Count de monaie

Dunno about youall, but Election Day cannot come a moment too soon for me. From President down to municipal offices the ads, the news, the shrill invective masking a dearth of substance… I’m starting to feel like Mercutio: a plague o’ both your houses.

& the one thing “good” (relatively speaking) about the economic meltdown is its timing: this close to the polls, not even our Congress-slime can avoid some of the consequences of a totally pissed-off electorate. (God bless the jury that convicted Ted Stevens!)

Speaking of buckets o’moolah, we all know that money makes the political world go around, so the occasion arose today for me to do a bit of investigating into major contributors to the two main presidential campaigns.

Well, blow me if the numbers don’t tell quite the story:

Contributors to John McCain, 2008:
Merrill Lynch $349,920
Citigroup Inc $290,101
Morgan Stanley $249,377
Goldman Sachs $220,045
JPMorgan Chase & Co $210,992
AT&T Inc $181,813
Credit Suisse Group $175,503
PricewaterhouseCoopers $163,670
Blank Rome LLP $161,576
US Army $150,470
Wachovia Corp $150,006
US Government $149,818
Bank of America $142,776
UBS AG $141,365
Greenberg Traurig LLP $141,137
US Dept of Defense $127,325
FedEx Corp $123,654
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher $122,546
Lehman Brothers $115,707
Bear Stearns $108,000
Total: $3,475,801

Contributors to Barack Obama, 2008:
University of California $777,593
Goldman Sachs $743,371
Harvard University $505,989
Citigroup Inc $499,598
Google Inc $493,705
JPMorgan Chase & Co $478,462
National Amusements Inc $437,669
Microsoft Corp $434,156
UBS AG $419,350
Lehman Brothers $391,624
Time Warner $388,063
Wilmerhale Llp $383,024
Sidley Austin LLP $371,166
Skadden, Arps et al $361,409
Morgan Stanley $344,130
Stanford University $342,749
Latham & Watkins $328,879
Jones Day $314,760
General Electric $299,434
University of Chicago $294,237
Total: $8,609,368

Now, I haven’t balanced my checkbook in 20 years, but even a numeracy-challenged twit can notice the names on these lists. Can you say “Goldman Sachs”, “Bear Stearns” & “Lehman Brothers”? I knew you could.

So the Wall Street giants that you & I, dear taxpayer, are propping up because they shot their (& their investors) wad on some sort of high-finance craps game—they’re generously giving hundreds of thousands of our money to McCain & Obama.

Yes, this largesse isn’t coming from these entities, it’s coming thru them, but even so, doesn’t it get up your nose just the teensiest bit?

Moreover, what the devil are the US Army, the “US Government” & the Department of Defense doing funneling roughly $427K into McCain’s coffers? I understand that this is allegedly from the plebs in these organizations, but these organizations are extremely big on chain of command, & it gives me the willies that this kind of coin is coming out of agencies where a request from your commander is not a request.

But one final comment (because even I’m running out of steam this close to 4 November): isn’t it interesting that these captains of capitalism, for whom any kind of government oversight is nothing short of satanic, have in every instance donated more to Obama than McCain? To the tune of three to four times the dough?

I mean, Wachovia’s donation to McCain barely covers Sarah Palin’s September wardrobe purchases.

What do you suppose that indicates? That they haven’t lost all their ability to mitigate risk? That they’ve read the chicken entrails & have seen a Democrat in the White House? &, that being the case, they want to be on the list of “supporters” when 20 January rolls around?

Well, a girl can hope.