BARACK OBAMA INC.

Barack Obama Inc.: The birth of a Washington machine
by Ken Silverstein

....

Word about Obama spread through Washington’s blue-chip law firms, lobby shops, and political offices, and this accelerated after his win in the March primary. Mike Williams, vice president for legislative affairs at The Bond Market Association and a member of an African-American lobbying association, had been following the race in Illinois and was introduced to Obama through acquaintances in Washington who had known him at Harvard Law School. “We represent Wall Street firms,” Williams said in recounting his first conversation with Obama. “A big issue for us since 2000 is predatory lending. He worked on that issue in Illinois; he was the lead sponsor of a bill there. I talked to him about that. He had a different position from ours. There’s a perception out there that the Democrats are anti-business, and I talked to him about that directly. I said, There’s a perception that you’re coming at this from the angle of consumers. He was forthright, which I appreciated. He said, I tried to broker the best deal I could.” Williams still had his differences with Obama, but the conversation convinced him that the two could work together. “He’s not a political novice and he’s smart enough not to say things cast in stone, but you can have a conversation with him,” Williams said. “He’s a straight shooter. As a lobbyist, that’s something you value. You don’t need a yes every time, but you want to be able to count the votes. That’s what we do.”

Williams subsequently set up a conference call between Obama and a group of financial-industry lobbyists. That, too, went well, and in June of 2004, Williams helped organize “a little fund-raiser” for Obama at The Bond Market Association. “It wasn’t just the financial community. There was a broad cross-section,” he said of the 200 or so people who turned out. “There was overwhelming support, not just people from associations giving $2,000 but from individuals who just wanted to meet him, giving smaller contributions.”

...

I recall a remark made by Studs Terkel in 1980, about the liberal Republican John Anderson, who was running as an independent against Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter: “People are so tired of dealing with two-foot midgets, you give them someone two foot four and they start proclaiming him a giant.” In the unstinting and unanimous adulation of Barack Obama today, one wonders if a similar dynamic might be at work. If so, his is less a midgetry of character than one dictated by changing context. Gone are the days when, as in the 1970s, the U.S. Senate could comfortably house such men as Fred Harris (from Oklahoma, of all places), who called for the breakup of the oil, steel, and auto industries; as Wisconsin’s William Proxmire, who replaced Joe McCarthy in 1957 and survived into the 1980s, a crusader against big banks who neither spent nor raised campaign money; as South Dakota’s George McGovern, who favored huge cuts in defense spending and a guaranteed income for all Americans; as Frank Church of Idaho, who led important investigations into CIA and FBI abuses.

Today, money has all but wrung such dissent from the Senate. Campaigns have grown increasingly costly; in 2004 it took an average of more than $7 million to run for a Senate seat. As Carl Wagner, a Democratic political strategist who first came to Washington in 1970, remarked to me, the Senate today is a fundamentally different institution than it was then. “Senators were creatures of their states and reflected the cultures of their states,” he said. “Today they are creatures of the people who pay for their multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns. Representative democracy has largely been taken off the table. It’s reminiscent of the 1880s and 1890s, when senators were chosen by state legislatures who were owned by the railroads and the banks.” Accordingly, as corporate money has grown increasingly important to candidates, we have seen the rise of the smothering K Street culture and the revolving door that feeds it—not just lobbyists themselves but an entire interconnected world of campaign consultants, public-relations agencies, pollsters, and media strategists.

All of this has forged a political culture that is intrinsically hostile to reform. On condition of anonymity, one Washington lobbyist I spoke with was willing to point out the obvious: that big donors would not be helping out Obama if they didn’t see him as a “player.” The lobbyist added: “What’s the dollar value of a starry-eyed idealist?”

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/11/0081275

once he gets all his big business/pharma money people in the room....

they're under his thrall!

After all, when someone makes you feel good about yourself, they're bound to develop emotional ties.

Democrats can be sheeple, too!

'Thrall' be powerfully seductive, or something like that! :crazy:

...as for me, I'm a sheeple for Edwards. :P

I don't need a candidate to hope for me, I need one to fight for me.

why it is so many people who support him are uninterested and uninformed of his very public record.

What exactly are they supporting beyond a chimerical figurine if they don't know what he has actually done?

Anyone But Hillary. I count myself in that, too.

I'll bet the republicons have a lot that is not being brought up now.

but stopped their research at that. I've become a little concerned as I hear that Republicans like him so much. Why? Maybe because they understand that he's essentially a conservative person.

I'm sorry, but like those so-called "pro-life" voters, I'm a single-issuer voter too, and I think predatory lending is an EXCELLENT single issue. Where you stand on it is a good gauge of who you really support - Corporations or People. Argue if you will about who caused the subprime crisis, but there's one absolutely black-and-white issue, and that's the fact that 30% interest rates on credit cards are usurious, period. And rent-to-own at 100-400% is usurious. And 700% on Payday Loans is usurious.

