Thread: Two Political Parties For The Prices Of $1,188,644,055

Two Political Parties For The Prices Of $1,188,644,055

Submitted by Tyler Durden
10/10/2011 22:48 -0400

The next time someone tells you that political party X is not entirely purchased by Wall Street, specifically Goldman, Merrill (aka Bank of Countrywide Lynch) and Morgan Stanley, or that Barack Obama is not the most "gifted" politician in history, show them the following infographic...



Courtesy of John Lohman


http://www.zerohedge.com/news/two-polit ... 1188644055

If this information is accurate, these are very important findings.

W

The only thing surprising about this to me is that it has been made public.

The Big Wall Street Banks Are Already Trying To Buy The 2012 Election



October 18th, 2011
8 Comments
many links on this post

We are never going to restore legitimacy to our political system until we get the money out of politics. Typically, in federal elections the candidate that raises the most money wins about 90 percent of the time. In 2008, Barack Obama raised almost twice as much money as John McCain did. 3 of the top 7 donors to Obama's campaign were big Wall Street banks (Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup). Now Wall Street is doing it again. The big Wall Street banks are already trying to buy the 2012 election. So who do they want to win in 2012? Based on contribution patterns so far, the overwhelming favorite of the Wall Street banks to win in 2012 is Mitt Romney. The big Wall Street banks have given to Romney as pile of money that is more than 4 times larger than they have given to anyone else. Even though most Republicans really don't want him, if history is any indication this means that Mitt Romney is going to be the Republican nominee for president in 2012.

Posted below are numbers from a recent analysis done by the Center for Responsive Politics. These numbers reflect monetary donations to presidential candidates by employees of these big Wall Street banks (and their wives) between January and September 2011.

As you can see, somehow Mitt Romney is at the top of each list by a wide margin. Clearly there is a "consensus" (some would call it a conspiracy) among the Wall Street elite that Romney is the man for the job.

When you want to find out what is really going on in American politics, just follow the money. If Mitt Romney does not win the Republican nomination, it is going to be a massive upset. History tells us that it is incredibly difficult to overcome the kind of monetary advantage that Romney is piling up.

Once again, the following numbers were put together by the Center for Responsive Politics. As you can see, Wall Street is once again trying to buy an election, and they very clearly want Mitt Romney to win the Republican nomination....

Goldman Sachs

Mitt Romney: $352,200
Barack Obama: $49,124
Tim Pawlenty: $25,000
Jon Huntsman: $6,750
Rick Perry: $5,500
Ron Paul: $2,500

Morgan Stanley

Mitt Romney: $184,800
Tim Pawlenty: $41,715
Barack Obama: $28,225
Rick Perry: $20,750
Jon Huntsman: $9,750
Newt Gingrich: $1,000
Ron Paul: $1,000
Herman Cain: $500

Bank of America

Mitt Romney: $112,500
Barack Obama: $46,699
Tim Pawlenty: $12,750
Jon Huntsman: $4,250
Ron Paul: $3,451
Rick Perry: $2,600
Thad McCotter: $2,000
Herman Cain: $750
Michele Bachmann: $500
Newt Gingrich: $250

JPMorgan Chase

Mitt Romney: $107,250
Barack Obama: $38,039
Rick Perry: $27,050
Tim Pawlenty: $16,750
Jon Huntsman: $7,500
Ron Paul: $5,451

Citigroup

Mitt Romney: $56,550
Barack Obama: $36,887
Tim Pawlenty: $5,300
Rick Perry: $3,000
Herman Cain: $1,465
Michele Bachmann: $1,000
Ron Paul: $702

As you can see, no other Republican candidate even comes close to Romney at any of these big Wall Street banks.

In fact, of the candidates that are left in the Republican race, Mitt Romney has raised 13 times as much Wall Street money as anyone else has.

The following are the overall donation numbers from employees of the big Wall Street banks and their wives....

Mitt Romney: $813,300
Barack Obama: $198,874
Tim Pawlenty: $101,515
Rick Perry: $58,900
Jon Huntsman: $28,250
Ron Paul: $13,104
Herman Cain: $2,715
Michelle Bachmann: $1,500
Newt Gingrich: $1,250

These numbers paint a very disturbing picture. Even though Romney's poll numbers are in the mid to low 20s most of the time, employees of the big Wall Street banks gave him $813,300 during the first 9 months of this year and they only gave $105,719 to the rest of the Republican candidates combined.

