7 of top 14 Obama supporters are...corporate interests
El_Kabong
Posts: 4,141
shock, gasp
http://jischinger.wordpress.com/2008/02/24/obama%E2%80%99s-money-cartel/
How he’s fronted for the most vicious firms on Wall Street
Wall Street, known variously as a barren wasteland for diver*sity or the last plantation in America, has defied courts and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for decades in its failure to hire blacks as stockbrokers. Now it’s marshal*ling its money machine to elect a black man to the highest office in the land. Why isn’t the press curious about this?
Walk into any of the largest Wall Street brokerage firms today and you’ll see a self-portrait of upper management rac*ism and sexism: women sitting at secre*tarial desks outside fancy offices occupied by predominantly white males. According to the EEOC as well as the recent racial discrimination class actions filed against UBS and Merrill Lynch, blacks make up between 1 per cent to 3.5 per cent of stockbrokers - and this after 30 years of litigation, settlements and empty prom*ises to do better by the largest Wall Street firms.
The first clue to an entrenched white male bastion seeking a black male occupant in the oval office (having placed only five blacks in the U.S. Senate in the last two centuries) appeared this month on a chart at the Center for Responsive Politics website. It was a list of the 20 top con*tributors to the Barack Obama campaign, and it looked like one of those compre*hension tests where you match up things that go together and eliminate those that don’t. Of the 20 top contributors, I elimi*nated six that didn’t compute. I was now looking at a sight only slightly less fright*ening to democracy than a Diebold vot*ing machine. It was a Wall Street cartel of financial firms, their registered lobbyists, ! and go-to law firms that have a death grip on our federal government.
Why is the “yes, we can” candidate in bed with this cartel? How can we, the people, make change if Obama’s money backers block our ability to be heard?
Seven of the Obama campaign’s top 14 donors consist of officers and em*ployees of the same Wall Street firms charged time and again with looting the public and newly implicated in originat*ing and/or bundling fraudulently made mortgages. These latest frauds have left thousands of children in some of our largest minority communities coming home from school to see eviction notices and foreclosure signs nailed to their front doors. Those scars will last a lifetime.
These seven Wall Street firms are (in order of money given): Goldman Sachs, UBS AG, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse. There is also a large hedge fund, Citadel Investment Group, which is a major source of fee income to Wall Street. There are five large corporate law firms that are also registered lobbyists; and one is a corporate law firm that is no longer a registered lobbyist but does legal work for Wall Street. The cumula*tive total of these 14 contributors through February 1, 2008, was $2,872,128, and we’re still in the primary season.
But hasn’t Senator Obama repeatedly told us in ads and speeches and debates that he wasn’t taking money from reg*istered lobbyists? Hasn’t the press given him a free pass on this statement?
Barack Obama, speaking in Greenville, South Carolina, on January 22, 2008:
“Washington lobbyists haven’t funded my campaign, they won’t run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of working Americans when I am president”.
Barack Obama, in an email to support*ers on June 25, 2007, as reported by the Boston Globe:
“Candidates typically spend a week like this – right before the critical June 30th financial reporting deadline – on the phone, day and night, begging Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs to write huge checks. Not me. Our campaign has rejected the money-for-in*fluence game and refused to accept funds from registered federal lobbyists and po*litical action committees”.
The Center for Responsive Politics’ website allows one to pull up the filings made by lobbyists registering under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 with the clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives and secretary of the U.S. Senate. These top five contributors to the Obama campaign have filed as registered lobbyists: Sidley Austin LLP; Skadden, Arps, et al; Jenner & Block; Kirkland & Ellis; Wilmerhale, aka Wilmer Cutler Pickering.
Is it possible that Senator Obama does not know that corporate law firms are also frequently registered lobbyists? Or is he making a distinction that because these funds are coming from the employ*ees of these firms, he’s not really taking money directly from registered lobby*ists? That thesis seems disingenuous when many of these individual donors own these law firms as equity partners or shareholders and share in the profits gen*erated from lobbying.
Far from keeping his distance from lobbyists, Senator Obama and his cam*paign seems to be brainstorming with them.
