Now that we know that Prince Alwaleed owns much of Citicorp as well as Time Warner

[JDPriestly]

and who knows what else.

Let's review the list of Obama's top campaign contributors.

University of California $1,591,395
Goldman Sachs $994,795
Harvard University $854,747
Microsoft Corp $833,617
Google Inc $803,436
Citigroup Inc $701,290
JPMorgan Chase & Co $695,132
Time Warner $590,084
Sidley Austin LLP $588,598
Stanford University $586,557
National Amusements Inc $551,683
UBS AG $543,219
Wilmerhale Llp $542,618
Skadden, Arps et al $530,839
IBM Corp $528,822
Columbia University $528,302
Morgan Stanley $514,881
General Electric $499,130
US Government $494,820
Latham & Watkins $493,835

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638&type=I

Over a million came from (employees of) companies in which Prince Alwaleed had a huge interest. So now we know who owns our government.

And McCain?

1 Merrill Lynch $378,995 $378,995 $0
2 Citigroup Inc $331,666 $331,666 $0
3 Morgan Stanley $268,952 $268,952 $0
4 JPMorgan Chase & Co $230,757 $230,757 $0
5 Goldman Sachs $230,345 $230,345 $0
6 AT&T Inc $211,938 $199,438 $12,500
7 US Government $208,379 $208,379 $0
8 Wachovia Corp $195,313 $195,313 $0
9 UBS AG $188,593 $188,593 $0
10 Credit Suisse Group $183,153 $183,153 $0
11 US Army $167,820 $167,820 $0
12 Bank of America $166,026 $166,026 $0
13 PricewaterhouseCoopers $161,150 $159,150 $2,000
14 Blank Rome LLP $154,276 $154,276 $0
15 Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher $152,596 $150,096 $2,500
16 Greenberg Traurig LLP $148,937 $146,437 $2,500
17 US Dept of Defense $145,355 $145,355 $0
18 FedEx Corp $134,474 $132,474 $2,000
19 Bear Stearns $117,498 $117,498 $0
20 Lehman Brothers $116,957 $116,957 $0

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=2010&cid=N00006424&type=I&mem=

McCain is less "owned" by Saudi Arabia's Alwaleed and friends than Obama. Interesting.

I am not a Republican and did not ever support or vote for McCain, but . . . . we have to be honest about our own situation. Our president needs to explain to us the extent to which he has been influenced by money from corporations in which investors who are not American and otherwise could not vote in our elections. Same for all the Republicans. After all, McCain did not take as much as Obama from Citicorp, but he took plenty.

Also, we need to know whether these candidates got money from employees of financial institutions that were failing and how much and whether those institutions then influenced not only the bail-out but the policies of the government after the bail out.

[snot]

1. Link to source would be helpful.

[JDPriestly]

4. Thanks. I posted the Open Secrets links. Sorry.

[NYC_SKP]

2. PLENTY of good Democrats are employees of these firms, so I call bullshit on the association...

...this OP seems to be trying, failing to make.

:shrug:

[JDPriestly]

5. You are partially correct.

The problem is that we don't know what portion of the donations is due to the donor's personal preference and what part to some other motivation.

That is generally true of donations to political candidates.

[NYC_SKP]

6. We could eliminate corporate contributions and there would still be numbers like those above...

The data isn't useful unless we only look at block contributions by corporations or corporate ownership.

As regards motivation, yes I have heard of irregularities and pressures put on employees.

I might add that I wasn't happy with the teachers' union in how they spent my dues on political campaigns.

Then there would be ads that claimed that 400,000 teachers support candidate X, when this wasn't at all true.

[Andy823]

3. Well

I think this just goes to show that nobody figure McCain had much of a chance, and the big money went with the candidate they thought would win. It's a gamble during election time, and they spread their money out so they can try and get some influence no matter who wins. It's been done this way for ages, and I am sure it will continue unless somehow congress puts a stop to it, but then again they make millions from these same groups, so they don't want to lose that money, sad but true!

[Make7]

7. Doesn't the US Government own like 35% of Citigroup?

That's by far the largest single investor, if I am not mistaken.

Does this mean the US Government is going to start bribing and blackmailing elected officials of the US Government? That's fucked up any way you look at it.
 

[David Zephyr]

8. Happy to give this a K&R. I hope it gets read.

Thanks for the post and links.

[BunkerHill24]

9. I guess you could say groups like AIPAC and the NRA

will now have a competition on campaign contributions. Just a thought!