Of Plutocrats and Plutocracy

Koch brothers: secretive billionaires to launch vast database with 2012 in mind

2011-12-28T09:52:00.000-08:00

Koch brothers: secretive billionaires to launch vast database with 2012 in mind

David and Charles Koch, oil tycoons with strong right-wing views and connections, look set to tighten their grip on US politics

Ed Pilkington in New York · guardian.co.uk

David Koch at a Cut Spending Now rally in Washington. David and his brother Charles are reportedly worth $25bn each. Photograph: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

The secretive oil billionaires the Koch brothers are close to launching a nationwide database connecting millions of Americans who share their anti-government and libertarian views, a move that will further enhance the tycoons' political influence and that could prove significant in next year's presidential election.

The database will give concrete form to the vast network of alliances that David and Charles Koch have cultivated over the past 20 years on the right of US politics. The brothers, whose personal wealth has been put at $25bn each, were a major force behind the creation of the tea party movement and enjoy close ties to leading conservative politicians, financiers, business people, media figures and US supreme court judges.

The voter file was set up by the Kochs 18 months ago with $2.5m of their seed money, and is being developed by a hand-picked team of the brothers' advisers. It has been given the name Themis, after the Greek goddess who imposes divine order on human affairs.

In classic Koch style, the project is being conducted in great secrecy. Karl Crow, a Washington-based lawyer and Koch adviser who is leading the development, did not respond to requests for comment. Nor did media representatives for Koch Industries, the brothers' global energy company based in Wichita, Kansas.

But a member of a Koch affiliate organisation who is a specialist in the political uses of new technology and who is familiar with Themis said the project was in the final preparatory stages. Asking not to be named, he said: "They are doing a lot of analysis and testing. Finally they're getting Themis off the ground."

The database will bring together information from a plethora of right-wing groups, tea party organisations and conservative-leaning thinktanks. Each one has valuable data on their membership – including personal email addresses and phone numbers, as well as more general information useful to political campaign strategists such as occupation, income bracket and so on.

By pooling the information, the hope is to create a data resource that is far more potent than the sum of its parts. Themis will in effect become an electoral roll of right-wing America, allowing the Koch brothers to further enhance their power base in a way that is sympathetic to, but wholly independent of, the Republican party.

"This will take time to fully realise, but it has the potential to become a very powerful tool in 2012 and beyond," said the new technology specialist.

Themis has been modelled in part on the scheme created by the left after the defeat of John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. Catalyst, a voter list that shared data on supporters of progressive groups and campaigns, was an important part of the process that saw the Democratic party pick itself off the floor and refocus its electoral energies, helping to propel Barack Obama to the White House in 2008.

Josh Hendler, who until earlier this year was the Democratic National Committee's director of technology in charge of the party's voter files, believes Themis could do for the Kochs what Catalyst helped do for the Democrats.

"This increases the Koch brothers' reach. It will allow them to become even greater co-ordinators than they are already – with this resource they become a natural centre of gravity for conservatives," Hendler said.

Though Charles, 75, and his younger brother David, 71, are very rarely seen or heard in public, their political importance in the US is hard to exaggerate. They have been steadily investing their wealth in projects designed to drive the country ever more to the right – they have backed the tea parties, funded incubators of radical conservative ideology such as the Mercatus Center at the George Mason University and hosted twice-yearly gatherings of some of the richest and most powerful figures in the country.

"What makes them unique is that they are not just campaign contributors; they are a vast political network in their own right," said Mary Boyle of the watchdog group, Common Cause.

They are estimated so far to have given more than $100m to right-wing causes. Kert Davies of Greenpeace estimates that the sum includes $55m since 1997 funding climate change deniers.

Many of the causes backed by the brothers clearly chime with their own self-interests. To encourage the denial of global warming science is obviously advantageous to businessmen who have made their fortunes in drilling and piping of oil; low taxation suits billionaires wanting to cut their own tax contributions; a bonfire of state regulations over business and the environment would be beneficial to a multinational corporation like Koch Industries, which is the second largest private company in the US.

But the two men are also anti-government ideologues who believe in what they preach, an inheritance from their fiercely anti-communist father Fred, who was a founder of the radical right-wing John Birch Society. David Koch stood as vice-presidential candidate for the Libertarian party in 1980 on a platform of doing away with a host of public bodies including the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the FBI, the CIA, social security, welfare, taxation and public schools.

Though the Kochs have already stamped their influence on the American right, their impact to date looks like small beer compared with their ambitious plans for 2012. According to Kenneth Vogel of Politico, the brothers intend to use their leverage among billionaire conservatives to pump more than $200m into the proceedings, focusing in particular on the presidential race.

Their potential to sway the electorate through the sheer scale of their spending has been greatly enhanced by Citizens United, last year's controversial ruling by the US supreme court that opened the floodgates to corporate donations in political campaigns. The ruling allows companies to throw unlimited sums to back their chosen candidates, without having to disclose their spending.

That makes 2012 the first Citizens United presidential election, and in turn offers rich pickings to the Koch brothers. They have already made clear their intentions. At their most recent billionaires' gathering in Vail, Colorado in June, Charles Koch described next year's presidential contest as "the mother of all wars". A tape of his private speech obtained by Mother Jones said the fight for the White House would be a battle "for the life or death of this country".

