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Just 158 Families Have Provided Nearly Half of the Money for Efforts to Capture the White House

posted by janrinok on Tuesday October 13 2015, @12:08PM   Printer-friendly
from the broken-system dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

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 Court's Citizens United decision five years ago.

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @02:51PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @02:51PM (#248907)

    Fairly certain it has been a LONG time since the nation was "made" by the votes of the people.

    This seems to reference the fact that many more women, young people, and minorities are providing the work/innovation/productivity that is actually making the modern United States as opposed to the united states of the 50s,60s,70s.

    The government continues to lag behind the people for all sorts of reasons, not least of which is complete legislative capture by moneyed interests.

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  • (Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Tuesday October 13 2015, @10:39PM

    by curunir_wolf (4772) on Tuesday October 13 2015, @10:39PM (#249166)

    This seems to reference the fact that many more women, young people, and minorities are providing the work/innovation/productivity that is actually making the modern United States as opposed to the united states of the 50s,60s,70s.

    I started to take it that way too, except they specifically said "the young, by women, and by black and brown voters." I agree that it's a major overstatement to say the nation is being remade by any "voters" at all, but to apply it to those groups (except women), is even more off-base.

    --
    I am a crackpot