Lawyer, Teacher, Philanthropist, Author, (and US Senator)

[sandnsea]

"..Obama thinks elected officials could do much to overcome the political paralysis of the nation's black communities. He thinks they could lead their communities out of twin culs-de-sac: the unrealistic politics of integrationist assimilation--which helps a few upwardly mobile blacks to "move up, get rich, and move out"--and the equally impractical politics of black rage and black nationalism--which exhorts but does not organize ordinary folks or create realistic agendas for change.

Obama, whose political vision was nurtured by his work in the 80s as an organizer in the far-south-side communities of Roseland and Altgeld Gardens, proposes a third alternative. Not new to Chicago--which is the birthplace of community organizing--but unusual in electoral politics, his proposal calls for organizing ordinary citizens into bottom-up democracies that create their own strategies, programs, and campaigns and that forge alliances with other disaffected Americans. Obama thinks elected officials--even a state senator--can play a critical catalytic role in this rebuilding..."

Excellent Article About the Rock Star.

http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/archive/barackobama/

[kid a]

1. great article! k&r

:hi:

[sandnsea]

2. I guess it isn't as fun as trash threads n/t

[Muttocracy]

3. kick - thanks, I learned a few new things about him. nt

[jenmarie]

4. Here, learn more!

...

We are asked to believe that those white executives at all the biggest Wall Street firms, which rank in the top 20 donors to the Obama presidential campaign, after failing to achieve more than 3.5 per cent black stockbrokers over 30 years, now want a black populist president because they crave a level playing field for the American people.

The number one industry supporting the Obama presidential bid, according to the widely respected, nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, is "lawyers/law firms" (most on Wall Street's payroll), giving a total of $11,246,596.

This presents three unique credibility problems for the yes-we-can, little-choo-choo-that-could campaign: (1) these are not just "lawyers/law firms"; the vast majority of these firms are also registered lobbyists at the Federal level; (2) Senator Obama has made it a core tenet of his campaign platform that the way he is gong to bring the country hope and change is not taking money from federal lobbyists; and (3) with the past seven ignoble years of lies and distortions fresh in the minds of voters, building a candidacy based on half-truths is not a sustainable strategy to secure the west wing from the right wing.

Yes, the other leading presidential candidates are taking money from lawyers/law firms/lobbyists, but Senator Obama is the only one rallying with the populist cry that he isn't. That makes it not only a legitimate but a necessary line of inquiry.

The Obama campaign's populist bubble is underpinned by what, on the surface, seems to be a real snoozer of a story. It all centers around business classification codes developed by the U.S. government and used by the Center for Responsive Politics to classify contributions. Here's how the Center explained its classifications in 2003:

~ snip ~

The same holds true for Greenberg Traurig, the law firm that employed the criminally inclined lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. Greenberg Traurig ranks ninth among all lobbyists for the same period, with lobbying revenues of $96,708,249. Its partners and employee donations to the Obama campaign of $70,650 appear not under lobbyist but the classification lawyers/law firms, as do 30 other corporate law firm/lobbyists.

Additionally, looking at Public Citizen's list of bundlers for the Obama campaign (people soliciting donations from others), 27 are employed by law firms registered as federal lobbyists. The total sum raised February 16-29, 2008 by bundlers for Obama from these 27 firms: $2,650,000. (There are also dozens of high powered bundlers from Wall Street working the Armani-suit and red-suspenders cocktail circuits, like Bruce Heyman, managing director at Goldman Sachs; J. Michael Schell, vice chairman of Global Banking at Citigroup; Louis Susman, managing director, Citigroup; Robert Wolf, CEO, UBS Americas. Each raised over $200,000 for the Obama campaign.)

Senator Obama's premise and credibility of not taking money from federal lobbyists hangs on a carefully crafted distinction: he is taking money, lots of it, from owners and employees of firms registered as federal lobbyists but not the actual individual lobbyists. But is that dealing honestly with the American people? According to the website of Akin Gump, it takes a village to deliver a capital to the corporations:

~ snip ~

"The 2008 Obama presidential run may be the most slickly orchestrated marketing machine in memory. That's not a good thing. Marketing is not even distantly related to democracy or civic empowerment. Marketing is about creating emotional, even irrational bonds between your product and your target audience."

And slick it is. According to the Obama campaign's financial filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and aggregated at the Center for Responsive Politics, the Obama campaign has spent over $52 million on media, strategy consultants, image building, marketing research and telemarketing.

~ snip ~

Why do Wall Street and the corporate law firms think they will find a President Obama to be accommodating? As the Black Agenda Report notes, "Evidently, the giant insurance companies, the airlines, oil companies, Wall Street, military contractors and others had closely examined and vetted Barack Obama and found him pleasing."

That vetting included his remarkable "yes" vote on the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005, a five-year effort by 475 lobbyists, despite appeals from the NAACP and every other major civil rights group. Thanks to the passage of that legislation, when defrauded homeowners of the housing bubble and defrauded investors of the bundled mortgages try to fight back through the class-action vehicle, they will find a new layer of corporate-friendly hurdles.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=548&Itemid=34

You people seriously need to open your eyes to what this guy is.

[Muttocracy]

5. an ambitious politican with corporate ties?

yeah, I know that, both Hillary and Obama fit that description. I find Obama a bit more acceptable.

Who are you voting for?

[sandnsea]

6. Greenburg Taurig has 1700 attorneys, 29 locations

$70,000 is a pittance for such a huge firm. With as much money as he's taken in, it isn't surprising he has large amounts from all sorts of industries.

What he doesn't have is known ties to Indian outsourcers who have been endicted, to fundraisers who are in jail, to billionaires with Dubai Port ties, and on and on.