According to the CPI, 40 senators are millionaires. Is that representative government do you think? I mean, for the whole of the American population.
Despite campaign finance reform, 2004 already is and will ultimately be the most expensive election in U.S. history. President George W. Bush has shattered his own astounding 1999 fundraising record and collected $130 million in 2003 - that's more than half a million dollars a day - and his campaign has $99 million in cash on hand with no major Republican primary challenger. article
Hey, there's Bill Wyatt.
Bush's official third quarter cash on hand number of $73 million was more than all of the major Democratic candidates and all of the Democratic national party committees combined ($54 million) through September!
...[I]n every presidential election since 1976, the candidate who has raised the most money at the end of the year preceding the election, and been eligible for federal matching funds, has become his party's nominee for the general election. At midnight on December 31st, it was Carter and Ford who had amassed the most campaign cash in 1975, Carter and Reagan in 1979, Mondale and Reagan in 1983, Dukakis and G.H.W. Bush in 1987, Clinton and Bush in 1991, Clinton and Dole in 1995 and Gore and G.W. Bush in 1999....making the contest an auction, not an election.
...Call it "the price of power" in our commercial, pay-to-play democracy, but each of the leading presidential candidates for the 2004 election has done public policy favors for his major campaign contributors. They don't exactly put it that way, or want to acknowledge at all how they service their major donors. article
KERRY (for more on Kerry, see my last post of yesterday)
Kerry wrote letters to the FCC asking it to delay its spectrum auction, keeping in line with his brother's law firm, which represents the telecommunications industry and has given the senator more than $222,000.
EDWARDS
Law firms constitute 22 of former trial lawyer Senator John Edwards' top 25 career contributors, and $6.8 million of the $11.9 million he had raised through June 2003 came from lawyers.
DEAN
While governor, Howard Dean pushed for utility contract provisions that saved the power companies, but cost Vermont families millions of dollars in higher skyrocketing rates. Vermont has the sixth highest utility rates in the country, due in part to a series of long-term contracts between its major power companies.
...Central Vermont Public Service Corp. donated more than $10,000 to Dean's Fund for a Healthy America PAC-a hefty contribution in a state that limits campaign contributions for statewide offices to $400.
Dean, in his 11 years as governor, did not propose a law or publicly support any legislation requiring financial disclosures for legislators or executive branch officials, meaning that his assets and income of almost $4 million went unreported. Vermont is one of just three states with no such disclosure laws.
CLARK
Acxiom, a company that was seeking Homeland Security contracts, agreed to pay former General Wesley Clark hundreds of thousands of dollars for his help in persuading the government to buy the company's wares. Clark was a registered lobbyist while he simultaneously served as a military analyst on CNN, and indeed, Clark was still registered as a lobbyist when he declared his candidacy on Sept. 17, 2003.
GEPHARDT (out of the running)
Gephardt tried to lower taxes on alcohol at least five times over the years, much to the pleasure of his largest career patron, Anheuser Busch, which has given him more than $517,000 over the years.
LIEBERMAN
After receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from biotechnology companies, Senator Joseph Lieberman hired the industry's top lobbyist for his staff and went on to introduce and co-sponsor bills on which this sector lobbied.
Conspicuously missing from this Center for Public Integrity list is the name: Dennis Kucinich. Whether Dennis simply doesn't do quid pro quo political work, or big business just hasn't seen him as a contender, I can't say, but it does look like he's been in politics long enough to have had the chance to become tainted. (Of course, Moseley-Braun and Sharpton are missing from the list, as well, so it's possible the CPI didn't consider Kucinich as among "the leading presidential candidates".)
Who Bankrolls Bush and his Democratic Rivals?
(All the candidates' public documents, personal financial statements, campaign contributions, and biographies are available at the Center for Public Integrity.)
Click this graphic to see who has the largest grass roots following, the most "devotion", and who has the fat cats.
Click this graphic to see a geographical distribution of the candidates' contribution funds.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are moderated. There may be some delay before your comment is published. It all depends on how much time M has in the day. But please comment!