The political publication, The Hill, re*ported on December 20, 2007, that three salaried aides on the Obama campaign were registered lobbyists for dozens of corporations. (The Obama campaign said they had stopped lobbying since joining the campaign.) Bob Bauer, counsel to the Obama campaign, is an attorney with Perkins Coie. That law firm is also a reg*istered lobbyist.
What might account for this persistent (but non-reality based) theme of distanc*ing the Obama campaign from lobbyists? Odds are it traces back to one of the largest corporate lobbyist spending sprees in the history of Washington whose details would cast an unwholesome pall on the Obama campaign, unless our cognitive abilities are regularly bombarded with abstract vacuities of hope and change and sentimental homages to Dr. King and President Kennedy .
On February 10, 2005, Senator Obama voted in favor of the passage of the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005. Senators Biden, Boxer, Byrd, Clinton, Corzine, Durbin, Feingold, Kerry, Leahy, Reid and 16 other Democrats voted against it. It passed the Senate 72-26 and was signed into law on February 18, 2005.
Here is an excerpt of remarks Senator Obama made on the Senate floor on February 14, 2005, concerning the pas*sage of this legislation:
“Every American deserves their day in court. This bill, while not perfect, gives people that day while still providing the reasonable reforms necessary to safe*guard against the most blatant abuses of the system. I also hope that the federal judiciary takes seriously their expanded role in class action litigation, and upholds their responsibility to fairly certify class actions so that they may protect our civil and consumer rights..”.
Three days before Senator Obama ex*pressed that fateful yea vote, 14 state attorneys general, including Lisa Madigan of Senator Obama’s home state of Illinois, filed a letter with the Senate and House, pleading to stop the passage of this cor*porate giveaway. The AGs wrote: “State attorneys general frequently investigate and bring actions against defendants who have caused harm to our citizens… In some instances, such actions have been brought with the attorney general acting as the class representative for the con*sumers of the state. We are concerned that certain provisions of S.5 might be misinterpreted to impede the ability of the attorneys general to bring such ac*tions…”
The Senate also received a desper*ate plea from more than 40 civil rights and labor organizations, including the NAACP, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Human Rights Campaign, American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Justice and Democracy, Legal Momentum (formerly NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund), and Alliance for Justice. They wrote as fol*lows:
“Under the [Class Action Fairness Act of 2005], citizens are denied the right to use their own state courts to bring class actions against corporations that violate these state wage and hour and state civil rights laws, even where that corporation has hundreds of employees in that state. Moving these state law cases into federal court will delay and likely deny justice for working men and women and victims of discrimination. The federal courts are al*ready overburdened. Additionally, federal courts are less likely to certify classes or provide relief for violations of state law”.
This legislation, which dramatically im*paired labor rights, consumer rights and civil rights, involved five years of pres*sure from 100 corporations, 475 lobby*ists, tens of millions of corporate dollars buying influence in our government, and the active participation of the Wall Street firms now funding the Obama campaign. “The Civil Justice Reform Group, a busi*ness alliance comprising general counsels from Fortune 100 firms, was instrumen*tal in drafting the class-action bill”, says Public Citizen.
One of the hardest-working registered lobbyists to push this corporate giveaway was the law firm Mayer-Brown, hired by the leading business lobby group, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the Chamber of Commerce spent $16 million in just 2003, lobbying the government on various business issues, including class action reform.
According to a 2003 report from Public Citizen, Mayer-Brown’s class-action lobbyists included “Mark Gitenstein, for*mer chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee and a leading architect of the Senate strategy in support of class-action legislation; John Schmitz, who was deputy counsel to President George H.W. Bush; David McIntosh, former Republican congressman from Indiana; and Jeffrey Lewis, who was on the staffs of both Sen. John Breaux (D-La) and Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La).”
While not on the Center for Responsive Politics list of the top 20 contributors to the Obama presidential campaign, Mayer-Brown’s partners and employees are in rarefied company, giving a total of $92,817 through December 31, 2007, to the Obama campaign. (The firm is also defending Merrill Lynch in court against charges of racial discrimination.)
