– The Washington Times – Tuesday, February 10, 2009
EXCLUSIVE:
Wall Street executives have pleaded economic ruin, secured hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer assistance and been pilloried for their business excesses. But none of that has curbed their appetite for doling out political donations – or the willingness of politicians to accept the largesse.
A Washington Times analysis found that executives and employee-funded political action committees of banking companies that received bailout money have donated more than $2 million to members of Congress and other politicians since lawmakers approved the federal rescue of America’s financial system in October.
The PACs linked to the top 20 recipients of federal rescue funds have spent a combined $1.5 million on donations since Congress approved the bailout while employees of the top 10 recipients of bailout money have donated an additional $726,070, Federal Election Commission records showed.
The financial industry has long been a dominant political giver. For instance, executives of the top 10 bailout recipients gave $1.2 million in donations during the same period in 2004.
But their continued largesse since the bailout is a stark reminder that its executives still intend to play expensive politics even in the midst of a belt-tightening recession, analysts said.
Those who have been awake and thinking for the last several decades recognize this as merely a slightly less obscure example of how the govt-crony system works every day. As Henry Louis Mencken notably wrote:
Dude, like, that was so long ago. I was still a van driver.
A whore is a whore.
Public unions financially back politicians who, in turn, award the unions with lucrative contracts and raises funded by the taxpayer. The taxpayer never seems to have any representation at the negotiation table and so gets fleeced each and every time.
Some people are just now realizing Wall Street does it too?
A whore is a whore.
I’ve always been an optimistic guy, and I’m optimistically certain we are fucked!
Conservatives battled Bush on TARP8 years ago. Bush, once again, leid.