Hopefully the American people will wake up and will think for themselves.

But we have seen this story play out time after time after time before.

The candidate with the most money almost always wins. The establishment is almost always able to pick the candidates that they want, and the rest of us are often left with trying to choose between "the lesser of two evils".

A while back, Dylan Ratigan absolutely lost in on air during a panel discussion on MSNBC. This epic rant about money in politics is not something that you will often see in the mainstream media, and it contains a lot of truth....

Video: Dylan Ratigan (rightfully) loses it on air http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIcqb9hH ... r_embedded

Ratigan is right about this issue. We do have a bought Congress. We also have a bought president.

If Mitt Romney wins the Republican nomination and the general election in 2012, we will have yet another bought president.

Until we get the money out of politics, we will continue to have a situation where it seems like nothing ever changes no matter who we send to Washington D.C.

The way that election laws are written right now, the big Wall Street banks and the ultra-wealthy are able to have a much greater say in who gets elected than the rest of us do.

It is fundamentally wrong and it has turned our political process into a giant farce. Instead of being "elected", most of the time our politicians are "selected" for us by the establishment.

Please share this information with as many people as you can. The American people need to understand how things really work in the political world. Perhaps if they begin to understand how our candidates are "bought", then perhaps they will start demanding real change.

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archiv ... 2-election

This is why we absolutely must NOT elect Romney!

2012 Presidential Candidate Fundraising Summary

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/

Your Favorite Politicians As Nascar Drivers: Presenting The Sponsors

Video worth watching at the link http://www.zerohedge.com/news/your-favo ... g-sponsors

Submitted by Tyler Durden
10/26/2011 20:41 -0400

When watching politicians on TV, consistently peddling the agenda of their biggest bidder and never, unfortunately, that of the electorate, one often wonders: why do these people not wear the logos and decals indicating who their sponsor is, and how much money changes hands. After all it works for sports personalities of all shapes and sizes: why should politicians be exempt. Granted, the quid pro quo is to influence behind the scenes, and as such an overt act of advertising would be largely counterproductive, but campaign financing is without doubt one of the greatest weaknesses of modern society, and among (or at least should be) the main grievances of the Occupy Something crowd. And while a radical proposal like that would certainly never catch on due to concerns of constant exposure of the sell out nature of America's public representatives (who really merely represent corporations), here is an informative clip from Reuters, with observations on "if presidential hopefuls wore their sponsors on their sleeves, what logos would your contender wear?" The result is quite entertaining.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/your-favo ... g-sponsors

Jack Abramoff Explains How Easy It Is To Buy A Congressman

Video: http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=37204

This is a great clip from 60 minutes where Jack Abramoff explains how incredibly easy it is to buy a congressman. The piece is way too flattering to the guy, they act like he is some super genius. The idea that giving people hundreds of thousands of dollars of 'gifts' in the form of tickets to football games, trips to the best golf resorts in the world, etc., is some sort of genius plot to get the congress people to give you what you want is in no way shocking nor interesting, it's the logical result of the way "government" is organized. If you give one single organization a total monopoly on law & order, as well as the final say in every dispute, is it really such a difficult scenario to imagine such an all powerful organization would become "corrupt" overnight? Is it even corruption at that point? Is not the corrupt act giving total power to one gang of criminals to begin with? The idea you can appoint a gang of people as dictators then ask them to "limit their powers" and "be responsible" is completely delusional. Sometimes I can't help but laugh at how stupid the idea of a centrally planned state truly is. Of course, the conclusion to the piece is the state just needs to pass another law, yeah, I'm sure that will fix everything.

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=37204

12 Facts About Money And Congress That Are So Outrageous That It Is Hard To Believe That They Are Actually True

by Michael Snyder

Do you want to get rich? Just get elected to Congress. The U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives are absolutely packed with wealthy people that are very rapidly becoming even wealthier. The collective net worth of the members of Congress is now measured in the billions of dollars. The people that we have elected to the House and Senate are absolutely swimming in money. Unfortunately, it is not easy to get elected to Congress. In this day and age you generally have to be heavily connected to those that are very wealthy to get into Congress because it takes gigantic amounts of cash to win campaigns. But if you can get in to the club, you pretty much have it made. The numbers that you are about to read are very difficult to believe and they should deeply sadden you. They show that Congress has become all about money. Congressional races are mostly financed by wealthy people, most of the people that we elect to Congress are very wealthy, and they rapidly get wealthier after they are elected. All of this money has turned our republic into something far different than our founding fathers intended.

The following are 12 statistics about money and Congress that are so outrageous that it is hard to believe that they are actually true....

#1 The collective net worth of all of the members of Congress increased by 25 percent between 2008 and 2010. http://www.rollcall.com/issues/57_51/An ... 907-1.html

#2 The collective net worth of all of the members of Congress is now slightly over 2 billion dollars. That is "billion" with a "b". http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/0 ... 69377.html

#3 This happened during a time when the net worth of most American households was declining rapidly. According to the Federal Reserve, the collective net worth of all American households decreased by 23 percent between 2007 and 2009. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/0 ... 69377.html

#4 The average net worth for a member of Congress is now approximately 3.8 million dollars. http://www.rollcall.com/issues/57_51/An ... 907-1.html

#5 The net worth of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi increased by 62 percent from 2009 to 2010. http://thehill.com/homenews/house/16676 ... ess-wealth In 2009 it was reported that she had a net worth of 21.7 million dollars, and in 2010 it was reported that she had a net worth of 35.2 million dollars.

#6 The top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, saw his wealth grow by 29 percent from 2009 to 2010. http://thehill.com/homenews/house/16676 ... ess-wealth He is now worth approximately 9.8 million dollars.

#7 More than 50 percent of the members of the U.S. Congress are millionaires. http://www.cnbc.com/id/40233691

#8 In 2008, the average cost of winning a seat in the House of Representatives was $1.1 million http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/11 ... e-and.html and the average cost of winning a seat in the U.S. Senate was $6.5 million. http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/11 ... e-and.html Spending on political campaigns has gotten way out of control.

#9 Insider trading is perfectly legal for members of the U.S. Congress - and they refuse to pass a law that would change that. http://endoftheamericandream.com/archiv ... hange-that

#10 The percentage of millionaires in Congress is more than 50 times higher than the percentage of millionaires in the general population. http://www.thesmokingjacket.com/enterta ... nformation

#11 U.S. Representative Darrell Issa is worth approximately 220 million dollars. His wealth grew by approximately 37 percent from 2009 to 2010. http://thehill.com/homenews/house/16676 ... ess-wealth

#12 The wealthiest member of Congress, U.S. Representative Michael McCaul, is worth approximately 294 million dollars. http://www.rollcall.com/issues/57_51/An ... 907-1.html

So how are members of Congress becoming so wealthy?

Well, there are lots of ways they are raking in the cash, but one especially alarming thing that goes on is that members of Congress often make investments in companies that will go up significantly if legislation that is being considered by Congress "goes the right way".

This is called a "conflict of interest", but it happens constantly in Congress and nobody seems to get into any trouble for it.

The following is video of Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes ambushing Nancy Pelosi about one particular conflict of interest involving credit card legislation. As you can see, she does not want to talk about it....

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzKtmPFV ... r_embedded

As noted above, insider trading is perfectly legal for members of Congress.

A law that would ban insider trading by members of Congress has been stalled for years on Capitol Hill. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB2000142 ... s_page_one

So has this been a significant benefit to members of Congress?

Well, there has been at least one study that appears to indicate that members of Congress have been much more successful in the stock market than members of the general public have.... http://www.professorbainbridge.com/prof ... talls.html

A 2004 study of the results of stock trading by United States Senators during the 1990s found that that senators on average beat the market by 12% a year. In sharp contrast, U.S. households on average underperformed the market by 1.4% a year and even corporate insiders on average beat the market by only about 6% a year during that period. A reasonable inference is that some Senators had access to - and were using - material nonpublic information about the companies in whose stock they trade.

Of course all of this could just be a coincidence, right?

Meanwhile, members of Congress keep telling the rest of us that we are just going to have to cut back because times are tough.

For example, during an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/story?id=6725512&page=2 Nancy Pelosi actually claimed that we should try to encourage poor people to have less children because it costs the government so much money to take care of them....

PELOSI: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those - one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So no apologies for that?

PELOSI: No apologies. No. we have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy.

