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Obama Inauguration Paid For By Wall Street

The authoritative Hartford Courant reports:“Obama set a cap of $50,000 on individual contributions and has refused to accept money from unions, corporations and lobbyists, although bundlers with ties to corporate America have kicked in $5.7 million of the $27 million raised thus far, according to a review by the nonpartisan group Public Citizen commissioned by The Wall Street Journal.”

That reference to the Wall Street Journal report is incomplete.

Although President-elect Barack Obama has banned corporations and big donors from contributing to his campaign, the Wall Street Journal, citing a report from Public Citizen, reported that fund raisers have collected $24.8 million of the $27.3 million reported by Obama through Jan 8. “But 90% of donations received so far,” the paper reported, “have been raised by well-heeled fund-raisers, including Wall Street executives whose companies have received billions of dollars in federal bailout money.’

Wall Street Journal employees as a group, the paper reported, “have been the biggest single source of these private donations, according to the analysis. Much of their donations -- $5.7 million total -- has been channeled through financial-services executives who each have bundled together donations worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

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