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Joan McCarterRSS
Daily Kos staff

Fri Jan 27, 2012 at 01:11 PM PST

Wall Street donors swamp all others in election spending

by Joan McCarterFollow

This is enough to turn your stomach.

sunlight graph
FIRE stands for the finance, insurance, and real estate sector, or in other words, Wall Street. The Sunlight Foundation study reveals that in the past two decades, the number of donors giving $10,000 or more from this sector has risen 405 percent. More astounding, the combined contributions to individual candidate, PACs, parties, or independent expenditure groups has grown by 700 percent.

Sunlight calls these donors the "Political One Percent of the One Percent." There were 5,510 of them in the 2010 cycle, and they now contribute one quarter of all individual campaign contributions made in this country.

Where's that money going?

sunlight graph
That blip you see on the right, where the money to Democrats went just above 50 percent, was after the 2008 election, when Democrats had the House, Senate and White House. Then came Dodd-Frank and the 2010 election. Boy, that's a steep drop off, huh?

But that's instructive to see when you hear Republicans rail against taxing the wealthy. Because you know very few of the 5,510 donors, the Political One Percent of the One Percent, are paying 30 percent of their income in taxes.

Originally posted to Joan McCarter on Fri Jan 27, 2012 at 01:11 PM PST.

Also republished by Daily Kos.

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