When Is One Dollar Worth Twenty?

  

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

A few days ago I wrote in this space about how some Republican presidential candidates were, in essence, purchasing donors for their campaigns in order to meet GOP requirements for participating in the first national debate of Republican candidates on August 23^rd in Milwaukee.  One of the requirements for a candidate to be in the first debate is that he or she must have 40,000 individual donors including at least 200 donors from twenty individual states.  A “donation” can be as little as a dollar.
 
Some of the GOP presidential candidates, not being averse to grifting, immediately set about trying to find shortcuts to getting the necessary donors.  One of the more egregious ploys that I mentioned in the original posting was the brainchild of Governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota, a rich white guy with the financial means to rig the game.  Burgum invested $1 million in $20 gift cards which he then promised to people who would donate at least a dollar to his campaign.  One dollar for twenty – not a bad deal!
 
Another of the candidates, Mayor Francis X. Suarez of Miami, Florida, set up a raffle for donations with the top prize being a ticket to see Lionel Messi’s American soccer debut.  Suarez also raffled off a year of free college tuition.  But Suarez, unlike Burgum, failed to hit his donor goal and had to come up with a new idea - so he stole Burgum’s.
 
Now Francis Suarez has also invested in $20 gift cards which he will give to donors who grease his palm with at least a dollar.  There is no word yet on exactly how many gift cards Mayor Suarez felt compelled to buy, or how many lucky “investors” will receive one.
 
While this whole scheme wreaks of fraud, the Federal Elections Commission has yet to rule it as crossing over into the realm of illegality.  But “investors” might want to hurry and send in their dollar donations, nevertheless, while everything is still legal – at last in theory.
 
Corporate America has been buying elections for generations, so it’s only fair that candidates get their turn, too – and the denizens of the party whose poorest members send donations to Trump every time he gets indicted or has a bad hair day should be easy pickings!
 
These candidate clowns would make P. T. Barnum blush!