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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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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