Daily Resource Highlight - 5/03/2021
Posted by on May 03, 2021 at 5:09 PM
Below are the highlights and featured resources of this past week’s Daily* Resource.
4/26/2021 - Issue One: 1/13 of Election Dollars Came From 12 Megadonors
Sometime it’s quite difficult to understand big numbers, including when it comes to money. My father Jeff Garson, though, came up with a simple thought experiment to wrap our minds around what a million dollars means as opposed to a billion. It goes like this:
You’ve time travelled back before the year 2000 and you want to count your money by hand before you reach the year 2000. If you had a million dollars and each $1 took 1 second, you would need to start the morning of December 21st, 1999, or about 10 days before the new year. If, on the other hand, you had a billion dollars, you would need to start in April of 1969.
A billion dollars is a lot of money, but billionaires do exist. Moreover, and unsurprisingly, some of these billionaires are using their wealth to support their favored politicians / political parties. According to the newest report from Issue One, just 12 mega donors accounted for 1/13th of the $45 billion given to federal candidates and political groups between January 2009 and December 2020, or $3.4 billion.
Issue One’s report breaks the numbers down further and examines the 100 top-giving ZIP codes, racial disparities in giving, and the profiles of the 12 mega donors. They also note that there are zero residents in 5 of the top 100 zip codes (find out how this is possible on page 4 of the report).
Also, in case you’re wondering, counting $1 trillion by hand would send you back to 29,710 BCE, or 20,000 years before the first written numbering systems.
4/28/2021 - The Fulcrum, Now Brought to You by BAEF
There is so much happening at the Bridge Alliance Education Fund, it’s sometimes hard to keep track of it all. This year, in particular, we are massively expanding how we communicate with you, our supporters. As you may already know, we have an active presence on all four major social media platforms -- Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. We also, of course, have this newsletter.
Our goal, though, is to reach enough Americans to accomplish real change in this country, which is why we’re stepping up our offerings by:
- Acquiring The Fulcrum, which is a premier online platform for coverage of the healthy self-governance movement, effective May 3rd, 2021
- Starting a podcast that bring the expertise of the Bridge Alliance and its partners to the general public
- Building an online portal where citizens who want to get involved in the movement can find organizations working on the issues they care about (more on this soon!)
The future of our nation is on the line, and we will not give up until every American feels empowered to help decide what that future looks like.
Featured
- AllSides - April 20th, 2021: How Can America Depolarize? The Best 11 Ideas from Early 2021
- Braver Angels (essay written by John Wood Jr.) April 19th, 2021: The Painful Path to Unity
- Braver Angels - April 26th, 2021: The Psychology of Disagreement | Julia Minson with Greg Steinbrecher
- Civil Squared (survey): Civil Squared Survey
- Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget - April 27th, 2021: Biden Tax Gap Proposal Deserves Bipartisan Consideration
- The Flip Side - April 27th, 2021: 2020 Census Results
- Independent Voter News (podcast) April 14th, 2021: The Next Steps In A Critical Pro-Voter Reform Movement
- Listen First Project (video) April 20th, 2021: #ListenFirst Friday One America Movement
- McCourtney Institute for Democracy - April 20th, 2021: Voting rights advocate Desmond Meade to receive 2021 Brown Democracy Medal
- McCourtney Institute for Democracy (podcast): The Democracy Group
- McCourtney Institute for Democracy - Democracy Works (podcast) April 26th, 2021: Colored Conventions Show Us Where Democracy Really Happens
- McCourtney Institute for Democracy (podcast) April 26th, 2021: Democracy Works: Can Pranksters Save Democracy?
- National Institute for Civil Discourse (video): Listening with Empathy and Humility
- Project on Government Oversight (petition): Tell Congress: Pass the 4th Amendment Is Not For Sale Act!
- Project on Government Oversight (statement) April 20th, 2021: POGO Statement on the Verdict in the Derek Chauvin Trial
- Project on Government Oversight - April 21st, 2021: POGO Statement for the Record on Whistleblower Reforms at the Department of Veterans Affairs
- Public Agenda (report) April 27th, 2021: America’s Hidden Common Ground on Overcoming Divisiveness
- R Street Institute (podcast) April 15th, 2021: Why can’t Congress do its job?
- R Street Institute - April 16th, 2021: The Filibuster Is Not A Veto
- R Street Institute (podcast) April 19th, 2021: Nila Bala on Improving Employment Prospects for the Formerly Incarcerated
- RepresentUs (petition): Tell President Biden To Support The ‘For The People Act’