Curator note: The inaugural donations are an example of how the U.S. has become an oligarchy, a political structure where a handful of people donate most of the money in politics. In this case, supporting the president of the U.S. The U.S. population is estimated to be around 320 million, there are 200M registered voters. Of those 200 million eligible voters, 250 donors or .000125% of the population funding the inauguration, after the election. This has occurred, to a large extent, due to the Citizen’s United Supreme Court decision, led by the Roberts Court.
Our democracy is seriously threatened by this Supreme Court decision. We should all take action on reversing this disastrous decision. The website for the “real” Citizens United is http://reclaimdemocracy.org/who-are-citizens-united/. The website name “Citizens United” has been claimed by the alt-right, another way that the right is disrupting our country.
From Wikipedia — Oligarchy (from Greek ὀλιγαρχία (oligarkhía); from ὀλίγος (olígos), meaning ‘few’, and ἄρχω (arkho), meaning ‘to rule or to command’)[1][2][3] is a form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people. These people might be distinguished by nobility, wealth, family ties, education or corporate, religious or military control. Such states are often controlled by a few prominent families who typically pass their influence from one generation to the next, but inheritance is not a necessary condition for the application of this term.
Throughout history, oligarchies have often been tyrannical, relying on public obedience or oppression to exist. Aristotle pioneered the use of the term as a synonym for rule by the rich,[4] for which another term commonly used today is plutocracy.
250 donors shelled out $100k or more for Trump’s inauguration, providing 91% of funds
What does it take to stage a welcome-to-the-neighborhood blowout? President Trump raised $107 million for his inaugural festivities, shattering previous records. The former titleholder, Barack Obama, raised half that, $53.2 million, in 2009 — though Obama imposed far stricter limits on amounts and sources of donations.
Read full Open Secrets (fact checker) article
Money Talked Loudest at Inaugural
Coal, oil, gas and chemical industries, technology and pharmaceutical companies contributed a big chunk of the record $107 million collected to pay for the inauguration, according to numbers released by the inaugural committee last week. That’s more than double the $53 million President Obama raised in 2009, for bigger festivities that drew many more attendees. If Mr. Trump had divided his inauguration cash among the Americans who stood on the National Mall for his swearing-in, each one would have gotten about $699.
The inaugural committee says any money not spent will be given to charity — but Mr. Trump’s record of lying about his philanthropy puts that in doubt.
Two presidents before Mr. Trump tried to limit corporate financing of their inaugurations. George W. Bush capped all gifts at $100,000 in 2001 and $250,000 in 2005. President Obama capped contributions to his first inaugural at $50,000 and banned money from lobbyists; he blew through that precedent at his second inaugural, capping individual gifts at $250,000 but accepting corporate cash of up to $1 million. Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee upped that ante by eliminating limits on individual contributions and retaining the $1 million cap on corporate money.
Trump Sees Government as a Series of Deals. That’s Because He’s an Oligarch.
Historians have (correctly) savaged President Trump’s recent query: “Why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?” As any educated fifth-grader knows, there was a war from 1861 to 1865 because Southern slaveholders insisted that they had the right to spread slavery across the nation, and Northerners, who thought that American society must be based on the compensated labor of free people, disagreed.
But there is more to Trump’s question than ignorance, and it lies in the idea that the root causes of the war could somehow have been “worked out.” His view of government as a broker of bargains rather than an expression of democratic will is nothing new. In fact, it’s been a common feature of oligarchic politics for nearly all of American history. In the light of the oligarchs of the past, Trump’s insistence that some deal could have prevented the Civil War has plenty in common with the anti-democratic wheeling and dealing of big bankers and slaveholders, and their fate bodes ill for the Trump administration.
“Why could that one not have been worked out?” sounds a lot like banking mogul J.P. Morgan’s comment to President Theodore Roosevelt in 1902, when Morgan found out that the government was about to slap his giant railroad conglomerate with an antitrust suit. “If we have done anything wrong,” the astonished Morgan said to Roosevelt, “send your man to my man and they can fix it up.”
