Mar 30 2008
Lawyers and Lobbyists contribute $13,456,386 to Obama
I invite readers to help us compile a list of all the times Obama has insisted on not taking lobbyist money. We will post it.
Obama maintains he does not take lobbyist money, and if so, very little - but this is a patent absurdity! Most lobbying in this country is done by law and consulting firms, and not officially designated lobbyists! Any company in the country can lobby on behalf of another, and or open a law practice- in fact giants such as Paton Boggs and Skaden offer clients a full range of all legal forms of lobbying. The schemes is always the same: Clients select well connected lawyers and firms to communicate their message to legislators and executives.
Obama takes money from both lobbyist clients, and from the lawyers who represent them- i.e. who lobby on their behalf. When Obama talks about not taking lobbyist money, he is demeaning the voters’ intelligence.
Obama claims to only receive a $ 100,000 from official lobbyists, but a cursory glance at some of the law practices category exposes this as a garish fib.
Not only does Obama lie about lobbyist money, he pushes a contemptibly artificial distinction between lobbyist clients, and the actual lobbyist. When he says he doesn’t take lobbyists money, he thinks you’re dumb.
Official Lobbying firms, as any legislator knows, do not give target legislators money. That is called bribery. Such firms by definition are paid. They take money from clients, as fees for pandering their message to governments.
To say that one does not take lobbyists money, on the basis of such language artifice, is like insisting one does not breathe air, but H2O.
Any sane and common sense usage of the term lobbyists, applies equally to both clients and their representatives. Obama’s top three campaign contributors alone, Goldman Sacks, UBS AG, and JP Morgan Chase, spent more than 8 million dollars lobbying Congress in 2007!
Yet, Obama brazenly claims in a new Ad in Pennsylvania:
“I’m Barack Obama and I don’t take money from oil companies or lobbyists and I won’t let them block change anymore.” [source]
It’s a claim he has not stopped making along the campaign trail. And its a sheer lie. Not only does Obama take oil money to the tune of $ 200,000 (100K less than Hillary - big difference eh?) - to lie that he does not take money from lobbyists!- please help us compile that list.
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We all know who are our nation’s biggest lobbyists: corporations and their associations.
The Obama campaign has received a total of $116,984,670 from such Corporations.
The top contributing industries, to Barack Hussein Obama’s campaign are: [source]
Top Industries
|
1 |
Lawyers/Law Firms |
$13,341,673 |
|
2 |
Misc Business |
$10,261,541 |
|
3 |
Retired |
$9,058,652 |
|
4 |
Securities & Investment |
$6,715,680 |
By sector:
Unclassified (corporate) $17,648,491
Misc Business $15,663,211
Finance, Insurance & Real Estate $15,087,469
Lawyers & Lobbyists $13,456,386 [source]
34 % of Obama’s $117 corporate millions cannot be accounted for. Analysts can’t code their industry or sector. We’re talking $ 40 million we don’t know about.
From what information we posses, we know Obama received $13 million from lobbyists and law firms. While designated lobbyist may have contributed no more than a hundred thousand dollars (Hillary’s is eight hundred thousand, still less than a million), the contributions of undesignated and unaccounted lobbyists, are estimated in the millions!
Top law firms who contribute to Obama, include Sidley Austin LLP who openly boast about its lobbying skills but Obama lists as lawyers. Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, Jones Day, and the world’s largest law firm of Skadden & Arps, leading Obama contributors and lobbyists, listed as lawyers, because that’s how they register.
All firms backing Obama are listed as lawyers by Obama, yet the bigger their contribution, the likelier they are to have a paper record trail showing millions of dollars of lobbying fees for 2007 alone! Just the five firms listed above, contributed more than a million dollars to Obama’s campaign!
Yet, Obama repeatedly claims to only have taken a hundred thousand from lobbyists!? Does he have a problem with truth or just the English language? Anyone can look at the list of Obama’s largest contributors:
and then search each one either for client or Lobbying firm in this database.
You will find all of them either in one, or both categories. They lobby and part of the lobbying process.
Just for kicks, compare Obama’s list of top campaign contributors with Hillary’s. It’s almost the same. Even the same law/lobbying firms. The implication of this is mind-boggling.
While Hillary admits that lobbyists can sometimes be the legitimate representatives of American interest on the Hill, and calls a spade a spade, Obama thinks Americans’ are so stupid that he can flat out lie about not taking lobbyist money, while his single biggest contributor by industry, is a bundle of lawyers whose lobbying activities are so vast, we can’t even map them?!
I am not even addressing the rest of Obama’s nearly $ 120 million dollars of corporate money which inevitably comes from companies who lobby congress on behalf of their interests, and to which the term special interests, and lobbyists, applies no less than to legally designated lobbying firms.
PS. There really isn’t a media conspiracy keeping the truth about Obama from Democrats?
16 responses so far
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Jeff, on the money–no pun intended. Have you seen this new piece by Pam Martens over at BlackAgendaReport titled “The Obama Bubble”, an African-American political site? Your 13 million figure adds up nicely to this column.
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=548&Itemid=34
(forgive long link–hyperlink not working)
Also, is there a way you and the gang on this site can “prove” you guys are the real deal and not a ‘front” for the other side? I’m afraid the Obamabots are hell out on discrediting you all at the gate. Let’s see a show of force.
Keep up the good fight and excellent work.
Thanks for this research. I post the link everywhere.
From The Obama Bubble; Why Wall Street Needs a Presidential Brand by Pam Martens @ http://www.blackagendareport.com
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….That brings us to today’s bubble. We are being asked to accept at face value the notion that after more than two centuries of entrenched racism in this country, which saw only five black members of the U.S. Senate, it’s all being eradicated with some rousing stump speeches.
