FEC filings released Sunday provide an illustration of how dramatically the contributions of mega-donors eclipse those of normal citizens.
For example, billionaire George Soros gave $6 million to the pro-Hillary Clinton Super PAC Priorities USA last quarter. By comparison, the average donation to the Bernie Sanders campaign — the only one mostly funded through small donors — was $26.28, according to a spokesperson for the campaign.
That means Soros gave as much money as a small city’s worth of small donors — 222,000 people, slightly larger than the population of Des Moines.
The $3 million that pro-Israel billionaire power couple Haim and Cheryl Saban gave is equivalent to about 185,000 Sanders donations, or a bit more than the population of Boulder.
Former AIG chief Hank Greenberg gave $10 million to Jeb Bush’s Right to Rise Super PAC through his company, C.V. Starr. That’s 370,000 average Sanders donations — almost the population of New Orleans.
All of this could pale compared to the general election. The Koch-backed networks of political organizations reportedly plan to spend up to $900 million on the 2016 election; that’s 33 million small donors averaging $27 a pop. If every resident of Shanghai and New York City wrote a check for that amount, they still would not match the Kochs.
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- Elizabeth Warren Challenges Clinton, Sanders to Prosecute Corporate Crime Better Than Obama
- Hillary Clinton Made More in 12 Speeches to Big Banks Than Most of Us Earn in a Lifetime
- The “Bernie Bros” Narrative: a Cheap Campaign Tactic Masquerading as Journalism
- Hillary Clinton’s Single-Payer Pivot Greased by Millions in Industry Speech Fees
Top photo: Demonstrators in Washington, D.C., mark the fifth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which enabled the creation of Super PACs.
IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT.
What we’re seeing right now from Donald Trump is a full-on authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government.
This is not hyperbole.
Court orders are being ignored. MAGA loyalists have been put in charge of the military and federal law enforcement agencies. The Department of Government Efficiency has stripped Congress of its power of the purse. News outlets that challenge Trump have been banished or put under investigation.
Yet far too many are still covering Trump’s assault on democracy like politics as usual, with flattering headlines describing Trump as “unconventional,” “testing the boundaries,” and “aggressively flexing power.”
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IT’S BEEN A DEVASTATING year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
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I’M BEN MUESSIG, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief. It’s been a devastating year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.
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