Exhorting the 300 guests in attendance to open their sizeable wallets and donate to the Koch election coffers, he went on: "It isn't just your money we need. We need you bringing in new partners, new people. We can't do it alone. We have to multiply ourselves."

Which is where Themis comes in. Karl Crow, the spearhead of the new database, was one of the speakers at the June 2010 Koch gathering in Aspen, Colorado, where he described his mission under the heading "Mobilising Citizens".

"Is there a chance to elect leaders who are more strongly committed to liberty and prosperity," he said, adding that he wanted to put forward a "strategic plan to educate voters on the importance of economic freedom".

At the same gathering, the kernel of the idea for Themis was unveiled as a "micro-targeting" initiative that would allow a more thorough understanding of the electorate. "How can we take advantage of this advanced technology?" the agenda asked.

By dint of the secrecy surrounding the project, it is not known which bodies have signed up for the database. But it is a reasonable guess that groups that are highly influential within the tea party movement such as Americans for Prosperity and Freedomworks, as well as right-wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, will be among the participants. Between them, they have tentacles that extend to millions of voters.

Lee Fang, a blogger at the Center for American Progress, thinks the combination of the Kochs' capital and their new voter files could have an immense impact in 2012. "This will be the first major election where most of the data and the organising will be done outside the party nexus. The Kochs have the potential to outspend and out-perform the Republican party and even the successful Republican candidate."

The Political One Percent of the One Percent

2011-12-14T08:09:00.000-08:00

Sunlight Foundation

The Political One Percent of the One Percent

Lee Drutman

Dec. 13, 2011, 11:49 a.m.

This piece was prepared in collaboration with Ethan Phelps-Goodman.

If you think wealth is concentrated in the United States, just wait till you look at the data on campaign spending.

In the 2010 election cycle, 26,783 individuals (or slightly less than one in ten thousand Americans) each contributed more than $10,000 to federal political campaigns. Combined, these donors spent $774 million. That's 24.3% of the total from individuals to politicians, parties, PACs, and independent expenditure groups. Together, they would fill only two-thirds of the 41,222 seats at Nationals Park the baseball field two miles from the U.S. Capitol. When it comes to politics, they are The One Percent of the One Percent.

A Sunlight Foundation examination of data from the Federal Election Commission and the Center for Responsive Politics reveals a growing dependence of candidates and political parties on the One Percent of the One Percent, resulting in a political system that could be disproportionately influenced by donors in a handful of wealthy enclaves. Our examination also shows that some of the heaviest hitters in the 2010 cycle were ideological givers, suggesting that the influence of the One Percent of the One Percent on federal elections may be one of the obstacles to compromise in Washington.

The One Percent of the One Percent are not average Americans. Overwhelmingly, they are corporate executives, investors, lobbyists, and lawyers. A good number appear to be highly ideological. They give to multiple candidates and to parties and independent issue groups. They tend to cluster in a limited number of metropolitan zip codes, especially in New York, Washington, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

In the 2010 election cycle, the average One Percent of One Percenter spent $28,913, more than the median individual income of $26,364

At the top of this elite group are individuals such as Bob Perry, CEO of Perry Homes, who gave $7.3 million to Karl Rove’s American Crossroads in 2010 and $4.4 million to Swift Vets and POWs for Truth in 2004, and Wayne Hughes, owner and chairman of Public Storage Inc., who gave $3.25 million to American Crossroads in 2010, and Fred Eshelman, CEO of Pharmaceutical Product Development who spent $3 million in 2010 on his own group, RightChange. Sunlight’s Ryan Sibley writes more about the top donors here.

Unlike the other 99.99% of Americans who do not make these contributions, these elite donors have unique access. In a world of increasingly expensive campaigns, The One Percent of the One Percent effectively play the role of political gatekeepers. Prospective candidates need to be able to tap into these networks if they want to be taken seriously. And party leaders on both sides are keenly aware that more than 80% of party committee money now comes from these elite donors.

Political scientists Wendy K. Tam Cho and James G. Gimpel have called these elite donor networks “campaign gold” after discovering just how much big contributors tend to flock together, making it easy for candidates to raise substantial sums of money at a single event.

We find that in the 2010 election cycle, 74 federally registered candidates relied on The One Percent of the One Percent for at least half of all of their itemized (over $200) contributions (of those running in that election, 25 won, and 15 lost – the other 34 were not up for election; mostly they were Senators preparing for a future campaign). Only in 2008 did more elected officials (109) rely on The One Percent of the One Percent for half of their itemized contributions. (Candidates and parties do not need to disclose to names of contributions under $200. In the 2010 election cycle, the average congressional campaign got 84% of its money from donations of $200 or more. See our methodology section for more details.)

Congressional candidates are also increasingly relying on contributions from people who do not live in their districts, according to research Professor Gimpel has conducted along with Frances Lee and Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz. In a paper entitled “The Check is in the Mail,” they find that candidates are increasingly calling on what the scholars call “political A.T.M.s” – the small number of zip codes that are home to the concentrated communities of high-spending donors.

