Unity08 may be dead, but the tribute band is coming.

AmericanPresident2012 is a website that will, according to its “Mission Statement”:

The purpose of AmericanPresident2012.com is to bring back to the American people the vision that was The United States Of America. We are motivated to identify what is broken in our political system and dedicated to repairing the damage that has been done. We shall at all times stay true to our core values and always strive to maintain the strong moral principles that our country was built on; by promoting constitutional freedom, by educating our communities, by encouraging our neighbors, and by providing a venue for common everyday people to voice their beliefs, and a means to get the job done. By doing these simple things together, we will return American Government back into the hands of the American People where it belongs by the next presidential election in 2012.

Er, what is AmericanPresident2012 going to do again? The About Us page says it will, er:

It was during a spring get-together in early 2008 that the plan to create a new way to get people involved in politics was first conceived. A wise crack, a spark of brilliance, and a toast spawned the original idea that Mona Burtz just couldn’t let go.

While talking about the presidential campaign, the candidates, their avoidance of the important issues, and the public’s lack of enthusiasm about the candidates, Mona’s brother Curtis made the comment about how the whole campaign might be a lot more interesting if it was put on like “American Idol.” As everyone laughed and nodded in agreement, Curtis spouted, “At least the ratings would be better.” When she heard that statement, Mona, known for her offbeat and successful marketing ideas, latched on to the whole media campaigning concept and refused to let go. A few days later, she was bouncing the concept for AmericanPresident2012.com off of friends and family. It wasn’t long until she had recruited a small team that included her husband Jon, her brother Curtis and a close family friend, Ken. The team met every week, and often several times a week hammering out ideas and details, timelines and legalities. After more than a year, a lot of hard work, and a whole lot of determination, AmericanPresident2012.com is here and ready to positively change the way Americans look at everything political, from the election process to the way we handle the critical issues facing our country and the world.

The scope of this project has been an incredibly huge undertaking. Everyday, each of us on the AmericanPresident2012.com team realize how critically important it is for all of us to get involved in the day-to-day happenings of our government and to play an active role in the administration and control of our government, of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Herm. Come on, let’s give it one more go. What will AmericanPresident2012 do? The FAQ:

We’d like to see what you would do if you were president, vote for our favorite candidates, and support a presidential and vice-presidential team as write-in candidates for the 2012 election. Pretty simple.

Well, there you go. But how do we know AmericanPresident2012 won’t just go down in flames like Unity08?

Well, for one thing, this operation is meant to be profitable. The website is already peppered with advertisements for Beaches, Sandals and the website owner’s marketing business. The website’s terms of service reads:

Members consent to receive commercial email messages from AmericanPresident2012.com, and acknowledge and agree that their email addresses and other personal information may be used by AmericanPresident2012.com for the purpose of initiating commercial email messages and notifications.

That’s right, you’ve got spam!

The terms of service AmericanPresident2012 also reserves the right to kick you off their website and to delete anything you write if, in their sole interest, what you write on the website is “objectionable.” Unity08 eventually did all this, but they made the mistake of first stating openly that their website was open to all to say their peace. AmericanPresident2012 has learned: no open forum this time!

But what about AmericanPresident2012’s privacy policy? Is your personal information protected in any way from commercial use? As of this morning, the following is the complete content of AmericanPresident2012’s “Privacy Policy”:

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Finally, if you read through their website closely, you’ll notice that AmericanPresident2012 nowhere actually promises to run a presidential campaign, provide any resources to candidates, engage in a free or fair or legitimate nominating election or do any of that democracy crapola that Unity08 promised. Nah. AmericanPresident2012 will have an online poll of some sort, and then the winners can go ahead and run as write-in candidates… just like anybody can do already, anyway.

Oh, I’m just a-rarin’ to go on this one. Right after I pick enough lint out of my belly button to knit a nice sweater.

