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.
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.
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.
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.
Well Putin did it, was found out, and - nothing happened so. Why not.
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”
I love Elon Cuck cosplaying as a “Texan cowboy” but too stupid to realize his hat was on backwards 😂😭🤡
What a dipshit.
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.
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.
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.
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…
yes thats what im saying
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.
“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.
link is in the first comment
Nope, nothing there. Still waiting for actual facts.
WASHINGTON, July 15 (Reuters) - Billionaire Elon Musk has said he plans to commit around $45 million a month to a new pro-Trump super political-action committee, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.
So you object to the WSJ, and/or their not-naming their source.
No, I object to no paper trails or direct videos or quotes from Elon himself saying he will do it. They don’t even have a email transaction log or call log to show he has been in contact with the super pac.
No problem. You can be on that side, believing all the same stuff, and only be against the more extreme methods of group-based self-deception. It’s just bad internal intelligence methods. No biggie. The core philosophy’s still sound, I’m sure.
Are you a bot?
I’m not American. Can someone explain how they are ‘allowed’ to do this? Similarly, how is the war chest created?
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
What a racket.
Thank the corrupt supreme court.
You spelt democracy wrong. /s
Cleptocracy oligarchs. Yay!
You spelt Oligarchy wrong (absolutelly not /s).
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.
can we all share some info about his daily habits? what his security detail looks like, etc?
What roofs he never looks at
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?
So…you just copied this from a tweet a few posts down, and made it ugly? Nice job.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
How long you suppose the economy can recover if we ban billionaires and rule that they share their profits rather than hoard them?
You’ll get labelled as “too old” for that kind of thinking.
Ban billionaires from what?
existing
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.
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.
