Well, well, well, here’s an expose on how Obama’s much-touted ban on campaign contributions from lobbyists has really worked.
Courtesy of Portfolio, a few excerpts:
First let’s start with what Barack Obama himself says:
“So one of the things that we’ve got to do is not just change the health-care system, but we’ve also got to change our political system. And that’s why I don’t take PAC money. I don’t take money from federal registered lobbyists, because I want to answer to you when I’m in the White House. I don’t want to answer to all these fat-cat lobbyists!”
Now let’s look at what really happens:
The campaign has no problem accepting money from the spouses of Washington lobbyists. A database search conducted for this column by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign-finance issues, found that more than 20 spouses of prominent Washington lobbyists have donated to the Obama campaign, including the wives of Dan Glickman, the head of the Motion Picture Association of America; Norman Brownstein, a prominent Denver-based lawyer who has lobbied for Oracle, Toshiba, and Comcast; and Stuart Pape of Patton Boggs, Washington’s foremost lobbying firm, who has lobbied for Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer, and the Smokeless Tobacco Council.
The campaign accepts money from lobbyists registered in state capitals. It accepts money from partners at law firms that engage in lobbying. It accepts money from the C.E.O.’s, chairs, and officers of corporations, but not their lobbyists. Obama has received more than $627,000 in contributions from employees of Goldman Sachs, including, for example, $2,300 (the maximum contribution allowed) from the likes of managing director George Butcher. But Michael Berman, a registered lobbyist (and a former adviser to Walter Mondale), cannot give money to Obama because his firm, the Duberstein Group, has lobbied on behalf of Goldman Sachs on energy and tax issues. Aren’t such policies a little inconsistent with the ban? “Maybe,” said the senior Obama official. “But it’s important symbolism.”
But wait, there’s more. While Obama proactively speaks against it, he secretly encourages it:
I recently spoke with a very successful registered Washington lobbyist, a Democrat who asked not to be named in this piece for fear of diminishing his influence with a possible Obama administration. Even though the Obama campaign wouldn’t accept a check from the lobbyist personally, he says, Obama aides asked him to help them raise money in other ways. “They wanted my list,” the lobbyist says, referring to the many donors the lobbyist has solicited for other campaigns. “Since then, they’ve asked if I could organize fundraisers but said that I couldn’t donate.”
and it only gets better:
Lobbyists have found other ways to work for the campaign, despite the official ban. In May, it emerged that Francisco Pavia, a registered Washington lobbyist whose clients include the Puerto Rican government, was helping to run Obama’s efforts in Puerto Rico. The campaign insisted that he was merely a volunteer and not on staff, and thus not in violation of the campaign’s own rules. While he was helping the campaign, Pavia took no leave from the firm of Winston & Strawn. The Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call reported at the end of July that 42 registered lobbyists had donated to Obama’s campaign despite the ban; only two had their checks returned. The campaign says that it’s doing the best it can to vet every contribution it receives against a database of registered lobbyists.
So there you have it folks, another glowing example of how Obama tells the people one thing, but does something completely different.
Posted by PUMA Pundit
