2008 Election CoverUps

Obama Campaign has big high-tech donors

August 2008

The Obama Campaign Cozies Up to big business ...

By Andrew Peterson
For CoverUps.com

The American Electronics Association (AEA) is one of those obscure but powerful groups that works diligently to stay outside the spotlight, while advancing the interests of big business. Those interests aren’t necessarily illegitimate, but they are often controversial, and they affect large numbers of people – many of them voters.

The AEA lobbies hard on behalf of electronics giants like Apple and Hewlett Packard to increase the so-called “H-1B” yearly quota. H-1B is that small subsection of U.S. immigration law regulating the annual inflow of highly-skilled noncitizens who are coveted by electronics companies for their coding skills and their willingness to work for less money than their American counterparts. Their numbers are strictly controlled.

The net effect of the AEA’s lobbying activities is a downward push on wages in the American electronics industry. Which leaves us with the question – is that good or bad? To American programmers and groups like JobDestruction.com, it’s bad – and they rightly call out the Obama campaign for the disparity between their populist rhetoric and their readiness to take large campaign contributions. All of which has earned them this angry denunciation from JobDestruction.com:

The Obama campaign goes to great lengths to spread the myth that all of his campaign funding is generated by small donations from the little people.

Check this load of BS, direct from his website:
        
This campaign is about building a different kind of politics.
We don't take money from Washington lobbyists or special-interest
political action committees. Instead, our broad base of
individual donors ensures that this campaign answers to no one but
the people.

Unfortunately, disparities like this are par for the course in politics. That said, the Obama campaign , with its messianic pretensions and its radical socialist politics deserves extra harsh criticism for this sort of duplicity.

The important thing to know is that the Obama campaign is getting very cozy with the AeA, and that's a very disturbing but not surprising trend. All of this means that we can expect Obama to continue to support guest worker visas like H-1B, mass immigration of cheap laborers, and the expansion of free trade agreements.

http://www.aeanet. org/events/ gadd_obamaStaffC ompetitiveness. asp

Our Take

American industry – and groups like the AeA – shouldn't be condemned as beyond the pale for trying to reduce labor costs. That’s just the natural order of things in business. How many of the same people who decry the likes of the AeA think nothing of shopping for computers at Wal-Mart and Target to save a few bucks? Everyone wants to cut expenses.

All groups try to advance their perceived best interests. So do politicians – including Obama.

Link to article.