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Presumed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has retreated rapidly
on promises to so-called Democratic Party progressives—the very ones he
called upon, messiah-like, to believe in his message of
"hope."
Obama-speak has it that his campaign is funded by "small
donations," yet recent data reveals that Democrat Obama’s campaign
is very much about big bucks. So far, Obama is leading fund raising on
Wall Street and among the ruling rich, leaving Republican John McCain
in the dust.
"No matter who wins in November, Wall Street will have a friend in
the White House," said Massie Ritsch of the Center for Responsive
Politics, sponsors of the award-winning website, Opensecrets. org,
which tracks election funding. Despite legitimate pride at the prospect
of electing the first African-American president, it’s hopeless to believe
that Obama or any other representative of his party can bring
meaningful change.
The twin parties of capital, Republicans and Democrats, do face a
crisis of "hope." Even at the beginning of Bill Clinton’s
term in 1992, polls showed that 36 percent thought Bubba usually didn’t
tell the truth. A September 2007 Gallup poll found that only 55 percent
trusted those in public office.
And why should people trust them? Both parties are run by small
financial elites, far removed from the impact of the decades-long
attack on living standards and the impact of the current economic
crisis on working people. A look at where Obama is getting his funding
makes clear the reasons for the crisis of "hope" at the heart
of his pitch.
The Obama campaign claims that 93% of all campaign donations are under
$200. However, current data on the Opensecrets.org website reveal that
only 47% of total contributions to Obama are under $200. A full 33% of
donations are over $1000—and many, way over. That means corporate
wealth will dominate an Obama administration, much as in a McCain White
House.
In this capitalist pay-to-play democracy, a record $2.79 billion was
spent on lobbying candidates throughout 2007, an increase of 7.7
percent, or $200 million, over spending in 2006.
This year, Obama set an individual fund-raising record, collecting
nearly $300 million, far more than his war-crazed opponent McCain, who
raised $119.5 million as of the end of June. The two candidates are
expected to spend about $1 billion through November, a vast sum that is
an insult to any notion of democracy.
So far, Wall Street investment and banking firms have contributed a
whopping $9.5 million to Obama— close to twice as much as the $5.3
million they have given McCain. After clinching the nomination, Obama’s
financial roll has accelerated. So far, Obama’s Wall Street haul is
second only to George Bush’s record $10.8 million in 2004.
Four out of five of Obama’s biggest contributors are employees of top
Wall Street corporations: Goldman Sachs ($571,000), UBS AG ($364,000),
JP Morgan Chase ($362,207), and Citigroup ($358,054). McCain’s
big Wall Street pals are Merrill Lynch ($230,310) and Citigroup
($219,551).
In individual contributions of $2300 or more, and in the $4600
category, the federal maximum for individuals, Obama is leading McCain.
By adding the number of contributions of the lower amount, using $2300
as an average, and adding the $4600 contributions, Obama raised over
$80 million among big contributors as opposed to over $56 million for McCain.
Obama’s lock on corporate America is solid. So far, Obama has stomped
his opponent by raising substantially more than Republicans from
commercial banks, financial and investment securities firms, the
health-care industry, hedge funds, real estate, and the TV/movies and
music industries. The largest Obama cash cows are lawyers and law
firms, who gave Obama $18.77 million as opposed to just over $6 million
to McCain.
On the Republican side, McCain has maintained Republican domination of
agribusiness, oil and gas, and transportation.
The Obama campaign has made big inroads among the yuppie capitalists of
Silicon Valley , whose internet savvy enabled Obama to rake-in $45
million in February alone. On its own, the computer and electronics
industry raised a total of $10.8 million for Obama as opposed to $2.69
million for McCain. And in the "miscellaneous business"
category, Obama slammed McCain almost two to one.
The Obama campaign is sponsoring dinners with the candidate, many with
a $28,500 per plate snob appeal, the maximum contribution allowed for
the national Democratic and Republican Party apparatuses. One New York
City host, a former Hillary Clinton booster, charged an obscene $33,100
per plate.
Chasing even bigger amounts are "bundlers," who collect a
large number of checks, usually from the affluent, totaling far above
the limit on individual donations. These high rollers can collect as
much as $250,000 or more, focusing on wealthy political cliques. One
Hillary Clinton supporter, Norman Hsu, collected $800,000 before being
accused of fraud.
Obama’s 328 bundlers have brought in $31.65 million, about 11.9% of his
total, says the Center for Responsive Politics.
