Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is leading the race for billionaire funders, with at least 42 throwing cash into his coffers.
In second place winner, so far, is Pres. Barack Obama, with roughly 30 Big Money People, followed by Rick Perry (20), and Jon Huntsman Jr. (12). This comes from The Washington Post consulting Forbes’ list of billionaires — of which America has 412. I count 104 billionaires on the presidential donor list. So someone is not pulling his/her weight…
If you’d like to follow the money more closely, I highly recommend Open Secrets or MAPLight.org.
But wait. Here’s a bonus:
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4 Responses to Occupy campaign financing
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Interesting…Obama has less billionaires on board but has raised more money. So far anyway. Obama, however, isn’t facing any challenges from within his Party…officially. So when the GOP decides on a nominee, the check writing will get more serious, I’m sure.
You’re chart may be a bit off. The percentage of millionaires, (depending on definition), in Congress is accurate enough, but the number of American millionaires is probably closer to 9 or 10 percent.
So I wonder, when we started talking about the 1 percent, is this the definition on which we agree?
I think “the one percent” is a term that was borrowed from various media, written articles and one documentary in particular, that point out around 50% of financial wealth in America is controlled by about one percent of its citizens. When Adbusters began promoting the OWS movement, they, and other groups, picked up on terms like “the one percent” and “the 99 percent” to use as rallying cries to help draw attention to the ever increasing income disparity of the last 20 years or so.
Some analysts, Tami Luhby for example, point out that while the numbers may not exactly add up and interpretations may vary, there’s no denying the fact that while upper incomes have continued to rise exponentially, middle and lower incomes have stagnated or even declined over the last 20 years. Other groups, like We Are The 99 Percent, add a slightly more inclusive perspective to the definition:
Both terms have become caricatures used to illustrate the “us vs. them” tone of the protests. Not exactly accurate. Not exactly inaccurate. And sometimes, as I think the WaPo article pointed out, counterproductive.
One of the frustrations I have with all the rhetoric surrounding the OWS movement is very little seems to be pointed at the government. People see all this disparity and make impassioned calls for social justice with little or no mention of the government which enables “a system of irresponsible, predatory capitalism based on the short term, rather than productive, responsible behaviour…” (Ed Miliband), continuing to empower an “insensate society in which innocence and decency can prove fatal.“(Peter S. Prescott)
If we want justice, we must demand accountability.
Hey leftover dont know you or where you come from but if you think one in ten people have a net worth of a million dollars you should do some research. Sorry to lead with a negative, I think your completely right on there has to be some accountability. It seems that the bad behavior is just publicly admonished by the public at best and maybe met with a fine. The us vs them thing is a motivator because if its not aggressive its not going to go anywhere. Think of the Iraq war the Shitte Muslims in the beginning they were the biggest problem and the most violent to us and now they are the ones running Iraq.