Should there be a parallel in finance as well?
The argument was that Obama's run for office was largely financed with small donations and that this, in his words, represented "a parallel public financing system".
The Obama method of raising lots of small donations over the internet is like a "parallel public financing system," he told donors earlier this month.
In his remarks, Mr. Obama told donors in Washington: "We have created a parallel public financing system where the American people decide if they want to support a campaign, they can get on the Internet and finance it.
In 1988, Mr. Kennedy was instrumental in forming an alliance of computer scientists from seven research institutions that led to the establishment of the Center for Research in Parallel Computation, financed by the National Science Foundation and based at Rice.
He argues that his small contributors, many of whom have given again and again over the Internet, have injected a new democracy into fund-raising, with the result that a kind of "parallel public financing system" has been created.
In the 2008 campaign, Mr. Obama reaped a windfall in small Internet donations, declaring, "We have created a parallel public financing system" to challenge "the wealthy and the powerful" who buy political influence.
David Axelrod, chief strategist to Mr. Obama, said the candidate's suggestion that the campaign had created a parallel public financing system was "an observation about what's happened" rather than a signal that he would ultimately turn down government financing and the limits that go with it.
Democrats, though, may be reluctant to surrender the significant money-raising advantage they have developed over Republicans, saying that Mr. Obama, by cultivating millions of small donors over the Internet, has built what amounts to a parallel public financing system that is arguably more democratic.
Some fear the organisations are becoming a parallel state, financed by foreigners and accountable to nobody.Most of the foreign money (around $250m a year) goes to a handful of famous NGOs such as the Grameen Bank, the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), Proshika and the Association for Social Advancement.
