Susan Stamper Brown, FloydReports.com
President Obama had a busy week. After helping to eliminate the world’s number one terrorist, Obama switched gears to focus on raising a record $1 billion in campaign contributions. Rather than capitalizing on bin Laden’s demise by using an event to rally allies in a focused campaign to finish the job to root out bin Laden’s more notorious associates, Obama is rallying supporters to donate their capital so he can build up his campaign war chest. First things first.
Apparently the whole campaign finance issue is so complicated that only someone like Obama can fully understand it. He’s been all over the map when it comes to finance reform; you might say he was for it before he was against it. In June 2008, Obama announced he had reversed his original stance and would forgo public campaign financing because, “The broken system we have now, a system where special interests drown out the voices of the American people will continue to erode our politics and prevent the possibility of real change.”
Soon after making that statement, unprecedented amounts of cash poured into Obama’s campaign coffers from special interest groups showing us that the only “real change” he offered was a new spirit of corporatism, when powerful Silicon Valley Green energy leaders like Steve Westly seemingly purchased a seat at the government’s table.
The more than $500,000 in campaign contributions Westly raised is a gift that keeps on giving. Now appointed to Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s advisory panel, Westly is granted regular access to Chu. Companies backed by Westly’s venture capital firm received over a half-billion dollars and Tesla Motors, a company Westly has ties to, saw its stock rise six percent after the Obama administration announced a federal rebate plan for electric cars….