Senator Obama graduated Harvard Law magna cum laude and was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. Given those credentials, one assumes that he understood the ramifica*tions to the poor and middle class in this country as he helped to gut one of the few weapons left to seek justice against giant corporations and their legions of giant law firms. The class-action vehicle confers upon each citizen one of the most powerful rights in our society: the ability to function as a private attorney general and seek redress for wrongs inflicted on ourselves as well as for those similarly injured that might not otherwise have a voice.
Those rights should have been strengthened, not restricted, at this dangerous time in our nation’s history. According to a comprehensive report from the nonprofit group, United for a Fair Economy, over the past eight years the total loss of wealth for people of color is between $164 billion and $213 billion, for subprime loans which is the greatest loss of wealth for people of color in mod*ern history:
“According to federal data, people of color are three times more likely to have subprime loans: high-cost loans account for 55 per cent of loans to blacks, but only 17 per cent of loans to whites”.
If there had been equitable distribution of subprime loans, losses for white people would be 44.5 per cent higher and losses for people of color would be about 24 per cent lower. “This is evidence of systemic prejudice and institutional racism.”
Before the current crisis, based on improvements in median household net worth, it would take 594 more years for blacks to achieve parity with whites. The current crisis is likely to stretch this even further.
So, how should we react when we learn that the top contributors to the Obama campaign are the very Wall Street firms whose shady mortgage lenders buried the elderly and the poor and minority under predatory loans? How should we react when we learn that on the big donor list is Citigroup, whose former employee at CitiFinancial testified to the Federal Trade Commission that it was standard practice to target people based on race and educational level, with the sales force winning bonuses called “Rocopoly Money” (like a sick board game), after “blitz” nights of soliciting loans by phone? How should we react when we learn that these very same firms, arm in arm with their corporate lawyers and registered lobbyists, have weakened our ability to fight back with the class-action vehicle?
Should there be any doubt left as to who owns our government? The very same cast of characters making the Obama hit parade of campaign loot are the clever creators of the industry solu*tions to the wave of foreclosures gripping this nation’s poor and middle class, effec*tively putting the solution in the hands of the robbers. The names of these pro*grams (that have failed to make a dent in the problem) have the same vacuous ring: Hope Now; Project Lifeline.
Senator Obama has become the in*spiration and role model to millions of children and young people in this coun*try. He has only two paths now: to be a dream maker or a dream killer.
Pam Martens
http://jischinger.wordpress.com/2008/02/24/obama%E2%80%99s-money-cartel/
How he’s fronted for the most vicious firms on Wall Street
Wall Street, known variously as a barren wasteland for diver*sity or the last plantation in America, has defied courts and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for decades in its failure to hire blacks as stockbrokers. Now it’s marshal*ling its money machine to elect a black man to the highest office in the land. Why isn’t the press curious about this?
Walk into any of the largest Wall Street brokerage firms today and you’ll see a self-portrait of upper management rac*ism and sexism: women sitting at secre*tarial desks outside fancy offices occupied by predominantly white males. According to the EEOC as well as the recent racial discrimination class actions filed against UBS and Merrill Lynch, blacks make up between 1 per cent to 3.5 per cent of stockbrokers - and this after 30 years of litigation, settlements and empty prom*ises to do better by the largest Wall Street firms.
The first clue to an entrenched white male bastion seeking a black male occupant in the oval office (having placed only five blacks in the U.S. Senate in the last two centuries) appeared this month on a chart at the Center for Responsive Politics website. It was a list of the 20 top con*tributors to the Barack Obama campaign, and it looked like one of those compre*hension tests where you match up things that go together and eliminate those that don’t. Of the 20 top contributors, I elimi*nated six that didn’t compute. I was now looking at a sight only slightly less fright*ening to democracy than a Diebold vot*ing machine. It was a Wall Street cartel of financial firms, their registered lobbyists, ! and go-to law firms that have a death grip on our federal government.
Why is the “yes, we can” candidate in bed with this cartel? How can we, the people, make change if Obama’s money backers block our ability to be heard?
Seven of the Obama campaign’s top 14 donors consist of officers and em*ployees of the same Wall Street firms charged time and again with looting the public and newly implicated in originat*ing and/or bundling fraudulently made mortgages. These latest frauds have left thousands of children in some of our largest minority communities coming home from school to see eviction notices and foreclosure signs nailed to their front doors. Those scars will last a lifetime.
These seven Wall Street firms are (in order of money given): Goldman Sachs, UBS AG, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse. There is also a large hedge fund, Citadel Investment Group, which is a major source of fee income to Wall Street. There are five large corporate law firms that are also registered lobbyists; and one is a corporate law firm that is no longer a registered lobbyist but does legal work for Wall Street. The cumula*tive total of these 14 contributors through February 1, 2008, was $2,872,128, and we’re still in the primary season.
But hasn’t Senator Obama repeatedly told us in ads and speeches and debates that he wasn’t taking money from reg*istered lobbyists? Hasn’t the press given him a free pass on this statement?
Barack Obama, speaking in Greenville, South Carolina, on January 22, 2008:
“Washington lobbyists haven’t funded my campaign, they won’t run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of working Americans when I am president”.
Barack Obama, in an email to support*ers on June 25, 2007, as reported by the Boston Globe:
“Candidates typically spend a week like this – right before the critical June 30th financial reporting deadline – on the phone, day and night, begging Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs to write huge checks. Not me. Our campaign has rejected the money-for-in*fluence game and refused to accept funds from registered federal lobbyists and po*litical action committees”.
The Center for Responsive Politics’ website allows one to pull up the filings made by lobbyists registering under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 with the clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives and secretary of the U.S. Senate. These top five contributors to the Obama campaign have filed as registered lobbyists: Sidley Austin LLP; Skadden, Arps, et al; Jenner & Block; Kirkland & Ellis; Wilmerhale, aka Wilmer Cutler Pickering.
Is it possible that Senator Obama does not know that corporate law firms are also frequently registered lobbyists? Or is he making a distinction that because these funds are coming from the employ*ees of these firms, he’s not really taking money directly from registered lobby*ists? That thesis seems disingenuous when many of these individual donors own these law firms as equity partners or shareholders and share in the profits gen*erated from lobbying.
Far from keeping his distance from lobbyists, Senator Obama and his cam*paign seems to be brainstorming with them.
The political publication, The Hill, re*ported on December 20, 2007, that three salaried aides on the Obama campaign were registered lobbyists for dozens of corporations. (The Obama campaign said they had stopped lobbying since joining the campaign.) Bob Bauer, counsel to the Obama campaign, is an attorney with Perkins Coie. That law firm is also a reg*istered lobbyist.
What might account for this persistent (but non-reality based) theme of distanc*ing the Obama campaign from lobbyists? Odds are it traces back to one of the largest corporate lobbyist spending sprees in the history of Washington whose details would cast an unwholesome pall on the Obama campaign, unless our cognitive abilities are regularly bombarded with abstract vacuities of hope and change and sentimental homages to Dr. King and President Kennedy .
On February 10, 2005, Senator Obama voted in favor of the passage of the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005. Senators Biden, Boxer, Byrd, Clinton, Corzine, Durbin, Feingold, Kerry, Leahy, Reid and 16 other Democrats voted against it. It passed the Senate 72-26 and was signed into law on February 18, 2005.
Here is an excerpt of remarks Senator Obama made on the Senate floor on February 14, 2005, concerning the pas*sage of this legislation:
“Every American deserves their day in court. This bill, while not perfect, gives people that day while still providing the reasonable reforms necessary to safe*guard against the most blatant abuses of the system. I also hope that the federal judiciary takes seriously their expanded role in class action litigation, and upholds their responsibility to fairly certify class actions so that they may protect our civil and consumer rights..”.
