Give Back Your Bonuses, Mr. President

I'm sitting here on my couch watching President Obama ranting about bonuses and high pay that individuals in our financial institutions are receiving. In our time of financial crisis, he finds it outrageous that individuals can be paid so much, and that there needs to be additional fees and regulations on these financial institutions, in order to get them to pay back their bailout money or as a simple penalty for their "financial irresponsibility" and "recklessness with taxpayer money." Ok, Mr. President, so why don't we start with YOU and all the money you received in what could be called a "bonus" in the form of a campaign contribution from these financial institutions?

The following are ONLY the top 20 contributors to Obama's campaign...I denoted the financial institutions with red arrows (courtesy of OpenSecrets.org):



According to my math, in ONLY his top 20 contributors, Obama received $3,449,317 from the financial institutions he now criticizes for paying (in his opinion) exuberant amounts to individual CEO's.

Why don't you pay your campaign contributions back to these institutions, Mr. President? I guarantee you the new CEO's of these companies are doing more to help their businesses survive than you are.

*Note: These were donations by the organizations' political action committees (PACs) rather than the institutions themselves. This is a loophole in campaign finance laws that allows corporations to donate to political campaigns, as they themselves cannot. It's essentially a political funnel. PACs can donate, corporations cannot. But ultimately it IS their money.

Money and Politics

Some people worry a lot about money in politics. I don't worry about it too much, because I personally feel that money represents collective interests, and people have a right to spend as much as they would like campaigning for their cause that they feel is correct. What money in politics CAN tell you is why politicians of certain affiliations act the way they do or refuse to confront some issues, and you can call them on it. Courtesty of Opensecrets.org, here are the top 23 contributors to the Democrat Party (2008 election cycle):























Likewise, here are the top contributors to the Republican Party, notice that some may be the top contributors to the GOP, yet may give even more to the Dems. This data is for the 2008 election cycle as well: