Always On Watch Two: Obama For America: Asking For A Handout

(With a hat tip to No Sheeples Here)

From "Tapped Out," an essay written by Peter Funt of Candid Camera fame:

This is not easy to write, because I consider the election of Barack Obama to be one of the most inspiring political and social developments of my lifetime. I truly mean no disrespect when I say: Stop asking for money.

Last spring, I signed up to receive e-mails from all the major presidential campaigns. Not surprisingly, the recurrent theme in the almost-daily messages was: Donate money. After Hillary Clinton dropped out, her pleas for donations increased; just last week, supporters received another letter seeking money to retire Clinton's campaign debt.

A week after the election, David Plouffe, the head of Obama for America, wrote: "We've been reviewing the books, and the DNC went into considerable debt to secure victory for Barack and Joe. . . . Please make a donation of $250 or more today and receive your Obama Victory T-shirt."

Americans barely have the stomach, or the money, to bail out the banks, the automakers and various foreign governments. Now the Democratic National Committee is seeking a handout?

[...]

...[D]espite the extent to which Americans have supported the Obama campaign, comes Plouffe again with an e-mail I find particularly riling. "Will you support the Obama-Biden transition," he wrote on Nov. 21, "with a donation of $250 or more?"

Money from "grass-roots supporters," he claims, will prevent the "secretive undertakings" of previous presidential transitions.

Taxpayers are already funding the Obama transition to the tune of $6.3 million. Apparently that's not enough, which is why tapped-out contributors are being asked to dig deeper into their pockets. Unlike election financing, in which Team Obama had to forgo taxpayer money when opting for private donations, in transition financing it can keep all the taxpayer money plus whatever comes in from those with anything left under the mattress....