In short, The One Percent of the One Percent are becoming more important to candidates. While technology may have expanded the possibilities of raising more money through small contributions over the Internet, The One Percent of the One Percent have remained just as important as ever. And with new campaign vehicles for unlimited funding, they are poised to play an even more important role.

What follows are more details about who The One Percent of the One Percent are, and their changing role in elections. (For more on how we define this population, please see our methodology section at the end.)

graphic by Ali Felski

Who are The One Percent of the One Percent?

In examining the filings of The One Percent of the One Percent, three types of affiliations predominate: corporate, lawyer/lobbyist, and ideological. The three types of affiliations have also been remarkably consistent over time. Roughly 55% of these elite donors have been affiliated with companies, roughly 16% have been affiliated with law and lobbying firms, and roughly 18 % we classify as ideological. The remainder either does not list enough information for us to make a determination or do not fit into one of the three dominant categories. (For more details on how we sorted the donors into categories, please see our methodology section at the end)

Table 1. Share of The One Percent of the One Percent belonging to each category

Cycle	Corporate	Lawyer/Lobbist	Ideological
1990	56.5%	14%	15.1%
1992	57.8%	14%	15.5%
1994	54.2%	15.7%	18.2%
1996	54.6%	15.6%	17.8%
1998	54.6%	16.4%	17.8%
2000	54.3%	15.8%	18.7%
2002	53.6%	15.8%	18.8%
2004	54.7%	15.8%	18.3%
2006	54.6%	15.5%	19.3%
2008	54.5%	15.8%	18.5%
2010	54.8%	15.7%	18.1%

The Corporate One Percent of One Percent

Corporate affiliations are the most common. To the extent that donors listed occupations (many do not), the most common titles were variations on “President,” “CEO,” “Executive,” Chairman”, and “Investor.”

Of the 10 companies with the most representation in The One Percent of the One Percent in the 2010 election cycle six are financial companies. Goldman Sachs, with 92, far outpaces everyone else. Citigroup, with 32, is second.

Table 2. Companies listed most commonly by The One Percent of the One Percent, 2010 election cycle

Corporation	# of The One Percent of One Percent
Goldman Sachs	92
Citigroup	32
Microsoft	29
Federated Investors	14
RJ Reynolds Tobacco	13
Comcast	12
E&J Gallo Winery	12
MBNA Corp	12
American International Group	11
Bear Stearns	11

A total of 94 companies had five or more members of The One Percent of the One Percent.

The Lawyer/Lobbyist One Percent of One Percent

A second category of The One Percent of the One Percent comprises individuals affiliated with lobbying and law firms. Lobbyists are well known to be important as campaign fundraisers; they are also frequently quite large contributors themselves. Typically they make up between 15 and 20% of The One Percent of the One Percent.

Table 3. Lobbying firms listed most commonly by The One Percent of the One Percent, 2010 election cycle

Organization	# of The One Percent of One Percent
Akin, Gump et al	22
Williams & Jensen	20
Patton Boggs LLP	20
PMA Group	17
Skadden, Arps et al.	15
Cassidy & Associates	13
Sullivan & Cromwell	13
Kirkland & Ellis	12
Simmons Cooper LLC	9
Verner Liipfert	9
Hogan & Hartson	8

A total of 49 law and lobbying firms had five or more members of The One Percent of the One Percent.

The Ideological One Percent of One Percent

In the 2010 election cycle, 18.1% of The One Percent of the One Percent we identified as ideological based on their giving patterns and affiliations. Of these donors, a handful of groups dominate – EMILY’s List (162), Club For Growth (70), and Act Blue (70).

Table 4. Ideological groups listed most commonly by The One Percent of the One Percent, 2010 election cycle

Organization	# of The One Percent of One Percent
EMILY’s List	162
Club for Growth	70
ActBlue	70
Moveon.org	14
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee	10
Act Blue / EMILY’s List	7
EMILY’s List / Moveon.org	6
League of Conservation Voters	6
Simmons Cooper LLC	9
Senate Conservatives Fund	6
JStreetPAC	5

Comparing the three types

Looking at the three different types of donors side by side for the 2010 election cycle, a few patterns emerge.

The ideological contributors on average spend the most (their median contribution level is $17,976). They also give the most money to independent expenditure groups (like American Crossroads) – 21.8%, much more than the other two types of donors. They give on average to 9.5 different candidates.

The lawyer/lobbyist donors give the most money directly to candidates (51.1% goes directly to candidates), and they give to the most different candidates (10.1 on average). Presumably, this is because they are interested in maintaining access to multiple elected officials.

The corporate contributors are the only category to give primarily to Republicans (they contribute 44.1% to Republican candidates and party committees, as compared to 39.8% to Democratic candidates and party committees; the rest goes to other vehicles, including independent expenditures). They tend to give to half as many candidates as they (on average less than 4.6) and give almost half of their money to party committees (the highest percentage of the three types).

