Follow the Money - Money in Government

About: Who is getting Money & Who is Giving Money in Politics

In addition to Vote Smart website, Open Secrets does a decent job of displaying & threading the money going into campaigns & politics . Of interest recently is the Goldman Sachs lawsuit & it's sudden appearance suspiciously close to Obama's push for new government financial regulations.

Background Material: ... • BigGovernment: Obama's Newest Villain: Goldman Sachs
• Sweetness & Light: Frank: Goldman Case Proves Reform Need
• Washington Examiner: Goldman Sachs Will Be Sitting Pretty With Emanuel in the Obama White House
• Sweetness & Light: Rahm Emanuel's Ties To Goldman Sachs
• New York Post: Wall Street Suspects Goldman Charges 'Not Coincidental' to Financial Reform Effort
• LA Times: Goldman Sachs Case Could Help Obama Shift Voter Anger
• Investor's Business Daily: SEC Charges Fraud By Goldman Sachs In Mortgage Deal
• Wall Street Journal: The SEC vs. Goldman
• New York Times: Top Goldman Leaders Said to Have Overseen Mortgage Unit
• Wall Street Journal: Americans Are More Skeptical of Govt Than Ever - Andrew Kohut

...Well if you want to follow the money you can see who Goldman Sachs contributed to here. Did GS buy themselves a painful rectal examination in public or will they benefit from the new regulations ? or something else? Here is the Open Secrets page referencing Obama & Goldman Sachs contribution of $994,795 to his presidential campaign through their PACs & other group/individual efforts.

This is a good argument for disconnecting the economic domain from the rights & legal (politics) domains in the sense of threefoldness.

Comments

Mark de LA says

Obama's 4 contacts recently prior to the Goldman Sachs civil fraud charges are talked about here:

source: ...

White House logs show that Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein traveled to Washington for at least two events with President Barack Obama, whose 2008 presidential campaign received $994,795 in donations from Goldman's political action committee, its employees and their relatives. He also met twice with Obama's top economic adviser, Larry Summers.

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/04/21/92637/goldmans-connections-to-white.html#ixzz0lw27LyJU

...

Mark de LA says

~ details... details

Source: ... Obama supporters like to counter that Obama raised more money from small donors than any previous candidate for president, which is true. But Obama still needed large donors to fund his campaign. Obama implies that he won the presidency without much money from large donors, and the evidence does not support that. In fact, even if we set the bar for small donors higher -- if we stipulated that everyone who gave less than $1,000 was a small donor -- that still means 43 percent gave more. And the interviewer, John Harwood, was correct when he said Obama got about $1 million from employees of Goldman Sachs; the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics puts the number at $994,795.

Obama's skill at raising money from small donors for the 2008 campaign was significant. But Obama was also skilled at raising money from large donors. His statement was, "the vast majority of the money I got was from small donors all across the country." That's not the case. Only 32 percent of his general election money came from people who gave $200 or less. We rate his statement False.

...

Seth says

Seems to me that the administration's targeting Goldman for fraud flys in the face of this complaint. But, yeah, never let a chance to rag on Obama go by without jumping on the band wagon.

Mark de LA says

seth 2010-04-23 11:15:29 13672

Seems to me that the administration's targeting Goldman for fraud flys in the face of this complaint. But, yeah, never let a chance to rag on Obama go by without jumping on the band wagon.

The dynamics of the situation seem to be that in the beginning Obama's demonizing of Wall Street (otherwise a zip code) enables his quick reform package through Congress before anyone, including Congress reads it. In the end what actually happens to Goldman Sachs & what kind of pain or benefit they draw from the reform package needs to be scrutinized. Obama & the White house claim no collusion with the SEC, OTOH it is pretty clear to those who are his appointees & fellow travelers in the media what has to done to please him. Plausible deniability is what kept Bill C & Hillary out of jail.

BTW, do you want some K-Y with that blue ass of yurs?

Mark de LA says

WashTimes: (Pruden): ... The president, in a speech in California, let us in on what these Washington-Wall Street tete-a-tetes might be about:

"[The minority leader] paid a visit to Wall Street a week or two ago," he said, "and met with some of the movers and shakers up there. I don't know exactly what was discussed. All I can tell you is when he came back, he promptly announced he would oppose the financial-regulatory reform."

Mr. Obama's slashing personal attacks on his opponents, accusing them of cynicism for doing what he does, demonstrate the community activist at work. His constant running off to make another speech, together with his toxic vitriol aimed at his opponents, is the homage he pays to Saul Alinsky and the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., his Chicago tutors in how to demonize anyone who gets in the way of his scheme to remake America as it never was.

Once upon a time Washington pols worried about "perceptions," the idea that if something looked bad and smelled bad it probably was bad. Perceptions are not so important now, with Washington awash in slush the color of money.

...

Once a politician makes known his M.O. & what he/she/it wants done it is not hard for the mind-numbed robots (or the faithful followers) to take action without an audit trail to embarrass them or cause jail or impeachment to show up in their future. Only Bill Clinton was foolish enough to lie about sex - he got away with all the rest.

Mark de LA says

For an interim perspective on the Goldman Sachs scapegoating read this.

source: ...

But it is hard to argue that Goldman's hedging made the crisis worse. Many, many other things take precedence over greed: government policies that encouraged shoddy lending and excessive consumer debt, lax monetary policy, ratings agencies that handed out AAA labels like dime store candy, regulators who were out to lunch or watching porn. If anything, a proliferation of shorts was the first sign that something had gone terribly wrong in the housing sector.

However, rather than accept that the crisis had many causes and many agents, Congress seems determined to pin the blame on a single investment bank. This is called scape-goating, and it's as American as apple pie. Shifting blame happens whenever Americans make a collective decision that they regret. In 2003, a bipartisan consensus about the dangers of Saddam Hussein, terrorists, and weapons of mass destruction drove the United States to invade Iraq and depose Saddam. But by 2007, when the Iraq war was at its bloodiest, you would've been forgiven for thinking that the only individuals who had supported military action were those dreaded neocons.

...

Mark de LA says

The SUPERPAC - this was apparently the outcome of campaign finance reform of McCain-Feingold I'm guessing. There are some very nice details in the link provided with more drill-down details.

Mark de LA says

... & then there's the quid pro quo of money:

TWS: ...

Access to the Obama White House is in direct correlation to the amount of money donated to the president's reelection effort and the Democratic party, the New York Times reports today.

The Times reports: "those who donated the most to Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party since he started running for president were far more likely to visit the White House than others. Among donors who gave $30,000 or less, about 20 percent visited the White House, according to a New York Times analysis that matched names in the visitor logs with donor records. But among those who donated $100,000 or more, the figure rises to about 75 percent. Approximately two-thirds of the president’s top fund-raisers in the 2008 campaign visited the White House at least once, some of them numerous times."

... Is access bribery?

Mark de LA says
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774 – how Hillary became the candidate.
Then too there is all that money to the Clinton Foundation via Uranium One

Transparency is the key. Campaign Finance Reform was/is a joke! In politics law makers & law breakers will do what they do & let the people complain after they are firmly seated back in the swamp!

Mark de LA says
Conversation forked to thought 24677

Follow the Money - Money in Government

About: Who is getting Money & Who is Giving Money in Politics

Tags

Comments

See Also