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2016 Election Cycle Led By Billionaire Donors
Nicola Hahn writes: The pluralist stance of American politics contends that true power in the United States has been constitutionally vested in "the people" through mechanisms like the electoral process, freedom of speech, and the ability to establish political parties. The traditional view is that these aspects of our political system result in a broad distribution of power that prevents any one faction from gaining an inordinate amount of influence. And today the New York Times has revealed the shortcomings of this narrative by publishing the names of the 158 wealthy families that have donated almost half of the money spent towards the 2016 presidential race. This group of donors is primarily Republican and is dominated by interests in the banking industry. These facts lend credence to the idea that national policy making is influenced heavily by a relatively small group of people. That the American body politic is largely controlled by a deep state.
Today, the New York Times published a damning report on the portion of water that is wet, showing that 100% of water molecules are, in fact, quite wet. The report even tested salt water and brine water, which were also wet. This report may shed light on the traditional view that water is dry.
Unless they're directly buying votes, then that remains true. I'm not sure why we're equating advertising dollars with votes, because they aren't the same thing.
Take for example the Colorado state senate recall election a few years back: 11 times the amount of money was spent lobbying in favor of the incumbents as there was for the newcomers, yet the incumbents lost anyways.
Larry Lessig found this out the hard way, he assumed (very stupidly I might add) that he could just buy votes for his mayday campaign. Instead he found out that every candidate he spent money on that won was already likely to win anyways, and the rest lost.
According to the FEC, contributions to Democrats so far total US$64.2 million, while contributions to Republicans total US$61.2 million. Hillary Clinton has received US$47.1 million, more than the top three Republican candidates combined. (Not surprising, given the fragmentation of the Republican field).
The summary's breathless implication that "rich Republican bankers are buying the Presidency" doesn't appear to reflect the facts.
Once you get past the Pavlovian reaction to "socialist", you'll find that he is the only candidate NOT dropping to his knees in front of the latest batch of plutocrats. If nor no other reason, a victory for him would be a victory for democracy remaining in the hands of the people.
The truth of it isn't interesting, to me. It's that this sort of guillotine-bait is being publicized when the 'deep state' OP cites, is specifically interested in having no such information be available.
I think it just goes to show the power of the whistleblower, and the instability of extreme injustice. When it gets this obnoxious, it's as fragile as it appears impregnable. Kind of like the USSR, which more or less imploded and balkanized.
News is the interface between the information and the act of communicating it. In this case the information is very old news to anyone who's been studying the world for a while, but the act of communicating it is strikingly different. This is off-script, and doesn't serve the interests of the 'deep state'.
And this is precisely why the advertising industry doesn't exist.
Well, with so much regulation, taxation, and rent seeking, "when the means of production are bought and sold, the first thing bought and sold is the legislature."
Translation: If the goverment didn't have such intrusive powers to begin with, especially into the economy, there wouldn't be such fights to wield its power.
inb4 someone yelpz about corporations being citizens with speech rights, needing yet another belabored explanation of the actual Supreme Court ruling.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
For presidential races after 1900 turnout is usually 50-60%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
meep
https://www.opensecrets.org/pr...
bernie sanders largest contribution out of ~15 million is 15,000 from google.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."
"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"
"What?"
"I said," said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, "have you got any gin?"
"I'll look. Tell me about the lizards."
Ford shrugged again.
"Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happenned to them," he said. "They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it."
"But that's terrible," said Arthur.
"Listen, bud," said Ford, "if I had one Altairian dollar for every time I heard one bit of the Universe look at another bit of the Universe and say 'That's terrible' I wouldn't be sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.”
For all man's accomplishments, we're still largely at a tribal stage where we will instinctively protect the in-group even when it makes no rational sense to do so. It's millions of years of evolutionary baggage that we need to overcome as we move forward.
Ahh, another self-described Homo economicus.
Where would Slashdot be without the powerful man who is 100% rational, informed, and pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
The Koch Brothers do not believe in climate change, or in any public policy that would do anything to mitigate it.