Table 5. Patterns of giving by Super Donor type, 2010 election cycle

	Law/Lobbying	Ideological	Corporate	All
Median total given	$16,350	$17,976	$15,000	$15,200
Mean total given	$28,797	$37,933	$27,719	$28,913
Mean # of candidates given to	10.1	9.5	4.6	6.4
% of money to candidates	51.1%	43.4%	35.4%	39.5%
% given to party committees	42.0%	35.8%	48.5%	45.7%
% given to independent expenditure groups	7.3%	21.8%	9.4%	11.6%
% Given to Democratic candidates and parties	70.6%	44.6%	39.8%	46.6%
% Given to Republican candidates and parties	22.6%	34.6%	44.1%	38.5%

Classes of The One Percent of the One Percent

Even within the elite universe of The One Percent of the One Percent, some contributors are more high-powered than others. An elite cadre of 15 contributors each gave more than $500,000, and an almost-as-elite group of 252 gave between $100,001 and $500,000. These high-spending donors give their money primarily through independent expenditure groups, and tend to be more ideological.

The next two classes of The One Percent of the One Percent (those giving between $50,001 and $1000,000 and those giving between $25,001 and $50,000) tend to favor parties as their contribution vehicles of choice. More than half of The One Percent of the One Percent gave less than $25,000. These split more equally between candidates and parties.

Table 6. The One Percent of the One Percent by giving bracket, 2010 election cycle

	More than $500K	$100,001-$500,000	$50,001-$100,000	$25,001-$50,000	$10,000-$25,000
# of The One Percent of One Percent	17	995	2,468	4,907	18,305
Amount Given	$27,761,319	$135,925,304	$172,008,627	$169,265,649	$266,124,661
% of Political 0.0% money	3.6%	17.6%	22.2%	21.9%	34.4%
% who are corporate	47.1%	47.7%	55.2%	54.4%	58.7%
% who are lawyer/lobbyists	0.0%	15.7%	17.2%	18.7%	14.8%
% who are ideological	52.9%	33.4%	22.8%	19.0%	14.6%
% given to independent expenditure groups	92.4%	13.4%	7.4%	7.2%	7.7%
% given to candidates	2.7%	30.4%	34.4%	42.3%	49.6%
% given to parties	4.9%	58.1%	59.5%	49.8%	31.9%

The Rise of The One Percent of the One Percent

In the last two decades, both the cost of campaigning and the size of campaign donor bases have increased. So has the number of individuals giving $10,000 or more in real 2010 dollars, the cut-off point to be included in The One Percent of the One Percent. (For purposes of comparability, we’ve kept the cut-off point stable over time. See our methodology section for more details)

A few trends are worth highlighting. The community of donors giving more than $10,000 (in 2010 dollars) has more than quadrupled, from 6,456 in 1990 to 26,783 in 2010. In 1990, they accounted for 28.1% of all itemized (over $200) donations. By 2010, that number had risen to 44.1%. These donors are also accounting for an increasing number of all donations. And they’re giving more, too. In 1990, the average donation was $8,058 ($13,443 in 2010 dollars). By 2010, it was more than double: $28,913.

Table 7. Evolution of The One Percent of the One Percent

Cycle	Membership of The One Percent of One Percent	Median amount given	Average amount given	Share of itemized donors	Share of all itemized contributions	Share of all contributions
1990	6456	$5,994	$8,058	2.0%	28.1%	N/A
1992	10486	$7,013	$10,498	2.1%	31.9%	N/A
1994	8167	$7,388	$11,528	1.7%	28.2%	N/A
1996	16255	$9,822	$18,439	2.4%	41.6%	N/A
1998	11305	$8,970	$16,825	2.2%	36.8%	N/A
2000	19927	$10,266	$20,428	2.4%	40.3%	19.0%
2002	14406	$10,267	$22,587	1.9%	38.2%	18.7%
2004	32616	$12,994	$23,979	2.9%	41.9%	21.2%
2006	25469	$13,175	$23,571	3.2%	41.9%	22.1%
2008	44743	$17,477	$30,401	3.4%	44.3%	27.5%
2010	26783	$15,200	$28,913	3.3%	44.1%	24.3%

Parties are becoming more reliant on The One Percent of the One Percent

Individuals can give up to $30,800 per year to party committees, making these elite donors especially valuable to Democratic and Republican officials. In 2010, party committees relied on The One Percent of the One Percent for 81.6% of all itemized contributions, the second-highest percentage since 1990, which is as far back as our data go.

As party committees raise more money, they are becoming more reliant on big donors. The last four cycles election mark four of the five cycles in which the parties have been most reliant on donors giving more than $10,000.

Table 8. Parties’ reliance on The One Percent of the One Percent

Cycle	Total parties raised from itemized contribution	% of itemized contributions from One Percent of One Percent	Republican Party % of itemized contributions from One Percent of One Percent	Democratic Party % of itemized contributions from One Percent of One Percent
1990	$111,769,441	59.7%	53.7%	67.8%
1992	$175,162,189	64.0%	57.0%	73.6%
1994	$139,056,980	70.8%	60.6%	84.0%
1996	$484,053,381	44.9%	38.8%	53.1%
1998	$261,258,960	55.0%	48.2%	64.3%
2000	$528,119,721	46.4%	43.7%	49.4%
2002	$426,944,679	41.1%	37.6%	45.6%
2004	$763,117,406	67.8%	63.8%	72.5%
2006	$596,278,361	92.7%	91.6%	93.9%
2008	$1,202,227,211	66.4%	60.2%	73.0%
2010	$522,058,279	81.6%	85.9%	77.9%

Politicians are more becoming reliant on The One Percent of the One Percent

Candidates are also becoming increasingly reliant on The One Percent of the One Percent as sources of funding.

