Obama's Love of Corporate Money and Lobbyists

Original Link: http://wizbangblue.com/2008/03/18/obamas-love-of-corporate-money-and-lobbyists.php

By Lee Ward

The failure of Bear Sterns last week brings to mind the extensive sponsorship and support Barack Obama has received from the financial sector. Wall Street investment banks are among Obama's biggest supporters.

Here's MCQ on the Q and O Blog:

In the financial sector, one and a quarter million dollars have found their way into the Obama campagin. The largest donor was Goldman Sacs at $375,978. JP Morgan Chase was second with $216,459 while Citigroup coughed up $181,787 and Morgan Stanley only produced $109,025 to finance Obama's campaign.
Time Warner led the big business contributors to the Obama campaign with $131,485, followed by GE at $47,450 and Microsoft at $44,250. Last time I looked, each of those were 'corporations'.

AT&T, you know, the communications corporation, kicked in $43,483 and among insurance corporations, Blue Cross/Blue Shield managed to send along $40,150 to the Obama campaign.

Other corporate contributors include Boeing, Walt Disney, Vivendi, UPS, Lockheed Martin, General Motors and American Airlines.

I even managed to find contributions from Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly & Co. and GlaxoSmithKline to the tune of $23,350. And apparently Big Oil didn't want to be left out in the cold with Chevron, BP and Exxon Mobil contributing $27,059 to the non-corporation funded Obama campaign.

I could only find one instance where a contribution from one of these corporations had been turned back. It happened in 2004 in Obama's race for the Senate when he rejected a $1,000 contribution from Bristol-Myers Squibb. But he's apparently gotten over that, having since accepted $5,500 of their money.

One final note - this is just from the list of the top 100 donors. There are skads of other donors as well. To give you an idea, when you look at the entire list of donors by industry you find Barack Obama listed as one of the top recipients of pharmaceutical industry money (2nd behind Hillary Clinton at $275,934) and a top 10 recipient of oil and gas industry money ($109,912). Insurance industry? Number 5 at $414,863.

And all of this without mentioning the possible Jack Abramoff connection.

Another glaring example of the rank hypocrisy and total bullshit spread by Barack Obama as he lies his way to the Democratic nomination.

McQ also points to this November, 2007 speech by Obama. It's highly indicative of the lies he's told to gain votes.

"I am in this race to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over. I have done more than any other candidate in this race to take on lobbyists - and won. They have not funded my campaign, they will not get a job in my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I am president."
They most definitely are funding his campaign, and trouble-prone investment banks seeking to buy political influence are among Obama's highest donors.