The Mother Jones 400 (1996)

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The Mother Jones 400 (1996)

An interactive database of the top campaign contributors

For years Americans have wondered whether a secret elite really runs the country. The Illuminati? The Establishment? The Mob? The answer is less glamorous and more troubling. In the 1990s, influence is available to anyone who can spare, say, a hundred grand to underwrite a few political campaigns.

In the Mother Jones 400, we identify the nation’s largest political contributors. You can check out this list of the fattest of the Fat Cats in its entirety. Or do some investigative work of your own and dig around using our interactive, searchable database of the top 400’s itemized contributions.

Most of these Cats see their donations as sound investments; in return, they ask for – and receive – generous tax breaks or legislation favorable to their businesses. Read about the Top Five donors and get a sense of what influence the bigwigs wield. You can view other members of the 400 that the MoJo crew investigated a little further in our Snapshots section.

The influence of the 400 is fundamentally at odds with the American ideal of popular government and sparked demands for reform. Reform initiatives have had success at the state level, but the Congress has done next to nothing when it comes to campaign reform. We here at the MoJo Wire hope that this feature will fuel the fire of those who want their votes to count as much as that of a New York investment banker. Or a camera-shy Cleveland billionaire

Acknowledgements | MoJo 400 Overview

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

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