In 1990, only 13 federal candidates relied on The One Percent of the One Percent for at least half of their itemized donors. In the 2010 election cycle, 74 did. A big transition happened in the wake of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance regulations in 2002. With soft money off the table, individual campaigns became much more reliant on big The One Percent of the One Percent. In 2004, 56 candidates relied on The One Percent of the One Percent for at least half of their campaign funding, as compared to just nine the year before.

Table 9. Candidates relying on The One Percent of the One Percent for at least half of their itemized contributions

	Total	Republicans	Democrats
1990	13	5	8
1992	17	3	14
1994	10	5	5
1996	6	0	6
1998	12	5	7
2000	17	8	8
2002	9	3	6
2004	56	23	31
2006	53	25	26
2008	109	34	74
2010	74	22	50

Over time, the share of all individual campaign contributions coming from The One Percent of the One Percent has increased for both parties, increasing from 17.8% in 1990 to 32.1% in the 2010 election cycle. Consistently, Democrats have been slightly more reliant on The One Percent of the One Percent than Republicans – relying on The One Percent of the One Percent for, on average, about three percentage points more of their itemized campaign receipts.

Table 10. Share of itemized candidate money coming from The One Percent of the One Percent

	All Candidates	Republicans Candidates	Democratic Candidates
1990	17.8%	14.5%	20.9%
1992	19.4%	16.6%	21.7%
1994	17.0%	13.3%	20.9%
1996	14.7%	13.3%	16.6%
1998	17.8%	15.3%	20.6%
2000	21.2%	19.3%	23.8%
2002	19.0%	17.4%	20.6%
2004	32.6%	31.0%	34.5%
2006	30.4%	28.3%	31.6%
2008	33.2%	32.0%	34.1%
2010	32.1%	29.7%	35.0%

Looking at the top recipients of One Percent of the One Percent money among current House and members (measured by share of their itemized* donations coming from The One Percent of the One Percent), Californians and Democrats dominate. Six of the ten House Members relying most on The One Percent of the One Percent are from California. Seven of the ten House Members are Democrats.

*We count only itemized (over $200) donations here, since the names of donors are not provided for contributions under $200. Contributions of $200 and up typically account for 80% of all campaign donations.

Table 11. Current House members most dependent on One Percent of One Percent money in the 2010 election cycle

Member	Share of all itemized funding from The One Percent of One Percent	Total money raised from The One Percent of One Percent
Pete Stark (D-CA)	80.6%	$25,000
Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)	74.5%	$713,585
Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL)	59.0%	$444,592
Jerry Lewis (R-CA)	57.3%	$103,600
George Miller (D-CA)	56.5%	$200,085
Gregory Meeks (D-NY)	56.3%	$148,705
Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL)	55.8%	$172,838
Doris Matsui (D-CA)	55.3%	$125,390
Anna Eshoo (D-CA)	55.3%	$351,123
John Kline (R-MN)	53.7%	$359,510

Senators most dependent on The One Percent of the One Percent also are more likely to be Democrats. For the 2010 election cycle, seven of the top ten candidates most reliant on The One Percent of the One Percent were Democrats. Interestingly, the top nine candidates most reliant on The One Percent of the One Percent in their fundraising were not actually up for election. Among the top ten, only Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) was actually on the ballot last year. The other two Republicans who rely most heavily on The One Percent of the One Percent are in two of least populous states.

Table 12. Current senators most dependent on One Percent of One Percent money in the 2010 election cycle

Senator	Share of all itemized funding from The One Percent of One Percent	Total money raised from The One Percent of One Percent
John Kerry (D-MA)	61.8%	$1,109,100
James Risch (R-ID)	61.5%	$30,950
Mark Pryor (D-AR)	60.8%	$49,900
Kay Hagan (D-NC)	60.1%	$123,662
Ben Nelson (D-NE)	58.9%	$356,126
Mark Udall (D-CO)	57.5%	$187,449
Byron Dorgan (D-ND)	57.1%	$625,424
Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)	56.3%	$135,850
Mike Enzi (R-WY)	55.9%	$13,400
Kelly Ayotte (R-NH)	55.6%	$2,005,614

Actually up for election the 2010 election cycle

Another important aspect of The One Percent of the One Percent's money is that the majority of it comes from out of state. While in general, candidates have relied on out-of-state money for about one in three of all their itemized dollars, this share is much higher when it comes to itemized donations from The One Percent of the One Percent. The share of The One Percent of the One Percent money coming from out of state has hovered around 55%. This reflects the fact that The One Percent of the One Percent are not spread evenly across the country.

Table 13. Share of One Percent of One Percent money from out of state

Cycle	One Percent of One Percent Share from Out of State	Itemized Share from Out of State
1990	65.1%	33.5%
1992	52.8%	29.5%
1994	55.5%	29.7%
1996	56.4%	30.1%
1998	55.3%	28.5%
2000	54.4%	34.1%
2002	61.2%	33.0%
2004	53.3%	35.6%
2006	58.3%	36.9%
2008	54.8%	43.7%
2010	53.4%	34.9%

The Geography of The One Percent of the One Percent

graphic by Drew Vogel

Members of the One Percent of the One Percent are not evenly distributed throughout the country, as the accompanying map makes clear (though over time, clusters of One Percent of the One Percent money are showing up in more and more parts of the country).

