VIP Donors Alarmed At "Porous" Obama Security

By GottaLaff

This kind of negligence is disconcerting. You'd think that, especially with this president, security would be tight as a drum, and then some:

Downtown Washington resembled a militarized zone last week for the inauguration of President Barack Obama, but some major contributors who had direct contact with Obama said they were surprised to find what they viewed as porous security surrounding the president-elect and vice president-elect.

Three contributors who raised $300,000 or more for the inauguration said they were never asked to show identification to retrieve dozens of tickets, including VIP passes that allowed them and their guests to meet privately with Obama. One of the three said ticket checks were so lax that no one noticed when, after a breakfast for contributors, a friend whose name hadn't been submitted for a background check tagged along into a VIP room to take pictures with Vice President-elect Joseph Biden.

And a half-dozen said that after a screening to sit in a ticketed area near Obama for his swearing-in, they mingled with public crowds but were never again checked for firearms or explosives.

"I was surprised," said online retail executive Alfred Lin, who attended most of the events for major donors in the days leading up to the swearing-in. "It was less strict than going through airport security." [...]

Two donors expressed concern about security screenings that preceded a meeting they and about 100 others had with Obama in a tent behind the Lincoln Memorial before the Sunday concert.

One said he was waved through with a camera that had no batteries despite warnings that it would have to be operational. The two said they later walked unattended by the president's motorcade and watched other donors lean on Obama's limousine, posing for pictures.

By the next morning, when Biden spoke to donors at a Northwest hotel, one said it had become clear that ticket checks had become "a joke." He said he flashed a handful of coveted gray passes to gain access to the VIP room with Biden but brought in an extra guest.

Many more details here.

Top 5 Donors to the 2008 Republican Convention

For fairness sake since I posted the top 5 donors for the D's here. Interesting point being that Lincy contributed $1.5 mil to the D's too.

1. Target—$3 million
2. Qwest—$2.9 million
3. Best Buy—$2.2 million
4. Lincy Foundation—$2 million (Lincy is owned by the largest private shareholder in Ford.)
5. Ray Dalio—$2 million (Dalio is owner of Bridgewater Associates, an $80 billion hedge fund.)

Obama's small donor base image is a myth, new study reveals

By GottaLaff

And your point?

In fact, Obama's base of small donors was almost exactly the same percent as George W. Bush's in 2004 -- Obama had 26% and the great Republican satan 25%. Obviously, this is unacceptable to current popular thinking.

But the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute just issued a detailed study of Obama's donor base and its giving. And that's what the Institute found, to its own surprise. [...]

Adding up the total contributions from the same small individuals (in terms of dollar amounts, not their height), the Institute discovered that rather than the 50+% commonly reported throughout the campaign, only 26% of Obama's contributions through last August and only 24% through Oct. 15 came from people whose total donations added up to less than $200.

The key word there being "total."

It comes down to which definition of "small donor" you accept:

Someone who donated to the Obama campaign by scraping together $199, period.

Or someone who donated $199 to the Obama campaign several times, perhaps totaling close to the $4,600 legal limit for the primary and general elections. In aggregate, that would vault him/her out of the small donor category that was so useful to the political campaign's public relations campaign portraying the donor base as about two times as broad as it really was.

The reported numbers show that Obama actually received 80% more money from large donors (those giving $1,000 or more total) than from small donors.

Through the Democratic National Convention, the Institute estimates, Obama received $119 million from genuine small donors, an impressive sum, to be sure.

But not as impressive as the $210 million he'd raised by then from bundlers and large donors. [...]

Now, we'll see how broad-based news coverage of this real reality is.

This is from an L.A. Times blog. The author's little quips annoyed me. I must be one of those over-sensitive, Obama-voting liberals who don't find superfluous height jokes ("in terms of dollar amounts, not their height"), or snide ("unacceptable to current popular thinking") asides, all that amusing.

No, instead I'm one of those wacky types who can't get enough of the truth, so good, bring it on. But the tone of this piece put me off. The implication was that Obama is so revered, and that so many of us are so swoony and such blind followers, that it would be too painful to have to deal with the notion that more money came from larger donors than smaller ones, and that the Obama campaign tried to pull one over on us.

I hate to disappoint the author, but I'm fine with the fact that Obama ultimately pulled in enough to beat ol' Gramm-pa McCain and Palin the WonderTurkey. Period.