How is this not the single most important thing being investigated by Congress?
It’s all about who owns Congess Dave.
The really sad thing is that our Congress critters have been so successfully bought (or so successfully sold themselves) that these numbers are hardly influential. While the numbers in the chart look huge, they are a tiny fraction of the net worth of all but the newest and least influential, even if focused on only a couple of people.
While I completely agree with those who state that there is too much corporate money in politics, and that politicians are easily bought (on the state level, legislators are pretty cheap!), this chart is misleading.
Under the "contributor" column is a list of corporations. But under US law, corporations cannot donate to political campaigns. (They can donate to allegedly-independent PACs, but that is not what this chart describes.) So how can this list be created?
Easy. If you've ever donated to a political campaign, you are required to disclose the name of your employer. When the candidates report their contributions, that information is included, and the agency that tallies this all up reports the total amount donated by the
employees of each company. Remember, for a federal campaign, a US citizen is allowed to contribute something like only $4600 to each candidate. Divide the $3,158,849 by $4600 and you get a whopping 686 individuals employed by Northrup Grumman donating to candidates of
both parties.
And since most people do not donate the maximum, not even close. I read somewhere that the average donation is $250 (take the CEOs who give the max and the line workers who give $20, and that sounds about right), so that's 12,635 individuals who work for Northrup Grumman who gave money to a candidate. How many employees does NG have? A lot more.
So I'd like to think that the $250 I give to my various preferred candidates will influence their votes, but the reality is that they already vote the way I want them to vote. I give them money so the guy who votes the other way doesn't get into office.
So the real money influence on campaigns comes not from individual donations, but from the super PACs legalized by the Citizens United decision, which basically allowed unlimited money contributed by anonymous people to run "issue ads" supporting preferred candidates and blasting opposition. The real money influence comes from lobbyists who can promise "jobs" in a district , and they can sweep that PAC money to a candidate.