|| -----Original Message-----
|| From: Hakki Alacakaptan
|| (...)
|| According to
|| http://www.opensecrets.org/newsletter/ce72/04hightech.asp, tech
|| firms are emerging as a new lobbying force (although
|| MacroSleaze packed the
|| biggest wallop with almost 30% of total computer/service sector
|| contributions with 2.3 mil it paid to be beat the DoJ antitrust rap).
|| Although tech firms don't pay a hell of a lot more to dems than
|| to repugs,
|| their rank among dem contributors is significantly higher (5th vs 10th,
|| 6.56% of total contribs vs 4.07%). If the trend continues, the
|| tech sector
|| once considered apolitical could be a solid dem power base much like the
|| entertainment industry.
|| (...)
Looks like somebody noticed this before me. But Schwartz & Hozic take the point even further: The dems have a power base in the new economy (and old labor) while the old economy roots for the repugs; the stock market bets on the winner, which is the real reason behind the tech stocks collapse.
Hakki
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/03/16/schwartz/print.html Who needs the new economy? Bush's bias toward industrial dinosaurs is strangling America's high-tech-driven growth.
By Herman M. Schwartz and Aida A. Hozic
March 16, 2001 | Ever since Deep Throat whispered "Follow the money" to Bob Woodward, journalists and pundits have been alert to the importance of money in U.S. politics. In the midst of the current economic downturn, however, they've been looking in the wrong direction. (...) Smart investors have anticipated the predictable changes in government spending patterns coming from the change of administration and placed their bets on the companies and sectors that are most likely to benefit from the Bush administration: defense, energy, tobacco. Meanwhile, entertainment and technology stocks, the pillars of both economic growth in the past decade and of the Democratic Party's campaign funds, are quickly crumbling in Wall Street.
Sectoral shifts of this magnitude cannot easily be offset with tax incentives and interest rate reductions. Paul Krugman has calculated that the negative wealth effect from the recent collapse in share prices will more than offset any plausible increase in consumption from George Bush's proposed tax cut.
So, what is actually going on in the stock market? The story is much less complicated than pundits would make us believe. Wall Street is simply following the trail of campaign contributions and electoral outcomes.
It's a cliché that the 2000 election revealed a country divided, but one division still rarely discussed is the widening sectoral gap between the old economy firms that favored the Republican Party and the new economy firms that favored the Democrats. During the 2000 presidential campaign (according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics and the Center for Public Integrity) around 80 percent of campaign contributions by oil, gas, agribusiness, automotive and tobacco firms went to Republicans, as did two-thirds of defense industry money. In contrast, money from the Hollywood entertainment complex, cable TV, toy companies and their associated California hardware and software firms went 3-to-2 to Gore and the Democrats. (...) Investors have been pricing this old economy/new economy split into share prices ever since the primaries. While Wall Street voiced little enthusiasm at Bush's good performance in the polls last April, his selection of Dick Cheney as his running mate at the end of July, the well-mannered GOP Convention in early August and even the Supreme Court's ultimate decision in mid-December each triggered a sell-off of technology stocks and a gain for the stocks of GOP corporate supporters. (...)