Are the top 1% richest Americans liberal?

Is the Pope Catholic?

Of course they’re liberal, overwhelmingly liberal, progressive, left-wing, or however they might be labeled these days. The Top 1%, those who were aptly identified by Occupy Wall Street, used to be called the “Eastern Seaboard Liberal Establishment.” President Dwight D. Eisenhower lifted the curtain slightly in his farewell address to the nation when he referred to the liberal establishment as the “military-industrial complex.”

Who are the top 1% richest individuals and corporations in America? A glimpse at the biggest, the richest, and the most powerful actors in a number of areas reveals the wealth and power of the liberal/left establishment and they’re getting richer and more powerful as they concentrate more wealth and power into their own hands. The top multi-national corporations are run by and are largely owned by liberals while the mid-sized and smaller corporations have an increasing representation of conservatives as the scale goes smaller. 

This is also the pattern when it comes to American foundations, academia, the media, cultural institutions, insurance, real-estate, inherited wealth, and certainly non-profits.

The biggest banks and investment firms are liberal and so are big oil, big pharma, and the medical establishment. The biggest player in the American oil business has always been the Rockefeller family going back to John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil. The Rockefellers are the quintessence of American liberalism as they have spearheaded such liberal causes as “progressive” education, eugenics, and internationalism. The Rockefeller institute founded Planned Parenthood which more openly focused on eugenics and population control before World War II and also the research of Alfred Kinsey. The Rockefellers have long sought to take over the Republican Party by driving out the conservatives. Other liberal families with oil interests include Armand Hammer of Occidental Petroleum and the Gore and Kennedy families.

Even a cursory examination of the boards of directors, the top employees, and the largest share-holders of the biggest American corporations reads like a Who’s Who of the Liberal establishment. The 3 biggest foundations, Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie, are liberal as is the Tides Foundation and most of the other big players. The top academic institutions in America are unquestionably dominated by liberals. The biggest TV and print media outlets are liberal as is the booming internet industry. The Forbes Magazine list of the 100 richest Americans is made up of about 75% liberals.

What are some of the tell-tale signs that the top 1% is left-liberal? The orientation of the biggest corporations is a free trade agenda that allows them to operate in a world without borders and without national loyalty, ideas that they view as outdated. The biggest corporations overwhelmingly support liberal causes, big government regulation and laws to cut out competition, and high taxes that they don’t pay, due to their international position, but serve to cull the investment capital of potential competitors. Franklin D. Roosevelt protected the interests of the biggest American corporations, referred to by the short-hand term “Wall Street” when he included in the establishment of the Federal Trade Commission laws that would prevent the formation of local and regional stock exchanges. This created a virtual investment monopoly for the liberal biggest corporations trading on Wall Street. A more recent example of liberal legislation is the Dodd-Frank reforms which enshrine bailouts for the liberal banks that are “too big to fail” while regulating the smaller and generally more conservative banks.

There certainly are a few members of the top 1% that are conservative and we all know their names since they stand out like a sore thumb. The most famous example is the Koch Brothers who have financed libertarian initiatives that would limit the size of government and allow for more capital formation in the hands of the smaller players where conservatives can be found. Koch industries employs tens of thousands of Americans and David Koch has donated almost a billion dollars of his own money to charities. Because they are the exception to the rule, the Koch’s have been called out by the perhaps well-meaning but utterly clueless Occupy Wall Streeters.