It is a truism that a sucker is born every minute. That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but it doesn’t matter to scam artists as long as a reasonably high number of people are reliably gullible. It appears that the right wing suckers among us are getting fleeced with regularity.
Here’s the facts: An Iraq veteran is running for Congress against John Murtha. High Priestess of Evil Michelle Malkin doesn’t understand why he is being ignored, since he has raised a jaw dropping amount of money. Once again that “liberal media” is doing its nefarious worst. Well, not so fast:
In the most recent quarter Russell raised $669,534, almost all from out-of-state donors who presumably are on BMW Direct’s list of self-styled conservatives with a good track record of responding to direct-mail fundraising.
At the same time, he spent $442,990, almost all of it on expenses related to the direct mail effort and paid to BMW Direct and its affiliates (some of which share the same downtown Washington office).
The only expenses that appear to be spent on an actual campaign totaled about $20,000 for Web site design, a low-budget video and a campaign consultant based in Pennsylvania rather than Washington.
He reports having $269,953 in cash on hand. But he also reports debts totaling $242,521 — almost all for direct mail expenses to BMW Direct and its vendors.
So that leaves him only about $27,431 ahead — not much for a guy who’s raised a total of nearly $1 million this election cycle.
The folks at BMW have been very busy beavers for Republican candidates. (See here and here). It’s a great business model: collect money on behalf of sure losers; bill said sure losers for almost every dime you collect; then repeat. Apparently, these folks have a mailing list that would make P.T. Barnum turn green.
One could almost suspect that BMW Direct is a dirty tricks outfit operating out of the DNC, but apparently it’s not so.
It reminds me a bit of the Producers. These guys aren’t interested in winners. They’re looking for box office bombs. One must wonder whether the candidates could possibly be ignorant of all of this. Don’t they look at their own financial disclosures? Almost makes you wonder if the candidates themselves are in on the scam.
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