Barr 2008 -- Scam, not Campaign
By phillies
I've spent the last year detailing how Barr 2008 spent its money. This article is the summary.
I'll keep the summary very short. The Barr 2008 campaign was in its operation a scam for transferring money from Libertarian donors to Barr's Republican cronies and a few libertarian hangers-on. The Barr 2008 Campaign raised nearly one and a half million dollars. It spent barely 4% of its income on anything that resembles classical public outreach. That includes $12,618.88 to book publisher. It spent under 1% of its income on actual press advertising, counting google.com. That's a tenth what it spent on rent of real estate and office furniture. That's a tenth what it spent (or still owes) on a web page. That's considerably less than it spent on limousines and town cars. That's what the campaign our party's establishment gave us. Full numbers below fold
Barr -- Campaign or Not
Bob Barr may have promised a Presidential campaign, but the delivery was a bit different. Here is the record of his spending, based on our reanalysis of the Barr 2008 FEC campaign reports. Some minor expenditures have been left out. The campaign spent $1.4 million, more or less every penny that it raised. The issue is where Barr 2008 spent its money, including $160,000 that the campaign owed at the end of the year, not to mention money owed American Express. In short: One per cent of campaign spending went for advertising the candidate to the general public via Newsmax, Google, and newspaper ads.. Three more percent went to activities such as a campaign book that could have helped spread the word. Around $100,000 went to the web site. A hundred grand went for renting real estate, with over thirty grand additional to rent and buy furniture and office equipment. Direct mail demanded a seventh of funds raised...about $200K. A third of a million dollars -- a quarter of funds raised -- went to pay people, not counting the hundred grand paid to consultants and the like. . Direct mail demanded a seventh of funds raised...about $200K. Some people eccentrically think that campaigns are about advertising, so here is everything that might be called general advertising and so reported. Add it up: one percent of the campaign's money went for broad-market advertising, and another three percent was for advertising of some sort:
Advertising That's being very generous to count it as 4%, because I am including over 12 grand to a book publisher for the Barr boom, 10 grand for bumper stickers (which are widely understood to be primarily effective at inciting the faithful), and an amount for lawn signs that were in fair part sold to supporters. Honest-to-goodness orthodox advertising including Google adwords and Newsmax (a far far right internet news outlet) were 1% of the campaign budget. Just for purposes of comparison, even the Boston Tea Party presidential campaign spent $327.83 to advertise on Google. As you might guess, this constituted a much larger percentage of their campaign budget. A third of a million dollars -- a quarter of funds raised -- went to pay people. That does not include various debts to people, starting with $47,000 owed to James Bovard for making, it is widely rumored, significant contributions to the invisible Barr books. Here are the people
People
Consulting firms The Barr campaign spent almost twice as much on office rent -- over $100,000 -- as on general advertising, and that does not include office furniture:
Real Estate Rent Office furniture? Now we come to office furniture and supplies. There's also some office equipment hiding on the electronics entries, at which point the office furniture spending nearly matched the spending on advertising.
Office Furniture Targeted outreach was done via electronic and direct mail efforts. The electronic efforts included over $130,000 in spending (in addition, Terra Eclipse is owed another thirty-five thousand and change), including
Electronics Direct mail is a fundraising tool; it also serves to frame issues. Mailing and shipping also puts your materials in front of people. Here is the mailing effort, nearly $200,000 of it:
Mailing and items:
Those mailings were went to mailing lists. Here are the places from which lists were rented:
More than $40,000 was spent on legal services, including:
It costs money to collect money. $34,000, under 3% of funds received, spent on various types of transaction expenses: Finally, you can send the candidate out on the hustings, where he can give speeches, excite the faithful, and support local candidates. Travel money and events came to a quarter of a million dollars, close to five times what was spent on advertising. Oh, yes, a funny thing happened on the way to the FEC. In earlier reports, payments to limousine companies are categorized as "limo services", but in later reports, they are equally legitimately categorized as 'travel expenses'.
Travel Expenses $206,583 The above list of numbers do not include the following campaign debts as seen in FEC filings at campaign's end.
James Bovard $47,000.00 Authoring Fee
Barr 2008 -- Scam, not Campaign | 1 comment (1 topical, 0 hidden)
Barr 2008 -- Scam, not Campaign | 1 comment (1 topical, 0 hidden)
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