Can Anyone Here Offer an Antidote to More of the Usual Bile?

 

Screen Shot 2015-10-10 at 12.40.14 PMWith this graphic now on the front page of the New York Times online at this hour, a question:

Is there anyone here at Ricochet who knows his way around campaign finances? Might he be able to compile a rough comparison of the amounts that go to Republicans and Democrats, not from private individuals, but from unions?

Published in Elections, General, Politics
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  1. John Hendrix Thatcher
    John Hendrix
    @JohnHendrix

    Paging Rick Wilson!

    • #1
  2. John Penfold Member
    John Penfold
    @IWalton

    Explain the graphic.  To me it says that the Democrats get more money from fewer people.  I’d like to see to whom CEOs of the Dow contribute, personally and corporate funds.   To whom the super wealthy contribute.  We know where the union money goes,  how about union members.  The narrative that Republicans represent the rich  dominates and  was probably true in the first half of the twentieth century, but now?  Great gobs of wealth are coming from rent seeking and distortions, including Wall street who’ve managed to get the up side while passing off the down side to savers and tax payers.  This doesn’t happen without government.

    • #2
  3. Aaron Miller Inactive
    Aaron Miller
    @AaronMiller

    Funny thing: Those look like piles of Monopoly hotels, and the Democrat debate will be at Steve Wynn’s hotel.

    If this is a comparison of “families”, the Republican pile should probably include a bunch of those little green houses.

    But what does one expect from journalists who admired Warren Buffett for claiming that only higher taxes on the wealthy could save Buffett from the tax write-offs his own accountants provide?

    • #3
  4. jetstream Inactive
    jetstream
    @jetstream

    Most billionaires are Lefties. The reason the Koch brothers are mentioned so often by the Democrats is they might be the only non-Lefty billionaires.

    • #4
  5. Chris Campion Coolidge
    Chris Campion
    @ChrisCampion

    Since Democrats absolutely kill it in donations compared to Republicans, they’re saying 20 Democrat families control the Democrat party.  Considering their superhero Barry rejected public funding of his campaign so he could raise gazillions, are they trying to say that the Democrat party is even less Democratic than the Republican party?

    Because that’s what their graphic says.

    • #5
  6. The King Prawn Inactive
    The King Prawn
    @TheKingPrawn

    Open Secrets has some good stuff. If you look at this list of top organization contributors it becomes apparent where the collected money comes from and where it goes to. Out of the top 50, 31 are solid liberal, 2 lean liberal, and only 9 are solid conservative donors. If you sort by amount, the top 9 are liberal with conservatives only garnering 4 of the top 25 spots. Money in politics flows almost exclusively into democrat coffers.

    • #6
  7. blank generation member Inactive
    blank generation member
    @blankgenerationmember

    This article was linked in the twitter feed yesterday.  It’s about a company that Eric Schmidt of google fame is setting up for electioneering.  Not a direct contribution so that doesn’t count probably, hah.

    http://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-working-for-hillary-clinton-campaign/

    • #7
  8. Don Tillman Member
    Don Tillman
    @DonTillman

    The King Prawn:Open Secrets has some good stuff. If you look at this list of top organization contributors it becomes apparent where the collected money comes from and where it goes to.

    Indeed.

    Also check out on Open Secrets, the list of top individual contributors.

    Next time someone complains about the Koch brothers, you can point out that that Tom Steyer has contributed more than 10 times the Koch brothers’ contributions combined.

    • #8
  9. Casey Inactive
    Casey
    @Casey

    Peter Robinson: Can Anyone Here Offer an Antidote to More of the Usual Bile?

    Why yes, Peter.  Yes I can.

    • #9
  10. viruscop Member
    viruscop
    @Viruscop

    What percentage of each party’s funds come from these families as a whole, and how much does each family give as a percentage of the total funds within each party?

    • #10
  11. Tedley Member
    Tedley
    @Tedley

    I see this as a standard Times effort to portray Republicans as the party of the rich. Neither the graphics nor the article provide even an estimated total amount donated to each party, but lots of photos of houses owned by the people who made these large donations.

    Good luck with finding any equivalent data for unions at this point in the election cycle.

    • #11
  12. Quietpi Member
    Quietpi
    @Quietpi

    Tedley:I see this as a standard Times effort to portray Republicans as the party of the rich.Neither the graphics nor the article provide even an estimated total amount donated to each party, but lots of photos of houses owned by the people who made these large donations.

    Good luck with finding any equivalent data for unions at this point in the election cycle.

    Precisely.  What’s more, the graphic makes it appear that Republicans are getting lots more money than the Democrats.  It shows nothing of the sort.  What it does show, when combined with the actual amount of money raised, that far more people are donating, in smaller amounts (presumably – safely, I would say).  In other words, once again, the graphic demonstrates that it is the Democrats who are being funded by the fat cats.

    • #12
  13. Michael Sanregret Inactive
    Michael Sanregret
    @TheQuestion

    Don Tillman:

    The King Prawn:Open Secrets has some good stuff. If you look at this list of top organization contributors it becomes apparent where the collected money comes from and where it goes to.

    Indeed.

    Also check out on Open Secrets, the list of top individual contributors.

    Next time someone complains about the Koch brothers, you can point out that that Tom Steyer has contributed more than 10 times the Koch brothers’ contributions combined.

