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San Francisco philanthropist Susie Tompkins Buell, one of the Democratic Party's most generous benefactors, is keeping her checkbook closed when President Obama holds high-priced California fundraisers this week."I want to look him in the eye and say, 'Thank you so much' " for his work, said Buell, who expresses deep disappointment in the president's leadership on environmental issues, especially climate change. With Obama's 2012 re-election campaign in full swing, "I would just love to write my big check ... or have a high-dollar dinner here" on his behalf, she said. "I can't."Buell, a co-founder of the Esprit clothing company, has...

While billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson may have rescued Newt Gingrich’s campaign in its early days, today, he may have just buried it. Bloomberg News reports that Adelson, who has donated $11 million to Gingrich’s Super PAC, does not plan to send any more money Gingrich’s way. Bloomberg is citing an anonymous source “familiar with their deliberations,” though an Adelson spokesman declined to comment. The move seems to be weeks in the making. After poor showings by Gingrich in the last several races and the re-resurgence of Rick Santorum, the former House speaker has once again been pushed to the...

The White House didn't blow a dog whistle for deep-pocketed liberal donors on Monday. No, the administration whipped out a supersized vuvuzela. Blaring message: Let loose the campaign finance-bundling hounds of super PAC war! President Obama's campaign manager, Jim Messina, who served as White House deputy chief of staff for operations before assuming 2012 re-election duties, announced the super PAC super-flip-flop in a mass e-mail to supporters and a blog post published on the left-wing Huffington Post website. In a related conference call to major campaign finance bundlers, Messina encouraged these high-dollar donors to start funding Priorities USA Action. That's...

Some developing news in the case of Juan Jose Rojas Cardona, who is a fugitive on drug and fraud charges. In 2009 it was discovered that he was involved in a plot to assassinate a rival and bribe Mexican officials. This has gone public, as has his $200,000 in fundraising done for Barack Obama. Obama has now returned the money, but the scrutiny on Cardona continues. It now appears that Cardona's links to the organized crime world also ties him to the DEA, which ran Operation Fast and Furious. Cardona was allegedly involved with a top drug cartel across the...

Bloomberg.com reported, Feb. 1, that Goldman Sachs Group workers contributed $106,580 to Mitt Romney's presidential bid in the fourth quarter of last year and that Goldie is his largest source of campaign bucks at a half-million total so far. Goldman Sachs does like to spread its money around. It gave boatloads to Barack Obama and got Timothy Geithner as secretary of the treasury in return, along with a whole lot of bonus people. . . . In other Goldman Sachs news, its CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, became the first national corporate spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, a homosexual advocacy group....

– The Newt Gingrich campaign held a meeting with approximately 60 donors Friday in Las Vegas, including casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, a source with knowledge of the session told CNN. Gingrich, who attended the meeting, had a brief discussion with Adelson at the session, the source said. The long-time friends are legally barred from speaking about the Adelson family's $11 million contributions to the super PAC supporting Gingrich's White House bid.

Mr. Adelson, by some estimates worth as much as $22 billion, presides over a global empire of casinos, hotels and convention centers whose centerpiece is the Venetian in Las Vegas, an exuberant monument to excess with canals, singing gondoliers and acres of slot machines. That fortune is a wellspring of financial support for Mr. Gingrich, who has benefited from $17 million in political contributions from Mr. Adelson and his wife, Miriam, in recent years, including $10 million in the last few weeks that went to a “super PAC” supporting him.

[Soros is crusading] to re-shape the entire discipline of economics, which he believes suffers from “market fundamentalism.” As Neil Maghami reports, Soros has promised to funnel $5 million a year for ten years through Central European University, a Budapest school he founded in 1991 and to which he’s donated hundreds of millions. Soros launched his economics project in 2010 at King’s College, Cambridge, where 200 academics were exhorted for three days “to develop new paradigms that explain market imbalances and uncertainties and that reject ‘static’ concepts such as rational expectations and market equilibrium.” (Video here.) Now grants have begun to...

