Illegal In-Kind Campaigning? Poll Fraud
The Market Ticker � - Commentary on The Capital Markets
2016-10-11 11:09 by Karl Denninger
in Corruption , 1464 references Ignore this thread
Illegal In-Kind Campaigning? Poll Fraud

OK folks.

You know about that nice NBC/WSJ "poll" that shows that Hillary is up 11, right?

Well, CTH deconstructed it.  It wasn't very hard to do, and it showed the usual media bias in the sample, which is a problem standing alone.  But then we get into why the bias existed, and it's not so simple as it first appears.

What CTH managed to find is that the organization that ran the poll is an organization run by a man who currently is a SuperPAC operator for PrioritiesUSA in support of Hillary Clinton, and was involved in a similar one for President Obama.

In other words the so-called "media poll" wasn't actually run by NBC and the WSJ, it was run by a SuperPAC dedicated to Hillary's election.

The reason for the intentional bias in the poll's sample is now obvious -- and ought to have been reason enough for both NBC and the Wall Street Journal to refuse to run it at all.

THAT is outrageous.  But it gets better -- Hillary's campaign paid this organization over $200,000 in September alone!

Is that legal, given that SuperPACs are not supposed to coordinate with a campaign?  Maybe.  It depends on what was bought.

Is it legal for a SuperPAC to run a poll and bias it on purpose?  Sure.  Hell, SuperPACs (and campaigns) run biased messages all the time -- that's what political advertising is!

But SuperPACs, like all other "independent" groups and the campaigns themselves are required by law to disclose who is paying for the communication so that the people have some chance of discerning what is "objective" and what is obviously and intentionally biased for political purposes.  That is why you hear "I'm .... and I approve this message."  Candidates and SuperPACs don't include that because they want to, they include it because it's illegal to put forward said communication without that notice.

A "news" organization that is patently used with their full knowledge and consent to present an electioneering message to the public that originates in this fashion without any disclosure whatsoever quite-arguably violates the law and in addition such advertising (which is exactly what it is when the content is not a "poll" but instead is an engineered communication from a SuperPAC) certainly appears to constitute an in-kind campaign contribution to the campaign that it promotes by the "news" organization in question.

Why do we put up with this crap again and where are the <snip>ed handcuffs?