The handful of people that control our elections.

From Mother Jones
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6 Mind-Blowing Stats on How 1% of the 1% Now Dominate Our Elections

Here's a statistic that should jolt you awake like a black coffee with three shots of espresso dropped in: In the 2012 election cycle, 28 percent of all disclosed donations-that's $1.68 billion-came from just 31,385 people. Think of them as the 1 percenters of the 1 percent, the elite of the elite, the wealthiest of the wealthy.

That's the blockbuster finding in an eye-popping new report by the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan transparency advocate. The report's author, Lee Drutman, calls the 1 percent of the 1 percent "an elite class that increasingly serves as the gatekeepers of public office in the United States." This rarefied club of donors, Drutman found, worked in high-ranking corporate positions (often in finance or law). They're clustered in New York and Washington, DC. Most are men. You might've heard of some of them: casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Texas waste tycoon Harold Simmons, Hollywood executive Jeffrey Katzenberg.