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.
I have some ideas about what we should do with Musk and Trump, but they’re against instance rules
WINK
A nod’s as good as a wink to a blind bat!
Know wh’ I mean? Eh?
Say no more!
Yes, bats, remember bats …
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!
If at first you don’t succeed…
yummy my mouth is watering
Interesting fact about the timing. He started donating as soon as Trump promised to never release the Epstein files.
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.
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.
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.
Where did trump say that?
Ohhhhh, a vast and deep conspiracy!
Get a life.
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.
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.
so they can complain about global warming without us knowing how much they fly private jets?
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.
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.
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…
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.
That’s cool and all, and I generally agree, but the sheer fact that he’s a foreigner isn’t something to go after
Yeah, this isn’t europe.
Well if we’re lucky, he’ll move to Mars.
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.
Wait until you hear about this guy named Rupert Murdoch.
Or as we call him in his original country, ‘Cunt’!
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.
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”
To be fair, you can’t be President if you’re a naturalized citizen so the xenophobia thing is kind of built-in.
In this case, thank fuck because we’d have Musk running for President, guaranteed.
To be double fair that was written in there pretty explicitly as a preventative measure from the English getting a loyalist elected and reclaiming us.
I love Elon Cuck cosplaying as a “Texan cowboy” but too stupid to realize his hat was on backwards 😂😭🤡
What a dipshit.
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.
Billionaires shouldn’t exist. So many lives could be improved with this, it makes me sick.
The funniest thing about this is as soon as he can trump will betray him.
Everyone Who Supports Trump Will Be Shit On.
No Exceptions.
I’m not American. Can someone explain how they are ‘allowed’ to do this? Similarly, how is the war chest created?
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.
What a racket.
Thank the corrupt supreme court.
You spelt democracy wrong. /s
Cleptocracy oligarchs. Yay!
You spelt Oligarchy wrong (absolutelly not /s).
Trump can also get pretty specific about the details.
I want the Big Macs to be wrapped in 100 dollar bills for the commercial. After the commercial send them to my room to make sure they were wrapped correctly. Do it even if we cut the Big Macs out of the commercial as well.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
“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!
I’m not saying that this is a good thing, but the meme really wants you to believe that ordinary people have donation limits and rich people don’t. This is an oversimplification.
The limit is still $3,300 in individual donations directly to a campaign, no matter who you are. There is no limit on individual contributions to a PAC, so long as the PAC doesn’t work directly with any candidate or campaign when spending the money, and this also doesn’t matter who you are.
There isn’t a literal rule that separates the rich from the poor here. You too can donate your entire savings to a PAC without limits.
The real inequality is how much we can afford to donate. I won’t ever have $45,000,000 in my life, so I won’t ever get the level of political influence that people like Elon Musk can buy. I can try to exploit the same systems he does, but he’ll always be able to exploit them more.
I’m not saying that this is a good thing, but the meme really wants you to believe that ordinary people have donation limits and rich people don’t. This is an oversimplification.
Sure, but it’s a practical truth. Which is to say, it’s true.
Now, if you want to file the paperwork to start your own superPAC as Stephen Colbert did on his show, you can do that. It wouldn’t cost much. That would allow you to accept and funnel unlimited funds to whoever or whatever you wanted. The “laws” around it are ludicrous.
But if you’re a regular working stiff and just want to relax and not fuck around but feel like donating to a candidate - the limit is there for you. That’s the practical distinction that makes the meme true.
If someone works from 18 to 65 and makes $60,000 a year then over the course of their career they would have a total take-home pay after taxes of about one million dollars. This guillotine dodger is donating 45 people-lives worth of productivity a month.
So rich people don’t have a limit. Got it.
Wait, this is about Elon Musk. Why isn’t it in the Musk community over at !technology@lemmy.world ?
Ha haaa - I see what you did there
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.
Why did it take a week to deny it?
He posted “Fake Gnus” on twitter pretty quickly when the story came out. The more in depth denials are coming out now. The media sees something that they think will trigger an emotional response and they all run with it. The individual can deny it once, but the story was reposted/rehashed thousands of times. The fact that the WSJ originally reported it lends credence and all the other outlets just grab it and run. Imagine you’re famous and posted something like this about you. Would you then go on the offensive denying the claim, because you’d never be able to keep up with the shares/retweets/reddit comments without a bot army.
Usually you have a PR person asking news media to post retractions if that’s the case
Kamala Harris
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.
It is just a weighted voting system where their opinion matters one billion times more than yours. I see no problem here.
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.
Removed by mod
What roofs he never looks at
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.
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
