Money manager makes it official: one huge donation, one vote

Wall Street to politicians: your “constituency” isn’t the voters. It’s your donors: namely, us.

A “longtime money manager” quoted in Saturday’s New York Times:

“Who do you think pays the taxes?…Financial services are one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let’s embrace it. If you want to keep having jobs outsourced, keep attacking financial services. This is just disgruntled people.”

He added that he was disappointed that members of Congress from New York, especially Senator Charles E. Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, had not come out swinging for an industry that donates heavily to their campaigns. “They need to understand who their constituency is,” he said.

Emphasis added. From the perspective of huge donors, elected officials’ “constituency” consists of them, not us. A sentiment no doubt widely held, but rarely openly avowed—until Occupy Wall Street provoked it. Keep up the good work.

Author: Andrew Sabl

Andrew Sabl, a political theorist, is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Ruling Passions: Political Offices and Democratic Ethics and Hume’s Politics: Coordination and Crisis in the History of England, both from Princeton University Press. His research interests include political ethics, liberal and democratic theory, toleration, the work of David Hume, and the realist school of contemporary political thought. He is currently finishing a book for Harvard University Press titled The Uses of Hypocrisy: An Essay on Toleration. He divides his time between Toronto and Brooklyn.

4 thoughts on “Money manager makes it official: one huge donation, one vote”

  1. Then there’s this: “Financial services…we…do it well.” Yeah, you had nothing at all to do with the economy cratering.

  2. “Financial services are one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let’s embrace it.”
    This statement has an interesting logic:

    “Potent marijuana is one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let’s embrace it.”
    “Pornography is one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let’s embrace it.”
    “Gun murder is one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let’s embrace it.”

    Wash, rinse, repeat.

  3. These are the savvy, foresighted, incredibly intelligent people who should be trusted to act as a chokepoint for the entire economy.

    One would like to claim that wall streeters aren’t the arrogant, delusional, insanely callous greedheads that leftist caricatures have always painted them as, but they’re not helping.

  4. For once I agree with the commentors. How could anyone on Wall Street be so stupid as to donate to the campaigns of Shumer and Gillibrand? I’d rather stick a needle in my eye.

    You do get the government you deserve (and pay for).

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