So another way to look at it is that by eliminating a few thousand parasites, we can reshape our political landscape…
YSK that 158 families made up 50% of all US Presidential Campaign Spending
Submitted 3 months ago by Davriellelouna@lemmy.world to youshouldknow@lemmy.world
Comments
sartalon@lemmy.world 3 months ago
And this article is 10 years old. It has gotten so much worse.
yucandu@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Should figure out where they live and protest on their street instead of burning down the local 7/11.
BaldManGoomba@lemmy.world 3 months ago
The only access to them is media in the backroom or private event held by rich asking what do you think of protests on main street because you can’t get close to their property and if you can they are probably in another house
yucandu@lemmy.world 3 months ago
People snuck into a military airbase and spray painted an RAF plane the other day and got away with it.
Rich people get complacent. They’re so proud of themselves, so fat and satisfied. They can’t imagine that anyone like us would ever get inside their house, walk their floors, spit in their food.
WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
The rich aren’t accessible, but their property sure is awfully flammable.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Citizens United was the final straw in the downfall of America democracy.
It’s been inevitable since.
kalkulat@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Citizens United Corporations have been ‘people’ since the 1886, as the USSC decided in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad.
Yet somehow, unlike most people, they’ve escaped having to go to jail when they commit crimes.
ReverendIrreverence@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I’ll believe a corporation is a “person” when Texas (or Alabama, Florida, South Carolina etc) executes one of them
eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 months ago
An oligarchy is what America has been for over a decade now officially. Every politician is bought and sold, told to vote on every bill by the companies lobbyists that line their pockets. Every vote is controlled by mass propaganda on every network and every corporate social media.
But we’re a democracy, right?
Ileftreddit@lemmy.world 3 months ago
THIS ARTICLE IS FROM 2015 A DECADE AGO IT HAS ONLY GOTTEN WORSE SINCE THEN
kalkulat@lemmy.world 3 months ago
158 families isn’t much to feed 300 million starving people. We need rules on who gets to eat the 0.01%
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 3 months ago
Fuck that. First come, first serve. Get it if and while you can.
TooPoor@lemmy.world 3 months ago
If my math is correct 158 families would be around .00005%. They have no clue what life is like for the average person yet they have so much influence. Gross.
galoisghost@aussie.zone 3 months ago
And they all have addresses.
umbrella@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
[deleted]MBech@feddit.dk 3 months ago
Golf is such a perfect rich person sport. It wastes a ton of space, destroys local wilflife, the hardest part is done by the caddy (i.e. not the rich person), and at the end you feel like you accomplished something, but you’ve done absolutely fuck all other than show off your expensive shit.
BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Plus it gives you a nice excuse to get drunk and ride around in a tiny car like a little boy
thermal_shock@lemmy.world 3 months ago
And they have to have complete silence! It’s not a sport at all, it’s just showing off your clothes/clubs. Such weak ass players can’t be heckled at all like any other real sport. LMAO.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 3 months ago
The key to returning democracy to the people is to limit the involvement of money. First step is to repeal “Citizens” United, the law that officially sold the US government to corporations and the wealthy under the guise of Freedom (as usual). Second step is to outright ban political compaign contributions from non-individuals. Organizations aren’t citizens. They can’t vote. They shouldn’t be allowed to pour money into elections.
WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
It’s not enough to reform campaign finance. We need to destroy the class of people behind this. We need to really wage class war, a class war of annihilation.
We need a national wealth cap. 1000x median household income. Anything more is taxed at 100%.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I agree with those ideas too.
thermal_shock@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Income isn’t how their taxed, but I get your point.
ReverendIrreverence@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Let’s start with stopping Billionaires. Once someone gets to $999,999,999 they are awarded a plaque that states something along the lines of “Yay, you won Capitalism (or, frankly, corporatism)” and force them to divest themselves from all companies and stocks etc and live on their ranch in Aspen and live off the almost Billion. Any income that ends up topping their financial worth over a Billion is taxed at 100%
Tikiporch@lemmy.world 3 months ago
People talk about the Harambe timeline, but Citizens United is when the shit started going sideways.
thermal_shock@lemmy.world 3 months ago
It’s going to take the boondocks saints taking these people out one by one like Luigi before anything meaningful happens. They only care about their life, let’s remove it from the equation.
pinheadednightmare@lemmy.world 3 months ago
In the end, when Trump is certified as the modern day hitler, these families need to be held accountable…. Like the soldiers of the concentration camps.
turtlesareneat@discuss.online 3 months ago
There are only a few outcomes that would lead down that road, and while I hope for one of them, I am pretty convinced they’ll all die happy and rich in their warm beds of old age after getting lots of plastic surgery and riding on lots of jets and jetskis
cabron_offsets@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Fuck scotus. John Roberts is the most damaging traitor in American history.
Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 3 months ago
wasn’t there some billionaire that ran for president, spent hundreds of millions and got like <1% of the vote?
awesomesauce309@midwest.social 3 months ago
Yeah Michael Bloomberg bought his way through the rest of the primary debates then when it came time for the primary vote nobody wanted him.
Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 3 months ago
Michael Bloomberg
That’s the one!
Bloomberg spent nearly $1 billion on his three-month presidential campaign
nbcnews.com/…/bloomberg-spent-nearly-1-billion-hi…
So my next question is:
Just 158 families have provided nearly half of the early money for efforts to capture the White House
Just how effective is advertising in the presidential race when you can spend a billion and go no where?
Stern@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Perot did pretty well on his runs iirc. But I don’t think he’s the one you were talking about.
Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 3 months ago
Yep sorry it was Michael Bloomberg
Gudl@feddit.org 3 months ago
We should eat them all
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 3 months ago
They visit each others mansions so they can make sure they are still keeping up with the other billionaires.
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Yes, and so what? $5.5 billion was spent on the 2024 presidential election. That’s very little. There are individuals capable of spending more than that. So if spending more could actually affect the outcome in a significant way, why wasn’t much more spent? Surely the difference between Harris and Trump is worth more than just $5.5 billion to some group. My conclusion is that while some amount of money is necessary to run a campaign, even the relatively small amount being spent now is so far past the point of diminishing returns that spending more isn’t worth it even to billionaires who could easily do so and care a lot about the outcome.
Pringles@sopuli.xyz 3 months ago
I think you have lost all sense of how much a billion is from it being thrown around so much. 5.5 billion is an enormous sum of money. Think of how much 1 million is, then imagine spending that 5500 times. It’s an obscene amount. Sure, some people have more wealth than that, but it’s still an absurdly large amount.
whostosay@lemmy.world 3 months ago
OPs username checks out
stickly@lemmy.world 3 months ago
This is bad because it means if you want to run for office, your campaign is mostly floated by this tiny group of people. $5.5 billion sounds small until you realize that breaks out into millions of dollars for any individual. Unless you’re rich enough to ante up (and repeat that every election cycle), you’ll never play the game.
More isn’t spent because it doesn’t need to be, not because it isn’t effective. The policy goals of the 0.01% are basically in lock step, why would they bid against each other? Regardless of the raw number, the average politician has to equally weigh their representation between the needs of the 0.01% and the 99.99%.
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
The policy goals of the 0.01% are basically in lock step, why would they bid against each other?
The Democrats and the Republicans both raise money.
selfdefense420@lemmy.world 3 months ago
if the people went after the wealthy first, they could use the spoils to fund the revolution
humanspiral@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
Gotten worse since 2015.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 3 months ago
In the US the term “informed electorate” is a joke. Big elections are advertising competitions.
ABetterTomorrow@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Tax them bitches
whostosay@lemmy.world 3 months ago
“mainly selfmade wealth”
That doesn’t exist, let’s stop fucking pretending it does.
dhork@lemmy.world 3 months ago
What they really mean is that they didn’t inherit their immense wealth, which means there was a time in their lives when they weren’t obscenely wealthy.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Except even that doesn’t hold up under close scrutiny. A big component of the market cap of any Fortune 100 company stems from equity and debt held by the generationally wealthy. Amazon and Tesla aren’t worth $1T without the Vanderbilts and the Carnegies and the Adelsons and the Waltons bidding up asset prices.
What’s more, the biggest source of market capital is inevitably government contracts. You can’t tell me that Michael Dell is “independently wealthy” when the bulk of his fortune came via the Texas public school system buying all his company’s computers. Particularly when the governors, legislators, and board members making these decisions are (a) big shareholders of the Dell corporation and (b) legacy scions of wealthy Texas families.
jimjam5@lemmy.world 3 months ago
To them, poor is probably like just a few dozen million USD.
whostosay@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I get what they’re getting at, but selfmade has that connotation with it.
They could say not inherited vs inherited wealth
danc4498@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I made all my money myself. After I graduated from private school with my personal trainer and one on one tutoring and my car I didn’t have to work for and my apartment I didn’t have to pay for I definitely earned my first job myself. I mean, my dad didn’t interview with his good friend from the country club, I DID! Give me the credit I deserve! I am a self made man!
kalkulat@lemmy.world 3 months ago
They get to play in a sandbox designed for them. They’re taught how to play in the sandbox, and are given the toys to play (roads, electricity, raw materials for example). We get to be the sand.
whostosay@lemmy.world 3 months ago
If only the sand realized how many people and weapons there are. We could figure this shit out in a day
unphazed@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Only two super wealthy people come to mind: Oprah and Rowling. Both are bastards (Oprah mostly because of who she endorsed and her increasing lack of connection to the average American).
parody@lemmings.world 3 months ago
Who helped Taylor Swift? (I don’t know myself)
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 3 months ago
They mean as opposed to inherited, not in the way you mean it.