Crony watch: Will Obama seek corporate donations to pay for his inauguration?

Apparently Barack Obama is considering asking corporations to pay for the festivities around his second inauguration.

President Barack Obama's fundraising advisers have urged the White House to accept corporate donations for his January 2013 inaugural celebration rather than rely exclusively on weary donors who underwrote his $1 billion re-election effort.

People involved in his re-election campaign said White House staff and campaign advisers have been debating whether to accept corporate money to stage the events but haven't made a final decision.

No corporation donates money to a sitting politician without a reason. That reason might be to secure business from the government, which now constitutes a huge proportion of GDP, or -- in the case of this very anti-business administration -- it might be to avoid special "attention" from federal regulators. In either case, the winners will be the big businesses with whom Obama consults from time to time, and the losers will be their smaller competitors.