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by lighthawk 4078 days ago
> under a republican president

Democrat or Republican doesn't matter. Lobbying and who is offered and receives campaign contributions, etc. matter. It's about manipulation, money and power/getting re-elected, plain and simple.

Notice the Reps and Dems on this list of campaign contributions from Comcast: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000461

Top Recipients from Comcast:

National Republican Congressional Cmte, John Boehner (R-OH), National Republican Senatorial Cmte, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Cmte, DNC Services Corp, Democratic Congressional Campaign Cmte, Ed Markey (D-MA), Democratic Municipal Officials, Cory Booker (D-NJ), Fred Upton (R-MI)

Comcast spent $16,970,000 on lobbying in 2014. They likely lobbied both Reps and Dems.

Those noted who own Comcast shares:

Barber, Ron (D-AZ) Boehner, John (R-OH) Cohen, Steve (D-TN) Collins, Susan M (R-ME) Cooper, Jim (D-TN) Dingell, John D (D-MI) Frankel, Lois J (D-FL) Frelinghuysen, Rodney (R-NJ) Hagan, Kay R (D-NC) Hanna, Richard (R-NY) Heck, Dennis (D-WA) Holding, George (R-NC) Isakson, Johnny (R-GA) Kelly, Mike (R-PA) Marchant, Kenny (R-TX) McCaul, Michael (R-TX) McDermott, Jim (D-WA) Pelosi, Nancy (D-CA)

1 comments

Note that Comcast, as a corporation, is prohibited from donating money to political campaigns: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/04/07/supre....

OpenSecrets has been sweeping that disclaimer more and more under the rug, to the point where now I'd accuse them of lying.

A corporation being prohibited from donating is entirely irrelevant as we saw in the Sony leaks: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9392872
Is this a matter of direct contributions versus PAC contributions?
Corporations cannot donate money to campaigns at all, either directly or through PACs. A corporation can have a "captive" PAC whose expenses it can pay (for example, letting it operate out of their corporate offices), but all donations that pass through to a campaigh must come from individuals.

When you hear that "Company X gave money to candidates", what you're really hearing is "people who reported that they work for Company X gave money to candidates."