Democrats attack their benefactor

By Randall Hoven

Henry Waxman waxed righteously indignant, as the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee grilled Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers, deploring his $480 million in pay the last 8 years. One Democrat even said, "I wonder how he sleeps at night."

Now let's go over to Open Secrets and look up this same Mr. Fuld, shall we? It turns out Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers gave $151,300 in disclosed political donations in recent years . How does it break down?

$45,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
$10,000 to the Democratic National Committee Services Corp.
$4,600 to Hillary Clinton, $4,600 to Chris Dodd and $2,300 to Barack Obama.
Other contributions to Democrats: Dick Gephardt, Joe Lieberman, Jack Reed, Erskine Bowles, Joseph Driscoll, Nita Lowey, Bob Torricelli, Frank Lautenberg, Brendan Byrne, Jon Corzine, Bill Bradley, Chuck Schumer, Ted Kennedy, Ed Markey, and Dianne Feinstein.

And what about Republicans?

John McCain ($2,300), George W. Bush ($2,000), Bob Dole ($2,000), Jon Christenson ($1,000), Mike Crapo ($1,000), Phil Gramm ($1,000), Arlen Specter ($1,000), and Jack Fields ($500).

My arithmetic says Republicans received well under 10% of Mr. Fuld's political contributions.

When I searched OpenSecrets for all contributions from Lehman Brothers, the page returned a fatal error because the number of contributions exceeded 1000. So then I searched only for donations from Lehman Brothers to Barack Obama. The total was $322,075.