Thanks to 123kid for sharing a link to the final court decision of DC District Judge Richard W. Roberts in the case of Unity08 v. FEC. Unity08 was a registered corporation with plans to nominate its own candidates for president and vice president in the world’s first national secure online convention in the spring of 2008. Clearly, that didn’t come to pass, but Unity08 wanted it to happen, and as part of its efforts it sued the FEC for the right not only to accept gigantic “loans” at zero percent interest but to hide the sourcing and terms of such loans from the public.

In last fall’s final ruling on the subject, Judge Roberts declared in favor of the FEC, with the reasoning that the fronting of a presidential ticket by a corporation like Unity08 on the basis of undisclosed loans left an opening for significant corruption:

The plaintiffs acknowledge that the “concern that contributions to the candidate could result in
quid pro quo corruption or its appearance is what justifies the impingement on protected speech.” (Pls.’ Mem. at 10 (emphasis in original).) Yet they fail to consider that the appearance of quid pro quo corruption is present when a candidate receives the benefit of appearing on a party ballot - - a ten to twelve million dollar benefit - - solely due to the efforts of Unity08.

Transparent reporting of the amount and terms of loans — required by FEC regulations — is what Unity08 should have been engaging in all along.

As a sort of post-mortem, today I looked back at the IRS donation and expenditure records of Unity08 in the summer and fall of last year. No donations to Unity08 were made during during that period, and expenditures of just $67 were reported. Nothing’s been written about Douglas L. Bailey, the figure most centrally behind Unity08, since July of 2008, when writers referred to his role in the Ford presidential campaign.

The unity08.com webpage has fully reverted to an advertisement for Peak Creative Media, the Republican public relations firm within which Unity08 began. Peak Creative Media has begun featuring Unity08 prominently in its portfolio of creations:

Unity08 is superdead. I’m not sure it was ever independently alive.

It’s a fairly important substantive question being considered in the Unity08 v. FEC lawsuit, filed back in January of 2007: ought groups attempting to engineer the election of third-party figures as presidential candidates to obey the fundraising restrictions of political action committees, which restrict contributions to $5,000 per person and require the amounts, terms and conditions of loans to be disclosed? Or should they be allowed to take very large contributions from single people and hide the terms of the large loans given to them by individuals — loans that may turn out to be no-interest, payback-optional backdoor contributions? In short, should inside players be able to front presidential bids without bothering to garner the support of a widespread donor base?

A year and a half later, and a year after arguments were completed in the case, Judge Richard W. Roberts has still refused to rule in the case, even though Unity08 has continued to persist as a nominal organization for the purpose of seeing the lawsuit to its conclusion. The last development, the last big change in the case? On May 14 2008, one of the lawyers for Unity08 informed the court of a change in his address.

Something’s more than a wee bit off-kilter here.

As the 2008 election cycle moves forward without the utterly defunct Unity08, I thought it might be instructive to look at the pattern of donations made by Unity08 leadership to other political campaigns. But it turns out that the biggest pattern of members of the Unity08 Founders Council is of non-contribution: 28 of the 31 Founders Council members have made no campaign contributions whatsoever in the 2007-2008 election cycle. Catherine Dunham has contributed $500 to Barack Obama. David Maney has contributed $3,000 to a Republican PAC, Republican Senator Norm Coleman, and $1,000 to Mitt Romney for President. Tom Stroock has contributed $2350 to Republicans and conservative Democrats in Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska. There is no coherent tendency in the contribution data. There is no Unity.

Are you heading to the Unity08 presidential nominating convention? Let’s set this page up as the unofficial Rider Board. If you have space in your car to spare, say so. If you need a ride, say so. Be sure to indicate where you’re driving from and your e-mail so you can coordinate schedules!

Hee. Yes, this is the month that the fake-grassroots public relations corporate disaster called Unity08 promised to have its presidential nominating convention. Didn’t work out so much.

One of my favorite quotes from the group:

“Did you know that 99% of American voters have NO say in who is picked to run for president on the party tickets? Unless you live in Iowa or New Hampshire, you’re left out in the cold. And everyone knows, these two races (and how filled the campaign coffers are) dictates what happens in the rest of the country.” — Sam Waterston, Unity08 corporate spokesbrow.

