For The Turnstiles

Face Time
Although Mr. Obama has made a point of not accepting contributions from registered lobbyists, a review of campaign donations and White House visitor logs shows that special interests have had little trouble making themselves heard. Many of the president’s biggest donors, while not lobbyists, took lobbyists with them to the White House, while others performed essentially the same function on their visits. 


More broadly, the review showed that those who donated the most to Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party since he started running for president were far more likely to visit the White House than others. Among donors who gave $30,000 or less, about 20 percent visited the White House, according to a New York Times analysis that matched names in the visitor logs with donor records. But among those who donated $100,000 or more, the figure rises to about 75 percent. Approximately two-thirds of the president’s top fund-raisers in the 2008 campaign visited the White House at least once, some of them numerous times. (NYT, 4/14/2012)


Exactly the kind of investigative reporting that the New York Times does when Republicans are involved and that it needs to do more of if it has any hope of ever being seen again as an objective arbiter of the news. Obama's green energy sinkhole, Fast and Furious and the new GSA scandal are all still sitting out there waiting to be really investigated. What do you say New York Times, are you in?


People Persons
Sen. Bernie Sanders is among congressional lawmakers leading the call for a constitutional amendment to end corporate spending in elections. 


But his ideas on “corporate personhood,” the treatment of corporations as people under the law, are drawing criticism from some amendment advocates. They say his approach unfairly favors unions and nonprofit corporations and might clash with the wishes of some Vermonters.
.....
“We appreciate Bernie Sanders for many things, but we think that he has created an exemption that is intellectually dishonest,” said David Cobb, of Move to Amend, a grassroots group that has worked on local campaigns in Vermont and elsewhere. (Burlington Free Press, 4/14/2012)


Taking up the challenge thrown down by RedStateVT, supporters of Colonel Bernie Sanders note his hypocrisy. (Political donations from corporations bad, political donations from unions good.)  Tip of the hat to "Move to Amend." No doubt, RedStateVT would disagree with them on most things, but they get our respect for calling out Bernie.