2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumThe Families Funding the 2016 Presidential Election - The New York Times
They are overwhelmingly white, rich, older and male, in a nation that is being remade by the young, by women, and by black and brown voters. Across a sprawling country, they reside in an archipelago of wealth, exclusive neighborhoods dotting a handful of cities and towns. And in an economy that has minted billionaires in a dizzying array of industries, most made their fortunes in just two: finance and energy.
Now they are deploying their vast wealth in the political arena, providing almost half of all the seed money raised to support Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. Just 158 families, along with companies they own or control, contributed $176 million in the first phase of the campaign, a New York Times investigation found. Not since before Watergate have so few people and businesses provided so much early money in a campaign, most of it through channels legalized by the Supreme Courts Citizens United decision five years ago.
These donors fortunes reflect the shifting composition of the countrys economic elite. Relatively few work in the traditional ranks of corporate America, or hail from dynasties of inherited wealth. Most built their own businesses, parlaying talent and an appetite for risk into huge wealth: They founded hedge funds in New York, bought up undervalued oil leases in Texas, made blockbusters in Hollywood. More than a dozen of the elite donors were born outside the United States, immigrating from countries like Cuba, the old Soviet Union, Pakistan, India and Israel.
But regardless of industry, the families investing the most in presidential politics overwhelmingly lean right, contributing tens of millions of dollars to support Republican candidates who have pledged to pare regulations; cut taxes on income, capital gains and inheritances; and shrink entitlement programs. While such measures would help protect their own wealth, the donors describe their embrace of them more broadly, as the surest means of promoting economic growth and preserving a system that would allow others to prosper, too.
Complete story at - http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/11/us/politics/2016-presidential-election-super-pac-donors.html
in_cog_ni_to
(41,600 posts)Made legal by a CORRUPT SCOTUS.
No wonder Bernie's going to win. We are not going to let 158 families by our country and continue to destroy it and us. Sorry. Go find your own country to destroy - this one's ours. Assholes.
Paka
(2,760 posts)Secret mobster money buying our country.
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)Just as the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers and Astors lived in the pre-income tax era.
History repeats itself.
Nice to know a rising tide will eventually wash away that Fla. private island.