I'm totally with you that jQuery is a crutch for a lot of devs, but it's also the easiest way to ensure backwards compatibility for IE 6+. If you have enterprise customers who refuse to upgrade it's probably the most stable way to support them while leveraging the power of modern browsers for enlightened users who have them.
Good that you mention this point. This is for me the main reason to use jQuery in a project: backwards compatibility. I am gladly in the position where I make my own business decisions and so I choose which browsers I want to support. That said I totally refuse to support super-old browsers like IE6. I even refuse to support IE9. If someone has trouble using a site built on modern standards: Go get a modern browser. If it looks shitty on your old IE6 then don't blame me.
