The Seattle Times did a brilliant job of trying to figure out the earmark scam that Congress runs. Led by investigative reporter David Heath, the Times team sifted through all the hidden data on earmarks - much of which is written in code in conference reports. Congress actually goes considerably out of its way to hide this information from the public. I looked at the Times database, and found the following for the approved 2007 defense bill.
Clinton Defense Earmarks: $110,520,000
-Received from defense contractors $378,660
Obama Defense Earmarks: $3,300,000
-Received from defense contractors $97,250
More below
Obama was associated with just 3 earmarks in the 2007 defense bill. All three of these went to support the development of fuel cells and hybrid technology. The money went to 2 public and one private research institutes.
Obama's main campaign supporter among defense contractors was General Dynamics who gave him $51,700 out of his $97,250 total.
Clinton was involved in 60 earmarks. There were allocated more to the traditional defense contractors like Lockheed, Northrup, L-3, and others like Corning, General Motors as well a bunch of smaller companies and a few universities. She received $133,950 from Corning staff and its PAC as campaign contributions since 2001.
Hillary is one of the top recipients of campaign contributions from big business according to the Times study.
http://community.seattletimes.nwsour...
In one of the debates, Hillary said she was involved in over $300 million in earmarks. This make her one of the top 15 or so "earmarkers" in Congress. Obama is one of the least users of the earmark system at least when it comes to defense. So there is a clear difference here in how these two candidates deal with defense pork. Although, maybe Obama was just getting the hang of it since he was relatively new for that bill!
It would be useful, and helpful for voters to see all of the earmarks for these candidates and what connections they have to the recipients, e.g., see Hillary and Corning above.