elimurray

The FEC says you're allowed to do 3 things with the leftover money in your campaign account after you leave office/lose an election: refund it to donors, donate it to charity, or donate it to another political committee.

He left with around $400k in his account. Through some wise investments, he grew that to over $1 million while still spending lavishing on himself.

To be a campaign, all you need to do is file with the FEC. The loophole is that there is nothing in federal election rules that requires you to close down your account after the campaigning ends. These campaigns that are still legally "campaigning" according to the FEC whilst not actually campaigning for an office are what we called zombie campaigns.

I think it's intentional. There are bills that have been filed to address this that were killed right away.

This is an excellent question. I agree that the fine seems small when you compare it to the revenues of Gopher but if you compare it to other OSHA fines it will be one of their largest fines given out this year. OSHA cited Gopher for 44 violations, one of them was a willful violation which is the most serious. Beyond the fine, what this means, is that OSHA will require Gopher to fix the issues that lead to those violations and will presumably keep an eye out for those things in future inspections. Prior to our first story, OSHA hadn't been to the factory in 5 years.