Two Political Parties For The Prices Of $1,188,644,055
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
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$1.18 Billion sure doesn't buy what it used to!
I invented the piano key necktie bitchez!
Mugatu
Dunno about that... it bought your "democracy", your "freedom" and any lingering chance of the "American dream".
Not a bad price for all that really, eh?
maybe he wants royalties on the piano key chartporn w/ a side-order of pi(e) graphs
i thought billie joel invented the piano key tie!
here he is doing his best stephen colbert impression: Billy Joel LIVE- Only The Good Die Young - YouTube
ZH! Stop one second and let's consider something.
We may have just discovered the purest indication of inflation the world has ever known. Econoheads babble about CPI and other vague indicators. Meanless, manipulated propaganda. Gas prices? Food prices? Indicative to be sure, but still volatile.
What really tells us the impact of inflation?
Ladies and Gentlemen (or shall I say Baby Blythe and Gentlemen), I give you the GoldmanSucks Bribery Index!
The true measure of inflation is how much Goldman contributes to each successive election. Obama has already received 20% more than Bush through only one term, a big portion of which is undoubtedly from Goldman. Which means it's really a 40% gain if you calculate the second-term-that-will-probably-not-happen for Obama. 40% divided by 8 is 5%, probably pretty accurate.
Hmm, funny that I detect a lot of banks in there...
and didn't Dodd do something about regulating all these banks that are giving him rather a lot of money?
Hmm, I can see now why he did such a good job, and why so many of these too-big-to-fails have now been taken down already.
There is only one cure...
Pretty crappy ROI for those Lehman and Bear employees.
See Geraldo Rivera flee chants of "Fox News Lies"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r03VNAdDn8
Sanitized Media. We don't need it.
The CME gave the prostiticians $1.71 MM. They make margin rules up freely, randomly, and obviously to the government and the big banks favor on the exchanges! What a racket!
Why would anyone want to use the Comex after seeing this and watching their criminal smash down of silver via opportune margin hikes as of late?
Ah, USA, land of "freedom" - political capture at its finest!
Democracy = one person, one vote. Capitalism = one dollar, one vote.
Not a good idea to allow the two mix at the same point ...
put the whole charade up on ebay , and make 'em wear nascar style suits with their sponsors/purchasers names emblazened on them
Who is John Lohman, the creator of the graphic? His graphics have been used several times on ZH, with never a link.
Excellent question. I'm a long time lurker and love the site, but I question where these stats come from.
We always question the BLS statistics (rightfully so,) shouldn't be question these too?
Tell that to the lying lackeys on our Supreme Court. Money ='s speech, doncha' know. Corporations = people.
Here is the concept we should promote: If you are not a registered voter, you are not allowed to make a contribution to a campaign. Period. No 'in kind' contributions from ANY special interest group. After all, "special" interests are by definition concerned only for their interests and AGAINST the "general" interests.
No corporations, no unions, no PACs.
Then, EVERYTHING changes.
Agreed. And if that doesn't work, burn Washington D.C. to the ground.
You want to see what it looks like when massive economic bubbles bursts?
"DRACONID METEOR BALLOON: During the peak of the Draconid meteor shower on Oct. 8th, a group of students in Bishop, California, flew a helium balloon to the stratosphere to try to record some Draconid fireballs in the darkness at high-altitude. Five cameras recorded more than 50 GB of data, which the team is sifting through now for evidence of meteors. While we're waiting for the meteor count, the team offers this video of the balloon popping about 100,000 feet above Earth:"
http://spaceweather.com/swpod2011/10oct11/pop_slomo2.mp4?PHPSESSID=o81oqb7f5p5h2s1j29hri5b035
http://spaceweather.com/
The entire business model of Washington D.C. has to change.
Vote Ron Paul,
There is no other choice.
Trichet is currently speaking directly to the higher ups in his banking cartel structure. It is quite fascinating to watch and listen to.
Never thought I'd read a sane article and comment section from Huffington Post, I guess there's a first time for everything.
