Fun fact:
George W Bush’s entire campaign budget was 198 million dollars.
Citizens United is allowing this one billionaire to donate more than that by himself.
Also, compare the breakdown of the 2020 race:
https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race
Biden’s campaign directly spent over $1B, and over half a bil of outside money (SuperPACs, I assume). Trump “only” managed about $1B combined.
IIRC, money spent directly by the campaign is also worth more; they get preferential ad rates.
Harris has already broken $100M in the first few days. Some of that was pent up donations from donors who wanted Biden out.
Probably tax deductible. Also, aren’t Tesla employees happy their owners gave their billionaire CEO a $50 billion bonus instead of sharing it with all their employees? Now they are just passing the bullshit bonus onto Trump instead of the middle class employees that work there.
Yeah but with the layoffs and impending implosion of the company people won’t be there for long.
How many billionaires are there? How many do the Republicans “have”?
There were liberal billionaires holding purse strings about college students protesting the killings in Gaza. This isn’t a one-party problem. Though Repubs are more blatant about their corruption because they no longer have any shame.
Zionists aren’t liberals in my book. They’re just a slightly different flavor of fascists who dress up their sick ideology with a Jewish facade rather than the more traditional Christian facade.
Not necessarily- most Zionists are Christians- they have the belief that the apocalypse will be declared by the antichrist at the Temple, so they want Israel to take control of Palestine, demolish the Al Aqsa mosque and rebuild the Temple.
They’re “Christians” who enjoy a little bit of Jewish-flavored fascism as a seasoning for their Christian-flavored fascism the same way they might enjoy a bagel for breakfast once in a while.
source?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Zionism
This should give you a bunch of sources- I learned of this from Dr. Bart Ehrman myself.
I haven’t heard that - can you point me to an article or something?
Look up Bill Ackman. There are others, but his name is the one I recognize from hearing about him on podcasts.
There were liberal billionaires holding purse strings about college students protesting the killings in Gaza.
What do you mean by the verb phrase “holding purse strings about” here?
I know what holding purse strings means: one controls the money for an operation hence gets to decide.
But what does to mean to “hold purse strings about” these protests? You’re saying they were funding them? Or funding reporting? Or funding the schools? Or what?
What’s “about” mean here?
They threatened to withhold donations unless the universities cracked down on the student protesters. Look up Bill Ackman. That’s the name I know.
Musk is a dumb piece of shit that didn’t earn his money.
Fortunately he’s one of only a hundred or so people evil enough to be a billionaire.
Good thing there aren’t any more evil people than that, given all it takes is the willingness to be evil enough to make billions.
There are 756 billionaires in the USA, 2,781 in the world.
They are propped up on the efforts of tens of millions of immoral ultracapitalists all clamoring for a piece of the pie, willing to exploit the labor of billions of people to hoard as much global capital at the top of the chain as they can.
Don’t underestimate the evil of capitalism.
I understand the general sentiment, but this whole “we’re no longer a democracy” is at best bullshit and at worst a dangerous statement to repeat. There’s a lot to fix in the US democracy (and somehow money involved isn’t even the most critical issue right now), but simply stating it doesn’t exist could empower some really destructive behaviour. Try living next to Russia for some perspective.
I see, it’s not as designed then… I’m not from US and I’m so confused every time I hear about rich people funding your politicians like it’s perfectly alright and absolutely not fucked up.
Well. The system didn’t originally come with any rules about money. And there was a period of massive corruption. We were working hard on fixing all of that until Reagan came along. And then the supreme Court blew it wide open with their Citizens United decision.
So yeah. It’s working as designed by the conservatives in the 1980’s.
It is just a weighted voting system where their opinion matters one billion times more than yours. I see no problem here.
I was waiting for someone to bring this up, it would be hilarious if Biden does something to put a wrench in this plan as a last FU to the republicans
Now that he’s not running he can do a lot of last fuck yous and take the grenade for them. Don’t know if he will.
Interesting fact about the timing. He started donating as soon as Trump promised to never release the Epstein files.
Ohhhhh, a vast and deep conspiracy!
Get a life.
Where did trump say that?
He started donating as soon as Trump appointed JD Vance as his VP. Vance is a protege of Peter Thiel, a Musk partner and Silicon Valley confidant.
Nobody is going to release “the Epstein file” (whatever the fuck that’s supposed to be) because Epstein was doing all sorts of shady shit on behalf of national security services in order to build compromat on people in conflict with those agencies. You didn’t need Trump to make any kind of promise for that (not that he’s particularly trustworthy anyway). What you needed was a guy on the inside, slavishly loyal to the Silicon Valley techbro community. And JD Vance is that guy.
Not everything is some national security plot. Its completely possible that he ran that kind of service purely for private interests. For instance, Ralph Nader had people trying to do that to him hired by automotive companies.
Not everything is some national security plot.
This was explicitly a national security plot. Epstein had known associations within national intelligence, both historically and at the time of his arrest.
So does twitter and whatever. This is a guy who hung out with rich people including prince andrew. Any contact could have been purely procedural. Whether there’s a real plot in there still hasn’t been proven.