What do you get when you mix Democratic fat-cat donations, Big Labor favors, pharmaceutical lobbying and Beltway business as usual? Answer: another toxic half-billion-dollar Barack Obama-approved crony deal. Move over, Solyndra. Here comes Siga-Gate. This latest Chicago-style payoff on your dime involves a dubious smallpox drug backed by a liberal billionaire investor, along with a former union boss who was one of the White House's most frequent visitors. They're the "1 percent" with 100 percent immunity from the selectively outraged Occupier mobs that purport to oppose partisan government bailouts and handouts to privileged corporations. Ronald Perelman is the New York...

Over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work. Senior officials have taken unusual steps to secure the contract for New York-based Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world's richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor.

The last time I checked, didn’t the Left call this sort of thing ‘crony capitalism?’ Over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work. Senior officials have taken unusual steps to secure the contract for New York-based Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world’s richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor. As you probably know, smallpox was eradicated in the wild decades ago: mostly because it was a genuinely terrifying threat...

There's Something Fishy About The White House's $433 Million Investment In A Smallpox Vaccine Becket Adams, The Blaze Nov. 15, 2011, 12:21[Editor's note: smallpox is indeed a horrifying and terrible disease; this cannot be overstated. It is not the intent of this article to mitigate the very real and terrible nature of the disease. The point of this article is to question the White Houses’ intentions in this deal.] Several critics believe that the Obama administration’s $433 million investment in the new ST-246 smallpox vaccine reeks of scandal. How could a multimillion dollar investment in an antiviral pill that could...

Energy Policy: Killing the Keystone XL pipeline may help one of the world's richest men get richer. North Dakota's booming oil fields will now grow more dependent on a railroad the president's economic guru just bought. Stop us if you see a pattern here. About the time George Soros — Hungarian billionaire and key donor to leftist groups and the Democratic Party — invested heavily in the stock of the state-run Brazilian oil company Petrobras, President Obama was curbing U.S. offshore oil production and the U.S. Export-Import Bank announced a $2 billion loan to Petrobras to finance deep-water drilling off...

SHOCKING PENN STATE RUMOR: Jerry Sandusky 'Pimped Out Young Boys To Rich Donors'Tony Manfred | Nov. 10, 2011, 9:27 AM Sportswriter Mark Madden went on WEEI in Boston and reported a rumor that alleged child molester Jerry Sandusky would pimp out boys to rich donors. "I hear a rumor that there will be a shocking development from the Second Miles Foundation ... That Jerry Sandusky and Second Mile were pimping out young boys to rich donors." Madden claims it's being investigated by "two prominent columnists." We'd say this is ridiculous, and that you should take it with a grain of...

Do Obama's big donors break his no-lobbyist pledge? CBS News President Obama's re-election campaign is pushing back against a New York Times report that suggests Mr. Obama may not be meeting his own standards when it comes to keeping corporate lobbyists out of his campaign.

Amid accusations of misleading the public, J-Street website reveals George Soros has donated money to organization. US Jewish billionaire investor George Soros, who is known for his support of leftwing causes and occasional criticism of Israel, is a major J Street donor, it emerged on Friday. Tax forms obtained by The Washington Times’ Eli Lake revealed that over the past three years, the Budapest-born Holocaust survivor and finance guru has given $750,000 to the organization. ...For years J Street had repeatedly denied having any connection with Soros.

Looks like President Obama is the one truly one occupying Wall St. donors. Earlier this week a report went out suggesting that the financial sector had abandoned Obama in favor of Mitt Romney. Turns out these numbers do not reflect the reality of the money situation. The Washington Post took a closer look at the numbers and reports that, in fact, Obama has outraised Romney on Wall Street this year 2-1. The Post reports that Obama raised $15.6 million from employees in the industry, Romney has raised less than half that ($7.5 million) and Perry has only managed to collect...

A Daily Caller investigation has found that in addition to the failed company Solyndra, at least four other solar panel manufacturing companies receiving in excess of $500 million in loan guarantees from the Obama administration employ executives or board members who have donated large sums of money to Democratic campaigns. And as questions swirl around possible connections between political donations and these preferential financing arrangements, the Obama White House suddenly began deflecting The Daily Caller’s questions on Wednesday to the Democratic National Committee. Asked Wednesday to comment on the connection between large Democratic donors and Obama administration loan guarantees to...

