Top CEOs donate to Romney over Obama, but Barack has at least $5k!

[CeeKay]

it's a 4-1 margin:

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/30/13034655-top-ceos-donate-to-romney-over-obama-by-4-1-margin?chromedomain=nbcpolitics

The chief executives of America’s top corporations have thrown their financial support to Mitt Romney over President Obama by more than a 4-1 margin, according to a review of federal records conducted by NBC News.

The presumptive Republican nominee’s presidential campaign has received almost $322,000 in direct donations from the CEOs of the companies listed on the annual “Fortune 500” list of the biggest U.S. companies.

By comparison, the Obama campaign has raked in $75,500 in contributions this election cycle from CEOs of the companies included on the list, according to records through the second quarter of 2012 on file with the Federal Election Commission.

While the sums are but a drop in the bucket relative to the hundreds of millions of dollars raised by both campaigns, they paint a picture of where the upper echelons of corporate America’s sympathies might lie at this point in the campaign. Overall, the Obama campaign has raised about $300 million in total, and the Romney campaign has collected roughly $153 million.

Federal records indicate that 147 CEOs have made some level of contribution directly to either the Obama or Romney campaign. Eighteen of those individuals contributed to Obama; 129 gave to the Romney campaign. Many of the CEOs – though not all of them – donated the maximum $5,000 to their candidate of choice, hewing to laws limiting contributions to $2,500 each for the primary and general election campaigns.

"People who support Mitt Romney do so because they support his pro-growth, pro-jobs agenda for the country," Romney spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg said. A spokesman for the Obama campaign declined to comment for this story.

let the Obama spin machine begin!  I can see it now:  'Romney: Bought and Paid for by Corporate America' without mentioning how little it is in the grand scheme of things.  kinda surprised to see funds raised being so different though; I was under the impression that Romney was doing better than Obama.

[Ironrod]

[pr0ner]

I saw a ticker on CNN today that Obama donated $5k to his own campaign today.

$5k, and it's newsworthy!

 

[Pyperkub]

it's a 4-1 margin:

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/30/13034655-top-ceos-donate-to-romney-over-obama-by-4-1-margin?chromedomain=nbcpolitics

The chief executives of America’s top corporations have thrown their financial support to Mitt Romney over President Obama by more than a 4-1 margin, according to a review of federal records conducted by NBC News.

The presumptive Republican nominee’s presidential campaign has received almost $322,000 in direct donations from the CEOs of the companies listed on the annual “Fortune 500” list of the biggest U.S. companies.

By comparison, the Obama campaign has raked in $75,500 in contributions this election cycle from CEOs of the companies included on the list, according to records through the second quarter of 2012 on file with the Federal Election Commission.

While the sums are but a drop in the bucket relative to the hundreds of millions of dollars raised by both campaigns, they paint a picture of where the upper echelons of corporate America’s sympathies might lie at this point in the campaign. Overall, the Obama campaign has raised about $300 million in total, and the Romney campaign has collected roughly $153 million.

Federal records indicate that 147 CEOs have made some level of contribution directly to either the Obama or Romney campaign. Eighteen of those individuals contributed to Obama; 129 gave to the Romney campaign. Many of the CEOs – though not all of them – donated the maximum $5,000 to their candidate of choice, hewing to laws limiting contributions to $2,500 each for the primary and general election campaigns.

"People who support Mitt Romney do so because they support his pro-growth, pro-jobs agenda for the country," Romney spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg said. A spokesman for the Obama campaign declined to comment for this story.

let the Obama spin machine begin!  I can see it now:  'Romney: Bought and Paid for by Corporate America' without mentioning how little it is in the grand scheme of things.  kinda surprised to see funds raised being so different though; I was under the impression that Romney was doing better than Obama.

