By Cliff Montgomery – July 23rd, 2012
Some days ago, The American Spark revealed who is buying the Romney presidential campaign. Now it’s time to unveil who are the top ‘contributors’ to the 2012 Obama campaign.
We described our stance when discussing the Romney campaign’s true owners, so it’s only fair to reiterate the point as we investigate the re-election campaign of Barack Obama. To whit: When people send money to politicians, we don’t like to call those actions, ‘donations’ or ‘contributions’.
The American Spark uses a more honest language and flatly calls them bribes.
Top ‘contributors’ do not work to ‘voice an opinion’. Protests, letters to lawmakers and voting are the means of voicing one’s opinion in a working democracy.
‘Contributions’ are just forms of glorified bribery – and the bigger the ‘donation’, the more influential the bribe.
Regardless, the financial information on the Obama presidential campaign was taken from Federal Election Commission (FEC) data released on June 21st, 2012.
Obama’s chief ‘contributors’ are almost all computer/Internet companies, law firms and leading colleges. Make of that what you will, dear readers…
One ‘donor’ standout appears to be Skadden, Arps et al. The company is “an international law firm…perhaps best known politically in the United States for its lobbying arm, and as a clearinghouse for donors to the Democratic Party,” states OpenSecrets, a website operated by the Center For Responsive Politics, a top lobbying watchdog.
“Lobbyists working for Skadden, Arps represent some of the largest political players outside of elected office, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and U.S. Steel,” declares the website, adding that “it’s the firm’s individual employees, as well as their immediate family members, who come out in droves for Democrats.”
“Together, they routinely help the firm rank at the top of the lawyers and lobbyists industry in terms of campaign contributions,” stated OpenSecrets.
Without further ado, we give you the Obama campaign’s top 20 ‘donors’:
Microsoft Corp: $387,395
University of California: $330,258
DLA Piper: $306,727
Google Inc: $271,300
Sidley Austin LLP: $257,296
Harvard University: $232,158
Comcast Corp: $201,606
Stanford University: $188,290
Time Warner: $183,614
Skadden, Arps et al: $169,753
US Government: $149,458
US State Dept: $147,917
Kaiser Permanente: $139,507
National Amusements Inc: $138,955
Morgan & Morgan: $135,145
Columbia University: $134,497
Wells Fargo: $127,807
University of Chicago: $127,507
Wilmerhale Llp: $117,661
Kirkland & Ellis: $113,770
