[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by GP_Matt

Two issues have come up more than once here that I have a problem with.

The first is the money in politics. I think the last presidential election cost around a billion dollars. That works out to less than a dollar a year per citizen. It doesn't seem like a lot of money to spend to determine the direction of your country. As for the lobbyists and corporate donations, it sure looks like the general public can generate a lot more money through millions of small donations then any corporation could part with. Even looking at a few of the previous elections, I think Obama and Harper both benefited from lower average donations from a larger group of people. I think the problem might not be the money, but rather that only a few are engaged enough to spend it while the others complain. I would wonder how many of the protestors have donated even 5$ a year to a party or political campaign that they believe in.

Here's the problem that I have, here is a list of Obama's largest contributors

University of California $1,648,685Goldman Sachs $1,013,091Harvard University $878,164Microsoft Corp $852,167Google Inc $814,540JPMorgan Chase & Co $808,799Citigroup Inc $736,771Time Warner $624,618Sidley Austin LLP $600,298Stanford University $595,716National Amusements Inc $563,798WilmerHale LLP $550,668Columbia University $547,852Skadden, Arps et al $543,539UBS AG $532,674IBM Corp $532,372General Electric $529,855US Government $513,308Morgan Stanley $512,232Latham & Watkins $503,295

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/co...?cid=N00009638

I think I read somewhere that Obama raised almost $10 million from Lobby groups and about $45 million from Law firms
Here's a site where you can breakdown by sectors

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/select.php?ind=F09

I also think your wrong on the private donation versus corporate donation scale, but I don't have time to dig that up right now.