I’ll always have those happy times to remember. Family members and kids’ teachers appointed to executive boards. Missed FEC filing deadlines. Secret funders. Sharing office space with Republican operatives and the Draft Bloomberg Committee. Sigh. Misty colored memories of the way we werrrrrrrrrrrrrrre…

Inside operators within the beltway of Washington, DC love to tell the rest of us how it has to be, and how anybody who thinks otherwise is just naive and wouldn’t understand. The next time you hear some DC insider telling you how it has to be, remember this:

Sam Waterston made a speech in February of 2008 as a spokesreader for Unity08, the outfit made up of DC insiders who knew for sure how it had to be. This is part of the script they wrote for him:

“Did you know that 99% of American voters have NO say in who is picked to run for president on the party tickets? Unless you live in Iowa or New Hampshire, you’re left out in the cold. And everyone knows, these two races (and how filled the campaign coffers are) dictates what happens in the rest of the country.”

How did that insider opinion that “everyone knows” work out? The next time some insider tells you that your ideals just cannot be realized because that’s just not the way things are, remember.

The Draft Bloomberg Committee reports in its 1st Quarter Disclosure that it received a $1,288 contribution from Unity08 on March 4, 2008. Unity08 reports no such contribution to the Draft Bloomberg Committee in its 1st Quarter report (filed two days late and just now made available). Both Unity08 and the Draft Bloomberg Committee report other activities continuing through the end of the 1st Quarter of 2008.

Reinforcing the conclusion that Unity08 and the Draft Bloomberg Committee (despite insisting that they were separate organizations) were actually housed in the same office, Unity08 reports making a separate payment of $1,041 on February 15, 2008 to the Draft Bloomberg Committee for “reimbursement of telephone and office expenses” … which would be very hard to explain unless Unity08 and the Draft Bloomberg Committee were sharing the same telephone and office.

Very curious. If you’d like to find out exactly how Unity08 and the Draft Bloomberg Committee were intertwined, you’ll have to ask Doug Bailey, the Republican political operative who founded both groups and who… seems to have fallen off the face of the Earth.

Happy April 15! This isn’t just the day you need to file your tax return. It’s also the day that political organizations not regulated by the FEC are required to file their 1st Quarter disclosures of political contributions with the Internal Revenue Service.

Well, looky looky. I see the Draft Bloomberg Committee has indeed filed its form 8872 with the IRS.

Guess what organization made a monetary contribution to the Draft Bloomberg Committee in the 1st Quarter of 2008?

I’ll give you a hint… it has something to do with this:

Over at Donklephant, former Unity08 Vice President Bob Roth (who now writes from the e-mail address info@draftbloomberg.com) declared that “Unity08 was not a process of tranfering, redirecting, re-allocating, re-structuring, re-constituting, or re-organizing into a pro-Bloomberg effort. No member information or money was moved from one organization to the other. They are completely separate organizations.”

Unity08 Founder Douglas L. Bailey also insisted in his opening news conference earlier this month that the Draft Bloomberg Committee is “totally separate” from Unity08 and the two used their contacts with The Hill to arrange an interview there in which they also insist that the Draft Bloomberg Committee and Unity08 are “completely separate.”

Yes, Virginia. Unity08 gave $1,288 to the Draft Bloomberg Committee on March 4, 2008.

How very curious for an organization that swore up and down in its FAQ:

What candidate are you doing this for?

No one.

Very curious indeed.

Unity08 filed its lawsuit against the FEC, trying to sue for the right to take donations of unlimited size, on January 10, 2007. The last substantive filing in the case was in May of 2007. Unity08 continues to profess its meager existence if for no other reason than to reach some resolution with the case. But public records reveal that Judge Richard W. Roberts of the DC District Court has failed to make any ruling in the case.

Rulings in federal elections law are time-dependent, and the case has large implications for how campaigns and campaign support structures are run. Can someone explain to me why Judge Roberts would sit on this case for 10 months and give it no resolution? If you’re a lawyer, can you explain to someone like me who lacks a law degree whether this is at all unusual, and if not, why?