They overwhelmingly congregate in a handful of metro areas. In the 2010 election cycle, the top metro area for The One Percent of the One Percent were New York, NY (2,981), Washington, DC (2,095), Los Angeles, CA (1,358), Chicago, IL (1,244) and San Francisco, CA (1,047). The list of top One Percent of the One Percent metro areas is almost exactly the same as it was in 1990. The only new city is hedge-fund rich Greenwich, CT, which displaced Houston to #11 on the list.

Table 14. Top Metro areas for The One Percent of the One Percent, 2010 election cycle

Area	# of The One Percent of One Percent
New York City, NY	2,981
Washington, DC	2,095
Los Angeles, CA	1,358
Chicago, IL	1,244
San Francisco, CA	1,047
Boston, MA	877
Miami, FL	862
Philadelphia, PA	646
Dallas, TX	607
Greenwich, CT	536

Table 15. Top Metro areas for The One Percent of the One Percent, 1990 election cycle

Area	# of The One Percent of One Percent
New York City, NY	835
Washington, DC	498
Los Angeles, CA	465
Chicago, IL	219
Miami, FL	166
San Francisco, CA	161
Dallas, TX	151
Philadelphia, PA	123
Houston, TX	122
Boston, MA	121

But even within these metro areas, a small number of zip codes stand out.

In New York, the top zip codes are 10021 (Upper East Side), 10024 (Upper West Side), 10023 (Upper West Side), 10028 (Upper East Side), 10019 (Upper West Side)

Table 16. Top New York zip codes

Zip code	# of The One Percent of One Percent
10021	109
10024	105
10023	67
10028	67
10019	61

In Washington, DC, the top zip codes are 20007 (Georgetown) and 20008 (Cleveland Park), 22101 (McLean, VA), 20815 (Chevy Chase) and 20817 (Bethesda)

Table 17. Top Washington, DC zip codes

Zip code	# of The One Percent of One Percent
20007	60
20008	57
22101	57
20815	50
20817	43

In Los Angeles, CA, the top zip codes are 90210 (Beverly Hills), 90067 (Century City), 90077 (Bel Air), and 90025 (West L.A.), 90402 (Santa Monica)

Table 18. Top Los Angeles, CA zip codes

Zip code	# of The One Percent of One Percent
90210	75
90067	44
90077	34
90025	29
90402	29

These geographical patterns highlight that these The One Percent of the One Percent concentrate together in high-income areas. They are far from evenly distributed throughout the nation.

Conclusions

There are approximately 312 million people living in the United States. Yet just 26,783 (less than one in ten thousand) accounted for 24.3% of all political contributions in the 2010 election cycle.

Unlike the 99.99% of Americans who do not spend ten grand of their own money on an election cycle (mostly because they can’t afford to do so), The One Percent of the One Percent have unique access to candidates and party leaders. They know that candidates and parties need their money, and this presumably allows them to play a kind of gatekeeper role, allowing them to set the parameters of priorities of “legitimate” politics.

They congregate in a limited number of elite zip codes. Their concerns are not the concerns of ordinary Americans.

Some are motivated by ideological reasons. For others, the motivation is less partisan and more pragmatic: Many are lawyers and lobbyists, and even more are corporate executives, all seeking to influence legislation and policy.

Over time, more individuals are choosing to spend $10,000 or more on politics, and candidates and especially parties are becoming more reliant on them. With new vehicles for unlimited money in the 2012 election, a small number of individuals with both the means and the motive to spend lavishly on elections are poised to play an even greater role. To the extent that the priorities and interests of these elite donors are not representative of the country, there are good reasons to be concerned that their unique access is having a distorting impact on our politics.

Methodology

All of the data used in this analysis originates from the Federal Election Commission. Information on the total amounts raised by candidates and committees comes from the FEC's summary files, available here. Information on itemized contributions (contributions over $200) is published by the FEC and standardized by our partner organization, The Center for Responsive Politics. (CRP). CRP identifies unique donors and assigns organizational and ideological affiliations. Contributions under $200 are not required to be itemized, so our analysis cannot say anything about the characteristics of this group of donors, other than the total amount of money raised.

Figures for total amounts given by all individuals are computed by summing the total individual amounts listed in the candidate and PAC summary files. Contributions coming from organizations, rather than individuals, are not considered anywhere in our analysis. Figures for the total itemized contributions are taken by summing all contributions from individuals in the CRP itemized data. The only exception is candidate self-contributions (FEC transaction type 15c), which are excluded from the analysis. This results in figures that are higher than those reported by CRP here since CRP's analysis includes only contributions to candidate, party and leadership committees, and not independent committees.

We identified the set of super donors by finding all CRP contributor IDs associated with at least $10K in contributions in a single cycle. These contributions could be to candidates, party committees, or independent groups. Because of contribution limits to candidates and party committees, donors in the upper ranges of the super donors are giving mostly to 527s and SuperPACS, for which there are no contribution limits.

