Among Democrats, Obama best positioned on Campaign Finance Reform

[illinoisprogressive]

On this issue, Obama leads the pack - I'd say PAC, but he (and Edwards) don't take their checks, either. He helped pass a far-reaching ethics and campaign finance bill in the Illinois state Senate and made the issue a priority on arriving in Washington. Much to the displeasure of his colleagues, Obama promoted an outside commission to handle Senate ethics complaints. He co-authored the lobbying reform bill awaiting President Bush's signature and pushed - again to the dismay of some colleagues - to include a provision requiring lawmakers to report the names of their lobbyist-bundlers.

He has co-sponsored bills to overhaul the presidential public financing system and public financing of Senate campaigns. It's nice to hear Clinton talk about how "we've got to move toward public financing" - Edwards backs it, too - but I don't see her name on those measures.

Obama readily agreed to identify his bundlers. Unlike Clinton and Edwards, he has released his income tax returns. Perhaps most important, Obama has pledged to take public financing for the general election if he is the Democratic nominee and his Republican opponent will do the same.

Any Democratic candidate wanting to "get the money out of American politics" (Clinton) or demonstrate that "the Democratic Party is the party of the people" (Edwards) ought to leap at this chance. The candidates' silence on Obama's public financing proposal - they'll "consider" it - has been more telling than anything they have actually said.

http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_6695956

[draft_mario_cuomo]

1. He also skirted that much hyped IL ethics bill--at taxpayers expense

What "principle"!

====State Sen. Barack Obama claims the mantle of a reformer, but early last month the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate spent $17,191 in state taxpayer money on a mailer that had the look and feel of a campaign flier.

The mailing went out just days before a new ban on the pre-election dissemination of such state-paid constituent newsletters went into effect, part of a package of ethics reforms that Obama takes credit for getting passed.==

==The mailing went out to more than 70,000 households in Obama's South Side legislative district and cost $17,191 to print and mail, according to state records.==

==The new ethics law that bans such mailings was passed by the legislature in the fall. However, the effective date of the ban was delayed until mid-February, a few days after the letters went out.==

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/elections/c...==

[draft_mario_cuomo]

2. What did Obama's tax returns show about his charitable giving? Talk about an "empathy deficit"...

Note: Let me make it perfectly clear why I am posting this. If Obama is going to tout something as making him superior to other candidates he has to accept the other side of the coin, if there is one, regarding that very thing. You cannot promote him for releasing his tax returns and then sweep under the rug what those tax returns revealed.


==Obama has enjoyed a robust household income throughout his political career in the Illinois Senate and the U.S. Senate. But for most of that time he has reported comparatively little by national standards in charitable contributions on his tax returns, records released by Obama show.==

==In 2002, the year before Obama launched his campaign for U.S. Senate, the Obamas reported income of $259,394, ranking them in the top 2 percent of U.S. households, according to Census Bureau statistics. That year the Obamas claimed $1,050 in deductions for gifts to charity, or 0.4 percent of their income. The average U.S. household totaled $1,872 in gifts to charity in 2002, according to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.

The national average for charitable giving has long hovered at 2.2 percent of household income, according to the Glenview-based Giving USA Foundation, which tracks trends in philanthropy. Obama tax returns dating to 1997 show he fell well below that benchmark until 2005, the year he arrived in Washington.==

==Obama released several years of past tax returns during his 2004 U.S. Senate run and has made subsequent returns public as well. Illinois' other senator, Democrat Dick Durbin, also discloses his annual taxes. Over the last decade, Durbin has consistently devoted a share of his income to charity that is above the national norm, sometimes double.==

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/chi-0704250022apr25,1,1209388.story?coll=chi-news-hed

Obama when the cameras are rolling

=="There's a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit," he told Northwestern University graduates last year at commencement ceremonies. "But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit -- the ability to put ourselves in someone else's shoes, to see the world through those who are different from us: the child who's hungry, the laid-off steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your dorm room."==