Big Education contributes more than Big Oil

Capitol Eye:

Nearly four years after academia donated almost $30 million to unseat George W. Bush and Republicans, college professors and others in the education field have contributed more money to federal politics than the oil industry and drugmakers, with a nearly unanimous goal of putting a Democrat in the White House.

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Seventy-six percent of the education industry's total federal contributions for '08 has gone to Democrats, on par with the industry's partisanship in the last two election cycles. Perhaps more surprising than the industry’s party split is its sheer size: Education was the eighth-largest industry in terms of all federal campaign contributions in 2004 and the 13th largest in 2006, meaning that in the last two election cycles, college employees contributed more to politicians than the oil and gas industry, which ranked 16th in both cycles. For 2008, CRP ranks the education industry as No. 14, still ahead of big-givers such as oil and gas, general contractors, the computer and Internet industry, electric utilities and the pharmaceutical industry.

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Typically a candidate’s top givers are large firms with highly paid employees, such as investment banks or law firms, but in 2004, Democratic presidential contender John Kerry's top contributors looked very different. Kerry received more money from employees of the University of California than he did from any other employer—$623,000. According to CRP's research, that was more than twice the amount given by employees of media conglomerate Time Warner, which was Kerry's largest corporate donor. Directly behind UC was Harvard University, located in the Massachusetts senator's home state. Stanford and Columbia universities also ranked among Kerry's top 20 contributors.

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This does not include the in kind contributions made by filling young skulls full of mush with liberal nonsense. We need to look more at the corrosive effect of Big Education on the political campaigns. Clearly we are paying professors too much money. If they were really smart they would not be Democrats anyway.