We categorized the donors using CRP's ContribCode field, which includes codings for lobbyists, ideological groups and business sectors. If the candidate has given any money to an ideological group then they are considered an ideological donor. If they have given any money as a lobbyist then they are considered a lobbyist donor. If the contributions fall into any of the hundreds of business sector categories then they are considered a corporate donor.

The Koch Brothers, ALEC and the Savage Assault on Democracy

2011-12-13T12:12:00.000-08:00

December 12, 2011 at 22:24:17

The Koch Brothers, ALEC and the Savage Assault on Democracy

By John Nichols (about the author)

Billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch finally got their way in 2011. After their decades of funding the American Legislative Exchange Council, the collaboration between multinational corporations and conservative state legislators, the project began finally to yield the intended result.

For the first time in decades, the United States saw a steady dismantling of the laws, regulations, programs and practices put in place to make real the promise of American democracy.

That is why, on Saturday, civil rights groups and their allies will rally outside the New York headquarters of the Koch brothers to begin a march for the renewal of voting rights in America.

For the Koch brothers and their kind, less democracy is better. They fund campaigns with millions of dollars in checks that have helped elect the likes of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Ohio Governor John Kasich. And ALEC has made it clear, through its ambitious "Public Safety and Elections Task Force," that while it wants to dismantle any barriers to corporate cash and billionaire bucks' influencing elections, it wants very much to erect barriers to the primary tool that Americans who are not CEOs have to influence the politics and the government of the nation: voting.

That crude calculus, usually cloaked in bureaucracy and back-room dealmaking, came into full view in 2011.

Across the country, and to a greater extent than at any time since the last days of Southern resistance to desegregation, voting rights were being systematically diminished rather than expanded.

ALEC has been organizing and promoting the assault, encouraging its legislative minions to enact rigid Voter ID laws and related attacks on voting rights in more than three dozen states.

With their requirements that the millions of Americans who lack driver's licenses and other forms of official paperwork go out and purchase identification cards in order to cast ballots, the Voter ID push put in place new variations on an old evil: the poll tax.

"We are in the midst of the greatest coordinated legislative attack on voting rights since the dawn of Jim Crow," says NAACP President Benjamin Jealous. "Voter ID laws are nothing but reincarnated poll taxes and liter acy tests, and ex-felon voting bans serve the same purpose today as when they were created in the wake of the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteeing ex-slaves the vote -- suppressing voting numbers among people of color."

Voter ID laws represent only the beginning of the assault on voter rights. In states across the country in 2011, conservative governors and legislators who had swept to power in the 2010 election moved to restrict access to the polls in other ways. They ended election-day registration programs in state such as Maine, ending a practice that had allowed new voters to come to the polls, fill out a simple form and cast a ballot. They restricted early voting in states such as Ohio, making it dramatically harder for citizens to cast ballots in the run-up to an election. They scrapped weekend voting in Ohio, where working men and women had been able to cast ballots on their days off. They placed new restrictions on voting by students at colleges and technical schools, even going so far in Wisconsin as to move the primary election date to when most students were on summer break. They reduced the number of polling places in some states, making it harder for voters who lack transportation to get to the polls. And after they established the Voter ID requirements in Wisconsin, and said that citizens had to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get the proper paperwork, they tried to reduce the number of DMV offices.

"For nearly a century, there were Jim Crow laws in place that discouraged people of color from voting, explains Wade Henderson, the president and CEO of the Leadership Council on Civil and Human Rights. "Today, there are different laws, but the objective is the same--to prevent millions from exercising their right to vote."

No one who is serious about voting and elections misses the point of the project.

The point is not just to make it harder to vote. The point is to make it harder for citizens to elect legislators, governors, members of Congress and presidents who will regulate and tax multinational corporations such as Koch Industries, while at the same time establishing programs that meet the needs of the great mass of Americans. "Now, just as before, they are seeking to block us from voting in order to make it easier to come after our other rights," says Mike Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers. "Everything we care about is at stake, from the right to a quality education to the right to a fair wage."

It is with all of this in mind that the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, the Asian American Legal Defense & Education Fund and allied civil rights and civil liberties organizations, churches and unions have endorsed the "Stand for Freedom" voting rights campaign, which will launch with a march Saturday from the offices of the Koch brothers to the United Nations. At the United Nations, the groups will mark Human Rights Day by calling for an end to assaults on voting rights in the United States.

The choice of the Koch brothers office as a starting point is not symbolic. It is practical. For decades, the Koch brothers and their foundation have funded ALEC and other groups that are now driving the attack on voting rights in states across the country.

The people are pushing back. In November, Mainers voted by an overwhelming margin to restore election-day registration. In other states, voting rights has become a central political issue. And, now, that issue is being raised at the headquarters of the Koch brothers -- and the United Nations.

"From the beginning of our nation's founding, Americans have understood that voting was fundamental to their pursuit of freedom and equal opportunity," says Lillian RodrÃguez LÃ³pez, President of the Hispanic Federation. "Any attempt to undermine the right to vote, especially when that effort is directed at historically marginalized groups, must be treated as an attack on the very ideals that created our country: democracy and equality. And that is why we stand up for freedom and continue to fight for the right to vote for all Americans."

John Nichols, a pioneering political blogger, has written the Online Beat since 1999. His posts have been circulated internationally, quoted in numerous books and mentioned in debates on the floor of Congress.