Oh, the Koch Brothers believe in climate change, alright. They realize how damaging the reality is to their business interests. That's why they funnel so much money in to conservative candidates and PR groups to create the false impression that there is serious scientific debate.
Suzanne Goldenberg of the London Guardian reports that "conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120 million . . . to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change," helping to "build a vast network of think tanks and activist groups working to a single purpose: to redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarizing 'wedge issue' for hardcore conservatives."
What pleases me is that no amount of money can keep the current set of Republican presidential candidates from self-destructing every time they open their mouths. The GOP should heed Bobby Jindal's advice to "stop being the stupid party."
That's a generalization that is sometimes fair, sometimes not. Rich people occasionally throw their money at unprofitable things for principled reasons. Anyway, by making this bald generalization, you definitely have the class warfare/envy shtick down, so I guess thanks for illustrating my point.
it's about controlling. You're viewing the money issue in a vacuum, assuming it's the only factor at work here. The key to politics is to get out the vote. It's to make people who have a hundred other things to worry about and are exhausted at the end of the day drag their tired asses to the polls and vote. You do that with advertising. You make sure they don't forget to vote after their second shift at the Arby's or after the meds that keep their heart pumping kick in.
There's more to it. You Gerrymander so the people who vote against you don't count. You shut down pulling offices so they can't vote. You make it so signing up to vote gets them Jury duty they can't afford to serve. When you're a billionaire with an entire society's wealth at your disposal you can hedge your bets.
There's two really easy solutions to this. a. You're not allowed to donate to a politician you can't vote for and you're not allowed to buy advertisement in a race you can't vote in. There's your free speech issue solved. b. Mandatory voting. It's like Jury duty on steroids. Everyone over 18 votes unless their declared legally incompetent.
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So people elected by 15% of the eligible population ends up as the Representative. No wonder they don't listen to you. You did not elect them. 85% of America did not elect them. You find it in the polls. 85% of America has negative opinion of their Reps.
If mere 15% more people arm themselves with facts, start showing up in the polling booth, register as independents to vote for the best candidate from either party, the influence of money on the politics will wane. Don't blame the rich people for being jerks. Blame the non-so-rich people for being lazy and ignorant.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
If you want to change the system then you have to be involved a lot sooner than voting day.
And it all starts at the grassroots level.
Don't simply vote for the "lesser evil" in your local elections. Get out and help campaign for someone whom you could actually support.
Get your friends together and form your own voting bloc.
Schedule time to meet with the candidates. Even the ones who "have no chance".
MAKE the change instead of waiting for someone who's already bought to do so for you. Because that isn't going to work.
Don't normally post on politics, but have disagree on this one. Money has alway an important played a role, but so did political parties, pecking orders, etc. Nowadays, it's all about the money, and a single well-heeled benefactor can keep an otherwise unviable candidate in the running. Political parties have lost much of their clout because candidates no longer need the machinery they provide.
Hopelessness is learned, you know, and I believe it is one of those those things that is indeed uniquely human. No, that's not true, you can even teach a dog to be scared to walk through an open door.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
And with that first comment, you perfectly demonstrate your complete lack of understanding of the desire for a just society. Up until the seventies, the blue collar middle class grew and thrived. People could work a single job and buy a house, raise a family, live a modest lifestyle, and be perfectly content. But since then those with wealth used it to undermine that culture, and thus began the decades-long erosion of the middle class and working families, all while those with wealth saw their prospects improve.
Now you have families where both parents work two or three jobs and still can't improve their economic outlook. There's much less opportunity to start a business. I'm not saying none, but much, much less. People just want a chance to give their children more than they had, to take risks to get ahead, to see their labor rewarded. Instead of taxing the rich more I'd much rather see a livable wage—or better still—a basic income guarantee that would bring these opportunities back to all of society.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
The real news is that the mainstream media (NYT) is reporting on it. Also, that money is influential is obvious, but the degree to which it is influential is finally being measured. With numbers backing up observation, and MSM exposure, something may have to be done about it.
Online tech forums are fond of saying the MSM is a puppet of government. Here we have an instance where it isn't.
That's news for nerds.
