A BuzzFlash News Alert
December 28, 2001
The Bush-Cheney Recount Donors
Yesterday it was announced that the remains of the Bush-Cheney Recount Fund, some $270,000, was given to the Republican National Committee.
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAULA6ORVC.html
A couple of very important items are revealed in that story:
1. "The Bush-Cheney recount committee was not required by federal law to disclose its donors to the government, so there is no public record of the source of the money."
2. The Bush-Cheney recount committee had promised potential donors that "any monies not expended for this purpose will be returned on a pro rata basis."
3. "The RNC is required by law to reveal who gives it money."
To the first problem, there actually is a public record, of sorts, of those who donated. One of our regular readers, Cathy, did a little digging and found this story:
The
Neverending Story: A Look at Donors to Bush's Recount Fund
http://www.opensecrets.org/alerts/v5/alertv5_64.asp
In the story above is a link to a search engine that allows you to dig through the donor names and see who gave what:
George
W. Bush: Presidential Recount Donors
http://www.opensecrets.org/2000elect/other/bush/recountdonorsform.asp
Among the more interesting donor names are Enron's Kenneth and Linda Lay ($5000 each), Donald Rumsfeld ($1000), Elaine Chao ($5000), and Karl C. Rove ($500). Plus, there are plenty of Bushs, Cheneys, and Powells on the list, many from Texas.
To the problems inherent in promising a return of an investment and not getting it back and the RNC's reluctance to offer any more insight into the donation than that it came from the Bush-Cheney Recount Fund, we can only hope someone with the investigative resources and a legal defense fund will uncover this typical display of arrogance, wealth and, most importantly, defiance of the law.
More than likely, as with all unsavory Bush-Cheney things, the media will sweep the story under the public attention rug and we'll hear no more of it.
But, as Cathy said, "Seems that Republicans thought that all traces of the names were gone when they removed them from the Recount Fund site, huh? Guess they've never realized that the net is like a pillow full of feathers... open those pillows and let the feathers fly in the wind (like the net) and it's impossible to retrieve all the feathers!"
BuzzFlash hopes to continue finding those feathers and alerting our readers to there whereabouts.
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