Top 10 campaign contributors, McCain and Obama

[JakeMartinez]

Just read a post accusing Obama of being bought and paid for. Thought I'd research both campaigns' top 10 to see who's buying whom.

McCain:


1. Merrill Lynch $230,310
BANKING
2. Citigroup Inc. $219,551
BANKING
3. Blank Rome LLP $189,226
LAW
4. Greenberg Traurig LLP $157,487
LAW
5. AT&T Inc. $153,005
COMMUNICATIONS
6. Goldman Sachs $139,520
BANKING
7. Morgan Stanley $136,651
BANKING
8. JPMorgan Chase & Co. $129,400
BANKING
9. Credit Suisse Group $110,725
BANKING
10. Lehman Brothers $96,050
BANKING

DOMINANT INDUSTRY: BANKING (7/10)

Barack Obama:

1. Goldman Sachs - $571,330
BANKING
2. University of California - $437,236
EDUCATION
3. UBS AG - $364,806
BANKING
4. JPMorgan Chase & Co - $362,207
BANKING
5. Citigroup Inc - $358,054
BANKING
6. National Amusements Inc - $320,750
ENTERTAINMENT
7. Lehman Brothers - $318, 647
BANKING
8. Google Inc - $309,514
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY/SERVICES
9. Harvard University - $309,025
EDUCATION
10. Sidley Austin LLP - $294,245
LAW

DOMINANT INDUSTRY: BANKING (5/10)

REPEATING DONORS (McCain-Obama):

CITIGROUP (2-5)
GOLDMAN SACHS (6-1)
JP MORGAN-CHASE (8-4)
LEHMAN BROTHERS (10-7)

INDUSTRY SHARED BY REPEATING DONORS:

BANKING

Interesting, isn't it?

This chart may be out of date, so I encourage any more accurate information to be posted :)

So, according to this chart, BOTH campaigns have accepted large amounts of money from banking interests (and these are just the campaign contributions from them that we know about). Why would banks want to give so much money to these campaigns? And, more importantly, why are they hedging their bets, as it were.

Oh I'm about 80% sure the law firms that contributed were specialists in business law.

[JakeMartinez]

No comments? Really???

[maladroit]

everyone knows politics is corrupted by corporatism (special interest groups including corporations)

[theforthdrive]

No comments? Really???

LOL, whats new?

[flyingimam]

No comments? Really???

give it time, people gotta wake up first and get through their days:D

I find politics everywhere in the world at least a partially flawed process if not wholly. Now I do not exactly know how these contributions count or what they exactly mean, when almost every single politician has some of them on his/her record

perhaps ron paul would be among the few who will not have such contributions, im not even sure about this...

All i know is that we setup a system including these PACs that supposedly help influence the candidates or politicians toward certain interests. and this is a practice done in most modern nations, it's essentially the same philosophy as lobbying. I really cannot say much about this issue, because I cannot imagine a functional alternative for it, in fact I can, but it wont be possible here in America: Swiss democracy, where citizens are WAY MORE involved in their politics in a DIRECT way.

in a representative democracy, a republic that we are, u gotta accept the cons, and this could be just one of them.

the thing is, throughout the history, mankuinds governing systems have evolved and mostly for the better, so I don't thinking that we got the best thing ever is a smart or wise way of thinking, ideas come and go, some stick for while, some last centuries and some dont even get any attention

for now, this is what we got, we could reform it for the better, I'm sure from left and right a lot of people can agree that there are some problems with what we got in the "current" situation and I believe 95% of the fuss is about what we want to change it to, however I don't think being scared from experimenting is a good thing, in fact science would have gotten nowhere had people only stuck with the first failed results of some test or solution.

and thats why our governing systems have evolved throughout the history and almost at any given time, we have had people who thought thats the best system ever or the worst one. truth is this shit is not here permanently, it will evolve even if after our lifetime, there aint no stopping to change for the better or more efficient systems of the government

all this said, I think we will have to accept ending up with a mix of these ideas such as capitalism, liberalism or socialism. u know, they are a way governing, not just means of economic system and in todays world they are firmly connected together.