> Money has alway an important played a role
in the US. Most other countries have sane rules.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
When Wall Street paid for Senator Clinton's campaign, she "represented" 20 million New Yorkers, and saw 0.000001% of them face-to-face. She DID spend face time with Wall Street bankers, she didn't spend (unscripted) face-to-face time with "normal" people. Senators generally don't do that much.
My state representative represents 167,000 people, is my neighbor, and sees me once a week at church.
Who do you think is more influenced by Wall Street bankers vs influenced by people like you and I - my neighbor, who is my state rep and sits two rows down at church, or my federal senator? My state rep has never met any of the Wall street bankers who bankroll federal candidates.
At an even more local level, my city councilman represents a district of about 8,000 people. He's my daughter-in-law's brother. I have his phone number. He's also never met a Wall Street banker.
Political parties have lost much of their clout because candidates no longer need the machinery they provide.
Well, yes, and no. It has always been true that the wealthy, privileged have been able to buy power, and the tendency will always be for them to establish their own ruling elite, as long as wealth is allowed to overrule the will of the people. But I think there is something wider - and possibly more sinister - at play: the fact that the mainstream parties all look the same. We have all been sold the idea that "Capitalism has won, there is no other way" etc, so everybody is trying with varying success to be the same party, with slightly different tones of grey as the dominant colour. What is sinister about it is that is isn't exactly true - it is tale that has only been told from one side, and the assumption has always been that the economy MUST grow, no matter what. I think we will have to review that idea, sooner or later, is we wish to achieve a stable and sustainable society.
People - the ones that should have had a say in elections, but increasingly don't - are clearly sick of it; that's why Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party in UK, surprising everybody, not least himself. And that is also why the sillier parties like UKIP or the Tea Party movement have so much popular support - at least they look different, and they appear to have another way of doing things.
> It may just be that a successful democracy has a maximum limit of size before it ceases to function correctly.
Indeed. A solution that was proposed was that one could have a bunch of smaller democratic republics, and where large- scale action was required (such as a military at war), those sovereign republics would act as one by each republic having a vote on what the coalition (federation) does.
Local citizens would be served by locally elected publics servants for things like noise ordinances, schools, and anything else that doesn't directly affect neighboring republics. That is, each community rules themselves. To move mail around the entire federation you'd have a federation mail service, and when negotiating with foreign countries they'd act as a united federation. The concept was called federalism and the workings were described in a document called the US Constitution.
It was supposed to be separate states, but united. United States. During and after WWII, the federation government (federal government) assumed most of the power, and the states have allowed it.
Well, besides "dumb" and "smart", there's "experienced" and "inexperienced"; and experience shows while this has always been true to some degree, that degree varies over the years.
In particular if you are old enough to remember what the American middle class was like in the early 70s, it's a shadow of its former self. Oh, we're materially better off in some ways, but that's largely a function of (a) technological advances and (b) the shift from single earner households to dual-earner households and (c) a massive reduction in leisure time.
The bottom line is that fewer people have time to act as involved citizens. That creates a power vacuum that is filled by people with resources who can make a return on investing their time and attention in being influential.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Don't normally post on politics, but have disagree on this one. Money has alway an important played a role, but so did political parties, pecking orders, etc. Nowadays, it's all about the money, and a single well-heeled benefactor can keep an otherwise unviable candidate in the running. Political parties have lost much of their clout because candidates no longer need the machinery they provide.
Whats the difference between the USA and Russia regards elections?
In the USA, the friends of the party use gerrymandering to exclude as much as possible, opposition candidates.
The wealthy make sure to fund their candidates so that post election business can come to the wealthy, or that they can later work with their candidate to influence laws favourable to the wealthy. (eg, spend 500k to win 2-3million in business / year). Its known as one-hand washes the other.
In Russia, its one party. The opposition is eliminated, and the single party, favourable to the leader and his cronies influence laws favourable to the wealthy. (eg, spend 500k rubles to win 2-3million in business / year). Its known as one-hand washes the other.
At least with Russia, socialism provides good health care, excellent education, good jobs and vacations, and a relative even standard of living for the masses. Can you say that for the USA?
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada