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.
Related:
- Hillary Clinton Laughs When Asked if She Will Release Transcripts of Her Goldman Sachs Speeches
- 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.
You should double check your math. First you equate a $6M with 222k donors, then in the next paragraph $3M (exactly half of the first donation) with 185k donors. Even your average Sanders donation into $6M works out to 228k, not 222k – make you wonder if any of you numbers are actually accurate…
He rounded a couple of times. For Soros’ donation, he rounded the average Bernie donation to $27.00, and then rounded the result (222,222). If you are going to publish a widely read article, avoiding this type of thing would keep people from being distracted from the overall message: in money politics, 1 rich guy = big city population.
Bernie isn’t the new Obama because Obama had a Super Pac and Bernie never had one. No disrespect to Obama but Bernie is better for the Presidency.
Yeah,
don’t “disrespect” a lying murderous corporate owned predator
because THAT is going too far!
Only in America.
“While Clinton has campaigned as the rightful heir to President Barack Obama’s two terms, Sanders has portrayed himself as the successor to Obama’s political movement, launched more then 8 years ago in Iowa” Associated Press
“That is a great quote by the Associated Press, because that is what this election is about. Bernie is running as the Barack Obama of 2007 and 2008. And Hillary is running as Barack Obama of 2015.” The Young Turks’ Cenk Uygur
Every moment, gesture, thought would be poll tested by Hillary. In a way this reflects her donors from Wall Street and Corporations who have billions and trillions of dollars riding on this election. This is Super pacs VS the Bernie supporters and their small contributions. A whole new generation is stepping forward for Bernie who could not vote in 2008. The veterans of the 2008 campaign are wiser and older now. Ever day Americans are taking a look at Bernie and joining. You can too!
What Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks says is true.
Thank you for telling the truth about those who are controlled willingly by the evil elite.
This is why wealth inequality matters: It’s inherently undemocratic. And it is so regardless of election regulations.
so get a job
Really? It’s 2016 bro. Say you’re sorry.
The disparity in donations is indeed appalling — as is the disparity in wealth that creates it. You have made a valid observation, but to channel that observation toward the sterile outlet of overturning Citizens United is a case of mental premature ejaculation. The reasons why this is not going to work:
1) A constitutional amendment you want is not going to pass. Period. The Republicans are a party defined by the abject and genuinely religious worship of wealth and power, and they would no more vote to pass your amendment than they would bugger a life-sized Jesus statue on the Senate floor.
1b) Alright, if you really, really, really try you might manage to accomplish something. You might manage to form a coalition with the Republicans who want a new constitutional convention, allegedly to pass a balanced budget amendment. Once in session, they might repeal the First Amendment outright, accepting a loss of campaign finance protection as a necessary cost of being able to outlaw Democrats once and for all.
2) Suppose you did overturn Citizens United without an amendment. This isn’t something you can do, precisely; you just wait for lawyers and judges to present this reform someday as a gift from the gods. Well, then we’re back to campaign finance law, which is to say, a long complicated law written by a bunch of rich people that always, one way or another, allows a loophole for rich people to get around it. If you had a way to get a law written without the rich people abusing it for their own goals, we wouldn’t need campaign finance reform! I’ve been hearing about campaign finance from the 1970s, and never has it amounted to anything but some paperwork.
3) Even if we had campaign finance reform, we’re still that poor and they’re still that rich. They can just threaten the usual (move their businesses out of the country, lay people off) if they don’t get their way. It would be nice to actually have money, not just pretend to at the ballot box.
4) Right now, while people daydream about constitutional amendments, we have relatively free, relatively fair forums to try to discuss politics where all the candidates are on an even keel. With trivial amounts of investment, we could try to refurbish and improve such neutral forums. Such forums create content, ideas, even wealth out of nothing, and challenge the rule of money. Instead, we watch people hemorrhage from Usenet to Facebook, from IRC to Twitter – we watch the high-minded and open standards of the Internet thrown into the dustbin while creepy corporations and sponsored links get control over what people read even here.
Bernie has said it since day one: We need a political revolution. This campaign is about a political revolution — millions of people standing up and saying, enough is enough.
