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  • Kalkaline @leminal.space
    861·
    2 个月前

    It’s absurd that politicians are allowed to accept campaign contributions from individuals and corporations. Campaigns should be publicly funded.

    • Omgarm@lemmy.world
      35·
      2 个月前

      The corporations is especially crazy. An individual supporting the democratic process makes sense. They are the ones voting. But a business doesn’t vote.

        • FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          3·
          2 个月前

          Maximum monthly donation should be tied to minimum wage for 1 day of work. Realistically, who (unless you’ve got malicious intent or you’re rich as fuck, in which case I’ll assume malicious intent), is going to donate more than 1-20th of their income to a political party. Want to donate more? Choose a charity instead.

          (And a bonus) this law would probably break the gridlock on increasing minimum wage.

      • Empricorn@feddit.nlEnglish
        9·
        2 个月前

        The very-dishonestly named “Citizens United” fucked over We the People. Badly. Now, even Democrats and Independents have to also raise obscene amounts of money to match what giant corporations almost always throw at the Republicans who promise to lower their tax rates, limit regulation, repeal environmental and antitrust restrictions, etc.

        If it’s not yet fully a capitalist hellscape, it’s well on its way there…

    • TallonMetroid@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      2 个月前

      Campaigns being explicitly publicly funded would also have the benefit that if the fatcats want to contribute more*, they’d need to pay more taxes!

      *while still not getting to choose who they’re actually contributing to, because eat the rich

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
        12·
        2 个月前

        It also stops what is going on right now thanks to Citizens United- foreign dark money coming in to influence elections.

        Because Russia is very likely pumping a lot of money into U.S. elections and they’re probably not the only one. It’s legal, so why not?

    • themadcodger@kbin.earth
      8·
      2 个月前

      But won’t someone think of the poor corporations?! What about their free speech?

      • Roberts, probably. I didn’t actually read citizens united.
        • themadcodger@kbin.earth
          3·
          2 个月前

          I’m all for the corporate death penalty. Need a bailout, sure. C-suite is fired, assets seized, and corporation becomes nationalized.

          Or something like that. There’s a reason no one has consulted me on the best way to accomplish this.

          • bamboo@lemm.ee
            2·
            2 个月前

            I mean if the government is providing a bailout, at a minimum they should get shares of the company at the current market value. If that’s a controlling share, well then it’s as good as nationalized.

  • Juice@midwest.social
    54·
    2 个月前

    US government gives multi multi billionaire most of his money, billionaire turns around and gives it to Republicans. how’s your money in politics working, is it good?

  • rjthyen@lemm.ee
    44·
    2 个月前

    Let’s say he donated the highest amount of 6 figure (i didn’t read the article), 999,999. His net worth is at 260 billion, would be the same as me donating $2.50 in regards to my net worth, and i consider myself technically pretty okay money wise. It’s absurd how much billions are…

    • fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc
      12·
      2 个月前

      Article says it was $289k.

      There’s other donations though:

      How much money Musk ends up investing in the election remains an open question. In July, the Wall Street Journal reported that he planned to donate around $45 million a month to help Trump. Musk, however, later denied the report.

      Despite the influx of cash from Musk, the NRCC raised just $9.7 million in August, compared to $22.2 million raised by its Democratic counterpart.

      • rjthyen@lemm.ee
        3·
        2 个月前

        Still extra sickening how much billions are. Even if he actually did 45 million it would have roughly the same percentage impact to his net worth as me spending $100

        • fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc
          1·
          2 个月前

          Yeah… but that’s only the volume of money.

          The bigger picture is that he’s allowed to use his wealth to influence elections which will of course favour himself and others of his ilk.

          He’s using his money to convince people to vote against their own interests. The whole thing is cooked. Wrong on so many levels.

          • rjthyen@lemm.ee
            1·
            2 个月前

            I agree, i was trying to also bring to light that he can have that much influence with an amount of money that could almost be a rounding error to him.

    • jj122@lemmings.world
      4·
      2 个月前

      Just speculating here but it could be a joint fundraising committee donation. Basically allows a contribution to one entity to be distributed to many political entities. So the contribution limit would still apply but you can contribute to all people/pacs/parties associated with that committee. Doing some terrible calculations that would amount to like 1.7m if you maxed out contributions to every general election candidate ($3300 x 538) and excluding parties/pacs.

      https://www.opensecrets.org/joint-fundraising-committees-jfcs

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
    15·
    2 个月前

    It’s pretty cool how he has the ability to single-handedly improve the lives of people in absolute misery (it’d cost him nothing to renovate one homeless shelter, for example) yet he spends his money on stupid shit like this. /s