    And Democrats obfuscate the facts to confuse things.  The Koch brothers have organized others to donate money, and that money gets attributed to the Koch brothers.  Low information voters don’t know or care enough to distinguish between what the Koch brothers personally donate, versus what they’ve persuaded others to give.

    • #13
  14. Dustoff Inactive
    Dustoff
    @Dustoff

    Spot on observation Peter. Saw this today and felt the usual vague nausea brought on by a read of the Tmes’ world view. Too bad they are so good at packaging and disseminating this, well yes Bile.

    • #14
  15. Ball Diamond Ball Member
    Ball Diamond Ball
    @BallDiamondBall

    Great comments debunking the shoddy treatment of data.

    Agree with the bit on unions.

    Would also be nice to evaluate the in-kind contributions of favorable airtime from the MSM. There’s a lot of science done to calculate these things for advertising purposes.

    • #15
  16. Xennady Member
    Xennady
    @

    Like most things, I count this as yet another example of the miserable and endless failure of the GOP.

    The relentless bias of the NYT and the rest of the so-called mainstream media is well known to conservatives.

    So why, after generations of this, are vast swaths of the electorate blissfully unaware of it? The GOP is supposedly a political party, organized to win elections, but never complains about the endless lies told against it- and never attempts to inform those low-information voters. Pitiful.

    Even worse, the party allows it self to be tainted as the party of the rich, which it isn’t, costing it a lot of votes. Perhaps it would like to be, but the rich won’t have it. They vote mostly for democrats.

    So why, exactly, is the party still faithfully going to bat for them, taking enormous political damage in the process, and handing the left a weapon to be used against it?

    I suggest the GOP stop. I suspect the democrats, suddenly finding their rich benefactors without champions, would step into the role- harming their political fortunes.

    Also, why isn’t Tom Steyer a household name? Is the GOP so beholden to the rich that it will never criticize any one of them, even when they richly- ha ha- deserve it?

    Or will it continue to allow itself to be lied about by the left?

    Of course it will, because it’s the stupid party.

    • #16
  17. Could be Anyone Inactive
    Could be Anyone
    @CouldBeAnyone

    @ BDB – To my knowledge there has been some research on the slant of media organizations. I also remember the author of one such book (Left Turn), Dr. Tim Groseclose giving an interview on Uncommon Knowledge with Peter.

    It is a very illuminating interview needless to say. According to Groseclose’s calculus (he uses the standard in the field for calculating the slant of politicians if I remember correctly; in this case its the number of stories covered that is quantified) vast majority of the media is at least 70 in their slant score and that makes them plenty leftwing while media organizations like Fox actually score around 50 (there are a few that are right wing but they are very few in number)and that means they are centrist (fair and balanced as they call it), but to leftists that appears “rightwing” by their relative position.

    • #17
  18. jetstream Inactive
    jetstream
    @jetstream

    In a post, Tim Groseclose said, according to his research, the MSM’s hard Lefty bias was worth about 15% during elections.

    • #18
  19. Roadrunner Member
    Roadrunner
    @

    Sure, the New York Times wishes Republicans ill.  The use of a new metric, families, should immediately raise suspicion.  There is however a real problem with all that money coming from so few.  This problem does not have an equal effect on each party.  The big money on the Democratic side will not drive away voters.  It will not attempt to quiet their base on their key issues.  This is not true for Republicans.  Big money wants labor to freely move across borders.  A sizable amount of conservatives think this is a bad idea.  The consequences of not debating this issue in an honest way will be disastrous in the short term and hopeless in the long.  Already most of the conventional candidates have damaged themselves so seriously that their prospects are grim.  They still poll well at Ricochet though.  That is something maybe.

    • #19
  20. Don Tillman Member
    Don Tillman
    @DonTillman

    Quietpi:What’s more, the graphic makes it appear that Republicans are getting lots more money than the Democrats. It shows nothing of the sort. What it does show, when combined with the actual amount of money raised, that far more people are donating, in smaller amounts (presumably – safely, I would say). In other words, once again, the graphic demonstrates that it is the Democrats who are being funded by the fat cats.

    Tactical Projection.  They do it all the time.

    • #20
  21. Mountie Coolidge
    Mountie
    @Mountie

    The best place to go is Open Secrets. This link pretty much sums it up:

    https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/contrib.php?ind=P&Bkdn=Source&cycle=2014

    The union contributions to Republicans in the last cycle was about $6 Meg, to Dem’s about $53 Meg.

    • #21
  22. Joseph Eagar Member
    Joseph Eagar
    @JosephEagar

    Apparently California is thinking of enacting utterly insane “campaign finance reform” laws.  In fact, they are so insane I wonder the state doesn’t simply switch to exclusive public financing of campaigns (unions?).  That would be less of an intrusion.

    Why are we so defensive here?  Candidates should be able to freely raise money and coordinate with outside groups.  It’s basic free speech.   And I don’t buy this idea that rich people (who seem pretty divided to me) are going to take over the country.

    If liberals really cared about upper class interference in elections, they would ban upper-middle-class people from contributing their money or their time to political activity.  Failing that, they would tax those things.  Everyone in politics knows that the upper middle class has far more influence then the rich (occupational licensing laws and higher education are proof enough of that).

    Far better to just deregulate elections entirely.

    • #22
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