This elitist attitude extends all the way into the White House as well. Earlier this year, Barack Obama made the following statement.... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ns-to.html

"If you're a family trying to cut back, you might skip going out to dinner, or you might put off a vacation."
Meanwhile, the Obamas are living the high life at taxpayer expense. In a previous article I mentioned one outrageously expensive vacation taken by the Obamas that was paid for by our taxes.... http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/arch ... g-the-poor

"Back in August, Michelle Obama took her daughter Sasha and 40 of her friends for a vacation in Spain.

So what was the bill to the taxpayers for that little jaunt across the pond?

It is estimated that vacation alone cost U.S. taxpayers $375,000." http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ns-to.html

There is a massive disconnect between what our politicians say and what our politicians do.

The high life is good enough for them, but the rest of us have got to "cut back" and suffer becomes times are hard.

But when it comes to money and Congress, the most corrupting influence of all is probably all of the campaign money that gets thrown around.

In America today, it takes gigantic mountains of money to run a successful campaign.

Sadly, the candidate that raises the most money almost always wins. In federal elections the candidate that raises the most money wins about 90 percent of the time. http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/11 ... e-and.html

More than 5 billion dollars were spent on political campaigns back in 2008. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15283.html

That represents a huge number of favors that need to be paid back.

In 2012, it is being projected that 8 billion dollars could be spent on political campaigns.

When big corporations and wealthy individuals shovel huge piles of money into political campaigns, it is generally because they expect something in return.

Most of those that get sent to Congress realize that they never would have won if wealthy donors had not showered cash on them. Most of them understand that they should not bite the hands that feed them if they want the cash to keep rolling in.

Politics in America has become a game that is played by the elite for the benefit of the elite.

Average Americans have the perception that they are involved in the process and that their opinions really matter, but mostly it is just an illusion.

It is so sad.

Meanwhile, members of Congress rapidly get wealthier and average American families continue to suffer. In fact, the standard of living in the United States has fallen farther over the past three years http://www.businessinsider.com/america- ... es-2011-10 than at any other time that has ever been recorded in U.S. history.

But for members of Congress the good times just keep on rolling.

Just as it has been for most of human history, the rich rule over the poor.

Does anyone out there believe that we have any hope of changing this?

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=37222

November 11, 2011 1:12 PM

Congress insiders: Above the law?

21 Comments
60 minute's video at the page link

(CBS News) Martha Stewart went to jail for it. Hedge fund honcho Raj Rajaratnam was fined $92 million and will go to jail for years for it. But members of Congress can do the same thing -use non-public information to make stock trades -- and there's no law against it. Steve Kroft reports on how America's lawmakers can legally make tidy profits on information only they know, simply because they won't pass a law against themselves. The report will be broadcast on Sunday, Nov. 13 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Among the revelations in Kroft's report:

* Members of Congress have bought stock in companies while laws that could affect those companies were being debated in the House or Senate.

* At least one representative made significant stock purchases the day after he and other members of Congress attended a secret meeting in September 2008, where the Fed chair and the treasury secretary informed them of the imminent global economic meltdown. The meeting was so confidential that cell phones and other digital devices were confiscated before it began.

If senators and representatives are using non-public information to win in the market, it's all legal says Peter Schweizer, who works for the Hoover Institute, a conservative think tank. He has been examining these issues for some time and has written about them in a book, "Throw them All Out." "[Insider trading laws] apply to corporate executives, to Americans...If you are a member of Congress, those laws are deemed not to apply," he tells Kroft. "It's really the way the rules have been defined...[lawmakers]have conveniently written them in such a way as they don't apply to themselves," says Schweizer.

Efforts to make such insider trading off limits to Washington's lawmakers have never been able to get traction.

Former Rep. Brian Baird says he spent half of his 12 years in Congress trying to get co-sponsors for a bill that would ban insider trading in Congress and also set some rules up to govern conflicts of interest. In 2004, he and Rep. Louise Slaughter introduced the "Stock Act" to stop the insider trading. How far did they get? "We didn't get anywhere. Just flat died," he tells Kroft. He managed to get just six co-sponsors from a membership of over 400 representatives. "It doesn't sound like a lot," says Kroft. "It's not Steve. You could have Cherry Pie Week and get 100 co-sponsors," says Baird.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-5 ... ag=nl.e882