Billionaire Obama fundraiser George Kaiser visited the White House 16 times over the past 3 years, and is caught in the middle of the Solyndra scandal as the company’s chief investor and prime beneficiary of the debt restructuring approved by the Obama Administration earlier this year. This has lead to the obvious question of whether Kaiser leveraged his political connections to obtain federal stimulus funding, and preferential treatment, but surely there might be a less nefarious explanation for Kaiser’s White House visits, right? Nah…

good times good times. Meanwhile, Bachman has taken somewhere north of $140,000 from pharmaceutical companies. Those donors include Abbott Labs, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Novartis, Eli Lilly and Bayer. Yet, not a dollar of all that pharma money, from such a wide range of the world’s largest drugmakers, came from Merck. Might Bachmann be going after Merck on behalf of that company’s competitors who also happen to be Bachmann donors? She’s claiming a vaccine manufactured by Merck (Gardisil) causes mental retardation. Meanwhile, she’s taking campaign donations from Merck’s top HPV vaccine (Cervarix) competitor, GlaxoSmithKline.Hey, that’s not at all suspicious.Weren’t we...

As the 2012 election fund-raising cycle heats up, the onetime darling is finding far less enthusiasm from the showbiz donors who tell THR what went wrong. At this point in the previous presidential election cycle, Barack Obama was a Hollywood heartthrob. The entertainment industry's ardent Democratic activists couldn't dig deep enough into their wallets to finance his ambitious run for the Oval Office. The industry remains with the president, but the disenchantment is increasingly palpable, and even devoted Democrats are approaching his re-election campaign with all the enthusiasm of a studio contractually obligated to finance a dubious sequel. Obama certainly...

WASHINGTON - Mitt Romney's loss is Rick Perry's gain in the 2012 Republican presidential race, as the Texas governor, a late starter in the wide-open Republican presidential field, is not only stealing support but also big-money backers from the former GOP front-runner. Just look at California. Four years ago, Mike Schroeder was California political director of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. This year, he dismisses Romney's second White House campaign as "disorganized." "A lot of the energy that was for Romney has gone to Perry this time around,'' said Schroeder, who has not formally endorsed a candidate. Former California assemblyman Scott...

The CEO of Starbucks is urging fellow business leaders to join him in getting Washington’s attention by refusing to give money to political campaigns until there is a serious plan to rein in deficits. “I am asking that all of us forgo political contributions until the Congress and the president return to Washington and deliver a fiscally disciplined long-term debt and deficit plan to the American people,” Howard Schultz wrote Sunday in an email to business honchos obtained by POLITICO. Schultz called on CEOs and other corporate executives to “voice your perspective publicly,” and he has done the same in...

Full title: Panic In DC As Starbucks' Schultz Calls For CEO Boycott Of Campaign Donations, Urges Americans To Go On Strike Against Their Politicians In today's most underreported news of the day, which could potentially have the biggest impact on the future of America, none other than America's CEOs, or at least one of them: Starbucks' Howard Schultz, has mass blasted an email to fellow CEOs asking for a consensual boycott on donating to political campaigns in order to encourage the nation's muppets, elsewhere idiotically called "leaders", to solve America's budget and debt impasse. Bloomberg quotes from the CEO's e-mail...

This morning’s predictably dejecting jobs report provided the GOP presidential candidates with an apt opportunity to cast the president in an unflattering light — and to contrast his approach with what their own would be. Memorably, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney framed his statement in a way that leaves voters displeased with the economy little choice but to vote Obama out of office. “When you see what this president has done to the economy in just three years, you know why America doesn’t want to find out what he can do in eight,” former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said. Importantly,...

