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Corporate political donations shatter record at $646M so far for US midterms

reuters.com

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Re: Corporate political donations shatter record at $646M so far for US midterms

#11

Post by triceratops »

lapcat wrote: post #2

> "It's part and parcel to a system that fully embraces free speech," said Tom Garrett, a vice president at the Institute for Free Speech. "All Americans have the right to express themselves and exercise their right to political speech to the fullest extent possible." Corporations are people, my friend.

> Corporations are people, my friend.

Then maybe we should start taxing them like people...

File the 1040 take only the standard deduction no matter your income. Revenue, not profit, is your income. Etc.

Re: Corporate political donations shatter record at $646M so far for US midterms

#12

Post by misiti3780 »

oefrha wrote: post #8

> It also leaves out the $106 million-plus Google co-founder Sergey Brin has spent in California fighting a proposed wealth tax and other issues Damn, I can't think of a better argument for wealth tax if one dude alone is willing to spend $100m to fight it. He clearly has too much.

[flagged]

Re: Corporate political donations shatter record at $646M so far for US midterms

#13

Post by siscia »

From one perspective I am not against lobbying in general.

The idea is that legislator don't have the full context and don't know the impact of their work - so they welcome industry or matter experts. Which is quite reasonable. I would argue that the job of the legislator is to know what they are doing, but I can see it being hard for specific technical issues that really benefits from first hand experience.

I am not even particularly against the idea of donating money to make sure a particular issue is known to the public, so that the public can make an effective voting decision.

But all of this seems quite too much.

Companies have disproportionate amount of money to donate and much less synchronization issue that citizen.

Re: Corporate political donations shatter record at $646M so far for US midterms

#16

Post by nemomarx »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #6
nyc_data_geek1 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is not speech, no matter what the courts say.

I agree in spirit, but if not courts, and government, who is the one who gets to decide on it? Since it's a democratic country, if people disagreed or had a strong opinion about it, then would've voted accordingly.

When was it put up to a vote? I don't recall many national elections where I was asked my opinion about issues, only to choose between two options. And most of the time between one option really.

Re: Corporate political donations shatter record at $646M so far for US midterms

#17

Post by bigtex88 »

misiti3780 wrote: post #12
oefrha wrote: post #8

> It also leaves out the $106 million-plus Google co-founder Sergey Brin has spent in California fighting a proposed wealth tax and other issues Damn, I can't think of a better argument for wealth tax if one dude alone is willing to spend $100m to fight it. He clearly has too much.

[flagged]

Omg great question you're so smart!

Re: Corporate political donations shatter record at $646M so far for US midterms

#18

Post by convolvatron »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #5
lapcat wrote: post #2

> "It's part and parcel to a system that fully embraces free speech," said Tom Garrett, a vice president at the Institute for Free Speech. "All Americans have the right to express themselves and exercise their right to political speech to the fullest extent possible." Corporations are people, my friend.

Citizens United is possibly the worst SCOTUS decision ever, on par with Dred Scott and Plessy v Fergeson. Abomination.

I think the idea that we should also be able to hide our large donations started here, but got reenforced by later decisions. ok, it's your money, you get to send it to whoever you like. but you shouldn't be able to hide. companies shouldn't act as cover for their owners, and if a candidate is largely propped up by the billionaire class then shouldn't voters at least be aware? shouldn't we be allowed to connect the dots and say 'wow, so you're removing protection for these wetlands because this guy threw you a couple million to get elected'?

Re: Corporate political donations shatter record at $646M so far for US midterms

#19

Post by openasocket »

I’ve always wondered why candidates need so much money. I mean, this doesn’t go directly into their pockets, it’s largely used to fund ads, right?

I have a pet theory about political ads that I would love to find data to be able to confirm/deny. My theory is that those political ads don’t actually convince anyone about who to vote for, and aren’t intended to. Instead, it’s about convincing the people who already support you and your party to show up and vote. If that’s true, then the root cause of all of this money being injected into politics is really a symptom of low voter turnout. And so anything we can do to improve voter turnout will lessen the influence of money in politics.

My justification for this theory is that I see all of these political ads and really don’t find them convincing or liable to change my vote. I actually find attack ads often have the opposite effect on me, where I am immediately skeptical of whatever claim they advance and feel sure there’s important context they are leaving out. Of course I know I’m not the average voter, and other people may see it differently, but I’d love to see some data on this.

Re: Corporate political donations shatter record at $646M so far for US midterms

#20

Post by ericmcer »

einszwei wrote: post #14

Article says that there is an increase of 40% from 2024 to 2026 for political donations. Interestingly, the NASDAQ over the same time has also grown 40%.

Good point, the endless growth means comical amounts of money at the top.

It feels like they discovered in 2008 that you just never let the stock market go down. Then corporations have endless funds and excess can flow freely into politics.

They just have to convince everyone the market going up is good for the average person. The big problem is most people can't afford to invest so they don't give a shit what it does.

Fortunately they are creating a $1000 investment account for all newborns so everyone will be addicted to the market remaining green from birth.

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