So if Obama isn't against predatory lending, then that tells me all I need to know about how he would govern. I can still respect him as a person, as I did after reading his book, but I want a leader who is going to bow down to the credit card and finance industry.

Good luck with that Edwards thang... I guess people who see though him are stupid too...

At least he says he's on our side. Obama won't.

Obama never said he's on our side? Wow. That's all ya got?

:rofl:

He or his campaign attacks a progressive columnist, falsely says we have a Social Security crisis, disses unions as a special interest, consorts with a gaybashing loony, and opines as to how his pro-choice views may be wrong.

Yeah, that's all I got - it's enough.

I don't have a good feeling about this at all. Someone is trying to assure we end up with the same people running things. If they can steal elections, they can steal primaries.

They had their dress rehearsal when they bought a few Dem senate and governor races.

...it's very troubling.

Saglicious. Or to translate: Chickenshit Bullshit.

I think if anyone votes for your candidate they are a fool, go lay down.

:cry:

(said JRE - or something of that nature, anyway)

And I KNOW he's right.

We've been trying THAT TACTIC (taking their money then trying to negotiate with them) for YEARS in this country. What has it gotten us?

A corporate stranglehold on our government.

Obama can talk "hope" and "change" all he wants - but his affiliations and the source of too much of his money (AND MOST IMPORTANTLY - HISTORY) tells me that an Obama presidency is likely to be "same M.O.", NOT "change". (unless we're talking the "change" you get from McDonald's when you buy a cheeseburger).

That said, I still like Obama. But I think the BEST candidate for the job - for REAL CHANGE - and the ONLY one who can beat the Republicans - is EDWARDS.

that Obama has for substantive change is non-existent. It's just a slogan.

One should actually do the research and look into his voting record before lauding him. It's easily accessible and not very complimentary.

It doesn't make sense if one wnts change to get involved with someone who is so ardently suportive of the status quo.

and fundie yourself.


:evilgrin:

Not only is Obama refusing to take money from lobbyists and PACs in this race, he's broken records for small individual contributions from the grassroots.


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/us/politics/17obama.html


http://thephoenix.com/Article.aspx?id=48290&page=3

He doesn't just have more money than Clinton and Edwards, he has more donors--far, far more. I wish I could find more comparisons between Obama and Edwards' fundraising, because Edwards is certainly no Clinton, but I can't really find much.

Apparently, specifically in Iowa, they both had great showings for small donors: http://www.iowaindependent.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=589

FYI

You'll piss on the parade of all the "me me me" Democrats that have developed tunnel vision and could very well contribute to another November collapse.

Edwards voted for the Iraq war, when he knew the intel Bush was pushing was false, he also failed to read the NIE, the ONLY MEMBER of the committee to do so, dem or repub.


How do you get around that mess ?

Others who have helped raise funds for Obama's Leadership PAC include John Gorman of Texas-based Tejas Securities, a major funder of Senate Democrats (and of the Bush presidential campaigns) and Winston & Strawn, the Chicago-based law and lobbying firm. Individual contributors to Obama include some of the best-connected lobbyists in town, including Jeffrey Peck (whose clients include MasterCard, the Business Roundtable, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) and Rich Tarplin (Chevron, the American Petroleum Institute, and the National Association of Manufacturers).

In the magazine article, I asserted that Obama is not a mouthpiece for his donors; neither does his voting record mirror the wishes of his contributor list. But, as I suggested, it's naïve to think that he's completely unaware of who's footing the bills. Exelon, a leading nuclear-plant operator based in Illinois, is a big donor to Obama, and its executive and employees have given him more than $70,000 since 2004. The Obama staffer pointed out that the senator pushed for legislation that would require nuclear companies to “inform state and local officials if there is an accidental or unintentional leak of a radioactive substance,” according to an office press release. Obama took a stand on that issue following reports that a plant operated by Exelon had leaked tritium several times over the past decade.

But Exelon is probably not entirely unhappy with Obama. At a 2005 hearing at the Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, of which Obama is a member, the senator—echoing the nuclear industry's current campaign to promotes nuclear energy as “green”—said that since Congress was debating “policies to address air quality and the deleterious effects of carbon emissions on the global ecosystem, it is reasonable—and realistic—for nuclear power to remain on the table for consideration.” He was immediately lauded by the industry publication Nuclear Notes , which said, “Back during his campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2004, said that he rejected both liberal and conservative labels in favor of ‘common sense solutions.’ And when it comes to nuclear energy, it seems like the Senator is keeping an open mind.”

