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Strategies & Market Trends : Zeev's Turnips - No Politics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: puborectalis who wrote (93801)	7/11/2002 9:46:54 PM
From: puborectalis	Respond to of 99280

WorldCom, which as recently as two weeks ago contributed $100,000 to a Republican fundraising gala featuring President Bush, has given $1 million to lawmakers thus far in the 2001-2002 election cycle, said the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit, non-partisan research group. In addition, the company spent more than $3 million on lobbyists in 2001 alone. Much of that money has been donated to its hometown legislators. Between 1989 and 2002, WorldCom gave a grand total of $83,750 to Rep. Chip Pickering (R-Miss.) and donated $1 million to the Trent Lott Leadership Institute at the University of Mississippi in 1999. Other major beneficiaries of WorldCom’s largesse include Heather Wilson (R-N.M.), John Linder (R-Ga) and Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) in the House and Byron Dorgan (D-N.D), Fritz Hollings (D-S.C.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt) in the Senate. Donations were split fairly evenly between Democrats and Republicans. Legislators have profited from WorldCom in other ways, as well. According to the Washington Post, Senate Commerce Committee members John Breaux (D-La.) and John Edwards (D-N.C.) both hold as much as $15,000 in WorldCom stock, as do House Energy and Commerce Committee members John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Lois Capps (D-Calif.). "Any member of Congress, or even any state legislator or governor, who got campaign contributions from WorldCom will be embarrassed, and there’s no way to spare them the embarrassment," said Manfred Ohrenstein, founding partner of Ohrenstein & Brown and a former New York state senator. "I think there will be a lot of people returning campaign contributions." But Ohrenstein argued that there’s no way legislators could have known to act any differently. "A public official or someone running for office has many responsibilities, and they have no way of knowing whether some company, whether large or small, is misstating their numbers," he says. "If the marketplace, which puts millions and even billions of dollars into these companies, and has the wherewithal to check those numbers, cannot find this out, how can you expect someone who is three or four times removed from that responsibility to do that?" – Shira Levine