"If you thought President Obama's expressions of sympathy for the Occupy Wall Street movement meant he was suddenly going to stand up for "the 99%," think again. Obama has just submitted to Congress the Chamber of Commerce-backed Colombia, Panama, and Korea Free Trade Agreements. And now, thanks to maneuvering by Obama and his business-friendly Chief of Staff William Daley and U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, they're on an accelerated schedule in Congress. According to a report in The Hill, they will be voted on Wednesday, where they're expected to pass.
Obama's move is a brazen display of contempt for the Occupy Wall Street movement's calls for jobs, economic, and environmental justice as well as human rights. These trade agreements achieve a rare trifecta of progressive punching: it's hard to imagine a single initiative that at one time could so infuriate anti-corporate activists, labor unions, and environmentalists at the very moment that these disparate movements are finally finding solidarity and support in the streets."
Obama Pushes Huge Free Trade Deals to Wednesday Vote
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/glenn-hurowitz/obama-free-trade_b_1003846.html
Question for persons who regularly jump out of perfectly serviceable aircraft:
"The apex of your parachute shouldn't be pointing downwards, should it?"
Awesome video!
Assuming they assign a high utility to not having the pleasure of being assraped at Leavenworth, I'd say that those employees did pretty well with their investment, actually.
Obama will lead the way.
Yes We Sachs.
My response to anyone else falsely claiming that they created the Piano Key Necktie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOrI6uqS-vk .
Dirty deeds done dirt cheap.
They ought to hand out that flier at the Occupy Wall Street event and see how the protesters react.
Don't think that ZH is not being read and passed around amongst the participants! Does that explain the surge in 4S sales? Oh, wait, these folks are broke. Just another brick in the wall.
TALK ABOUT THE INFLATION! I thought the bar graph were the amount of sub prime loans handed out in those years! lol
I woke up this morning and got myself a beer,
The future's uncertain and the end is always near…
ghosts crowd the young child's fragile egg shell mind -- blood will be born in the birth of a nation.
well wallstreet is efficient. 1B over 20 years for 12 trillion in bailouts over the last 3. That's good ROI.
Touché, salesman!
Just wait until the politicians find out that they have been packaged in tranches (prime, sub prime) and sold to investors around the world
"$1.18 Billion sure doesn't buy what it used to!"
It doesn't buy WHO it used to either...
Speaking of which, I'm just shocked Ron Paul isn't on their list of big recipients. I mean he's been in office for so long! I wonder why they wouldn't contribute to him?
His family is in the wrong secret society, the Order of the Eastern Star. They just get the perks. Only Bonesmen, CFR, and Trilats get the contributions. Besides, he's suckered all the supposedly awakened people into donating so he doesn't need it.
Right, he's got soo much money to play with compared to the others. Not.
Well, with Ron's 8 million dollar haul from 100,000 individual donors vs Perry is 17 mil from 20,000. Ron sure knocked perry's teeth out and hence his spiral downfall. Ron has no where to go but up.
Just shows money isn't everything but how efficiently you use it. BANG 4 DA BUCK!
Although I am quite sure that Ron Paul's numbers are high, his money did not come from any Corporation's employees, families, and friends. His money came in small amounts from grassroots people. I think I saw recetly that he has roughly 10 times as many donors as Romney for the same amount.
Yes. More donors, rising in the polls, and he still can't get mentioned on TV.
Not an hour ago, I was watching some poll result that showed him in 3rd place. They go down the list and talk about #1, #2, then skip #3 and go right to #4. It's like he is invisible and they are afraid to mention his name. It really is becoming humerous, and it's likely to backfire. the more they do this, the more obvious it becomes.
http://gawker.com/5831167/jon-stewart-why-is-the-media-ignoring-ron-paul
This was almost 2 months ago, but nothing has changed.
It's deplorable that the costs of bribing our elected representatives keeps getting higher and higher. I have a modest proposal that we should outsource the jobs of politicians to China with free trade deals. Just think of the wasted money that goes to meaningless campaigns when Chang could work around the clock in a sweat committee for a fraction of the cost. It'd put the current politicians in the bread lines but it is free market and everybody likes free market.
Disgusting
Yes, a real rogues gallery, both donors and recipients.
And WTF is a market place such as CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) doing on this list?
What agenda does CME have? And is that agenda in the best interest of market participants and the public at large?