To anyone who thinks Obama is blissfully oblivious to the fundraising imperative, consider the following: in one of his earliest votes as a senator, Obama helped pass a class-action “reform” bill that was a long-standing and cherished goal of business groups. (The bill was the focus of a significant lobbying effort by financial firms, who constitute Obama's second-biggest single bloc of donors.)

...

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/10/sb-a-little-bit-more-on-obama-1161881683

on Obama. IMO the national press has really fallen down on the job in terms of examining Obama's record.

Carefully crafting the Obama 'brand' -

WASHINGTON - One evening in February 2005, in a four-hour meeting stoked by pepperoni pizza and grand ambition, Sen. Barack Obama and his senior advisers crafted a strategy to fit the Obama "brand."

The charismatic celebrity-politician had rocketed from the Illinois state legislature to the U.S. Senate, stirring national interest. The challenge was to maintain altitude despite the limited tools available to a freshman senator whose party was in the minority.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/obama/chi-obama_senate_recordjun12,1,4414390.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

Fundraising 101 at 'Obama U' -

"Gathered in a Chicago hotel ballroom, the 100 or so students had come from across the nation to learn from some of the top names in the business: Solomont, Kearney, Barzun.

While not household names, they are some of the top players in the presidential money game, where the bundling of contributions by elite fundraisers is an essential part in financing the growing cost of national campaigns.

The three instructors, plus others, spoke at "Obama University." The training program is designed to expand an already massive fundraising operation that raised $79 million during the first three quarters of the year for Sen. Barack Obama, keeping him competitive with Democratic frontrunner Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York. ...

"Obama University" was started after three of his top fundraisers pitched the idea to Chicago billionaire and Hyatt Hotel heiress Penny Pritzker, the campaign's national finance chairwoman."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/obama/

Obama fits in nicely with peoples' mythologies about heroes...pick one: The Egyptian uniter of the kingdoms; The dream of Martin L.K. and prediction of Bobby K.; The savior of the starry-eyed youth who are willing to accept a cardboard figure because they have already been raised on the lies of American culture....or, invent your own costume from the paper-doll box of Hope.

"It’s only when you hitch yourself up to something bigger than yourself that you realize your true potential."

Please.

That's Obama.

Digging deeper into Obama, I have concern about an Obama win, and this article confirms that.

Most telling quote?

This: On condition of anonymity, one Washington lobbyist I spoke with was willing to point out the obvious: that big donors would not be helping out Obama if they didn’t see him as a “player.” The lobbyist added: “What’s the dollar value of a starry-eyed idealist?”

A lot of influential people are flocking to Obama. (Recall also that piece about Zbig) How much can he be influenced? How principled is he?

Obama is not what he seems.

from linked article:

"Gone are the days when, as in the 1970s, the U.S. Senate could comfortably house such men as Fred Harris (from Oklahoma, of all places), who called for the breakup of the oil, steel, and auto industries; as Wisconsin’s William Proxmire, who replaced Joe McCarthy in 1957 and survived into the 1980s, a crusader against big banks who neither spent nor raised campaign money; as South Dakota’s George McGovern, who favored huge cuts in defense spending and a guaranteed income for all Americans; as Frank Church of Idaho, who led important investigations into CIA and FBI abuses."

We need John Edwards now more than ever.

Edwards = style and SUBSTANCE.

As Molly Ivins said, "You got to dance with them what brung you!"

The corporations are investing their money in a more palatable puppet. The right was sold an image of a macho tough cowboy & bought it hook, line, & sinker.

Now, the corporations realize that the Republicans won't do as front men anymore, they are changing their image. A feel good candidate. The corporations never cared about gay marriage or abortion. It was always a smokescreen issue to get their people in office. So, they will let the people 'eat cake' with a candidate who will be more socially liberal, however, will offer little change from the status quo.

And, the people gobbled it up.

Sad.

I guess that's why they are controlling everything. Now if one questions or criticizes the chosen candidates, one is often labeled a racist or something. A good trap for Democrats to fall into.

Perhaps, America needs a dem corporate President to finally awaken people to the TRUE fight. Once people figure out that NEITHER party represents the majority of America's citizens, we will be able to create true change. It is very disappointing that so many so called 'progressives' are just as easily manipulated & deceived as the Bush sheeple.

I am not buying into Obama at all.

Of course, I'm still hangin' with Edwards and hope more voters see him as the best progressive available (the national Rasmussen numbers have been encouraging lately). But the problem with wasting yet another decade, or even half a decade under the thumb of the oligarchy is that we don't have any time left to waste. The list of horrors coming our way is endless and if we don't REALLY tackle them we are in deep shit, that is if we survive to lament our stupid choices.