The Ten Companies Making The Biggest Political Donations
The Ten Companies Making The Biggest Political Donations
Posted: July 2, 2012 at 3:37 pm
With the U.S. presidential election heating up, 24/7 Wall St. decided to examine public companies’ political contributions in the current election cycle. The donations include monies given to political parties, candidates, and political action committees. The figures are staggering and have prompted many to ask whether money can buy a seat in the House, Senate, or even the presidency itself.
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The ten companies on our list operate in different industries. While one might think financial firms, tethered to the federal government by the financial crisis bailout, and defence companies, which count on billions of dollars in government contracts, would dominate the list, they do not entirely. Microsoft is on the list; so is AT&T, cable company Comcast, and film studio Dreamworks. In addition to the sums each company donated and to which political party, we also added how much these companies have spent on lobbying, which is counted separately from political donations. As tempting as it is, we did not speculate on the reasons behind the companies’ contributions.
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Based on data collected and published by the Center for Responsive Politics on its website, opensecrets.org, 24/7 Wall St. has identified the 10 publicly traded companies contributing the most to candidates, political parties, and PACs. The Center for Responsive Politics calculates total political contributions made by either companies’ PACs or employees within a given election cycle (beginning in January 1, 2011 for the 2012 cycle) that are over $200. 24/7 Wall St. also examined lobbying expenditure data, also published by the Center for Responsive politics. Finally, we relied on the 2012 Washington Technology Top 100 for revenue earned by the top government contractors.
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http://247wallst.com/2012/07/02/the-ten-companies-making-the-biggest-political-donations/
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