Debating
Barack Obama’s Cash Flow
By Joshua Frank
16 May, 2007
Countercurrents.org
A
recent editorial in The Chicago Sun-Times, published on May 14, attempted
to defile an essay I wrote in these pages about Barack Obama’s
fundraising channels and his ties to corporate America. The Sun-Times
piece, written by former Clinton White House counsel Abner J. Mikva,
challenged my claim that Barack isn’t taking on the pay-to-play
politics we are all so used to in Washington. Instead Mikva asserted
that the ethically minded Obama is “incorruptible”.
True, Obama has decided to
not accept PAC money for his presidential bid, but that doesn’t
mean the Illinois senator isn’t packing in tons of cash from the
corporate sector (more on that shortly). True also that Obama’s
campaign, like Howard Dean’s of 2004, is pocketing many small
online donations at an average of $25 a pop. However, small donations
from the Democratic grassroots do not mean he doesn’t also have
his paws in the corporate cookie jar.
How can this be if companies
cannot directly hand over cash to candidates for national office? Well,
their employees can donate up to $2,300 per person. In my article I
noted that Obama has raised money from several corporations, including
Exelon, UBS, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, along with tobacco
rich law firm Kirkland & Ellis. Of course there are others that
have fattened the accounts of Obama for president that I didn’t
mention, such as; Time Warner, Viacom, Williams & Connolly, Level
3 Communications, Credit Suisse Securities, Lehman Brothers and Ariel
Capital.
So how can one assume that
employee donations are representative of the companies they list on
their donor forms? As OpenSecrets.org, a not-for-profit website dedicated
to revealing the money trails of Washington, asserts, “Because
of contribution limits, organizations that bundle together many individual
contributions are often among the top donors to presidential candidates.
These contributions can come from the organization's members or employees
(and their families).”
Hence why UBS and Exelon
are on the top of Obama’s contributor list. Even so, are the millions
of dollars donated by employers of these companies actually influencing
Barack Obama’s positions?
Abner J. Mikva doesn’t
think so. But you may connect the dots as you see fit.
Fact: Barack Obama believes
nuclear power is “green” and told the Senate Committee on
Environment & Public Works, of which Barack is a member, that Congress
should allow “nuclear power to remain on the table for consideration”.
Employees of Exelon, which is the nation’s largest nuclear power
plant operator, have donated over $159,000 to Obama’s presidential
campaign as of March 31, 2007. That amount has likely increased since
the first public tallying of campaign contributions two months ago.
Fact: Obama, in one of his
earliest Senate votes, departed with his own party and voted for class
action “reform” legislation. The bill, as Ken Silverstein
wrote for Harper’s, was “lobbied for aggressively by financial
firms, which constitute Obama’s second biggest single bloc of
donors.” An amendment to the legislation, which the senator opposed,
would have capped credit card interest rates at 30%. Obama, unfortunately,
didn’t see a need for any cap on such predatory lending.
Fact: Obama may not allow
PACs to donate directly to his presidential campaign, but the young
senator started a PAC of his own, which has donated to other Democratic
Party members, all of whom are moderates, and several are even staunch
conservatives like Sen. Joe Lieberman (Obama backed Lieberman over Ned
Lamont). Obama’s leadership PAC has been loaded with the help
of credit card lobbyist Jeffrey Peck (who, subsequently, opposes a cap
on credit card interests) and big oil proponent Rich Tarplin.
By pointing out these truths
I am not implying that Obama is the most corporate entrenched candidate
running for the presidency. That award may indeed go to Sen. Hillary
Clinton. Nevertheless, I think it is pertinent for voters to know where
candidates stand on important issues as well as what may have influenced
these positions.
Aside from the purported
corporate pressure on Obama’s campaign, there are other issues
we should all consider before jumping on the Obama express -- such as
his lopsided support for Israel and his all-options-on-the-table approach
to dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Sen. Obama may not completely
support the war in Iraq, but he has yet to put forward an agenda for
the region that offers a critical departure from the failed Bush doctrine.
On the Middle East, Obama is an avid hawk. On social movements in South
America Obama has argued that citizens there should not follow left-leaning
populists like Hugo Chavez, and advocates in his book The Audacity of
Hope, that these poor nations should embrace free-market capitalism
instead.
By and large Barack Obama
is a mainstream Democratic candidate that is exciting many due to his
personal, charismatic zeal. There is no question that Obama is a gifted
politician, and his youth only adds to the mystique that he’s
offering an alternative to business as usual in Washington.
Despite all of these claims,
I still have to depart from Abner J. Mikva’s editorial in The
Chicago Sun-Times, which insists Obama can’t be influenced. I
connect the dots differently than Mikva, and see Sen. Barack Obama as
just another ineffectual politician, who is more concerned with being
elected than with standing by the ideals of his constituents.
Joshua Frank is co-editor of Dissident Voice and author
of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush (Common Courage
Press, 2005), and along with Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor of the forthcoming
Red State Rebels, to be published by AK Press in March 2008.
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