Mitt Romney Winning the Race for the 1 Percent

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The Washington Post reports today that Barack Obama has received donations from 30 billionaires while Mitt Romney has received donations from 42 billionaires. Ho hum. But there’s this fascinating little tidbit halfway through the story:

Romney has attracted the support of Redskins owner Dan Snyder and other billionaires, including California real estate developer Donald Bren, who is worth $12 billion, and developer and publisher Sam Zell, who is worth $5 billion.

As a lifelong reader of the Los Angeles Times, I’d say that the support of Sam Zell ought to be reason enough to disqualify anyone from the presidency. I suppose there’s a good chance that he’s not actually much more of an asshole than hundreds of other billionaires, but he sure went out of his way to make it more obvious than usual. He’s just lucky that LA also has Frank McCourt around, which means there’s at least one zillionaire here that we all hate even more.

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Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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