In a federal race like the presidency, each donor can only give $2,500 per candidate. However, there's nothing stopping powerful 'bundlers' from collecting checks from their rich friends. President Obama is already taking advantage of these super - donors: billionaire Democrats including Penny Pritzker and Marc Benioff have already raised hundreds of thousands for the reelection campaign. Perry must be hoping his past billionaire donors will do the same. Per Texas state disclosure records:

There is a fascinating, if slightly disturbing, account in Mike Allen’s newsletter from Politico this morning: FLY ON THE WALL: Fifty of the most prized donors in national politics, including several hedge-fund billionaires who are among the richest people in the world, schlepped to a Manhattan office or hovered around speakerphones Tuesday afternoon as their host, venture capitalist Ken Langone (pronounced LAN-goan), a co-founder of The Home Depot, implored New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to reconsider and seek the GOP presidential nomination. The governor was firm that it’s not in the cards this time, but left his spurned suitors with...

The campaign fundraising efforts of President Obama raised $86 million in the past three months from 500,000 people — but at least $35 million of it can be traced to just 244 well-connected supporters who collected contributions from wealthy friends. Just 634 donations from people giving $30,000 or more to the Obama Victory Fund comprise $23 million, while the 1,335 donations the fund received from those giving $250 add up to about $336,000, a Washington Times analysis shows. The campaign has branded itself as a new type of political operation and touted its reliance on a grass-roots network of everyday...

Rep. Michele Bachmann’s latest campaign finance report shows she has a strong network of small-dollar donors backing her presidential bid but, for now, she lacks the support of the big-money bundlers. The report, which covers April to June, showed that Mrs. Bachmann collected more than $4.2 million and had $3.6 million in the bank — putting her neck-and-neck with Texas Rep. Ron Paul for second place in the early money chase and in the rearview mirror of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who raised $18 million and has $12.7 million in the bank. With six months until the caucuses and...

PHILADEPHIA (AP) — Even as President Barack Obama's re-election effort is powering toward an impressive early fundraising haul, campaign officials are trying to reassure donors who have concerns about a range of policy decisions and pace of change during Obama's first term. Some top donors and even members of Obama's campaign team say that to replicate the success of 2008, the president and his advisers must reassure the fundraising community on a number of issues, from regulations on Wall Street to the Middle East peace process to the president's refusal to endorse gay marriage. "It's not unfair to say the...

AUSTIN — Two of Texas’ most powerful business leaders have mounted a late-hour push to derail an anti-illegal-immigration bill in the Legislature’s special session. Houston homebuilder Bob Perry (no relation) and HEB/Central Market grocery chieftain Charles Butt applied pressure Thursday to members of a House panel to block the “sanctuary cities” measure

What did Obama supporters get for $35,800-a-plate at Thursday night’s DNC fundraising dinner at Manhattan’s swanky Daniel restaurant?The menu included Maine lobster salad with roasted beets, a duo of Black Angus beef, braised short ribs with spinach and roasted tenderloin with stuffed potato and hen of the woods.The wines poured: a 2009 Sandhi Santa Barbara Chardonnay ($28 per bottle according to the winery’s website) and a 2008 Copain Anderson Valley Pinot Noir Tous Ensembles (also under $30 per bottle according to pricing online.)For dessert, guests were treated to

Through a nonprofit, private donors are expected to cover the $3,000-a-month rent, along with utilities and other expenses, on Gov. Jerry Brown's loft in Sacramento. Reporting from Sacramento -- Gov. Jerry Brown will look to a group of private donors — presently refusing to reveal their identities — to pay his rent at the luxury loft in downtown Sacramento where Brown and his wife live while in town. Donors are contributing to a nonprofit formed specifically to cover the costs of Brown's $3,000-a-month, 1,450-square-foot apartment. In the past, the practice of having private donors pay for the governor's residence has...

While America as a whole slides toward unemployment and poverty, certain well-connected people are doing very nicely indeed. Consider Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and her husband Paul. Kevin Bogardus of The Hill reports:  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) saw her net worth rise 62 percent last year, cementing her status as one of the wealthiest members of Congress.Pelosi was worth at least $35.2 million in the 2010 calendar year, according to a financial disclosure report released Wednesday. She reported a minimum of $43.4 million in assets and about $8.2 in liabilities.For 2009, Pelosi reported a minimum net worth...

