On Friday, the Obama- and Clinton-allied Center for American Progress finally revealed its long-sought corporate donor list after heavy pressure arising from CAP’s quasi-lobbying history. That scrutiny ratcheted up following the announcement that CAP founder John Podesta would be formally joining the Obama administration. Both Politico and The New York Times called for the donor list to meet the public eye.
And so CAP handed over the list to the leftist Huffington Post. Incredibly, its 2013 donor list contains a myriad of massive corporations, including Apple Inc., AT&T, Bank of America, BMW of North America, Citigroup, Coca-Cola, Discovery, GE, Facebook, Google, Goldman Sachs, PepsiCo, PG&E, the Motion Picture Association of America, Samsung, Time Warner Inc., T-Mobile, Toyota, Visa, Walmart and Wells Fargo.
The revelation that huge corporations have been footing the bill for the CAP shatters the myth that major corporations are right-wing repositories. In fact, it shows precisely the opposite: major American corporations including supposedly conservative ones like Walmart are largely in league with a massive government that supports massive subsidizing legislation. Crony capitalism is the order of the day, and it skews leftist – and impacts the donation patterns of America’s most profitable companies.
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013). He is also Editor-in-Chief of TruthRevolt.org. Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.