By The Campaign Finance Institute

Editor’s Note: Sigh.
REALITY CHECK: Obama Received About the Same Percentage from Small Donors in 2008 as Bush in 2004
Obama also raised 80% more from large donors than small, outstripping all rivals and predecessors
It turns out that Barack Obama’s donors may not have been quite as different as we had thought. Throughout the election season, this organization and others have been reporting that Obama received about half of his discrete contributions in amounts of $200 or less. The Campaign Finance Institute (CFI) noted in past releases that donations are not the same as donors, since many people give more than once. After a more thorough analysis of data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC), it has become clear that repeaters and large donors were even more important for Obama than we or other analysts had fully appreciated.
“The myth is that money from small donors dominated Barack Obama’s finances,” said CFI’s executive director Michael J. Malbin. “The reality of Obama’s fundraising was impressive, but the reality does not match the myth.”

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Posted on November 25, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

Who is Nadhmi Auchi and why is he important to Barack Obama? Let’s take a look.
*
Contrary to Obama’s persistent claims, he indeed did favors for Tony Rezko, including this one:
“While Mr. Obama was running for the Senate, Mr. Rezko was also raising money for a huge development in the South Loop of Chicago, often playing host to dinners in a private room at the Four Seasons Hotel here.
“Former Rezko associates said that Governor Blagojevich attended one of the dinners, and that at Mr. Rezko’s request, Mr. Obama dropped in at one for Middle Eastern bankers in early 2004, just as he was starting to pull ahead in the Senate primary. The visits, Mr. Rezko’s partners said, helped impress foreign guests.
“‘I remember that he had been on the campaign trail, and he was completely wiped out and exhausted,’ said Anthony Licata, a lawyer who represented Mr. Rezko on real estate deals. ‘My recollection is that he drank ice tea, and he talked about how he was really making progress, and we were all excited to see him.'”
Last March, I asked: Was Nadhmi Auchi there?

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Posted on April 15, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

UPDATE MARCH 19
We learned a little bit more about Barack Obama’s meetings with the city’s editorial boards to discuss Tony Rezko on Chicago Tonight Monday night. Carol Marin moderated. The panel: Investigative reporter David Jackson and deputy editorial page editor John McCormick from the Tribune and reporter Chris Fusco and editorial writer Deborah Douglas from the Sun-Times. Let’s take a look.
*
(Direct quotes will be in quote marks; the rest is from my notes but pretty close to verbatim.)
MARIN: Why did Obama do this now?
JACKSON: The Tribune “was preparing to run a story in Sunday’s paper that listed the unanswered questions.”
FUSCO: The Sun-Times has been asking questions since November 2006. How much money has Tony Rezko raised for you? When the Obama campaign said $50,000 to $60,000, “you just sit there and realize, that cannot be right.”

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Posted on March 19, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

Is Barack Obama a liar?
Well, consider the two issues troubling him this week: Tony Rezko and NAFTA.
Let’s take NAFTA first.
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“The denials were sweeping when Senator Barack Obama’s campaign mobilized last week to refute a report that a senior official had given back-channel reassurances to Canada soft-pedaling Mr. Obama’s tough talk on Nafta,” the New York Times reports.
“While campaigning in Ohio, Mr. Obama has harshly criticized the North American Free Trade Agreement, which many Ohioans blame for an exodus of jobs. He agreed last week at a debate with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton that the United States should consider leaving the pact if it could not be renegotiated.
“On Monday, a memorandum surfaced, obtained by The Associated Press, showing that Austan D. Goolsbee, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago who is Mr. Obama’s senior economic policy adviser, met officials last month at the Canadian consulate in Chicago.
“According to the writer of the memorandum, Joseph De Mora, a political and economic affairs consular officer, Professor Goolsbee assured them that Mr. Obama’s protectionist stand on the trail was ‘more reflective of political maneuvering than policy.’
“It also said the professor had assured the Canadians that Mr. Obama’s language ‘should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans.'”
Well, then.

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Posted on March 4, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

See below for additional material posted on February 20.
“Before he bought his South Side mansion in 2005, Sen. Barack Obama took his friend and fundraiser Antoin “Tony” Rezko on a tour of the premises to make sure it was a good deal, Obama’s campaign revealed Monday,” the Tribune reports.
“Weeks after saying he’d answered all questions about his controversial dealings with the now-indicted Rezko, Obama released new details about their purchase of adjacent lots from the same seller on the same day. But the disclosures by Obama’s presidential campaign left unanswered questions and raised new ones.”
No kidding.