Despite protestations to the contrary by Unity08 staffers, Unity08 did not shut down when it and the Draft Bloomberg committee shared the same business address. It’s not just that the Unity08.com website itself said that Unity08 was “forced to scale back - not cease - our operations.” Unity08 has had its lawyers file a motion to expedite consideration of its lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission — a lawsuit to grant Unity08 the right to take campaign contributions of unlimited size and unlimited loans with undisclosed terms.

This latest motion filed by Unity08 asks DC circuit Judge Richard W. Roberts “for expedited consideration of the crossmotions for summary judgment in this case that are now pending before it.” In other words, Unity08 is asking Judge Roberts to hurry the hell up and get his work done. I sympathize with Unity08 on this point: the incorporated organization filed its lawsuit nearly a year and two months ago, and its last susbstantial filing was in May of 2007. The case is not immensely complicated and it is time-dependent. Yet Judge Roberts and his staff have sat on their hands and issued no rulings in the case since last summer. Roberts owes Unity08 and those who supported it an explanation for his tardiness; his inattention has potentially impacted a presidential election.

While I have procedural sympathy for Unity08, I have no substantive sympathy for it. The plan, says Unity08, was to seek “to obtain from certain supporters loans of $100,000 or more.” The funny thing is, a very large majority of the contributions obtained by Unity08 did indeed come in the form of such large loans (with mysteriously undisclosed terms). So if Unity08 was already taking in these big megaloans, why was it filing a lawsuit?

Unity08 explains in its latest filing:

A number of individuals otherwise prepared to make loans in these larger amounts have been unwilling to do so because of the Commission’s ruling… A favorable ruling in the near term may make it possible to revive Unity08 through substantial loans from those individuals who have expressed a willingness to make such loans but not in the face of legal uncertainty about their exposure to possible liability for doing so.

Oh! So Unity08 wants to take on even more megaloans from wealthy donors it has lined up to fund a presidential bid, making its effort to win for some unnamed person the rulership of the nation even more heavily funded by the very, very rich…

… because, you know, it’s not like a presidential bid can soar, raking in nearly $30 million in cash in just one month’s time when some 90 percent of donors give $100 or less to the campaign.

Oh, wait, yes it is. Yes, it is exactly like that, as a matter of fact.

If Unity08 had been as electrifying as Barack Obama has been to the nation, it would have had no trouble meeting its monetary needs. Unity08 had lots of opportunities with cable news and national newspapers and national magazines and late-night TV shows to make its pitch. Unity08 had a lot of opportunities to catch on. The American people rejected the message and tactics of Unity08. That is why Unity08 has been a miserable failure.

In January of 2007, Unity08 CEO Douglas L. Bailey posed for a video camera in front of the Capitol Building and rolled out a Clean Money Pledge. Bailey challenged members of the public to sign on to a statement in which they committed to the following verbatim text:

I will only vote for a presidential candidate who has raised more than half of his/her funds through small contributions of $250 or less.

Bailey simultaneously described why he thought the Clean Money Pledge was appropriate “for all candidates to follow”:

Clean Money Pledge is an effort to — by Unity08 and its supporters to encourage the candidates for President to do what we will do, which is to fund — to do what Unity08 will do. And that is to fund its entire efforts ultimately with contributions well over 50 percent of the funds raised would be in contributions of $250 or less. We think that’s an appropriate effort, given the capacities of the Internet, for all candidates to follow. And so we’ve encouraged them to do it.

Douglas Bailey even sent letters to all the presidential candidates on December 25 2006, demanding that they meet his Clean Money standard:

Unity08 sent a letter the week of December 25 to every possible or likely presidential candidate informing them of this new campaign and asking them to commit now to adopting this self-imposed limit and generate more than half of their total contributions in small, $250 increments or less.

An Alexa internet cache of the unity08.com website from January 18, 2007 reveals the text of Douglas L. Bailey’s letter to all the presidential candidates:

Unity08 has asked the presidential contenders to answer our call and go on the record with a commitment that the majority of their campaign funds will come from small contributions. The letter we are sending to all possible presidential candidates is provided below.

