Summary
Elon Musk’s threats to fund primary challengers to Democrats in safe districts, following his role in nearly forcing a government shutdown, have reignited calls for campaign finance reform.
Musk, who spent $277 million backing Republicans, criticized a bipartisan spending bill and used his platform to sway GOP opposition, influencing legislative outcomes.
His intervention has sparked outrage among Democrats, with leaders like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warning of rising oligarchy and calling for reforms to limit super PAC and dark money influence.
The episode highlights growing concerns over Musk’s political power and its impact on democracy.
OMG you guys, could Bernie have been right?!? Could it be that the citizens united decision has been a disaster for the country that we should’ve been organizing for an amendment to fix this whole time? Or were the multi-billion dollar pacs – the ones that are only made possible by this terrible decision – right when they said he was a scary socialist that wanted to make America into Venezuela or whatever?
I always thought the billionaire supervillain with campy punchlines and so annoyingly obvious and mask-off manipulation, threatenings and other evil goings-on was a dumb, unrealistic and improbable trope
But here we are
I’d love to see Bernie’s idea of taxing anything over 999 million at 100% get implemented. I bet most Americans would actually be for this.
You can get by on 999 million.
Yeah, but just because, let’s say, 90% Americans support it doesn’t mean it will ever get passed.
And, when you get into the 999 million club, you also get a red hat that says “I won” on it because you’re an insecure dipshit in a cult that needs constant validation because your father didn’t love you, elon.
There are some problems with it that make it not as simple as it would appear.
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If it was 100% perfect and not cheatable then the economy would a just around it as the new norm. In a few years people would say “you can get by on 99 million” and they’d be right. There would be calls to lower it again and the economy would shift around it. Imagine an MMO with a max coin cap and you can visualize the economy of it. The price of everything might eventually come down, but we would still be unable to afford any of.
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It’s cheatable. Elon can’t make 70 billion in one year? That’s why he has 70 kids and they’re all employees of Eloncorp and they each make 1 billion. Or, if you don’t trust your kids (which he probably wouldn’t since …) You could just form 70 corporations to hold the money.
Rich peoples money is tied up by accountants and lawyers so tight there isn’t a magic fix for it. Elon could litigate through an entire presidency until his paid for politician was elected and could undo the tax laws.
Point 2 I agree 110%. It’s why the system in and of itself is flawed. The more money you have the more you learn to protect it. The problem needs to be fixed on the person level and that’s not happening because you will always have rich assholes that will lie, cheat and steal.
Point 1. You don’t know that and none of us do. You may be swinging at windmills for all we know.
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My inner Trotskyist telling me that this is actually a very good transitional demand
It’s a whole can of worms no one in the financial sector wants to tax unrealized gains like you’re imagining tho. I like the idea in general.
The main part of the tax is that rich assholes would not longer be able to use those unrealized gains as collateral for loans. Because as soon as those gains are realized, they’re taxed.
This alone would massively limit the power of rich assholes.
Yup, the borrow buy die financial strategy should be 100% illegal.
Honestly, at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if they backstop a Bitcoin bubble bust with taxpayer money. This country has been fully corrupt for some time now.
Elon is sure acting like he feels like a god lately. Hopefully it doesn’t all blow up in his face because he’s a bumbling dumbshit or anything…
We need Mario.
Because he sadly is. He has more money and wealth than God.
What’s really sad is just how fucking cheap it is for him to buy candidates.
Trump and Musk are both ego maniacs. They will have a falling out, just a matter of when and how salty they will be publicly. Fingers crossed for full on social nuclear war!
This is what you get when you define corporations as people and define money as speech. (Citizens United) The monkeys are running the zoo
Like that will ever happen.
America reforming its corporate dictatorship is about as likely as it reforming the British Empire or Confederacy.
new urgency
Anyone who had their minds changed over this can eat shit. If you have to be personally effected to realise something is wrong you need to [removed]
“Hey I know just made more money than the Roman empire was worth by manipulating politics but ummmmm… could you please make rules that stop you from beating everyone else?”
The time to stop this was in 2016. Democrats had every opportunity and continued to fellate their corporate overlords instead of even paying lip service to their base. We’re in the “find out” phase. I’m sorry you’re losing your job, but guess what, it only gets worse from here
Citizens United decision was in 2010, and after 2011 they lost the votes needed ever since, so probably more like 2010/2011 was the only time they had enough power to do anything about it.
To be clear, a law banned PACs in 2002 but the courts decided that banning the pacs violated the first ammendment, meaning that simply passing a new law wouldn’t cut it. You would need either a constitutional amendment, replacing the courts, or some other measure involving a supermajority.
I remember calling it the last free election back then and people said I was being dramatic.
15 years of examples later, Project 2025 is on our doorstep and I’m still being dramatic …
Great point. I’m sure like most things related to shitty American politics if you go back far enough there’s Reagan bullshit in there too. We had a lot of opportunities to not be here, and yet here we are
Yeah I really wish I didn’t have to think about Reagan’s bullshit like all the time.
A. Fucking. Men. Brother
Just to add a little bit of humour to this situation:
Reading your comment without the periods becomes “a fucking men brother” which can be interpreted however you like
Nixon was terrible, but the ball really, REALLY got rolling under Ronnie Raygun.
Let’s not act like the Citizens United decision hasn’t been a major, major issue in US politics since it was made
Fat fucking chance it passes under Republican Majority, but if they do somehow get Citizens United overturned then I’m willing to forgive them.
I heard that Citizens United is woke. Everybody’s been saying it.
So he could finance a “Democrat” who will promise to switch parties after they win?
I’m not sure how he could primary a Democrat unless he convinced people in that district to switch registration.
Pretty simple, he funds a “moderate” (read: right leaning basically republican who will obstruct regularly) democrat who will play the game for money, will say the right thing, play the role, and openly lie. Even if the funding is traced back to him a great deal of voters don’t pay all that much attention to nuance, they pay attention to headlines
So watch out for a bunch of democrat challengers with a shocking amount of funding following the fetterman playbook: initially appears as an “Everyman” with unclear politics (unless you dig), maybe says some promising sounding stuff about income disparity, cops being too much, the climate, or whatever’s the hot topic at the moment during the election, wears a hoodie! Then gets elected, has a fairly uneventful year, then starts to shift hard right when they need them to.
It has a huge chance of being successful, it’s worked many times. And when it works again what the fuck are you going to do about it? The incumbent has an inherent advantage once installed because people don’t pay attention, recall elections basically never ever happen, there is no accountability for them whatsoever so they will do whatever they want
He doesn’t need people to switch registrations. He just needs the currently registered voters to continue to be mostly low informed and the help of the media to keep them that way
Didn’t Fetterman’s views change after a major medical incident? It really just seems like he had an actual personality change after having a stroke.
This. He had a long history of being exactly who he said he was in local politics, which led to real grassroots support. He hasn’t been the same since. Whether it was medical or financial, he’s no longer that person.
Regrettably that’s probably what will happen.
Better hurry up. They have less than 4 weeks to change things. Soooo, it’s likely already too late.
they had four years, doubt four weeks is going to change anything.
this is just the corporats posturing to appease the peasants for next cycle.
see we wanted to take this away but they wouldn’t let us!
both parties are the same, rotten to the fucking core.