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Posted on February 19, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

A roundup of weekend Obama commentary and news about campaign finance, superdelegates, and the meaning of change.
Money Honey
“A year ago, before Barack Obama’s prodigious fund-raising powers were clocked in at $1 million a day, the senator made a great show out of raising a good idea: He would take the narrower road of public financing in the general election if he secured the nomination and his opponent did the same. Senator John McCain, then a long shot, agreed. Mr. Obama even secured a ruling from the Federal Election Commission that he could return unused private donations and then accept public financing,” the New York Times says in a Sunday editorial.
“Well, Mr. McCain is now the presumptive Republican nominee and says he is eager to take Mr. Obama up on the idea if he beats Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Sounds good? Not so fast.
“Representatives of Mr. Obama are cautiously saying this plan was an option, not a pledge, and it will not be definitively addressed unless Mr. Obama secures the nomination. An idea floated by a contender is now too ‘hypothetical’ for a front-runner.”

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Posted on February 18, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

“Like Krugman, we’ve been stunned and saddened at the Dem-on-Dem hatred displayed in comments around the web,” Bob Somerby wrote this week. “(Our reaction to the South Carolina debate: Those are the three best candidates we’ve ever seen in a three-candidate forum.) We wouldn’t know how to quantify this. But, like Krugman, it’s our impression that more of this comes from Obama supporters. We can think of an obvious reason for that: There’s a sixteen-year catalogue of demonology to access about Candidate Clinton.
“For our money, it’s sad to see how many Democrats have purchased this RNC-inspired, MSM-driven package. But it’s understandable that this has occurred. To amplify something Krugman said: Many Democrats also believed that Al Gore said he invented the Internet. Indeed, why wouldn’t they have purchased that tale, and so many others like it? They heard these tales a thousand times. They rarely heard them contradicted.”
Somerby faults Obama supporters, but not Obama himself, though his campaign has counted on and exploited the Republican attack machine’s sliming of the Clintons instead of transcending and uniting. Let’s take a look.

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Posted on February 15, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

If Obama says he loves you, check it out.
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Obama And Exelon
“When residents in Illinois voiced outrage two years ago upon learning that the Exelon Corporation had not disclosed radioactive leaks at one of its nuclear plants, the state’s freshman senator, Barack Obama, took up their cause,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Obama scolded Exelon and federal regulators for inaction and introduced a bill to require all plant owners to notify state and local authorities immediately of even small leaks. He has boasted of it on the campaign trail, telling a crowd in Iowa in December that it was ‘the only nuclear legislation that I’ve passed.’
“‘I just did that last year,’ he said, to murmurs of approval.
“A close look at the path his legislation took tells a very different story.”
You might even say Obama lied.

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Posted on February 4, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

1. “Barack Obama’s presidential campaign ‘scored a significant hit’ against chief rival Hillary Rodham Clinton ‘by helping to place’ a story about tainted Democratic donor Norman Hsu, according to an article about Obama in the December issue of The Atlantic,” Lynn Sweet reports.
“The story, titled ‘Teacher and Apprentice’ by associate editor Marc Ambinder, describes how Obama campaign staffers were ‘frustrated’ because the press was not covering Clinton ‘in the way they expected it would.’
“‘. . . And at a campaign event in Iowa, one of Obama’s aides plopped down next to me and spoke even more bluntly. He wanted to know when reporters would begin to look into Bill Clinton’s postpresidential sex life,’ Ambinder writes.

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Posted on November 9, 2007

You act like I’m no longer alive
Helped buy your house in 2005
Well our land was side by side
We were neighbors, my friend

* Available on YouTube for your embedding needs.
* Obama on the run.
* Beachwood’s Obama coverage in Obamathon.
* Also available from Beachwood Video: “I’m the Tribune/I’m the Sun-Times.”
* New from Beachwood Audio: “Cubs Fans: Please Stop Believin’.”
I Had a Crush Credits: Tony Rezko/Marty Gangler; Music/Tom Latourette; Porch Girl/Jenny Sturrock; Woman in Yellow Hat/Herself; Direction & Editing/Tim Inklebarger; Videographer/Shawn Girvan; Executive Gaffer/Steve Rhodes.

Posted on August 15, 2007