AND we’ll keep you, the press and the public updated on who’s taken the pledge and who hasn’t.

Unity08 Clean Money Pledge Letter to Prospective 2008 Presidential Candidates

The letter below was sent during the week of December 25th to potential democratic and republican presidential candidates. We have posted the letter we sent to Sen. Hillary Clinton as an example.

Dear Senator Clinton:

This will notify you in advance that Unity08 is encouraging voters to sign online the “Clean Money Pledge” which reads as follows:

“Change in Washington starts at the top. I will only vote for a presidential candidate who has raised at least half of his/her funds through small contributions of $250 or less. I am sick and tired of power in Washington built on lobbying money and special interests.”

The great success of those presidential campaigns which relied on online fundraising in the 2000 and 2004 contests – and the continuing growth in the use of the internet for financial transactions from banking to shopping – is convincing evidence of the feasibility of this approach. Please be assured that we will notify all who sign the pledge of any decision by 2008 candidates to adopt this self-imposed limit – and, should the campaigns wish, where the pledge signers may make online contributions to them.

Unity08 believes strongly that it will take presidential leadership to restore public confidence in the ethics of Washington, and the place to start is the campaign. When TIME makes the American online users their person of the year, it is obvious they have the power to start a transformation of American politics in an hour of great national need.

We have set the level at contributions not to exceed $250 because that ensures that each such contribution can be matched by federal funds for campaigns that have met the defined legal threshold.

More details about Unity08’s Clean Money Pledge can be found at www.unity08.com. We welcome any thoughts or feedback you may have. Happy New Year!

Barack Obama raised 47% of his campaign funds in the 4th Quarter of 2007 from donations of $200 or less, and a quick review on my part of 4th quarter 2007 donations to Obama at levels from $201-$250 suggests that an additional 3.7% ($780,000 or so) of his 4th quarter money came from this group. That puts Barack Obama at more than 50% of total contributions coming from donations of $250 or less.

Bailey said would publicly recognize presidential candidates who met his Clean Money standard. Well, Obama just met that standard. Has Bailey made public note of it? No, just as Bailey made no note of the fact that Democratic presidential candidate Mike Gravel also satisfied the Clean Money Pledge. Instead, Bailey has surfaced to complain to the New York Daily News that it will be hard for him to get his campaign for billionaire Michael Bloomberg off the ground because Barack Obama is black.

In Unity08’s financial reports to the IRS for 2007 (split into a report for the 1st half of 2007 and another report for the 2nd half of 2007), the sum total of all contributions for 2007 is $1,550,226.

There are many important pieces of information to sift through in these two reports. But the figure that jumps out most immediately is that a majority amount of all contributions to Unity08 in the year 2007 came from just five people:

1. Robert Bingham, corporate executive and investor of his own considerable funds.
Total contribution to Unity08 in 2007: $817,452.00.
Amount of contribution in form of loans: $812,452.000.
Terms of loans: undisclosed.

Curiously, $255,000 of Bingham’s monetary contributions occurred before news emerged that Douglas Bailey was ousted as CEO of Unity08 and Robert Bingham was to be the new CEO of Unity08 in public, on June 4 of 2007 on KPBS.

2. George Vradenburg, Past VP for Global and Strategy Policy at AOL, current President of the Vradenburg Foundation, current Member Council on Foreign Relations.
Total contribution to Unity08 in 2007: $105,000.
Amount of contribution in form of loans: $100,000.
Terms of loans: undisclosed.

3. Martin “Marty” Capdevilla, founder and president of Frontier Trading Inc.
Total contribution to Unity08 in 2007: $100,000.
Amount of contribution in form of loans: $100,000.
Terms of loans: undisclosed.

4. Roger Craver, Chairman of CMS, a direct marketing corporation.
Total contribution to Unity08 in 2007: $50,000.
Amount of contribution in form of loans: $50,000.
Terms of loans: undisclosed.