Fourteen of Obama’s bundlers are actually lobbyists—a group Obama
condemned in campaign speeches—reports Public Citizen, a nonprofit
organization founded by Ralph Nader. Rival John McCain, says Public
Citizen, has 70 lobbyists working as bundlers.
Despite campaign rhetoric by McCain and Obama about transparency, both
withheld many names of their bundlers. Eight watchdog organizations,
including Common Cause and The League of Women Voters, asked the
candidates to reveal missing names.
Meanwhile, the AFL-CIO, who refused to back a candidate during the
primaries, announced in June that it will spend $50 million of its
members’ dues and deploy more than 250,000 workers in support of Obama.
John Sweeney, AFL-CIO president, called Obama, "a champion for
working families." The "Change to Win" coalition of
trade unions, an AFL-CIO split-off, has also endorsed Obama.
Given Obama’s hold on Wall Street and the subservience of the labor
bureaucracy to the Democratic Party, you can imagine how likely are
Obama’s promises to unions or his promises to tax corporate capital
gains—a huge tax write-off for the rich—or enact any meaningful
progressive tax.
The deepening crisis on Wall Street means working people can expect
from either candidate continued assaults on living standards and job
security, a prolonged war for oil, and attacks on immigrant rights.
Betrayal.com
Obama supporters are reeling with the speed at which he is pulling the
rug out from his so-called "progressive agenda." Obama’s
supporters were shocked when he cast aside promises to abide by federal
campaign funding—a democratic reform that would level the field
somewhat during elections. But, Obama’s betrayals didn’t stop there.
Here’s the short list of recent betrayals:
"Antiwar" Obama has refused to promise removing all troops
from Iraq by the end of his term and will intensify the war on Afghanistan,
while threatening new wars on Iran and Pakistan. He supported every
war-funding bill in Congress.
Obama backed a Senate bill that gave immunity to telephone companies
who tapped phones on orders from the Bush administration without
demanding a warrant. He promised CIA-backed Cuban
counter-revolutionaries that he would maintain the illegal U.S. trade
embargo on Cuba and work to destabilize the revolutionary government.
He promised massive military aid to apartheid Israel and threatened
Palestinians (see Socialist Action, June 2008).
Obama encouraged government funding of church programs, eroding church
and state boundaries, not unlike Bush. To get votes, Obama criticized
the NAFTA "free-trade" treaty, which meant the loss of
hundreds of thousands of U.S. and Mexican jobs and farms, yet Obama
recently voted for a NAFTA-like agreement with Peru.
As a supporter of the racist death penalty, he criticized a recent
Supreme Court ruling limiting the death penalty in rape cases. And
Obama refused to call for a moratorium on mortgage foreclosures.
Perhaps the unkindest cut of all was Obama’s Clinton-esque "Sister
Souljah" moments, in reference to the rapper Bill Clinton had
attacked to reassure racist whites that he was on their side. Obama
dissed his life-long pastor, Jeremiah White, for the reverend’s mostly
on-target indictments of racism and U.S. imperialism. But spared
Obama’s criticism was McCain’s anti-Semitic pastor, the Rev. John
Hagee.
And earning squeals of delight from the corporate media, Obama went on
to blame Black men, not racism, for conditions in the Black community.
Obama’s betrayals of the African-American community were so raw that
the Rev. Jesse Jackson said in what he thought was an off-camera
remark, "I’d like to cut his nuts out." Despite the loyal
Democrat Jackson’s cowering apology to his capitalist masters, the U.S.
rulers used the "scandal" to ram home the message of a
"generation gap" between "out of touch" civil
rights leaders and a "new breed" of capitalist politicians
like Obama. To underscore the point, the New York Daily News called
Jackson a "relic."
Ruling-class spokespersons are tirelessly using Obama to fool working
people into believing that we’ve entered a new race-less society.
Hardly. The Black community suffers double-digit urban unemployment,
poverty, poor housing, underfunded schools, and police brutality—like
the cop-murder of Sean Bell in New York and the police frame-up of
journalist and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The decades-long economic offensive against all working people,
deepened in today’s economic crisis, is hitting the African-American
community doubly hard. It is time for renewed struggle, not another
retreat into the Democratic Party, the graveyard of social struggles.
Obama’s past and present demonstrates the impossibility of reforming
the Democratic Party. The bosses have their own party. Working people
need a party of their own—a labor party!
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