President Obama is blowing Republicans away in campaign funding. In 3 months, Obama has raised 86 million dollars.
Two-thirds of money raised by the DNC (most will go to Obama's reelection) this year has come from donors who contribute more than 10,000 dollars. The campaign tried to hide this by rigging the numbers by getting a bunch of $5 dollar donations (by giving the small donors a chance to win a dinner with the president) near the deadline, thus making the average donation much smaller. This way Obama's campaign manager (and his minions and talking heads like Al Sharpton) could exclaim that the average donation was $69, which is basically a cooked number. Critical observers shouldn't fall for this stuff. Over half of Obama's campaign money came from bundlers (or what the administration humorously called "volunteer fundraisers). Obama used 244 big time bundlers. 87 of them brought in between 50-100 thousand dollars. Forty-one collected between $200,000 and $500,000, while 89 gathered between $100,000 and $200,000 and 27 bundled more than 500,000 dollars. Michael Kempner was one of these major bundlers. He has worked for two lobbying firms (which should lay to rest the administration's claim that they don't raise money from lobbyists) and donated almost 5,000 dollars for Evan Bayh (who now works for a lobbying group and Fox News, and was one of the most corrupt members of government in his time as a Senator) in a previous election.
Orin Kramer was also a bundler of more than $500,000, he is a banker type who wrote a piece in Bloomberg calling for pension "reform" (which always mean raid the people's pensions). Another 500,000 plus bundler Marc Benioff is worth over 2 billion dollars. Former Goldman Sachs CEO and Former New Jersey Governor (which should shock people that this man has both on his resume) Jon Corzine was also a bundler of the half a million dollars plus variety, showing that the Wall Street types still very much support Obama. Robert J Wolf previously donated to David Vitter and the Republican Congressional committee. He was a bundler in the 200,000- 500,000 range for Obama. He is the CEO of UBS Investment Bank. In short, he is a banker who is playing both parties, so that no matter what, he wins. The Wall Street Journal called Wolf "Obama's Wall Street Buddy" in 2010. Blair Effron, was the former UBS (what's up with UBS?) Vice Chair also donated 25,000 dollars. Investment Bankers from Allen & Co, a secretive bank, donated the max $35,800. At least 3 people (all with the last name of Krupp) from Berkshire Group (Warren Buffet's company, a blatant tax avoider) donated the 35,800. The heads of Comcast (David Cohen) and Dreamworks were big bundlers and among the 27 people who raised over a half a million dollars in this quarter. John R. Alchin the Executive Vice President of Comcast also gave 5,000 dollars to the Obama campaign. It is not hard to see why Comcast would donate and raise money for Obama's campaign. His first term was very profitable for Comcast, as it was under his administration that the corporation was able to take over NBC and its sister stations.
Steve Westly's companies have received over half a billion dollars in grants since Obama took office. This quarter, he bundled between 100,000-200,000 dollars for Obama. Hard to call this a coincidence. George Clooney and the Disney CEO were among those who contributed the max 35,800 dollars to the DNC. Jeffrey Abrams , a Paramount Producer, also donated the max 35,800 dollars. In the controversial March 7 th meeting (I have written about this meeting elsewhere, this is the meeting that Obama is accused of breaking the Hatch act), Obama met with executives who ended up bundling nearly $4 million dollars for him this quarter. If that meeting wasn't about fundraising (which would have broke the Hatch Act), then I have no idea what it was about.
Remember in 2008, Obama won the wealthy vote, as 52% of people who make more than 100,000 dollars a year voted for him. The wealthiest counties also voted for him, as the second-wealthiest county (Fairfax, Va.) in the nation, voted 60% for Obama. Barack Obama is the money president (and candidate), and the representative of the wealthy, his campaign numbers show this.
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