We win when people come together. We win when we reject division. Welcome to the political revolution. We need policies that bring us together and create an economy that works for all of us, rather than a few.
We need a political revolution that takes back our democracy from establishment politicians and the billionaire class. This country needs a political revolution and @BernieSanders can’t do it alone.
I support @BernieSanders because he is telling us the truth. I believe in @BernieSanders because I know he can lead our country in the right direction.
We need a revolution in how higher education is funded. We need a revolution in how healthcare is provided in this country. We need a revolution to prevent this nation from becoming an oligarchy.
If we’re serious about climate change, we can’t just talk the talk, we’ve got to walk the walk and take on special interests. Climate change is the most underated and highly dismissed issue of our time. I believe that its because this is such a huge problem that people fear even approaching it honestly and seriously.
Another huge, intractable problem relates to income inequality. We must stand with our sisters and demand pay equity so women get equal pay for equal work.
A vote for $Hillary Clinton is a WASTED vote. You’re not voting for the lesser of two evils. You’re voting for evil itself and, in doing so, become a willing partner with the ring leader of the criminal enterprise that is destroying our democracy.
When are we as a people EVER going to rise up and DEMAND that we be able to vote our conscience if not right NOW!? Voting for $Hillary is CONCEDING power to the 1% and perpetuating the problem. Voting for Bernie means you are placing your trust in the very best this country could ever hope to see in a President.
Bernie Sanders is a man that has proven through decades of faithful service to this country that he is the most qualified candidate. By voting for him you are affirmatively declaring that YOU understand, respect and appreciate the value of true character, integrity and honor. Anything less, is settling and is unacceptable.
#NotMeUs #FeelTheBern #BernieOrBust #NoSHillary
B10 – Bernie Sanders Slideshow #10
“Don’t believe me, just watch”
https://youtu.be/w13oFnVN9FQ
Just imagine the good all this election money could do for the homeless, jobless, underfed people of the USA. Of course, donating to those causes doesn’t bring the donor power or influence. Shameful.
What is not being mentioned is how much good all this money being spent on getting someone elected could do for the homeless, or people who have no food, funding decent mental health programs, etc. But spending money on those things doesn’t bring the funder any power. It’s shameful.
she s gonna buy this election :/ RIP democracy
I remember when I used to think the words
E Pluribus Unum
had something to do with the voices of the majority.
Now, it means a single voice with many dollars
will determine what you can hear, what will be done,
and who will benefit.
Like pretty much every other aspect of politics and economics
in the fake USA,
the old meaning is implied, but
a different meaning is applied.
Robert Reich, today, takes a dig at one of the main WaPo/Hillary talking points, WRT health care:
http://robertreich.org/post/138312932370
proving that Hilary is paid off by special interests and no different than one of the GOP clowns currently running around like chickens with their heads cut off -the Israeli’s? and a private $6 mill? obviously they both have “agenda” -notice how NO article in the 1% owned press will EVER just talk about Bernie’s platform-if they have to mention him like now when he is on the verge of being the democratic front runner they find some obscure BS to prattle along till they confuse the issue so the lemmings will become confused and forget–like a bunch of bad math and calling Bernie a Socialist-whatever-the youngsters see thru the spin and are out to change the world-no wonder the 1% is so terrified-FEEL THE BERN 2016
I’d rather be a “Bernie Bro” than a Hillary Hoe!
From a Bernie supporter to anyone who read this ridiculous comment… Please disregard it. This person is either a troll (most likely) or simply a fool. As degrading and insulting as the “Bernie Bro” labels have been, comments like these are obviously toxic, and my guess is it is just someone trolling to make a bad situation worse. Comments like these do not represent the overwhelming majority of supporters.
I hope someone puts these numbers into a cool piece of graphics!
It is a clear demonstration of the absurdity of Clinton and the rest of establishment candidate’s claims that they are not being bought and sold.
I think the top link is mis-linked…
The math doesn’t hold up. If $6 million from Soros is 220,000 Bernie equivalent donations, then $3 million from the Sabans would be 110,000 Bernie equivalents, not 185,000.
