$45 Million Per Month, As One Does
$45 Million Per Month, As One Does
131 comments
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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.
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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.
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Dude was born and raised in South Africa pretending to be an American (much like Ted Cruz who was born in Canada) interfering in US elections. It’s fucked.
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Our whole schtick is (supposed) to be that anyone who wants to come here and make a life here is an American.
There's plenty of things to be pissed at Musk for, especially in relation to how his family made their money in Apatheid South Africa (emerald slave mines), but him being born elsewhere isn't it.
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That shtick is just a shtick. Every country with a functioning government has standards for who they'll allow to immigrate and become a citizen, and Musk is precisely the kind of person I'd want to keep out. He's making a life here as a billionaire, not an American, because billionaires have no real nationality, just flags of convenience. I don't want him on my planet, much less in my country, and I especially don't want his greasy money in our politics.
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Lol. These fuckers are all ladder pullers. Check out the tenets of project 2025. They want to kick immigrants OUT. Musk is donating $45 million per month toward kicking immigrants out. He got his though, so…
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Yeah but the dude is also pro slavery. If you're a foreign billionaire coming here to make money and promote slavery then I'm not sure I'm prepared to call you an American. No matter how historically accurate it may be.
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Eh, now you're getting xenophobic.
There's a ton of reasons to criticize musk on without resorting to such stupid argument "he's not a real 'murican"
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I love Elon Cuck cosplaying as a “Texan cowboy” but too stupid to realize his hat was on backwards 😂😭🤡
What a dipshit.
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Wait until you hear about this guy named Rupert Murdoch.
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Or as we call him in his original country, 'Cunt'!
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That Aussie cunt and fat boy Elon were sucking eachother off this year in the same suite at the Superbowl whilst plotting America’s demise.
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Well Putin did it, was found out, and - nothing happened so. Why not.
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I'm not American. Can someone explain how they are 'allowed' to do this? Similarly, how is the war chest created?
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Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert did a lovely series about this.
But in short, Donating millions to Trump. Illegal. Donating millions to Trump PAC. Legal. Trump can not spend Trump PAC money directly. Trump can say "boy I wish I had millions of dollars in political ads in a specific states at specific times about these specific topics." Trump can also get pretty specific about the details.
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The Supreme Court declared money to be "free speech" and therefore protected by the first amendment. Therefore, if you are a billionaire and wish to throw elections to a fascist of your choice, that is protected speech.
The case is referred to as Citizens United. It's also the source of the phrase "corporations are people, my friend" as it affords first amendment protections to corporations which are not people. Except in the crooked eyes of the fascist Supreme Court majority.
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Short version: strategically place judges at all levels of jurisdiction, bring cases in front of them that upend protections aimed at preventing exactly that type of oligarchic power buying and thus rewrite the laws through these hoops until Freedom of Speech is conflated with buying elections.
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You see, despite appearances, companies are actually people. Not in a real, people kind of way. Specifically, in a "the best of both for them" kind of way.
Then was have to remember that paying to circumvent and unduly influence democracy is, we're to beleive, "free speech ^^^^tm" and, contrary to any and all logic, is actually very democratic. Then you have to remember that there aint no limit on freedom in America, baby!
If that doesn't make sense to you then you're a freedom hating commie.
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The distinction is that a Super PAC, is explicitly NOT for the direct benefit of a candidate: it’s for the donors to use their free speech to publish messages of their choice.
It’s legal hair-splitting
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Interesting fact about the timing. He started donating as soon as Trump promised to never release the Epstein files.
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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.
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Where did trump say that?
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Ohhhhh, a vast and deep conspiracy!
Get a life.
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He also planned to have a bulletproof window cyber truck. He should plan to get his head surgically removed from his ass. Since that is apparently where it's been for a decade.
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No, he should throw a bag of money at a deaf proctologist who doesn't use social media.
If he had a say over the operation, after 3-5 years they'd end up shoving a robotic arm up there so he could tweet faster
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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.
