The truth:
Obama is raising more than his opponents from executives of some of the corporate interests he criticizes. Obama has received more money from people who work at pharmaceutical and health product companies, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics. He's taken in $528,765 through February, compared with $506,001 for Clinton and $139,400 for McCain, despite saying last July that "I don't take pharma money."
2 comments:
(Yawn)
This isn't so much a lie as a semantic 'controversy,' IMO.
It is easy for a candidate to refuse to receive big pharma PAC money, or any PAC money, which is the way corporations are allowed to contribute to political candidates' primary or general election campaigns. BHO has indeed committed and honored his commitment to not take PAC monies, so far as I know.
It is impossible to refuse to receive private contributions from parties who WORK at such firms. All that could be done would be to process contributions, and for those persons who (voluntarily) filled out the 'employer' section of the disclosure information, back check that information against a list of companies in a given field of endeavor, and then RETURN those funds.
That's a lot of work, and it wouldn't even suffice to accomplish its purported goal all the time, because there is no legal requirement that contributors fill out any information as to the company they work for. In that case, in order to not take contributions from a given business sector, you'd need the candidate to do what amounts to a background check on any and all contributors who haven't supplied their employment information.
Impractical, and that cannot be what people think a candidate is promising to do when he or she says they will not take corporate monies. Surely such a pledge must be considered fully honored by refusing PAC monies alone.
Assuming BHO is doing this, it is quite unfair to use the contributor process he's engaged in to say he's 'lied' compared to his pledges. It would be fair to argue there may be no effective difference, given his receipt of individual donations from those employed in those sectors.
...sofla
The lie consists in the clear and unmistakable intention of smearing Clinton. He is suggesting that she DOES take money from "Big Pharma."
Which is something that the progbloggers genuinely believe.
At any rate, we all know that one way to dodge the laws is to force employees and spouses to "donate."
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