas has any diplomatic experience as many of his predecessors didn’t either.
Broas was a big-money bundler helping raise more than $500,000 for the president’s 2012 reelection effort. Campaign laws don’t allow a single money donor to contribute more than $2,500, but bundlers act as a donation clearinghouse effectively skirting the law. Broas served as a fundraising point-person, collecting money and then bundling it together to donate to the campaign.
In the foul world of politics bundlers are generally rewarded in some fashion; it’s the emblematic pay-for-play. The Center for Responsive Politics estimated that Obama nominated two-dozen fundraisers to ambassador positions within his first year in office.
Are you surprised these matters never come up in the news? Don’t be. Just accept that it’s just another “they all do it” excuse and the mainstream media happily buries the dirty little payoff.
Broas works at the law firm Winston & Strawn, representing high-profile clients like UBS Securities and Papa John’s International. Lawyers in big time law firms often bill their clients in excess of $500 an hour; so what’s a few $2,500 donations to bundle together to get that perfect no-stress job. Could you find a lower visibility job than Ambassador to the Netherlands? When was the last time you can remember a major crisis developing that involved people wearing wooden shoes?
Just two years ago Obama appointed Broas to a trustee position with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars(WWICS); a precursor to a nomination to a diplomatic post? Would it be a stretch to assume that Broas was given the position with WWICS with the understanding that if he bundled enough money together for the 2012 election there would be bigger and better positions to come?
Remember when Obama was going to come to Washington to change things?
Of the nearly 80 ambassadorship nominations or confirmations since Obama’s Inauguration, 56 percent were given to political appointees and 44 percent have gone to career diplomats, according to records kept by the American Foreign Service Association.
More than two dozen Obama money bundlers, who together organized and solicited more than $10 million in donations during the 2008 campaign, have now been dispatched to some of the world’s greatest locations.
Charles H. Rivkin, a Los Angeles-based children’s television executive and an $800,000 bundler, is in Paris; Alan Solomont, a Boston-based investor and $500,000 money bundler, is in Madrid; Louis B. Susman, a Chicago investor and $500,000 money bundler, is in London; and former Virginia lieutenant governor Don Beyer, a $745,000 bundler, is in Bern, Switzerland.
Nicole Avant, a member of a Motown family dynasty who is credited with bundling up to $800,000 for Obama, was granted the coveted and cushy ambassadorship in Nassau, Bahamas.
The American people are suffering under the longest lasting economic downturn in American history and our president is passing out coveted jobs like candy; just another chapter in the history of political corruption and we the people are nothing but a bunch of suckers.