Bundlers in our midst

— Editor's note: Tanya Amador-Daigle is reporting for Florida Weekly on the presidential election. She has a unique perspective on the primaries and the process for choosing a candidate, having traveled the country reporting on primaries and caucuses for the Purple States project. To learn more about Purple States go, to www.purplestates.tv.

Never in my life did I feel the words, "We all want the same thing," resonate so loudly as they it did this past week. With all the warring of words between political parties lately over the economic crisis, it finally hit me: Americans are all on the same page. What I mean is that we are all fed up with our government.

This week on the Purple States Web site we had a discussion about the housing market, which cannot be debated without mentioning the economy in its entirety. The conversations almost always went back to the same thing: Washington has been screwing us. And no one is blameless, Republican or Democrat.

Last season on the site we argued and screamed like banshees. The lines were clear. Democrats spat on Republicans for Bush, and Republicans ridiculed Dems for the do-nothing Congress. Now, we all just want to tar and feather the lot of them. At this point, they are all the same evil machine. It doesn't even matter who did it, just fix it.

A few of us are still holding out hope that one of the candidates can mend the broken economy. But even those who have decided who they are voting for seem half-hearted in their backing. It's as if no one really believes anyone can fix it. The passion is gone, along with the cash in our wallets.

Who can blame them? When you look at the associations between both Barack Obama and John McCain and companies like Fannie or Freddie, it doesn't exactly give you a warm and fuzzy feeling.

In order to understand campaign contributions, one needs to know what a "bundler" is. Basically, a bundler, or "burglar," as I like to call them, is a fundraiser on steroids. Under current law a person can donate a maximum of $2,300 to a campaign in each election (primary and general elections). Bundlers gather donations from many different individuals and present them to the campaign. It's a way for bundlers to gain influence with a candidate. the paractice came about after the 2002 revision to campaign finance laws made unrestricted soft money more difficult to get.

The Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan watchdog group, has a helpful Web site that keeps an eye on these things. When I went to the site, I found that both McCain and Obama have been almost equal recipients from the investment, securities, insurance and real estate industries.

More specifically, and beginning with McCain, Wall Street appears to have contributed, through bundlers, at least $30 million to the Republican candidate. For Obama, the number appears to be somewhere around $22 million but with less transparency. While McCain has disclosed all of the names and occupations of his bundlers, Obama has "ignored repeated requests from the Center for Responsive Politics and other watchdog groups to disclose his bundlers' employers and occupations, these figures (for Obama) are probably undercounts," according to the center's Web site.

Additionally, bundlers for McCain include Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain, Lehman Brothers, Bear Sterns, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Chase, Credit Suisse and Wachovia. Obama's list includes Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs.

From the commercial banking industry, on a whole, McCain and Obama's contributions are almost equal at about $2 million each.

With all of that information, what really floored me was this number: $101 million has been contributed to both political parties from the finance industry in the 2008 election. More than half, 56 percent, went to Democrats. In other words, this is common practice in politics on both sides of the aisle.

I know I may be stating the obvious to some people, but to those who are just beginning to understand how the process works, it's gotta hurt. Especially when you really start to process the enormity of it.

Any reasonable, clear-thinking individual would probably assume that bundlers might have something to gain from their efforts. Things like government contracts and the chance to gain some influence and favors from the politicians they have worked so hard for, right? Yep, you are right, pass Go and collect $200. It's a recipe for corruption.

I won't blame anyone, but here are a few fun facts, according to USA Today:

Bob Rubin, one of Obama's advisers, is a senior adviser for Citigroup. Citigroup is one of the companies that is deeply entrenched in the subprime mortgage crisis. He was given $17 million in compensation from the company in 2005. This is the company that kept giving out mortgage after mortgage to high-risk borrowers. Hmmm.

One of McCain's advisers, Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett Packard, was dismissed and was given an $11 million going away present. Fiorina contends that shareholders backed that package, which is one of the reforms McCain is calling for.

Clearly, the whole system needs to be reformed. After all, the parties involved aren't doing anything illegal. The problem is, that if one does it, then the only way for the other to compete is to do it as well. It all boils down to matching campaign dollar for campaign dollar in order to win. Unfortunately, the corruption that inevitably comes out of campaign finance ends up hurting guess who? The American people.

I'm so disgusted by the abuse of the power that I don't even want to watch the news anymore unless it's titled, "Virginia Town Tries to Prove Existence of Ghost Cats." I kid you not; it's a real headline.

Purple States

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