The numbers work fine if the Sabans’ donation was $5 million instead of $3 million.
Your point still stands, and I very much appreciate it, but it’s important to get the math right, or critics will jump on it and declare the entire point invalid.
Money may be less effective in buying elections, but it’s so liberally spread around that the whole system is bought & paid for.
Smart move adding “Related” links. Very helpfull. Thank you! ox
And that is exactly why we need Bernie Sanders.
This is all true, but it’s not really fair to compare the maximum of one set of things to the average of another set of things. The article makes important points, but those points would be stronger if they compared the same things. Clinton/Bush etc get much more of their money from large donors, so how do the actual averages compare? Or how many large donations does Sanders have? Let’s do the comparisons properly.
Agreed. This is obviously necessary. Any critical reading of this article would lead to the conclusion that something essential was being concealed. I fully expect that the top donation to Sanders is considerably smaller than Soros’ gift, but leaving out its size in order to make a more eye-popping comparison with the mean donation is dishonest, shoddy journalism.
Right.
Think the fact is that so many donate to Bernie Sanders campaign to get to 6 million.
Only 1 person donated 6 million to the Clinton campaign.
Considering that Bernie refuses to have a super PAC, his maximum donation I believe is limited to $2,700. Last I heard, he had not more than a hundred, perhaps a few hundred at most, that have contributed this maximum amount.
I do agree with you that the article should have touched on your issues, just to avoid this criticism. The donors he is discussing are not donating directly to the Clinton campaign obviously as the donations are well above the limits, but instead to Super PACs.
The problem is, Sanders stated he did not want any Super PACs, and had he totally held to this, it would be impossible for the author to actually compare anything. For the most part, Sanders has has kept any Super PACs from starting (he managed to get 2 shut down that were attempting to start early on), however, he did finally caved when the National Nurses United endorsed him.
The National Nurses United has since started a Super PAC for him and Sanders has not gone out of his way to shut it down. He has taken flak for this, and probably deserved it as it does technically break his pledge. He defends himself by stating the fact that the money the PAC is spending is all small donations from individual nurses, and should not be compared to a standard PAC where you “have a few large donors spending huge sums of money”. The Communications Workers of America have now endorsed him too, and I believe they are starting a PAC as well. Although I don’t believe the spending will be nearly as large, I haven’t seen any data.
The last data that I saw showed the Nurses Union spending $550,000. Now this is definitely considerable, and I agree the article should have addressed it, even if it is only about 1/6 of what Saban donated, or 1/12 of what Soros donated. The problem here, is that we are still comparing apples to oranges, because the Soros donation of $6,000,000 was actually only one donation to the actual PAC that is “Priorities USA Action”. Priorities USA Action has already received over $50,000,000 in donations, with another possible $42,000,000 in future pledges coming.
So the issue here is if the writer really wanted to compare the Soros donation with its real equivalent, he would have to compare the top individual donors of National Nurses United with Soros. Considering the Union consists of over 185,000 nurses, even if it was only 20,000 of them who donated (unless the money was taken directly from Union Dues, which would make this amount even smaller), it would average about $27.75 a piece. I doubt there is really much room for top donors to come anywhere near a Soros level.
So, the issue is, if we go this route and only compare the money donated in the Super PACs, the situation really only looks worse for Hillary. There are obviously many other large donors beneath Soros that are making up that $44,000,000 just within Priorities USA Action, and then you have to start taking into consideration any of the other Super PACs out there for her. So I think if anything, even though the writer did not compare things correctly, he was actually doing Hillary a favor.
well said Samizdat … and it HAD to be said.
sure Ziad, make your point … but then do some actual comparisons (eg. average of all donations for all candidates, largest donations for all candidates, total for all candidates etc …) rather than look for the most extreme examples and trot them out as the only analysis that can be made.
apart from it being a pro Sanders item, it’s the sort of thing i would expect from the M$M … not TI … it’s as though you didnt finish the piece …
Proves that Bernie is right, Billionaires are trying to buy elections.
Lee don’t forget about the elephant leading the GOP candidates. Duh Don is a billionaire!
And thus far it has been shown: money cannot buy everything