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Yeah but with the layoffs and impending implosion of the company people won't be there for long.
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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.
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US is not a democracy, it is a plutocracy, an oligarchy
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Is any other country a democracy? I thought for it to be a democracy you needed “everyone” to vote for every law rather than electing representatives.
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You're thinking of a direct democracy. The modern term is a catch all for everything from that to limited democracies that require things like land ownership to vote.
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You're foolin' yourself. We're living in a dictatorship! And how'd we get that, eh? By exploiting the workers. By hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society.
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Yes.
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Tucker Carlson, famous proponent of democracy.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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You get the president you
votedpaid for!-
Well the billionaires may want to ask for a refund considering how terrible Trump is......wait the billionaires know exactly what they are getting with Trump; a shitty President that will allow corruption to flourish and lower tax rates.
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"Corruption" is such a bad word. When you're the billionaire profiting from it, it's just good words like "common sense policies", "good business practices" and "it's fine, everybody's doing it". And if you own the right media conglomerates, that's then the public opinion too!
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Billionaires shouldn’t exist. So many lives could be improved with this, it makes me sick.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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They threatened to withhold donations unless the universities cracked down on the student protesters. Look up Bill Ackman. That's the name I know.
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The funniest thing about this is as soon as he can trump will betray him.
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Everyone Who Supports Trump Will Be Shit On.
No Exceptions.
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"Broligarch"
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Broldigharchs
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Youve heard of corporations are people, now get ready for one person is a corporation.
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How long you suppose the economy can recover if we ban billionaires and rule that they share their profits rather than hoard them?
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You'll get labelled as "too old" for that kind of thinking.
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Ban billionaires from what?
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existing
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From keeping all the profit for themselves
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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.
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It is just a weighted voting system where their opinion matters one billion times more than yours. I see no problem here.
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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.
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Wait, this is about Elon Musk. Why isn't it in the Musk community over at !technology@lemmy.world ?
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Ha haaa - I see what you did there
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So I don't want to defend Musk but does anyone have any proof of him actually saying this or donating 45 mil? Its been going around like its a fact because the Wall Street Journal posted it, but Elon called it "Fake gnus" on twitter.
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Regardless of donation limits, election is an innately oligarchic feature. Election strongly favors candidates with money and time to spare. Elections also favor those with wide and influential social networks.
When you want to choose a candidate from amongst the elite, elections are great. If you want a democratic choice, you have to use sortition - choosing at random from the whole eligible pool, like we do for juries.
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Wow. Yeah I . . . uh . . . I don't want that.
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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.
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Which people? You? Who then?
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damn, think of all the great lawyers he'll be able to afford now
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yes thats what im fucking saying
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So...you just copied this from a tweet a few posts down, and made it ugly? Nice job.
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yeah I copied it from your mom.
NO I didn't copy it and make it ugly FFS I stole it from someone else on the interwebs as is tradition. Nice job.
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How many billionaires are there? How many do the Republicans “have”?
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I really wonder why so many of the super-rich back Trump. He has a really bad track record when it comes to honoring contracts, let alone promises. Add to it that he already tried to overthrow democracy, in which case your campaign contributions would become worthless the moment he manages to seize power.
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Dude, Trump got them their tax cut. He gave them billions in shady covid money. He appointed anti union judges. He's done a phenomenal job for billionaires, just like every Republican president.
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What I mean is that he clearly has ambitions to become a dictator, as seen when he refused to peacefully step down after losing the last election. The power billionaires wield comes from their ability to use their money to influence elections. Once there's no more free elections, the billionaires have a much harder time applying political influence, and doing so may get them killed. Compare the list of notable Russians who died under suspicious circumstances
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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.
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"Elon Musk says" not a Elon fan but where did he say that? I have only seen them say "Sources close to". If he actually does it and we have records yes it is bad. But right now it's just a rumor.
131 comments