White House Refuses to Release Donors to David Axelrod's Charity

[avaistheone1]

Source: Gawker

In 1998, White House senior adviser David Axelrod co-founded a charity aimed at curing epilepsy, which his daughter suffers from. It raised $800,000 last year from corporate and private donors. The White House won't say who they are.

Lauren Axelrod, David and Susan Axelrod's 29-year-old daughter, has suffered for most of her life from a severe, debilitating form of epilepsy. Together, the Axelrods founded Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy (CURE) more than a decade ago to fund research for a cure, and it has raised and distributed more than $15 million in research grants to that end. The Axelrods made a relatively rare foray into enemy territory last week to promote the cause, appearing together on Fox News Channel in a two-part profile highlighting Lauren's struggles and CURE's good works.

David Axelrod has no current official affiliation with CURE, but the organization's press materials describe him as a "CURE father and co-founder," and his White House bio says he "helped found" it. Susan Axelrod serves as CURE's chair, an unpaid position. Any viewer of Fox News piece, which is a moving account of their attempts to help their grievously wounded daughter, would understand that CURE is very close to their hearts. Which could make it fairly tempting way for the philanthropically inclined to gain access to the White House.

CURE raised $796,000 from corporate and individual donors last year and another $826,000 from foundations, according to financial statements accompanying its 2009 tax return, for a total of $1.6 million from private sources. None of those donors have been systematically disclosed, despite the obvious potential for an apparent conflict of interest were someone with a business or policy agenda before the White House to support CURE. When Gawker asked the White House for the identities of CURE's donors, a spokesman responded with a statement refusing to do so:

Read more: http://gawker.com/5701265/white-house-refuses-to-release-donors-to-david-axelrods-charity

[ZombieHorde]

1. Nooooooooooo!!!!!!1!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh wait, this is not a big deal. nt

[GoCubsGo]

2. If only Gawker put as much effort into finding out who all those donors were that....

...inflicted all of those putrid political attack ads on us before the election.

[jtrockville]

3. Did CURE donate to political campaigns? Sponsor campaign ads?

NO?
Then why should the White House be involved in any of this?

[Celebration]

4. oh the outrage

NOT!

If any one donor constituted a significant percentage of the donations, they would be REQUIRED to put it on their Federal From 990. Since it wasn't on there, it shows that the donations were all small enough that it did not need to be disclosed.

Case closed.

[Igel]

7. Political problem.

Not a huge one, in $ terms. And probably not a very noticeable one in political terms. Possibly a big one. I doubt it. Most reporters in the MSM are (D) and while they don't always report that way, there's not going to be enough public interest in this issue to make it worthwhile devoting much dead tree or electron-hole movement to.

But note for the mental exercise that your claim is contrary but not contradictory. It is a way for the claim to be false, but does not falsify the claim. It is a necessary bit of evidence, but it is not sufficient.

Try this: "Axonless, Inc., is after some green jobs. It arranges for its 100 employees to each donate $1000 to a specific charity because it strongly suspects that it will get a $25 million contract. If this happens, these 60 employees will get a year-end bonus of $1500. Tipping the scale is Axelrod, intimately involved with the charity and who would like to get more money for said charity. In exchange for $90k in donations--10 people are deadbeats--he moves Axonless from the #4 to the #3 spot on the appropriations list forwarded to the appropriate office, having heard that the top 3 will be funded."

$800k total, $90k is more than 10%, but no one donation is more than 1/800th of the total. Crank the per capita contribution to $2k and you're still well within the limits of reporting requirements but now have accounted for nearly a quarter of the non-profits contributions.

Did it happen? Almost certainly not. Do such things happen? Almost certainly. In an age where we're used to political advisors arranging for perks for "friends" who bundle lots of reasonably small donations into big bundles, why do we think that Axelrod--a political advisor who probably has fairly often arranged for perks for "friends" who bundled lots of of reasonably small donations into big bundles--was incapable of this? It's easy to say he was because he's a good guy.

All that's needed is a bit of suspicion--drop the assumption that he's innocent and therefore must be innocent--and you're halfway there to a scandal. One of Rangel's goofs was using official letterhead to solicit contributions for a charity, even without any evidence that Rangel actually helped anybody in the charity or helped the charity himself. And he is just one of hundreds of reps, and probably has less power in most ways, if the truth be told, than Axelrod.

And remember the CoC ad scandal? A small portion of the Chamber of Commerce's funding came from overseas, there was no pressing need to assume that this money was needed for political advertising, but the suspicion was thrown out that since we don't know for sure it must be nefarious. Suspicion and innuendo in the absence of actual information is our friend? Not always. Training people to think this is a valid kind of reasoning is a foolish, democracy-destroying endeavor.

[timefortherevolution]

5. Its not a donation, its a BRIBE.

Axelrod is in no position to raise corporate dollars.

I'm sick and tired of this game of quid pro quo.

Look, he can do all the fundraising he wants when he's out of office.

This game of BRIBERY and that's what its all about, is killing us all.

[AlbertCat]

8. he can do all the fundraising he wants when he's out of office.

He's not "in office".

He wasn't elected. He's not an elected official. He can no more vote for or make law than any other kind of lobbyist or advisor.

[Tx4obama]

10. He is not doing any fundraising. n/t

[groundloop]

11. Did you not read the story - it's a foundation to fund epilepsy research..

And David Axelrod isn't even a board member anymore. There's no story here, except for a few right wing nuts that are desperately trying to find something to stir up.

[Yeahyeah]

6. Ruhroh.

[Tx4obama]

9. Here's a link to the two part video showcasing Lauren

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x530181