The reach of Citizens United v FEC just got longer, if only temporarily. Relying on the controversial ruling, a federal judge in Virginia threw out part of an indictment against two men accused of secretly reimbursing donors to Hillary Clinton with corporate cash. Judge James Cacheris ruled that Citizens United established that corporations have a right to donate to political campaigns, as well as to spend their own money: A judge has ruled that the campaign finance law banning corporations from making contributions to federal candidates is unconstitutional. …Cacheris says that under last year’s Citizens United Supreme Court case, corporations...

Washington— President Obama's Jewish fund-raising network is trying to calm uneasy donors who fear that his blueprint for Middle East peace would jeopardize Israel’s security. Although Obama's core fund-raising volunteers aren’t panicking, they say his outline for a peace deal has created unexpected obstacles that make it more difficult to meet short-term fund-raising targets. But many in the Jewish community remain worried about what the president said, what he meant and what it all means for Israel. In Philadelphia, a committee of about 30 Obama supporters is trying to raise about $3 million for an Obama fund-raising dinner set for...

Jewish donors and fund-raisers are warning the Obama re-election campaign that the president is at risk of losing financial support because of concerns about his handling of Israel. The complaints began early in President Barack Obama's term, centered on a perception that Mr. Obama has been too tough on Israel. Some Jewish donors say Mr. Obama has pushed Israeli leaders too hard to halt construction of housing settlements in disputed territory, a longstanding element of U.S. policy. Some also worry that Mr. Obama is putting more pressure on the Israelis than the Palestinians to enter peace negotiations, and say they...

Jewish donors and fund-raisers are warning the Obama reelection campaign that the president is at risk of losing financial support because of concerns about his handling of Israel. Some Jewish donors say President Barack Obama has pushed Israeli leaders too hard to halt construction of housing settlements in disputed territory, a longstanding element of U.S. policy. Some also worry that Mr. Obama is putting more pressure on the Israelis than the Palestinians to enter peace negotiations, and that the president has allowed relations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to fray. One top Democratic fund-raiser, Miami developer Michael Adler, said...

If senior journalist David Goldman is right, the correct word for describing the way a growing number of US Jews feel about President Barack Obama is not 'anger' but 'rage' – white-hot rage, at that, and a conviction that they have been swindled. Goldman, Senior Editor of First Things magazine and 'Spengler' columnist for Asia Times Online, spoke last week at a convention on intellectuals and terror at Ariel University in Samaria. In his lecture, he quoted a top Jewish campaign donor who used the word 'sociopath' to describe Obama. In an interview with Israel National News, he predicted a...

WASHINGTON – The Internal Revenue Service is investigating five donors for making contributions to the kind of nonprofit groups that have become popular for spending millions of dollars on political ads in the past few years. The IRS is trying to determine whether the donors owe federal gift taxes for the donations, an agency spokeswoman said Thursday. The IRS did not name the donors or the nonprofit groups to which they contributed. But the agency's confirmation of an investigation could have a chilling effect on politically active groups that have become integral to campaigns for Congress and could play a...

The president is about to order companies that do business with the federal government to disclose their political donations. President Obama has officially kicked off his 2012 re-election campaign, and don't Republicans know it. The president is expected any day now to sign an executive order that routs 70 years of efforts to get politics out of official federal business. Under the order, all companies (and their officers) would be required to list their political donations as a condition to bidding for government contracts. Companies can bid and lose out for the sin of donating to Republicans. Or they can...

No one is immune from an audit, including President Barack Obama. The Federal Election Commission has begun an audit of Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, according to Roll Call newspaper. The campaign, a record-breaking fund-raising machine that brought in nearly $750 million for then-candidate Obama, attributed most of its contributions to small-dollar donors. But the size of the haul almost guaranteed an audit would eventually occur.

Barack Obama raised a record-shattering $750 million on his way to winning the 2008 presidential election. But that stunning flood of cash has triggered an investigation by the Federal Election Commission, which is taking a detailed look at the campaign's records and transactions. According to Roll Call, the audit of Obama's financial records began two years ago. It was not required by law, since the Obama campaign did not accept federal matching funds and funded itself entirely with private donations. But allegations of improper contributions, coupled with the FEC's suspicions of certain transactions, led to the probe. Obama recently officially...