That's because all the Romney money is going to the SuperPacs where the real power brokers can hide and avoid the spotlight.  Approximately the same balance as the CEOs (roughly 4-1) is seen on the Super Pac money:

As of July 31, 2012, 698 groups organized as Super PACs have reported total receipts of $318,769,081 and total independent expenditures of $165,567,116 in the 2012 cycle.

80% of that money comes from less than 200 people:

80 percent of super PAC money spent in the presidential election so far has come from just 196 Americans. As Upworthy points out, that's less than the capacity of a single Boeing 767....

...Whispers checked in with the Center for Public Integrity to look at the top five of those 196 donors. And, surprise surprise, as of the June FEC filing, 4 of the top 5 biggest super PAC donors support Republican candidates.

If Romney does win (and I'd say right now he's got a 40-50% shot), it will say a lot about whether we have an oligarchy or a democracy.  Not spin, just the facts.

[CeeKay]

I saw a ticker on CNN today that Obama donated $5k to his own campaign today.

$5k, and it's newsworthy!

 

he even did a video for it.

[rshetts2]

let the Obama spin machine begin!  I can see it now:  'Romney: Bought and Paid for by Corporate America' without mentioning how little it is in the grand scheme of things. 

Considering that we are dealing with less than 200 contributors and the maximum allowable contribution, legally, is $5k, the amount really isnt the point.  Of the 147 CEOs making contributions all but 18 of them donated to Romney.  So yeah, Corporate America is backing Romney in vastly larger numbers than Obama.  Besides as pointed out by Pyperkub, they have ways of getting more money to Romney.

Regarding Obama's $5k donation to his own campaign, once again, thats the max allowed and it kind of makes sense that if youre going to ask the average american to donate to your campaign, you may want it known that youve donated the max allowable yourself. 

[Ironrod]

80 percent of super PAC money spent in the presidential election so far has come from just 196 Americans. As Upworthy points out, that's less than the capacity of a single Boeing 767....

...Whispers checked in with the Center for Public Integrity to look at the top five of those 196 donors. And, surprise surprise, as of the June FEC filing, 4 of the top 5 biggest super PAC donors support Republican candidates.

If Romney does win (and I'd say right now he's got a 40-50% shot), it will say a lot about whether we have an oligarchy or a democracy.  Not spin, just the facts.

More grist for this mill.

While they sure as hell ought to be shocking, these numbers are hardly surprising:

It’s no secret that some very rich people support the super PACs and other groups that have inundated the 2012 campaign with unlimited sums of cash. But a study released Thursday details the extent to which this kind of donating is the sport of the One Percent.

Just 47 people account for more than half (57.1 percent) of the $230 million raised by super PACs from individual donors, according to the study by US Public Interest Research Group and Demos, two liberal research and advocacy organizations. Just over 1,000 donors giving $10,000 or more were responsible for 94 percent of the money raised.

‘‘One might think of today’s outside spending groups as megaphones for moguls and millionaires,’’ write coauthors Blair Bowie and Adam Lioz. ‘‘The more money they pump in, the louder they’re able to amplify their voices — until a relatively few wealthy individuals and interests are dominating our public square, drowning out the rest of us.’’

Business as usual in the Citizens United plutocracy. But here's the perspective that I thought was worth posting:

At the top of the individual donor pyramid is billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam. They have given (along with their children) more than $36 million ... More recently, the couple contributed $10 million to Restore Our Future, the super PAC founded by a group of former aides to Romney, the presumptive GOP nominee. ... it would take 321,000 middle-income families, donating an equivalent share of their wealth (0.15 percent), to match the Adelsons’ giving.

 

(edit because quoting is HARD)

[Pyperkub]

A little more info:

Two conservative nonprofits, Crossroads GPS and Americans for Prosperity, have poured almost $60 million into TV ads to influence the presidential race so far, outgunning all super PACs put together, new spending estimates show... Conservative social-welfare nonprofits have spent about $70 million on TV ads in the election cycle so far, compared to just $1.6 million by liberal groups, CMAG data shows.