5. Douglas L. Bailey, Republican political consultant.
Total contribution to Unity08 in 2007: $30,714.
Amount of contribution in form of loans: $30,714.
Terms of loans: undisclosed.

For a number of months in 2007, Unity08 showed a big money bar on its Unity08.com home page with the total of well over a million dollars as an indicator of its success. But 70.5% of Unity08’s contributions in the year 2007 came from these five wealthy individuals in the form of loans. Why, 52.4% of Unity08’s contributions in the year 2007 came from just one mega-wealthy individual, an individual who took over the Unity08 corporation after making hundreds of thousands of dollars of these loans to it.

Robert Bingham describes himself as an “angel investor,” someone who sweeps in and provides funding to struggling efforts with the expectation of some return in the future. What kind of return did Bingham expect from his investment? What were the terms of the loans made by Bingham, Vradenburg, Capdevilla, Craver and Bailey? I don’t know. The terms of the loans are undisclosed.

In January of 2007, Douglas L. Bailey made an announcement. Bailey was then the CEO of Unity08, to be ousted in a few months by “angel investor” Bingham and his mega-loans. As Unity08 CEO, Bailey announced the Clean Money Pledge which he encouraged all citizens to follow:

I will only vote for a presidential candidate who has raised more than half of his/her funds through small contributions of $250 or less.

Bailey further (legal deposition by Bailey, see page 77) sent letters to all the presidential campaigns with a public flourish, demanding that they follow the Clean Money Pledge. Bailey promised to keep track of the presidential campaigns, making public congratulations to those campaigns which kept the Clean Money Pledge and making public condemnation of those campaigns which failed to satisfy it.

Unity08 never met the standard of its own Clean Money Pledge. It never came close.

Over at Donklephant, former Unity08 Vice President Bob Roth (who now writes from the e-mail address info@draftbloomberg.com) declared that:

Unity08 was not a process of tranfering, redirecting, re-allocating, re-structuring, re-constituting, or re-organizing into a pro-Bloomberg effort. No member information or money was moved from one organization to the other. They are completely separate organizations.

Unity08 Founder Douglas L. Bailey also insisted in his opening news conference earlier this month that the Draft Bloomberg Committee is “totally separate” from Unity08 and the two used their contacts with The Hill to arrange an interview there in which they also insist that the Draft Bloomberg Committee and Unity08 are “completely separate.”

“Completely separate.” “Totally separate.” “Completely separate.” Huh. Really now. They’re proclaiming this idea very loudly, aren’t they? But is it true? Well, we already know that Unity08 purchased the draftmichaelbloomberg.com domain name back in July of 2007 when Unity08 swore it wasn’t the stalking horse for any candidate. The Draft Bloomberg Committee initial filing with the IRS shows that Bob Roth isn’t the only Unity08 executive who has magically moved over to the Draft Bloomberg Committee — Unity08 corporate executives Doug Bailey, Gerry Rafshoon and N. Shilpi Niyogi have as well.

And, oh, dear, look at this. According to the Draft Bloomberg Committee IRS filing made January 15 2008, its business address is:

919 18th St NW Suite 650
Washington, DC 20006

According to the Unity08 IRS filing made January 30 2008, its business address is:

919 18th St NW Suite 650
Washington, DC 20006

Oh, my! What a coincidence! I mean, what do you think the chances of that are?

919 18th St NW in Washington, DC is a very rich place to have an office. Check out the neighborhood:

My, my. Just down the block from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the White House! Who managed to pay the rent for the office of both of these completely separate fake-grassroots no-people people’s movements?

Both of these organizations claim to still be in operation, and they also claim to be “completely separate,” but they report the same business address in their IRS filings. How is this possible?

My theory is that they’ve managed it just like in that old Laverne and Shirley episode, with them dividing the room down the middle with masking tape. Also, they try very hard not to look at each other, and put in ear plugs so they can’t hear one another’s meetings and phone calls. But that’s just my theory for which I have no evidence. Use of UFOs may also be involved.

Just keep mumbling “completely separate” to yourself and after a few hours it will all begin to feel better.