Commentary

Who’s a corporate stooge?

Nader never tires of ranting about the fundamental evil of corporations and their influence on politics. And of course, we all know that Republicans are most in thrall to corporate interests, right!? Umm, turns out there’s a few holes in that theory. A nifty Wired bit of “Infoporn” (sorry, the actual article is not online) shows some interesting trends in corporate giving to presidential races. a) In 1992 and 1996 both parties got about 1/3 of their campaign funding from corporations. b) In 2000, the Dems still got about 1/3 of their bucks from corporations, while Bush got only 19%. c) This year, Kerry still got 10% of his dough from corporations, Bush on 2%. Hmmm. The Wired article sites the Campaign Finance Institute and the Center for Responsive Politics as the sources of the data, though I could not quickly find it on either site.