At Harlem Dinner, A Few Disaffected Donors Come Back to ObamaBy Reid Pillifant March 30, 2011 | 7:28 p.m President Obama is making progress. According to two sources who attended the "purposefully small" D.N.C. dinner at the Red Rooster in Harlem last night, a few of those much-discussed, dissident donors were among the 50 attendees who paid $30,800 to enjoy short ribs and cornbread, and chat amiably with the president. "There were people there who in the past have expressed frustrations, and one person who said, 'You know, I'm not going to support him for re-election,'" said one attendee. "Well,...

Clinton Campaign Vows To Check Contributions Solicited by Supporter BRISTOW, Va. -- When Hillary Rodham Clinton held an intimate fund-raising event at her Washington home in late March, Pamela Layton donated $4,600, the maximum allowed by law, to Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign. But the 37-year-old Ms. Layton says she and her husband were reimbursed by her husband's boss for the donations. "It wasn't personal money. It was all corporate money," Mrs. Layton said outside her home here. "I don't even like Hillary. I'm a Republican." The boss is William Danielczyk, founder of a Washington-area private-equity firm and a major fund-raising...

Hundreds of major donors have abandoned the Republican National Committee, leaving it $20 million in debt and threatening its future as a central player in the 2012 presidential election. The RNC raised just $7 million from major donors for the midterm elections, one sixth as much as it brought in for the previous midterms, in 2006. By contrast, the Democratic National Committee raised $38 million from large donors for last fall's midterms, three times as much as for the 2006 elections, according to a Washington Post analysis of donor records. On Friday, when RNC members gather at National Harbor to...

Obama's tax-cut deal upsets many major donorsSome say they will withhold funds for the next election. Even if they come around before the campaign kicks into gear, the initial backlash could hurt early Democratic efforts to counter GOP-allied groups. By Matea Gold, Tribune Washington Bureau 4:39 PM PST, December 9, 2010 Reporting from Washington President Obama's advisors are confident that liberals dismayed by his agreement to extend tax breaks for the wealthy will forgive him by the time the 2012 election kicks into gear. But the current backlash on the left may intensify the immediate challenge Democrats face in building...

White House Refuses to Release Donors to David Axelrod's CharityBy John Cook In 1998, White House senior adviser David Axelrod co-founded a charity aimed at curing epilepsy, which his daughter suffers from. It raised $800,000 last year from corporate and private donors. The White House won't say who they are. **SNIP** David Axelrod has no current official affiliation with CURE, but the organization's press materials describe him as a "CURE father and co-founder," and his White House bio says he "helped found" it. Susan Axelrod serves as CURE's chair, an unpaid position. Any viewer of Fox News piece, which is...

Some of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors met Tuesday afternoon with influential party figures such as AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, organizer Joan Fitz-Gerald and former White House aide Van Jones to discuss the lessons and implications of the GOP’s landslide midterm election victory. The meeting – organized by a group of wealthy, politically active liberals called the Democracy Alliance – took place at Washington’s swank Mandarin Oriental hotel, where off-duty police officers and other security patrolled the halls looking for reporters and other uninvited guests, who were escorted from the premises. "The agreement is that everything that goes on here...

Top Overall Donors Breakdown to display: Dem vs. Repub Source of Funds Rank   Contributor   Total Contribs   To Dems   To Repubs   Contributions Tilt   1   ActBlue $18,497,333 100% 0% Solidly Democratic 2   Honeywell International $3,364,660 54% 46% On the fence 3   AT&T Inc $3,340,925 47% 52% On the fence 4   Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers $2,968,218 98% 2% Solidly Democratic 5   Comcast Corp $2,922,278 66% 33% Leans Democratic 6   National Assn of Realtors $2,906,374 57% 42% Leans Democratic 7   National Beer Wholesalers Assn $2,729,941 56% 43% Leans Democratic 8   American Assn for Justice...