We are asked to believe that those white executives at all the biggest Wall Street firms, which rank in the top 20 donors to the Obama presidential campaign, after failing to achieve more than 3.5 per cent black stockbrokers over 30 years, now want a black populist president because they crave a level playing field for the American people.
The number one industry supporting the Obama presidential bid, according to the widely respected, nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, is “lawyers/law firms” (most on Wall Street’s payroll), giving a total of $11,246,596.
“Other leading presidential candidates are taking money from lawyers/law firms/lobbyists, but Senator Obama is the only one rallying with the populist cry that he isn’t.”
This presents three unique credibility problems for the yes-we-can, little-choo-choo-that-could campaign: (1) these are not just “lawyers/law firms”; the vast majority of these firms are also registered lobbyists at the Federal level; (2) Senator Obama has made it a core tenet of his campaign platform that the way he is gong to bring the country hope and change is not taking money from federal lobbyists; and (3) with the past seven ignoble years of lies and distortions fresh in the minds of voters, building a candidacy based on half-truths is not a sustainable strategy to secure the west wing from the right wing.
Yes, the other leading presidential candidates are taking money from lawyers/law firms/lobbyists, but Senator Obama is the only one rallying with the populist cry that he isn’t. That makes it not only a legitimate but a necessary line of inquiry.
The Obama campaign’s populist bubble is underpinned by what, on the surface, seems to be a real snoozer of a story. It all centers around business classification codes developed by the U.S. government and used by the Center for Responsive Politics to classify contributions. Here’s how the Center explained its classifications in 2003:
“The codes used for business groups follow the general guidelines of the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes initially designed by the Office of Management and Budget and later replaced by the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS)…”
BubbleWall_StreetSign
The Akin Gump law firm is a prime example of how something as mundane as a business classification code can be gamed for political advantage. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Akin Gump ranks third among all Federal lobbyists, raking in $205,225,000 to lobby our elected officials in Washington from 1998 through 2007. The firm is listed as a registered federal lobbyist with the House of Representatives and the Senate; the firm held lobbying retainer contracts for more than 100 corporate clients in 2007. But when its non-registered law partners, the people who own this business and profit from its lobbying operations, give to the Obama campaign, the contribution is classified as coming from a law firm, not a lobbyist.
The same holds true for Greenberg Traurig, the law firm that employed the criminally inclined lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. Greenberg Traurig ranks ninth among all lobbyists for the same period, with lobbying revenues of $96,708,249. Its partners and employee donations to the Obama campaign of $70,650 appear not under lobbyist but the classification lawyers/law firms, as do 30 other corporate law firm/lobbyists….
——————————————————————–
Great article. Great site.
I came across some great sites today and I will like to share with you all.
http://www.ObamaLies.org
http://www.AudacityOfLies.com
http://www.AudacityOfChange.com
http://www.AudacityOfHypocrisy.com
Great article! Obama thinks that by using this stragegy, and hiring lobbyist consultants to organize ‘bundling’ of corporate donations, he can stay under the PAC & ‘lobbyists’ radar with the public.
Here’s a link to a great story which explains what ‘bundling’ is, and
“how the hugely successful fundraising techniques and apparatus of George W. Bush in 2000, and his copycats in the Democratic Party in 2004 [and 2008], to raise ever higher the price tag attached to the buying of the president.”
http://www.buyingofthepresident.org/index.php/stories/the_longest_campaign_part_five/
Also, it has been noted by a blogger on another site that Obama voted for the following bill:
On campaign finance and lobbyists S.2030 : A bill to amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to require reporting relating to bundled contributions made by persons other than registered lobbyists; and S.AMDT.41 to S.1 To require lobbyists to disclose the candidates, leadership PACs, or political parties for whom they collect or arrange contributions, and the aggregate amount of the contributions collected or arranged.
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I find it both hysterical & ironic that Obama should vote for this - as it will probably not become a law until after the election. He is the **WORST** abuser of this ‘bundler’ system - but he is turning out to be just like Ross Perot. Remember Perot? The billionaire who made his fortune from bilking the Medicare/Medicaid system, who proclaimed that once elected, he would make sure no one else could repeat what he did to defraud the government. (Do what I say, not as I do???)
Obama & his campaign are running the greatest election finance scam in presidential election history, hiring all those former lobbyist consultants that are running his ‘bundling’ scam - making it look like the bulk of his funding is coming from ‘grass roots’ America, when in reality, it is coming from many special interest corporations, like Exelon Corp./Commonwealth Edison, General Dynamics, Goldman Sacs & JP Morgan. I guess supporting this bill just shows people that now that he has discovered how to do this, he wants to make sure no one does it again!
Oh, I forgot to mention all the political maneuvering Obama does though his own PAC, Hopefund - which is how he is currently intimidating some of the SuperDelegates - by threatening to help finance opponents to defeat them in elections, if they do not vote for him! This is how he ‘buys’ political influence - through his own PAC - if they are so terrible, why does he need one??! To promote the lobbying interests of Barack Obama, of course. This is political pandering at its worst, and that same old, same old, political doublespeak.
I thank you as well……….
instinctively, I have known so much of this but thank you for giving me facts and references so the scales that continue to fall from my eyes do so with reasons and quotable sources and not only feelings.
How can they get away with this?
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I am a lawyer. My firm has one person who works part time as a lobbyist. I don’t do any lobbying work. I do prett boring water transactions. Yet, it appears from your article that you would consider me a lobbyist if I gave Obama money. Nice investigative journalism.
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