They made $7.9M in contributions and most of it is from their PAC, which is proportionally larger than for any other top contributor. It makes just as much sense as having a stock exchange such as NYSE or LSE as a political contributor. Somebody ought to check this further....
Money makes the world go round *manic laughter*
Have a laugh and a green on me!
F**k! Let this whole thing cave in on Odumber's watch...
Tyler Durden for President 2012.
Vote on the green button if you agree.. also spread the word.
sorry. i'm voting for ron paul.
Yup probably the next best guy to TD. Someone needs to get word out to the occupy wallstreet guys that Ron Paul is probably the only shot they have at near term change. Alas the chart above also suggests that RP would need an overwhelming push from the grass roots to get through the primaries against TPTB, and he'd need it soon !
I don't think OWS and RP are on the same page on most issues. A few, yes, but most, no.
That would be my thinking as well. But, I have NOT been to one of the demonstrations, and I hear conflicting things...
From what i've seen, and i havn't been to there either, i'd fully agree. One of the things that is a problem for OWS and other similar movements is that it's hard to say whether the majority is against free market capitalism per se or only against rigged market capitalism. I think that you could rally many more people around the latter ! Contrarily, mixing both makes it easy to discredit the entire movement as a bunch of leftist fanatics.
OWS and RP have a LOT more in common than either of them realise.
They are both on the lower end of the political compass.
Lower left and Lower right.
It's funny that they haven't realised that under RP's federal lower right policies, their states could implement lower left policies and the whole damn lot would work a lot better.
RP wants to gift the majority of the power back to the people at the local level, by dramatically cutting the federal government's size. This works perfectly with OWS, because frankly, the federal government cannot get the perspective required to solve all local issues or to achieve a national consensus.
OWS should support RP. Out of all the candidates including Obama, he's the only one that is totally genuine and comes closest to their goals.
Their liberal ideals can be implemented at the state level like say 'Romney care'. Once enough states have implemented similar programs, THEN some form of national administration will be appropriate.
I really hope they realise that despite having often opposing views, they've got a hell of a lot more in common with RP than any of the others who are all big government powermongers. Even the so called rest of the tea party are reactionist. They have no conviction, and they're likely to be sucked in by the powers that be as much as Obama has been.
When you're stuck between a rock and a hard place, pick a rock that's stable.
Buddy Roemer already beat him to it.
GOP candidate Buddy Roemer backs "Occupy Wall Street"
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20118163-503544.html
" arguing in a statement that "money and politics has created institutional corruption" in America and that "both parties are guilty of taking the big check and are bought by Wall Street."
"has campaigned on an anti-special interest platform, and does not accept money from political action committees (PACs) or donations of more than $100."
"Herman Cain, who criticized the young people as un-American, ought to rethink it," Roemer said in his video statement. "You're wrong, Herman - this is as American as a civil rights march. This is as American as a revolution. The young people are speaking. We ought to listen."
...which is exactly why most people have to say "Buddy who?".
He is even more ignored than Dr. Paul.
Buddy Who? (What you said.) Issat the new 'My Buddy' doll?
I think I found Ron Paul on the list: $0.02.
Troll Magnet
"voting for Ron Paul"?
Really? You expect him to be on the ballot?
Much more likely will be the usual limited choice between candidates officially endorsed by one of the Mafia crime families, that is to say, Democrat or Republican.
If by some quirk, Ron Paul is nominated by the Republicans, it would doubtless be because they have made him "an offer he can't refuse",
and if elected despite the MSM negative stereotyping of him, he will pull an "Obama", all "hope" and no "change" (except for the worse).
I would love to vote for Ron Paul but if I redgester to vote I will have to start paying taxes so screw that, remember taxation without representation well it works the other way around too
vote these fuckers OUT!!!
vote thse fuckers IN.
The damage has been done already, and I stand to make a fortune on my gold and silver when the correcting takes place. More they print, more I make, eventually, which puts me higher up the wealth ladder when everything and everyone else falls down.
Which is already inevitable and not my fault...
If everything collapses, your gold and silver probably won't be worth any more than now in terms of how much food you can buy except that you'll have a lot less types of food to choose from. Many other things you can presently buy won't be availble at any price so you will be much poorer overall.