Three days before Senator Obama ex*pressed that fateful yea vote, 14 state attorneys general, including Lisa Madigan of Senator Obama’s home state of Illinois, filed a letter with the Senate and House, pleading to stop the passage of this cor*porate giveaway. The AGs wrote: “State attorneys general frequently investigate and bring actions against defendants who have caused harm to our citizens… In some instances, such actions have been brought with the attorney general acting as the class representative for the con*sumers of the state. We are concerned that certain provisions of S.5 might be misinterpreted to impede the ability of the attorneys general to bring such ac*tions…”
The Senate also received a desper*ate plea from more than 40 civil rights and labor organizations, including the NAACP, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Human Rights Campaign, American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Justice and Democracy, Legal Momentum (formerly NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund), and Alliance for Justice. They wrote as fol*lows:
“Under the [Class Action Fairness Act of 2005], citizens are denied the right to use their own state courts to bring class actions against corporations that violate these state wage and hour and state civil rights laws, even where that corporation has hundreds of employees in that state. Moving these state law cases into federal court will delay and likely deny justice for working men and women and victims of discrimination. The federal courts are al*ready overburdened. Additionally, federal courts are less likely to certify classes or provide relief for violations of state law”.
This legislation, which dramatically im*paired labor rights, consumer rights and civil rights, involved five years of pres*sure from 100 corporations, 475 lobby*ists, tens of millions of corporate dollars buying influence in our government, and the active participation of the Wall Street firms now funding the Obama campaign. “The Civil Justice Reform Group, a busi*ness alliance comprising general counsels from Fortune 100 firms, was instrumen*tal in drafting the class-action bill”, says Public Citizen.
One of the hardest-working registered lobbyists to push this corporate giveaway was the law firm Mayer-Brown, hired by the leading business lobby group, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the Chamber of Commerce spent $16 million in just 2003, lobbying the government on various business issues, including class action reform.
According to a 2003 report from Public Citizen, Mayer-Brown’s class-action lobbyists included “Mark Gitenstein, for*mer chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee and a leading architect of the Senate strategy in support of class-action legislation; John Schmitz, who was deputy counsel to President George H.W. Bush; David McIntosh, former Republican congressman from Indiana; and Jeffrey Lewis, who was on the staffs of both Sen. John Breaux (D-La) and Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La).”
While not on the Center for Responsive Politics list of the top 20 contributors to the Obama presidential campaign, Mayer-Brown’s partners and employees are in rarefied company, giving a total of $92,817 through December 31, 2007, to the Obama campaign. (The firm is also defending Merrill Lynch in court against charges of racial discrimination.)
Senator Obama graduated Harvard Law magna cum laude and was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. Given those credentials, one assumes that he understood the ramifica*tions to the poor and middle class in this country as he helped to gut one of the few weapons left to seek justice against giant corporations and their legions of giant law firms. The class-action vehicle confers upon each citizen one of the most powerful rights in our society: the ability to function as a private attorney general and seek redress for wrongs inflicted on ourselves as well as for those similarly injured that might not otherwise have a voice.
Those rights should have been strengthened, not restricted, at this dangerous time in our nation’s history. According to a comprehensive report from the nonprofit group, United for a Fair Economy, over the past eight years the total loss of wealth for people of color is between $164 billion and $213 billion, for subprime loans which is the greatest loss of wealth for people of color in mod*ern history:
“According to federal data, people of color are three times more likely to have subprime loans: high-cost loans account for 55 per cent of loans to blacks, but only 17 per cent of loans to whites”.
If there had been equitable distribution of subprime loans, losses for white people would be 44.5 per cent higher and losses for people of color would be about 24 per cent lower. “This is evidence of systemic prejudice and institutional racism.”
Before the current crisis, based on improvements in median household net worth, it would take 594 more years for blacks to achieve parity with whites. The current crisis is likely to stretch this even further.
So, how should we react when we learn that the top contributors to the Obama campaign are the very Wall Street firms whose shady mortgage lenders buried the elderly and the poor and minority under predatory loans? How should we react when we learn that on the big donor list is Citigroup, whose former employee at CitiFinancial testified to the Federal Trade Commission that it was standard practice to target people based on race and educational level, with the sales force winning bonuses called “Rocopoly Money” (like a sick board game), after “blitz” nights of soliciting loans by phone? How should we react when we learn that these very same firms, arm in arm with their corporate lawyers and registered lobbyists, have weakened our ability to fight back with the class-action vehicle?
