It isn't moral, but the law says "to any person per purchase or transaction", which means they could legally pay a "volunteer" $100 for each street they canvassed.  Or, they could pay someone $100 for each comment they posted on MyDD and DailyKos.  

Right?

Someone should talk to a few of the LieberKids - they were all over the place and you could spot them a mile away.

Vote-buying is illegal.

So?

I don't recall a single candidate that was ever defeated because of illegalities in use of their campaign funds even though supporters or staff may have gone to jail.

Is Joe dirty?  Of course he is.

Will he be punished for being dirty?

No.

At least I don't think so.

Were it were otherwise.

Best,  Terry

I had a thought- what if the netroots started organizing a network of people who can, with relatively quick turnaround, start filing for investigations for stuff like this? I dont know how it works, but I know lots of others do.

Perhaps the grassroots in Connecticut should press him for an aggressive and early investigation.  Asking a few bagmen to appear before a local grand jury would be good for starters.  Start holding your breathe, now.

It looks like the Lieberman campaign is required to have a record of every one of the petty cash expenditures. Here's the relevant section from FindLaw (see petty cash rules, part C subsection H, parts 1&2

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/casecode/u scodes/2/chapters/14/subchapters/i/secti ons/section_432.html

(c) Recordkeeping - The treasurer of a political committee shall keep an account of -
   (5) the name and address of every person to whom any disbursement is made, the date, amount, and purpose of the disbursement, and the name of the candidate and the office sought by the candidate, if any, for whom the disbursement was made, including a receipt, invoice, or canceled check for each disbursement in excess of $200.

Every time petty cash is handed out, even for amounts less than $100, the Lieberman campaign has to record the Name, Date, and Purpose of the disbursement. I don't know how the law views cumulative dispursements. Is a $75-a-day for the same campaign worker 3 days in a row a disbursement over $200? Room and board for an out of state canvasser?

So, will Lamont run ads about this?  'Ask' if Lieberman is buying votes?  Stop taking the high road, and hit the bastard.

Richard Nixon is the politician most commonly associated with slush funds.  Heres something interesting from the Mark/Felt deep throat story: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0 505/31/lt.03.html

Toobin:   "Right. And if you remember -- and this is particularly vividly portrayed in the great movie version of "All The President's Men," where you'll recall Hal Holbrook played Deep Throat. And the thing that he always said to Woodward and Bernstein was, follow the money, follow the money. And it was through the control of the slush funds that Woodward and Bernstein uncovered, you know, how they -- they learned who controlled the slush funds that ultimately went to pay the Watergate burglars and pay for the various cover-ups. That was how the story was broken, and it was Deep Throat who kept pressing Woodward and Bernstein to follow the money."

A politician doesn't set up a slush fund unless they're doing something really dirty with the money.

Eh, I donno if there is a "there" there.

We're talking 350,000 over 14 days.  That's 25k a day.  If we're talking about, say, 30 bucks for each volunteer for housing and 15 bucks a day for a food allowance, then that's around 550 volunteers.  Considering we knew that pretty much every single Republican hack east of the Mississippi river was in CT "volunteering" for Lieberman, that's not unreasonable.

And while 15 bucks is reasonable for food, housing, if in hotels, would be more like 70 bucks a night.

They would have to get a bit tricky on the accounting, to make sure that, say, someone staying 5 nights in a hotel was billed seperately each night.  But I'm pretty sure they could do it legally.

Ethically, that's another question...