Got info on that? I love the red string cork board shit
Hardly red-string. This is bog standard business news. JD Vance is part of the Thiel political incubator project, intended to finance both right-wing media projects and partisan electoral bureaucrats. He’s running the same playbook as Sheldon Adelson and the Koch Brothers employed a decade ago. A playbook they got from the O&G and Tobacco lobbies ten years before that.
If you’re looking to go down a rabbit hole on Epstein specifically, I might point you towards TrueAnon podcast. They did live coverage of the Gislaine Maxwell (ep 29/30) even getting into her trial. And they have a ton of material on the Koches (Ep 94/95), Elon Musk (The Lamest Show on Earth eps 1-3), and Peter Thiel (Palantir ep 105 and Survival Of The Grimmest ep 244).
TrashFuture does a ton on the Silicon Valley political networks as well.
Theil paid for his running for Senate and got him his jobs… Theil so happens to be a billionaire from PayPal, hmmm who else is a billionaire from PayPal .
Theil also bankrolled Hulk Hogans sextape lawsuit against Gawker, because nearly a decade earlier, Nick Denton (founder of Gawker) de-closeted him online.
Hmm who else was ripping off his shirt at the RNC.
(N.B. Nick Denton is an asshole here, but the moral of the story is don’t fuck with Theil because he holds a grudge).
I recently read (well, listened to) this book on the subject and it turned me on to the whole genre of non-fiction true-crime. I found it on Libby after hearing an author interview on NPR.
I have some ideas about what we should do with Musk and Trump, but they’re against instance rules
I learned a cool magic trick that changes the color of people’s posts! Check it out:
I have some ideas about what we should do with Musk and Trump, but they’re against instance rules
Hey, that looks like a nice DIY project!
yummy my mouth is watering
If at first you don’t succeed…
WINK
A nod’s as good as a wink to a blind bat!
Yes, bats, remember bats …
Know wh’ I mean? Eh?
Say no more!
What’s crazy is what its probably going towards.
AKA bombarding a handful of pour souls with ads and messaging in swing counties where it actually matters.
It seems like such a waste.
In the end, most advertising is a waste.
If idk, all car companies came together, pooled their resources and knowledge and created joint car lines, using standardized optimized production lines across all of them, resulting in only one line of car per use case (one large truck, one small truck, a 2 person car, a 4 person car, a family car, etc etc) then no advertisement would be necessary. They could make the prices as low as possible to cover costs while still allowing some research into better technology. Everyone would just know/be able to find out “oh if I want a car I go to these people” and then you just choose the car that fits you, there’s no advertisement necessary because there’s no alternatives.
Of course, that doesn’t work because people are shitty, it would be a monopoly and the monopoly would jack prices up to infinity, the quality would be as bad as possible, resulting in an incredibly bad product for incredibly bad value.
But theoretically, if people were good and working for the general good of everyone, took pride in their work to do it as well as possible and deliver a product with the highest quality possible, the above scenario would work.
If idk, all car companies came together, pooled their resources and knowledge and created joint car lines, using standardized optimized production lines across all of them, resulting in only one line of car per use case (one large truck, one small truck, a 2 person car, a 4 person car, a family car, etc etc) then no advertisement would be necessary. They could make the prices as low as possible to cover costs while still allowing some research into better technology. Everyone would just know/be able to find out “oh if I want a car I go to these people” and then you just choose the car that fits you, there’s no advertisement necessary because there’s no alternatives.
Of course, that doesn’t work because people are shitty, it would be a monopoly and the monopoly would jack prices up to infinity, the quality would be as bad as possible, resulting in an incredibly bad product for incredibly bad value.
You are basically talking about a socialist or communist ecenomy, and there are good reasons that that is a horrible idea for certain industries (and a good one for others, and an even better one with some kind of bastardized hybrid system like the chip industry in Taiwan).
There is no best system, IMO everything should be evaluated a la carte instead of trying to centralize or privatize things ideologically.
Many private organizations that get like this are like the worst of both worlds though, where they lose the entrepreneurial spirit, efficiency and drive without any of the “benevolent” motivations and restrictions of a centralized system, especially when they get rich enough to push back against ethics.
I mean, I said it doesn’t work
I wouldn’t be too shocked if the PACS were being used to funnel money to people’s pockets instead of an actual PAC purposes.
“Broligarch”
Broldigharchs
yes thats what im fucking saying
Is there a website that tracks the whereabouts of billionaires? If not, how hard would that be to build and maintain?
Asking for a friend.
That’s a great start. Now we just need a few dozen more. That way, we can all have greater access to a billionaire no matter where we are in the world.
so they can complain about global warming without us knowing how much they fly private jets?
People track Taylor Swift, Bill Gates, The Waltons, The Kochs, and others. There is no concerted effort, as far as I know, and people drop doing it, or pick up doing it, as they have interest, and time.
The worst part is that it works. People are too busy trying to stay affloat they just go by the ads they see and hear.
Which people? You? Who then?
