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March 4, 2008, 5:38 pm
Flag as Inappropriate gbyrd  

Every time I turn on the TV, I see Barrack Obama commercials boasting that his campaign is not funded by lobbyist or interest groups. So I decided to get online and see if Barrack’s claims are legit. As it turns out, Obama is the number two recipient of corporate campaign contributions in this election, only behind Hillary Clinton for payoff money from the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries (which explains his successful downsizing of the healthcare reform while "serving" in the Illinois state senate).

But it goes much deeper than that. According to the Booman Tribune, the “senator has pulled a fast one.”

From Corporate Crime Reporter

Well, let's take the law firm of Sidley & Austin. Sidley & Austin is a registered federal lobbyist. It cannot by law give money to federal candidates. But the lawyers who control the firm and profit from the firm's lobbying activities can give to Obama. Some of those individual lawyers are registered lobbyists. Some are not. Guess who gives to Obama? Right. The ones who are not registered lobbyists. But they still control and profit from the lobbying activities of the firm. So, technically, Obama is not taking money from federal lobbyists. But only in the narrowest sense.

Sidley Austin, Skadden, Arps, Jenner & Block, Kirkland & Ellis, and Wilmerhale are all registered lobbyists. Lawyers at these registered lobbying firms have given Obama's campaign $813,459 through February 1, 2008.

"Is it possible that Senator Obama does not know that corporate law firms are also frequently registered lobbyists?" asks Pam Martens, writing in the current print edition of Counterpunch. ("The Obama Money Cartel," by Pam Martens, Counterpunch). "Or is he making a distinction that because these funds are coming from the employees of these firms he's not really taking money directly from registered lobbyists? That thesis seems disingenuous when many of these individual donors own these law firms as equity partners or shareholders and share in the profits generated from lobbying."