Corporate gifts to Obama?
It never happened Federal laws ban companies from donating -- and him from accepting
I could not believe what I read when I turned to Page 6 of the Sun-Times last Monday (May 7). It said that Obama had taken more than $165,000 from the second-largest bank in Europe, almost $160,000 from Exelon Corp., $143,000 from one Wall Street corporation, $50,000 from Citigroup, and $40,000 from another Wall Street firm. The story even intimated that the Obama campaign had confirmed these numbers.
If Obama had taken one dime from any of these corporations, he and the corporations would have been in clear violation of the federal Corrupt Practices Act that flatly prohibits any corporation from giving money to a federal campaign. There is a special law that has even stiffer penalties for any foreign corporation making such contributions. Not only can't corporations make such contributions, they cannot be involved in any activities leading to others making such contributions.
The story (by Joshua Frank of the Internet site Counterpunch) is flat-out wrong. No one connected with those corporations or any other corporations gave any such sums to the Obama campaign. An individual can give up to $2,300 for Obama's presidential campaign. What apparently happened, to give the reporter more benefit of the doubt than he deserves, some number of individuals, who work for those various corporations, gave various amounts to the campaign. They have to list the name of their employer on the contribution form, and the enterprising reporter totaled up all of the contributions of those people who worked for Exelon and assigned them to the corporation. Incidentally, the law prohibits any corporation (or other employer) from even "bundling" the contributions -- that is collecting them on behalf of the employees.
In short, the story shows that some 80 or more employees of Exelon gave individual contributions totaling $160,000. Where the other tens of thousands of Exelon employees have made contributions, if any, is unknown. (There even may be 80 or so employees of Exelon who are as discontented with the company's public policies, as am I, and based their contributions on such fact). The Obama campaign had more than 100,000 contributors in the first quarter of this year; more than 50,000 of those contributions came through the Internet, and the average of those Internet contributions was less than $25. Does that sound like a kept politician?
Corporations did not give any money to Obama and they are not going to have any hold on him in his public life. I have watched Barack Obama since he entered the state Legislature many years ago. I have compared him and his ethics with those of people I have known in political arenas over the last 50 years that I have been active in public life. He is in the mold of the late Senators Paul Douglas and Paul Simon. The only "Inc." you can put after his name is if you are starting to spell the word "incorruptible."
Abner J. Mikva served as White House counsel for President Bill Clinton, as chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and as a five-term congressman from Illinois.