Should there be any doubt left as to who owns our government? The very same cast of characters making the Obama hit parade of campaign loot are the clever creators of the industry solu*tions to the wave of foreclosures gripping this nation’s poor and middle class, effec*tively putting the solution in the hands of the robbers. The names of these pro*grams (that have failed to make a dent in the problem) have the same vacuous ring: Hope Now; Project Lifeline.
Senator Obama has become the in*spiration and role model to millions of children and young people in this coun*try. He has only two paths now: to be a dream maker or a dream killer.
Pam Martens
standin above the crowd
he had a voice that was strong and loud and
i swallowed his facade cos i'm so
eager to identify with
someone above the crowd
someone who seemed to feel the same
someone prepared to lead the way
he had a voice that was strong and loud and
i swallowed his facade cos i'm so
eager to identify with
someone above the crowd
someone who seemed to feel the same
someone prepared to lead the way
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
he had a voice that was strong and loud and
i swallowed his facade cos i'm so
eager to identify with
someone above the crowd
someone who seemed to feel the same
someone prepared to lead the way
damn i was wrong
im not sure i understand your question.
i can say this, though:
1. there isn't really a major law firm in this country that doesn't do lobbying. hell, i applied to and interviewed with half the firms on that list. the firm i am working for does lobbying too.
2. they bury the determinative part in the middle of a sentence turned into a question to make a perfectly legit answer seem incredulous: "these funds are coming from the employees of these firms." now, maybe the author has never worked a day in his life in a law firm, but that is not farfetched at all. there can be a hell of a lot of equity partners in a firm, and they are perfectly capable of doing whatever they damn well please with their money. if the money is coming from private citizens within the firm, i see nothing shady about that. nobody would blink twice if ed made a large donation to ralph nader. why should citizens be banned from financially supporting candidates of their choosing becos they work for a law firm? should we ban greenpeace members from donating to any campaigns becos their organization lobbies for change too?
3. im very curious what 6 donors he felt we did not need to know about... i thought censorship and screening and propaganda was what evil corporations did. im glad he has decided to filter things for us.
That is the Federal Reserve.
Wow.
I've just changed my mind again about Obama.
Don't get me wrong, they are all owned and fucking you. But i thought maybe Obama was actualy just naive and thought he was JFK. Which made me think maybe they would try to off him, like JFK. :rolleyes:
But now i'm right back to square 1.
Morgan Chase and Citibank, the combined monies of the Morgans and the Rockefellers, which are both previously in the public record as being the largest holders of NY Federal Reserve Bank stock.
I'm not sure how that qualifies as anything but establishment.
It is all doublespeak.
Everything in that obama website ... you're just gonna have to start accepting and believing it, people.
And yet,
just like the start of the Iraq "War", most will think at first that what is happening is good, but we will all soon see.
:(
If I opened it now would you not understand?
Based on previous disclosure forms, his stock portfolio (thru the Fidelity Magellan Fund) includes: Halliburton, Occidental Petroleum, the Limited, the Gap, Wal-Mart, Exxon-Mobil, Shell Oil Company, Sunoco, Texaco, Chevron Corporation, Raytheon (a major missile manufacturer), other various defense contractors, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_nader
Inside Nader's stock portfolio
A recent financial statement shows the Green Party candidate invests in companies he rails against -- including Dick Cheney's former employers.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Jake Tapper
Oct. 28, 2000 | MADISON, Wis. -- Supporters of Green Party candidate Ralph Nader are angrily lining the streets on the way to a rally for Vice President Al Gore. They hold up Nader signs, looking scornfully at the motorcade that passes by.
Lefties like to bash Gore for being a tool of corporate America. More specifically, Gore incurs their wrath because the trust of his mother, Pauline, owns stock in Occidental Petroleum which, according to Nader running mate Winona LaDuke, "is working to exploit oil reserves under U'wa land in Colombia." The U'wa are an indigenous tribe in Colombia, and became the champions of an anti-Gore rally at the Democratic National Convention.
"As I listen to the vice president espouse his views on campaign finance reform, I look at his investment portfolio and have to ask how that might influence public policy," LaDuke has said, slamming Gore erroneously for "own[ing] substantial stock in Occidental Oil Co."
If LaDuke is looking for Occidental stockholders to criticize, she might want to look a little closer to home. In the financial disclosure form Nader filed on June 14, the Green Party presidential candidate revealed that he owns between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of shares in the Fidelity Magellan Fund. The fund controls 4,321,400 shares of Occidental Petroleum stock.
The Rainforest Action Network -- whose members no doubt include myriad Nader Raiders -- has slammed Fidelity for "investing in genocide," and called for the fund to divest its Occidental holdings.
"The Occidental projects are so beyond the pale about what's reasonable and moral in this modern era," says Patrick Reinsborough, grass-roots coordinator for the Rainforest Action Network. Reinsborough says that his group has been primarily targeting Gore and Fidelity Investments in general, Fidelity Magellan being part of the Fidelity Investments mutual funds network, as well as the one with the largest quantity of Occidental stock. "We have called upon Ralph Nader -- as we would call upon any citizen -- to either divest from Fidelity or to participate in shareholder activism," Reinsborough says. "Gore has much more long-standing links to Occidental Petroleum."
But even if Fidelity were to divest its holdings in Occidental, it holds shares in so many companies Nader has crusaded against, it's hard to escape the conclusion that Nader's participation in the fund is supremely hypocritical. The fund, for example, owns stock in the Halliburton Company, where George W. Bush's running mate, Dick Cheney, recently worked as president and COO. The fund has investments in supremely un-p.c. clothiers the Gap and the Limited, both of which have been the target of rocks by World Trade Organization protesters, as well as Wal-Mart, the slayer of mom-and-pop stores from coast to coast.
Nader spokeswoman Laura Jones says that only the candidate himself can answer questions about his personal investments. Nader could not be reached for comment.
In a June interview with the Washington Post about his millionaire earnings -- much of which he has donated to his public interest groups -- Nader said the stocks he chose were "the most neutral-type companies ... No. 1, they're not monopolists and No. 2, they don't produce land mines, napalm, weapons."
But this is not true. The Fidelity Magellan fund owns 777,080 shares of Raytheon, a major missile manufacturer. And this isn't the only example of his rhetoric not matching up with his financial investments.
"I'm quite aware of how the arms race is driven by corporate demands for contracts, whether it's General Dynamics or Lockheed Martin," Nader told the Progressive in April. "They drive it through Congress. They drive it by hiring Pentagon officials in the Washington military industrial complex, as Eisenhower phrased it." The Fidelity Magellan fund owns 2,041,800 shares of General Dynamics.
"Both parties are terrible on antitrust," Nader told CNN in August. "Look, we have Boeing now, one aircraft company, manufacturer after the McDonnell Douglas merger." In a June press release, Nader expressed disappointment in the Clinton administration's Justice Department to challenge the merger of British Petroleum with Amoco, or Exxon's merger with Mobil. The Fidelity Magellan fund owns 2,908,600 shares of Boeing, 24,753,870 shares of British Petroleum-Amoco and 28,751,268 shares of Exxon-Mobil. The fund also owns stock in Shell, Sunoco, Texaco and Chevron -- on whose board Bush advisor Condoleezza Rice serves.
Nader has slammed Gore for being too cautious in his healthcare proposals, and for deferring to big pharmaceuticals. Before the House Budget Committee in June 1999, Nader testified that "Bristol-Myers Squibb markets taxol at a wholesale price that is nearly 20 times its manufacturing cost. A single injection of taxol can cost patients considerably more than $2,000 and treatment requires multiple injections." The Fidelity Magellan fund owns 15,266,900 shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Does this bother an activist like Reinsborough? "Sure," he says. "Absolutely." He lauds Nader for engaging in "shareholder activism," but says that such activities "aren't democracy. It's one dollar, one vote."
