Obama’s 44th California Fundraiser
By Mary Theroux • Friday September 28, 2012 11:55 PM PDT • 7 Comments
President Obama has brought new meaning to “Obama 44″. It used to refer to his number as president. This week, he made it the number of fundraisers he’s attended in California.
Which will be surpassed in a mere ten days.
I unfortunately won’t be able to accept the emailed invitation I received today, but presumably sufficient numbers will:
Please join President Barack Obama for a dinner reception with celebrity chefs Tyler Florence and Alice Waters at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium to support his re-election campaign.
Date: Monday, October 8, 2012
Time: 5:00 PM – TBD
Location: 99 Grove Street, San Francisco, CA
Contribution: Per Person: $20,000 | Per Couple: $40,000
RSVP: Click Here
As of May, of 52 California events to date as President, 35 had been fundraisers.
Since then, he was in Los Angeles in June for three fundraisers, then back in July with three more fundraisers in the Bay Area, including one priced at $38,500 per person—held a mere three miles from the Oakland Occupiers’ camp. Talk about the 1%!
Earlier this week, he was back, with one fundraiser in Silicon Valley (a favorite money-raising locale for him), one in La Jolla, and one in Los Angeles.
I hope Air Force One is able to get its regularly scheduled maintenance in between all these trans-continental junkets!
I have no desire to engage in class warfarism, but it is astounding to me that the Obamas—themselves well and truly part of the “1%”—are able to, with few calling them on it. And that those he regularly pillories gladly pony up their money enabling him to attack them further.
Vladimir Lenin famously foretold that “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” It did not happen exactly as he predicted, but it may well turn out that the beneficiaries of capitalism give the rope with which they will be hanged.
Or, with which they will be indefinitely detained.
Tags: Budget and Tax Policy, California, Civil Liberties, Culture, Elections, Nationalism, Politics, Presidential Power, Progressivism, Socialism, The State, War 
Are you suggesting he shouldn’t be raising money for his campaign? Did you raise these same objectives when Bush was using Air Force 1 to go campaigning in California, or to fly him back and forth to Texas for his monthly vacations.
It does seem quite hypocritical to only question one side on something both sides do.
Also, please stop this class warfare garbage. Arguing about 3% on upper bracket tax rates is not class warfare. This has to be this single most ridiculous things folks like you whine about.
The Independent Institute used to be a source for balance and interesting information fpor the politically independent minded, but folks like you and this incessant anti-Obamaism have turned into nothing more than an irrelevant Republican party mouth piece organization.
Shame on you!!!
Frank | Sep 29, 2012 | Reply
They love to make it about Bush don’t they? This is about the hypocrisy of criticising the rich, of denigrating capitalism, all with an outstretched palm. Greased.
Norma | Sep 29, 2012 | Reply
No Frank, you have created a straw man. First, consider the sheer volume of Obama fund raisers. Then consider the optics of a President Obama jetting off to attend a Vegas fund raiser, on the day Ambassador Stevens is hauled out, killed, and dragged through the streets. It is as if such a minor altercation is beneath the notice of our President.
Rick Caird | Sep 29, 2012 | Reply
All to be continued for the next four years and beyond.
richard | Sep 29, 2012 | Reply
Frank:
As is readily available in our website archives, we have been equal-opportunity critics of overarching executive privilege and hypocrisy forever.
The primary misery created during the Bush administration was the galloping take-over of civil liberties and murderous foreign adventuring. We spent from 2001 until the end of his term holding Bush accountable for the gross incompetence of the Feds in failing to protect the homeland on 9/11, compounded by the greatest expansion of federal and executive power in the history of this country. We held the first major national anti-war forum, in the spring of 2002. We hit high and low trying to bring the travesty of the Bush policies to an end—only to then watch President Obama extend and expand them.
Feel free to skim through our archives, from the beginning of the Bush administration to current day: http://www.independent.org/newsroom/commentary.asp?page=42&pid=2&sort=&sd=
The primary misery of the current administration is the impoverishment of the American people. An economic debacle with, yes, its roots in previous administrations (beginning with policies from the early 1990s: see “Anatomy of a Train Wreck“), but badly exacerbated by the current administration’s policies.
So, yes, 44-and-counting big-ticket fundraisers in California alone are particularly distasteful in those who spent three days of prime-time television spinning tales of hardship—yes, their college loans were high: Columbia and Harvard are expensive! But a six-figure condo, followed by a multi-million dollar house in Hyde Park is not exactly the ‘hood.
Even one of Obama’s staunchest supporters and major fundraisers regularly speaks out against Mr. Obama’s use of class warefarism: In May, he said he found it “inconsistent” for Obama to criticize private equity and then take money from those who work in that field. In July, he told various press outlets that he’s frustrated by the Obama campaign’s class-divisive tactics, such as a fundraising email from the DNC that mocked Romney as “out of touch” for having a boat that fit 12 people, accompanied by a picture of the Republican presumptive nominee on vacation.
I suggest you read his extended comments—including his criticism of the President for claiming the rich don’t pay their “fair share,” here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/10/r-donahue-pebles-obama-fundraiser_n_1663361.html
Like Mr. Pebles, I don’t begrudge achievement; I celebrate it, and Mr. Obama should celebrate it as well. Instead, he makes it nearly impossible for others to achieve by implementing economic policies that continue and exacerbate poverty.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
Unemployment: 2008, 5%; 2009, 7.8%; 2012, 8.2%
Broader unemployment, which includes those “marginally” employed: 2008, 9.2%; 2009, 14.2%; 2012, 14.8%
Total private sector jobs: 2008, 115.6 million; 2009, 111 million; today, 111 million
Median weeks unemployed: 2008, 9; 2009, 10.7; 2012, 20.1
Millions on food stamps: 2008, N/A; 2009, 32 million; 2012, 46 million.
See the entire table, here.
These figures represent human beings whose souls are being sapped; with fewer prospects, not more. I am not suggesting that it is up to the President—any President—to “save” the economy. It is up to the President to stop pushing policies that destroy the economy.
It would be nice to have an honest assessment of the state of civil liberties and the state of the economy and agree that neither reelecting Mr. Obama nor electing a new president will solve the problems. Neither party should have this amount of power over our economic and civil liberties. It corrupts those in power and immiserates those not in power.
With best wishes,
Mary
Mary Theroux | Sep 29, 2012 | Reply
Mary,
Dead on. I don’t always agree with The Institute’s every view or opinion, but I have found the to be intellectually consistent. Your criticism of in this post, parallels another made by others below, and they go at the heart of the intellectual dishonesty of class warriors for thee but not for me.
http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2012/09/30/the-regal-lifestyle-of-king-barack-and-the-rest-of-washingtons-gilded-class/
In fact, this is not the end of where you ought to criticize this administration’s apalling intellectual dishonesty and about faces in areas like domestic spying, drones, GITMO, military deployments, and the cult of the assassination, etc. These are all areas where he could have delivered and his failure to ought to disappoint libertarians just as much and expose him as a calculating pol.
MG | Sep 30, 2012 | Reply
I did not vote for George W. Bush but as a resident of Texas during the “W” years, I must say that President and First Lady Laura Bush came to Texas once a year for the month of August. They stayed on their own property during that vacation. They spent time with their family. They did not jet around the world at taxpayers expense every other month of the year.
Marion McEwen | Oct 1, 2012 | Reply