I agree I don't even have to get out of bed to make money, why would we want them to fix anything . People who still think it can be are still living the American dream, because you have to be asleep to belive it
HOW? When both parties are on the take it's; Damn if we do, and Damn if we don't. May be the EU is a little better for the people than what we have here.
http://www.kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2011/10/9_J...
Click MP 3
Jump you...
Thats it??? I thought BO was shooting for 1 BILLION just for his REelection campaign?
corruption, bitchez
The graphic should show that $1.19 Trillion as an amount paid, rather than given.
This is nothing to what they will do this year.
Remember: Goldman Sachs rules the World. And the Supreme Court has given them thier blessing.
You said it. When the supreme court handed that one down the game of even pretending was over
Yep. I told my wife when they took up this issue that if the court allowed these unfettered corporate bribes, it was game over for the America we grew up in. It was all but gone anyway, but this was the nail in the coffin.
President = bought
Congress = bought
Supreme Court = consolidated/bought
The Press = consolidted/owned
Realy, the only hope for keeping the promise of America alive is right here on the web. Don't expect it to last much longer.
womder what Obozo's contributions are gonna look like this time around?
He has already resorted to early bird specials and two for ones at his lame ass dinners
Separate Economy and State
are you kidding me...........why the fuck is chuck schumer 5th highest on this list ...........he never ran for any higher office and he is a lock every 6 years......why does he need any money .......that fucker should be knocked the hell out......
chuckster is a staunch supporter of israel, that's why.
And the banks. Jews and the banks.
aren't they one and the same?
Chuckie is the Protector Extroidanaire of the Money Manipulators.
For example, some years ago (I think it was around the 2008 elections and the First Great Lehman) he called for taxes on Private Equity and Hegdeies to be modified so as to tax what is essentially normal earned income at normal income tax rates rather than as carried interests/cap gains, etc., and proposed an additional slew of New and Improved Financial Economic Restructurings in Order to Reign in Excesses in Finance.
(Sound Familiar?)
Well, so in essence he blackmailed his own constituency to contribute more money to Him so as to Ensure that Those Terrible New Innovations (Like them paying more taxes) Never Got Passed. (Another wag's terminology for that time.)
And like when Rubinstein back in the good olde Prohibition days took an additional 10% cut off the top from some scam he already protected, told the boys paying up that the reason they should choke up is that if they didn't they'd just plain fucking choke. And that they survived another day is why he was fucking valuable to them. (Smiles)
That's fucking why.
One Wag Called it Extortion.
Correct. He and Dodd.
SHAKEDOWN!
he collects money for all the congressional races in usa for DNC
Chuck Schumer is the Saul Goodman of Congress.
Another Goldman Indictment? "Better Call Chuck!"
ROFL. Nice analogy.
Well at the end of the day we have (almost) no one to blame but ourselves.
Complacency bitcheeezz.
It's not like it's hard to fathom the incentive.
What other ~$38mm investment (spread over 21 years no less) can generate anywhere near the same ROI?
I see that so rarely mentioned here at ZH. We share the blame in part.
So, let's act.
Occupy the streets and send the message.
End the Fed
And of course....
BUY SILVER
Well, I'll stay off the streets (except when mounted onto wheel axles). But, I will buy gold and silver and contribute to Ron Paul.
End the Fed.
ever wnder why the politicians enter congress poor, and leave with several multi million dollar townhouses? look. no further than the above graphic. corrupt scum
The interesting thing for their campaigns is how that money is spent. Hire your wife, son, daughter, or relative as an advisor for big dollars. I think Meghan McCain "worked" on her fathers team. Maybe, one of the only recent college graduates to actually get a job.
More to the fact, Sarah Palin has made more money pretending to run for President than she would ever make being paid on main street. Anyone think Newt is running for anything other than to line his pockets? Running for President of the United States shouldn't be a career opportunity. It should be for protecting the freedoms that our forefathers put their lives on the line to obtain.
Considering wall street has earned trillions in bailouts and subsidies throughout that timeframe, that 1 billion dollar figure seems absurdly samall. A 10,000% ROI is pretty darn good. Even buffet would have a hard time finding enough BAC's to beat that.