Corporate-bashing is in vogue on the American left, and Gore is certainly doing his fair share of it on the stump, railing against HMOs, insurance companies and big pharmaceuticals. Some have seen this as Gore trying to shore up support on the left, mimicking Nader disingenuously and unconvincingly.
After all, as Nader said to the Washington Post in June, "The corporations are planning our future. They are making sure [our children] grow up corporate. The kids are overmedicated, militarized, cosmetized, corporatized. They are raised by Kindercare, fed by McDonald's, educated by Channel One."
There is a difference between Gore and Nader on this point, at the very least: Nader has hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in a fund that owns 15,694,800 shares of McDonald's stock. Gore does not.
Doesn't look very good for Nader, at all. But, at least, he is not an elected official accepting money for favors such as nuclear power and credit card co. interests. Obama has made votes and supports these contributors. Nader's record shows a very strong body of work that throughout his entire career focused on making things better for the common man. And when placed beside Obama he still shines in that area and you can't take that away from him. He rails against corporate control of our government not buying stocks in general.....still I wish he'd picked some better ones to invest in.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
I told you knuckleheads Kucinich was one of a kind!! But you guys wouldn't listen...'unelectable' yadda yadda. Pull up some stuff like that on him and I'll....I dunno, I'll do something.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
you do realize there are more options than those 3, don't you? you really shouldn't limit yourself to the select few corporate approved candidates the media told you was electable.
or you can go back to burying your head in the sand, whatever works best for you
he had a voice that was strong and loud and
i swallowed his facade cos i'm so
eager to identify with
someone above the crowd
someone who seemed to feel the same
someone prepared to lead the way
those are the highest return investments. and making a few extra bucks is worth a few legal or human rights violations, esp when you can rationalize it by saying you werent really THAT involved.
railing against corporate america/wall street control of the government... then investing and profitting of of the very same companies... especially WAR STOCKS... that is a tad hypocritical... i was let down, but not shocked, when i read this...
everyone has skeletons in their closet, we are only human...
nader also has the luxury of never having to cast a vote... it is convenient to attack someones senate voting record when you dont have one... thats why governors have kept winning until this year
i still support nader and his run... but i think he would be much better served running for an office he can win... the way i look at it, if he cares so much about these issues then why not try and get elected into government to have your stances on record in the house or in congress... sponsor bills, etc, etc
kucinich had my full support, and i openly advocated for him until the day he dropped out... Kucinich's endorsement of Obama in Iowa was a powerful one for me
i almost pulled the trigger for him on super tuesday because everyone was still on the delaware ballot... but i couldnt
nothing?
Its the train, in case you forgot
Besides, Obama made has made his tax returns public. Attempts to discredit him don't stick, not because of media bias, but because he is the genuine article.
Oops!
The day Obama talks seriously about addressing the fore mentioned criminal institutions will be definitely an interesting day. Has he yet at any point thus far?
Until then it's all smoke and mirrors with happy words in a shiny package.
One documentary to check out for thew doubters is "Fiat Empire". Give it a google or a torrent sometime.
and reveling in it's loyalty. It's made by forming coalitions
over specific principles, goals, and policies.
http://i36.tinypic.com/66j31x.jpg
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what does this mean?
I am an employee of a major corporation. I have donated to Obama. Its my free will to donate. My company doesn't advocate the donation. He's accepted my money. Big deal.
It is your free will to give money away. this is true.
dont you understand???? that means that obama is beholden to your company and will decide every action he bases on their preferences! nevermind the fact that a lot of people donating to him have conflicting interests. obama also accepted a donation from joe smith in illinois. son of a bitch... that means the entire country is going to be run based on what is best for joe smith!
please tell me this is sarcasm at it's finest.
kinda frightening you have to make sure isnt it? cos there are plenty around here who would say that with a straight face.
true dat
*sigh
McDonalds? Factory Farms? Animal Cruelty? Environmental damages? Obesity? The peddling of shit food to kids? You don't see the conflict in Nader having investments in this company?
As a matter of fact, I'VE donated to the campaign...
look out, bitches!
remember when i was the liberal and you were the conservative?