THE results of US elections are eccentric. While re-electing Barack
Obama to the White House, voters also chose members of the opposing
party as their representatives in Congress.
Pundits refer to this as division of powers at its best.
Today, next to President Barack Obama, Abigael Evans - the
four-year-old from Fort Collins Colorado - must be the second happiest
person that the presidential election is finally over.
Last week, Abigael became an instantaneous American celebrity after
her mum posted on a tearful, 22-second clip of her on YouTube declaring:
"I am tired of Bronco Bama and Mitt Romney." As of yesterday her video
had received more than 13 million hits.
She was not alone.
Living in a swing state, the little girl was among those who bore the
brunt of an estimated one million presidential election advertisements.
For anyone who has lived through a US election the immediate relief
is not the outcome, but the end of an incessant bombardment of primetime
commercials advising people who not to vote for, rather than who they
should.
In this election cycle, presidential candidates and Super Political
Action Committees (Super PACs) broke a new record - raising and spending
more than $2 billion.
US election laws do not allow citizens to contribute more than $2,500 to a candidate in an election year.
However, Super PACs were permitted in a 2010 Supreme Court ruling to
raise money from undeclared individuals or corporations and spend
unlimited cash during an election cycle.
This has more significance in this election as Obama could potentially fill more than half of the seats on the US Supreme Court.
Last month alone, Super PACs supporting both political parties invested more than $526 million in the US election.
The main Republican-inclined Super PACs were Mitt Romney's Restore
Our Future, American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS. An important
financier for Romney's Super-PAC was casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.
Adelson, who brags of being "the richest Jew in the world", was cited
by the British Guardian newspaper on November 1 as saying that
supporting the hawkish current Israeli Prime Minister was a "necessary
bulwark" to peace talks and Palestinian statehood, "a prospect he
abhors".
On the Democratic side, the pro-Obama Super PAC Priorities USA Action
was funded, among others, by Hollywood tycoons like Haim Saban of Saban
Entertainment and DreamWorks founders Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey
Katzenberg.
Saban, according to The New York Times on April 9, 2009, threatened
to withhold campaign contributions to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi if
Israeli firster Jane Harman was not appointed to an intelligence post in
a Congressional committee.
DreamWorks presented Israeli president Shimon Peres last March with
the original piece of artwork from their first animated feature film
Prince of Egypt.
Peres in turn, applauded Hollywood's influence on youth to the point
where "children believe the actors more than the politicians".
The major bankrollers on both sides of the US election share one thing in common - a special affinity to Israel.
This ensures that irrespective of the victor, an Israel-first
financier will have special access to the resident of the White House.
The Economist's special report on October 12 suggested that 80 per
cent of the cash that funds Super PACs "comes from fewer than 200
donors".
Statistically, this means that less than 0.0000007pc of the US
population has the largest impact in shaping the outcome of the American
election.
Chrystia Freeland, editor of Thomson Reuters Digital, sees status
symbol transformation for the super-rich - from conspicuous consumers to
influencing public policy.
She warned: "Democracy is supposed to be one person, one vote. But
when economic disparity grows and transfers into political disparity,
well, you have to ask where it's going."
