Tong Family

I was curious about how campaign funding works. Here are some fascinating facts and figures. I literally had no idea the numbers worked this way or that so much information was available online:
* “Open Secrets”:http://www.opensecrets.org/. A good advocacy site with mainly facts and figures. Most amazing is to see the fundraising differences. Bush has raised over $154M. Kerry has raised $46M. Also interesteing to see who the big fundraisers are. All large corporates with $1-2M raised per entity (do the math, that’s about 1-2,000 people per corporation giving their $2K/couple).
* “Fundrace.org”:http://www.fundrace.org/. An amazing site, now you can type your zip code in and see who your neighbors are who have contributed. Interesting to see so many famous names and their addresses online. A little terrifying actually.
* “John Kerry”:https://contribute2.johnkerry.com/contribute.html?team=54. It’s interesting to see how online things have gotten. For instance, you can now use your credit card and contribute what you want. There is a $2K/person limit.
* “DNC”:https://www.democrats.org/support/donate.html?dsc=SNETF12. Even the Democratic National Committee lets’ you contribute. The maximums for this kind of soft dollar is $25K/person. Haven’t figured out how you see these contributions yet.