Big Money Comes Out for the Inauguration

randall_burns writes "Open Secrets is running an interesting story about major donors to Bush's inauguration. The founder of Dell is one of the high rollers funding Bush's party."

Comments

What's the point?

[superyooser]

There is an inauguration every four years, no matter whom the president is. Inaugurations are always expensive. They always have big corporate donors. It's not surprising that some donors are in high tech. I see Qualcomm on the list, too.

Is there something special we're supposed to be inferring? Slow news day?

Re:What's the point?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Bush is a bad president because this money, which was donated by citizens and corporations explicitly for the inauguration, should go to the Iraq war.

Bush is a bad president because all of this fru-fru pomp and circumstance is inappropriate when the country is at war. Life should not go on like normal for the people responsible for sending the military out to risk life and limb. Celebrate when the killing is over.

If Kerry, or even Dean had won and were doing the same thing I'd say the same thing.

Re: Money is bad

[Seumas]

Does it really matter? People act as if there is ever much of a choice in who we elect. The world would not be drastically different if we elected Kerry instead of Bush or Dole instead of Clinton or Dukakis instead of Bush.

They're more or less the same people, same parties, funded by the same corporations, imbued with the same corruption and hell-bent on jamming their ideologies on the entire country.

300,000,000 people and only two viable parties with little difference. But you see, in the same way that the current administration uses perpetual war and terrorism to control and bend the citizens toward their want, so are they distracting you from the real problems of the world/country/government by convincing you that the real difference is in whether you vote for a Republicrat or a Libservative.

Re: Money is bad

[Kick the Donkey]

SS is just another slight of hand. His proposal is not that different from the British system implemented under Margrett Thatcher. And look how well that turned out.

His plan is just an excuse to give more money to investment houses...

Re:Money is bad

[An Onerous Coward]

Your entire argument is bogus for one simple reason: We cannot expect rational behavior from a busy, harried electorate when the politicians use corporate money to advertise themselves as something they're not.

For every voter who actually takes the time to figure out the problems arising from corporate influence, there are probably five who can be suckered in by simplistic sales pitches, fraudulent attack ads, and promises the politician has no intention of keeping.

So, if I'm a politician, do I take the high road? Do I work hard, study issues in depth, write rational legislation that fixes serious problems, and make realistic campaign promises? That's what I'd do. But then I'd lose in a landslide to some pompous, self-aggrandizing bastard who tells people what they want to hear, while whoring the political process out to whoever will give him the money he needs to amplify his voice.

Your final point is incoherent. You believe that corporations give money, but don't expect anything in return. You believe that politicians accept money, but don't expect they have to do anything in return. Which brings up the critical point: If nobody expects anything, why are all these checks being written?

Take, for example, the post-9/11 bailout of the airline industry. The taxpayers gave the airlines, what? Fifteen billion dollars? Why? Not to protect jobs, obviously. All the airlines cut tens of thousands of jobs despite the bailout. Not to protect against an interruption of transportation, either. In the end, we taxpayers basically handed a crapload of money to the people who invested in the airline industry. Corporate welfare at its finest. But politicians lied to us, telling us that if we didn't do this the planes would be grounded.

Collectively, we accepted this because the corporations fund the means of communication that matter to most voters. Had there been a real debate over the issues arising from the bailout, said bailout never would have happened.

You seem to believe that the system, as it stands now, is behaving in a basically fair and rational manner. Either you're making serious cash off the status quo, or you're seriously deluded.