Obama Beneficiaries Are Top Obama Campaign Donors

This “no surprise here” story in the San Francisco Chronicle shows that Silicon Valley, broadly defined as four Bay Area counties, has now surpassed New York City as the top source for Obama campaign contributions, providing a staggering $14,703,167 to his current reelection campaign, as against New York City’s “mere” $14,529,760.

If we, as Deep Throat suggested, “Follow the money,” we find the top privately employed contributors to Obama to be employees of Google, which Consumer Watchdog last year criticized for its secret contracts with the NSA, CIA, and other secret government agencies, “We believe Google has inappropriately benefited from close ties to the administration.”

These ties include Google Earth’s genesis as a CIA-funded venture—and last year’s revelations that Google Street View cars were collecting data from open Wi-Fi connections they passed. Add Google Earth to the front-door GPS-mapping of every residential address in the U.S. that was part of the 2010 census, and the U.S. government can now pin-point our homes with frightening (at least to me) accuracy.

Also topping the list are employees of Oracle. Named for the CIA project that launched it, Oracle continues to benefit mightily from huge government contracts.

The CIA’s venture capital fund, In-Q-Tel, continues to pump taxpayer money into Silicon Valley, but its relatively measly $56 million per year price tag pales in comparison to the largesse doled out by the Department of Defense, GSA, and various secret agencies.

There’s little threat that any of this funding would be cut under a Republican administration—at least I haven’t heard any promises to that effect—but as we know, business and other decision-makers tend to like certainty, which no change in administration is more likely to provide.

Also not surprising: of the remaining top contributors identified in the Chronicle article, nearly 50% are employed by the government.