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We know who backed Romney but who backed Obama?

Who backed Mitt Romney in his election attempt?


Romney's top five sources of donors were: Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, and Wells Fargo.




As The Wall Street Journal noted in 2008, no major U.S. corporation did more to back Obama than Goldman Sachs, yet in 2012, none has done more to help defeat him.  Why this volte face by Goldman Sachs? And why did the Dow Jones drop so sharply on new of Obamas' reelection?

Leaving those questions aside for the moment, We all know who backed Romney, the liberal media made sure of that, but little is known of who backed Obama.  Was it the little guy? Mr Jo Average. It is not that simple, the  truth is far  more self serving and thereby sinister than  the in your face obviousness of the major financial institutions backing Romney.

So who are these people who bankrolled Obama? In 2008 there was the belief that it was the 'little guy',
millions of them across the nation who donated their hard earned 5$ to get Obama elected.  Some called this mob rule, or mob democracy. In 2012 we find the backers of Obama are the guys who rule the mob. And it it a surprising band.


This group might be called the new Utopians. They are the elite or believe themselves to be. Although elites never believe that they are elite. Anyway, these elites mistakenly treat human nature as something that can be engineered and corrected by instruction from their enlightened betters, that is them. I know, it gets more Orwellian by the second. The approach of these elties, although often grounded in what they believe is good intention, can easily morph into a technocratic authoritarianism. And it has.

So lets cut to the chase. Obama’s big donors have come from the tech sector, government, and the academy: with his top five made up of the Harvard, University of California, Microsoft, Google, the U.S. government. Tech heavyweights such as Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg have given maximum donations to the president, as have Eric Schmidt and four other top executives at Google. And, needless to say, a big donor was the Entertainment Industryor some would term 'those painted fools that comprise 'Hollywood'.

But why are these people backing Obama? Apart from the obvious self-interest of the Entertainment Industry,  it is a little bit more difficult to unravel their reasoning but worth the effort.

These ideas welders, Harvard, Univsersity of California, Googe  make fortunes not through tangible means but by manipulating (cookies in your computer)  and packaging information. They have no interest in the mundane such as: a large-scale agriculture, housing, and manufacturing. They can afford to be 'progressive', since they rarely deal with  day to day sweat and toil of physical infrastructure.

As one unravels their interest, one sees there is a growing synergy between science, academia, and these information elites. Environmental policies pushed by the scientific community not only increase specialists’ influence and funding, but also the emergent regulatory regime expands opportunities for academicians, technocrats, and professional activists. It also provides golden opportunities for corporate rent seeking, particularly among those Silicon Valley figures involved in a host of heavily subsidized “green” ventures.

In many senses, we are seeing a “progressive” version of the  two Americas. Much of the U.S. is struggling, but Obama backers have thrived. Why is this?

Between late 2007 and mid-2009, the number of Federal workers earning at least $150,000 more than doubled.  Phew, and I thought kind of buying
of public opinion by giving them all jobs paid by the Government only happened these austerity days in Hollande's narcoleptic France.

As government has grown even while the economy staggers, the direct and indirect beneficiaries of that growth have hitched their carts to the administration. Many professors have been protected by tenure, even at hard-hit public institutions. Foundation and NGO heads, financed by philanthropy—much of it from often left-leaning Trustifarian inheritors—have remained comfortably secure, as have their good workers. And Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke’s money policies have funneled cash from return-starved investors into the coffers of tech and social-media companies.

So now we know why they are backing Obama, it is naked self-interest cloaked in velvet. They are the winners and firmly believe themselves to be perhced on their lofty heights.

There’s an old name for this new group of winners: the Clerisy, which British poet Samuel Coleridge  defined in the 1830s as an enlightened educated class, made up of the Anglican church along with intellectuals, artists, and educators, that would school the rest of society on values and standards.

But in many ways the New Clerisy most closely resembles the First Estate in pre-revolutionary France, serving as the key organs of enforced conformity, distilling truth for the masses, seeking to regulate speech and indoctrinate youth.

Most of Obama’s group serves, as Bell predicted, a “priestly function” for large portions of the population.

This post-industrial profile has shielded the post-industrial elite from the harsh criticism meted out to Wall Street grandees and energy executives by green activists, urban aesthetes, and progressive media outlets. Steve Jobs, by any definition a ruthless businessman, nevertheless was celebrated at Occupy Wall Street a cultural icon worthy of veneration.

For the most part, the members of the groups that make up Obama’s Clerisy, like any successful priestly class, embrace shared dogmas: strongly secular views on social issues, fervent environmentalism, an embrace of the anti-suburban “smart growth” agenda, and the ideal of racial redress, of which Obama remains perhaps the most evident symbol.

These secular clerics have been extraordinarily influential about global warming, primarily advocating limited consumption by the lower orders.

The Clerisy, as  can be seen clearly in the secular mecca of California—also seeks to impose mandates on more and more of private decision making, whether shaping college admissions and the composition of corporate boards, as well as basic choice in everything from housing types to food consumption.
The Clerisy often employs populist rhetoric, but many of its leading lights, such as former Obama budget adviser Peter Orszag, appear openly hostile to democracy, seeing themselves as a modern-day version of the Calvinist “elect.” They believe that power should rest not with the will of the common man or that of the plutocrats but with credentialed “experts,” whether operating in Washington, Brussels, or the United Nations.

The prospect of four years of plutocratic rule under Romney would have been no cause for celebration for those who would like to see greater social justice and reduced inequality. But it might prove less damaging to the country than allowing Obama’s new, secular priesthood to wreak damage on the economy that could take decades to unwind. 

Just wait till the ratings agencies attend to
the US Government's inability to deal with their trillions of dollars in debit.  Thsi day of reckoning will come and the USA's credit worthiness might face the ignomy of being  downgraded to junk status. In other words declared officiallybankrupt, which unofficially it is now.
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Source: Joel Kotkin   November 01 2012

 











 

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