Nichols writes about politics (more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

The 1% Are the Very Best Destroyers of Resources and Wealth the World Has Ever Seen

2011-11-08T13:34:00.000-08:00

Published on Tuesday, November 8, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

The 1% Are the Very Best Destroyers of Wealth the World Has Ever Seen

Our common treasury in the last 30 years has been captured by industrial psychopaths. That's why we're nearly bankrupt

by George Monbiot

If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren't responsible. Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes.(Illustration by Daniel Pudles)

The findings of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize, are devastating to the beliefs that financial high-fliers entertain about themselves. He discovered that their apparent success is a cognitive illusion. For example, he studied the results achieved by 25 wealth advisers across eight years. He found that the consistency of their performance was zero. "The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill." Those who received the biggest bonuses had simply got lucky.

Such results have been widely replicated. They show that traders and fund managers throughout Wall Street receive their massive remuneration for doing no better than would a chimpanzee flipping a coin. When Kahneman tried to point this out, they blanked him. "The illusion of skill … is deeply ingrained in their culture."

So much for the financial sector and its super-educated analysts. As for other kinds of business, you tell me. Is your boss possessed of judgment, vision and management skills superior to those of anyone else in the firm, or did he or she get there through bluff, bullshit and bullying?

In a study published by the journal Psychology, Crime and Law, Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon tested 39 senior managers and chief executives from leading British businesses. They compared the results to the same tests on patients at Broadmoor special hospital, where people who have been convicted of serious crimes are incarcerated. On certain indicators of psychopathy, the bosses's scores either matched or exceeded those of the patients. In fact, on these criteria, they beat even the subset of patients who had been diagnosed with psychopathic personality disorders.

The psychopathic traits on which the bosses scored so highly, Board and Fritzon point out, closely resemble the characteristics that companies look for. Those who have these traits often possess great skill in flattering and manipulating powerful people. Egocentricity, a strong sense of entitlement, a readiness to exploit others and a lack of empathy and conscience are also unlikely to damage their prospects in many corporations.

In their book Snakes in Suits, Paul Babiak and Robert Hare point out that as the old corporate bureaucracies have been replaced by flexible, ever-changing structures, and as team players are deemed less valuable than competitive risk-takers, psychopathic traits are more likely to be selected and rewarded. Reading their work, it seems to me that if you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a poor family, you're likely to go to prison. If you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a rich family, you're likely to go to business school.

This is not to suggest that all executives are psychopaths. It is to suggest that the economy has been rewarding the wrong skills. As the bosses have shaken off the trade unions and captured both regulators and tax authorities, the distinction between the productive and rentier upper classes has broken down. Chief executives now behave like dukes, extracting from their financial estates sums out of all proportion to the work they do or the value they generate, sums that sometimes exhaust the businesses they parasitise. They are no more deserving of the share of wealth they've captured than oil sheikhs.

The rest of us are invited, by governments and by fawning interviews in the press, to subscribe to their myth of election: the belief that they are possessed of superhuman talents. The very rich are often described as wealth creators. But they have preyed on the earth's natural wealth and their workers' labour and creativity, impoverishing both people and planet. Now they have almost bankrupted us. The wealth creators of neoliberal mythology are some of the most effective wealth destroyers the world has ever seen.

What has happened over the past 30 years is the capture of the world's common treasury by a handful of people, assisted by neoliberal policies which were first imposed on rich nations by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. I am now going to bombard you with figures. I'm sorry about that, but these numbers need to be tattooed on our minds. Between 1947 and 1979, productivity in the US rose by 119%, while the income of the bottom fifth of the population rose by 122%. But from 1979 to 2009, productivity rose by 80%, while the income of the bottom fifth fell by 4%. In roughly the same period, the income of the top 1% rose by 270%.

In the UK, the money earned by the poorest tenth fell by 12% between 1999 and 2009, while the money made by the richest 10th rose by 37%. The Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality, climbed in this country from 26 in 1979 to 40 in 2009.

In his book The Haves and the Have Nots, Branko Milanovic tries to discover who was the richest person who has ever lived. Beginning with the loaded Roman triumvir Marcus Crassus, he measures wealth according to the quantity of his compatriots' labour a rich man could buy. It appears that the richest man to have lived in the past 2,000 years is alive today. Carlos Slim could buy the labour of 440,000 average Mexicans. This makes him 14 times as rich as Crassus, nine times as rich as Carnegie and four times as rich as Rockefeller.

Until recently, we were mesmerised by the bosses' self-attribution. Their acolytes, in academia, the media, thinktanks and government, created an extensive infrastructure of junk economics and flattery to justify their seizure of other people's wealth. So immersed in this nonsense did we become that we seldom challenged its veracity.

This is now changing. On Sunday evening I witnessed a remarkable thing: a debate on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral between Stuart Fraser, chairman of the Corporation of the City of London, another official from the corporation, the turbulent priest Father William Taylor, John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network and the people of Occupy London. It had something of the flavour of the Putney debates of 1647. For the first time in decades – and all credit to the corporation officials for turning up – financial power was obliged to answer directly to the people.

It felt like history being made. The undeserving rich are now in the frame, and the rest of us want our money back.