Is this true? OBAMA TAKING BIG CONTRIBUTIONS?? [View All]

[trueblue2007]

Another dem friend sent me this link. In the article, there is a topic about Obama taking big donations. He states he is taking SMALL donations. Is this deceitful? There are other things that disturb me but this doesn't seem true.

Here is the link: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=12687


BIG (DECEPTIVE) TALK ABOUT “SMALL DONATIONS”



Morain also reports that Obama received more than two-thirds (68 percent) of his first quarter 2007 fundraising total “from donations of $1000 or more.” Obama has “played up populist themes of reform,” trumpeting his “large number of small donations” and claiming (in the Senator’s words) to be “launcha fundraising drive that isn’t about dollars” (Morain 2007). But his astonishing first-quarter campaign finance haul of $25.7 million included $17.5 million from “big donors” ($1000 and up) – a sum higher than the much more genuinely populist John Edwards’ (Curry 2007) total take ($14 million) from all donors (Campaign Finance Institute 2007). According to Chicago Sun Times columnist Lynn Sweet (Sweet 2007b):



“Obama talks about transforming politics and touts the donations of ‘ordinary’ people to his campaign, but a network of more than 100 elite Democratic ‘bundlers’ is raising millions of dollars for his White House bid. The Obama campaign prefers the emphasis to be on the army of small donors who are giving -- and raising -- money for Obama. In truth, though, there are two parallel narratives -- and the other is that Obama is also heavily reliant on wealthy and well-connected Democrats. ‘Bundlers’ are people who solicit their networks for donations and, at the elite giving levels, often get some assistance from campaign fund-raising professionals. Each of the 138 Obama bundlers promised to raise at least $50,000, and many are from Chicago, not surprising since Chicago billionaire Penny Pritzker is the national finance chairwoman. Among those from the city are major Democratic donors Lou Sussman, who was John Kerry's chief of fund-raising in 2004; Betty Lu Saltzman, one of Obama's biggest boosters; personal-injury attorney Bob Clifford; Capri Capital CEO Quintin Primo; activists Marilyn Katz and Michael Bauer, Ariel Capital's John Rogers and Mellody Hobson. Hollywood moguls David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg; a string of Harvard Law School friends; Broadway producer Margo Lion, and Bill Kennard, managing director of the Carlyle Group, are among the other bundlers.”



The hypocrisy is many-sided. Last week Sweet reported that Obama had received large donations from at least eight executives at Island Def Jam, a hip-hop recording firm that markets rap artists Obama has accused of “degrading their sisters” with sexist slurs (Sweet 2007c).



For what it’s worth, his wife received $51,200 in 2006 for attending a few board meetings of TreeHouse Foods, a giant firm where she was made a director after Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate (Sweet 2007a). The granting of high-pay and do-little board posts to the spouses of politicians is a longstanding tool of the “old,” corporate-dominated politics that Senator Obama claims to reject. TreeHouse Foods has not responded to my queries regarding Michelle Obama’s qualifications for her position on the company’s board and the timing of her elevation to that position.