Who Are Paying Obama's Bills? You Might be Surprised

by delzakiya | February 20, 2008 at 06:20 pm
1034 views | 2 Recommendations | 3 comments

Top Contributors

Goldman Sachs $421,763
Ubs Ag $296,670
Lehman Brothers $250,630
National Amusements Inc $245,843
JP Morgan Chase & Co $243,848
Sidley Austin LLP $226,491
Citigroup Inc $221,578
Exelon Corp $221,517
Skadden, Arps Et Al $196,420
Jones Day $181,996
Harvard University $172,324
Citadel Investment Group $171,798
Time Warner $155,383
Morgan Stanley $155,196
Google Inc $152,802
University of California $143,029
Jenner & Block $136,565
Kirkland & Ellis $134,738
Wilmerhale Llp $119,245
Credit Suisse Group $118,250

 

Are you getting the picture? These are powere players, some who laid off their workers and shut some of their branches, but they have money to give. Do you think a student's tuition should go to give political donations, like the $143,029 from the University of California or the $172,324 from Harvard?

Who is National Amusements Inc?

National Amusements holds controlling voting interests in CBS Corporation, Viacom, and Midway Games, MTV Networks, BET, and movie production and distribution Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks movie studios, and is equal partners in MovieTickets.com.

Isn't it nice when donors give so openly?

recommend This comment thread is now closed
ryan
ryan
flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 19:03 on February 20th, 2008

delzakiya, thanks for this important information. If I'm not mistaken, we have access to this stuff because of a campaign finance bill that Obama spearheaded.

To judge donations honestly one needs to consider the tax benefits of the donation. 

I'd really like to see if these companies made donations to other campaigns. 

I fixed the formatting of the story. 

0
Mikasi

(Please allow for a moment of transparency here - I will likely vote for Obama come the general election. With that in mind, allow me to procede with my  comment.) 

 

I think this is good stuff, however to give it context it would be important to expand the story to include the top donors to Clinton,  McCain and Huckabee. That would help me put the donations in context - it would help me determine if my candidate might be bought, my candidate is the least bought, or if the entire system might be bought and therefore rotten.

 Now I am a photographer, not a reporter, so my skills aren't great, however I think this link to the opensecrets.org 2008 Presidential money breakdown might be a good start in finding starting to locate perspective. (Note: OpenSecrets is a service of the Center for Responsive Politics.)

One last word, if you are looking for information on your state races, you can start finding it here, at Follow the Money.

0
Matthew Losee

Good work, Mikasi! Both campaigns are accepting large contributions from banks. If you want to sulk over lost oppurtunities, though -- look at Congressman Ron Paul at the aforementioned Open Secrets link. It takes a little searching, but you'll find him. Top 5 contributors: U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, Google, and Microsoft.

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