r/politics • u/_May26_ • 7h ago
No Paywall ‘Billionaires Aren’t Compatible With Democracy’: Elon Musk Tries to Boost Ken Paxton With $158 Million Donation
https://www.commondreams.org/news/musk-paxton-campaign-donations•
u/Zestyclose-Egg6211 7h ago
There is no objective defense to having this type of money in politics.
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u/khaldun106 7h ago
Mother fucker could be wiping out medical debt instead trying to buy victory for the guardians of paedophiles party. Ridiculous that this money can exist in politics
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u/LiluLay North Carolina 7h ago
He’s purchasing guardians for himself. He tore up the us government to stop investigations into his malfeasance and famously said he would be going to jail if Trump lost in 2024. He’s protecting himself above all.
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u/thebhguy9900 5h ago
Remember the old Fascist said several times "we have enough votes", a few weeks before the election. They're repeating those same tricks this time around, selectively.
If they lose, they all go to jail.
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u/oldmanjasper 4h ago
If they lose, they all go to jail.
Everyone said the same thing in 2020. Then they lost, and the Democrats slow-walked and half-assed the few investigations that they opened and nothing happened.
I'm not optimistic that these assholes will ever see the inside of a jail cell, regardless of what happens in this election or even in 2028. The only way they'll face consequences is if we as a country progress from the ballot box to the other box.
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u/Flomo420 4h ago
Bullies don't stop because you asked them; they stop when YOU MAKE THEM STOP
anything less is placating their behaviour and reinforcing it
"The revolution will be bloodless if the left allows it."
YOU CANNOT ALLOW IT
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u/Riaayo 3h ago
Yes, the issue is that Democratic leadership are feckless controlled opposition that aren't willing to actually prosecute Republicans for their crimes.
We as a society have to change that dynamic and get rid of Democrats who won't uphold the actual rule of law against the oligarchy, rather than just pandering to the mass-surveillance police state by being "tough on crime" (throwing all of us into the prison slave labor industry).
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u/Lobster15s 3h ago edited 1h ago
As our friends in Europe say "A two party system is not a democracy." Number one on the checklist is setting a few more parties setup. When more parties have to compromise the public benefits the most. The second thing is citizens united, absolutely has to go. Need some form of ranked choice voting and it is increasingly obvious that above all else we need a no confidence vote in American politics. We have too many Fettermans in office, even one person who ran as democrat then voted with Republicans as much as he does would have already been too many. We need a way to get these people out.
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u/Unlucky-Candidate198 6h ago
Medical debt, student loans, hell he asked the UN to budget how to solve world hunger for him, then buggered off and bought twitter for more money by a large margin. He could pay off all of that and still live lavishly.
At this point? All current billionaires need to be tried for crimes against humanity. Their wealth and assets all seized and redistributed back to the nations and more importantly their peoples. Since all their wealth is stolen from the peoples anyways.
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u/Riaayo 3h ago
then buggered off and bought twitter for more money by a large margin.
Yes but here's the thing: He used other people's money to do that and it bought him the online town-square so he could force said town square to kiss his ass and feed his ego while influencing the public. It bought him power, and didn't use his own cash to do it.
Using his own money to help the poors? There's not a single atom in any oligarch's body that would have them do that out of the kindness of their heart. They use to do some philanthropy to dodge taxes and get good PR, but it was never about making the world a better place because a better world would never let them be so wealthy.
They're all scum. There is not a single good, ethical billionaire in the world. Musk is just an attention seeking manchild so he's more mask off about it. The others just stick to their high society and pretend like us poors don't even exist.
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u/ledfox 6h ago edited 5h ago
Medical debt exists to maintain a system that enables his wealth.
If things were better - less miserable for you and everyone you know - he wouldn't be as rich.
He's more likely to amputate his own foot than he is to pay anyone's medical debt.
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u/Several_Ad_1322 5h ago
He could end a lot of problems and so could a lot of others that have billions of dollars, including the housing crisis, poverty, food difficulties, he chooses not to.
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u/eeyore134 5h ago
Instead they're causing all of that. It'd be one thing if they were just ignoring it, but they're creating it.
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u/syrup_cupcakes 4h ago
The reason they are able to get that amount of money in the first place is exploiting workers and taking wealth away from working people, even middle/upper class people who own and earn a lot more than average.
I've seen it first hand when my department made the company millions in increased revenue, managers only got a few thousands, rest went into the pockets of billionaires.
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u/WhatsAboveTheSubtext 4h ago
Yeah, he could easily be seen the world over as a hero, and still be filthy rich, but instead... Ken fucking Paxton.
Whatever humanity one has at the outset, it certainly appears to diminish as you get richer. Things just go missing.
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u/Traditional-Goal-229 5h ago
Worst than that. They are spending as much as it is to wipe out medical debt SO they can make laws that make medical debt INCREASE.
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u/milkman1994 4h ago
It's that type of selfishness that allowed for his immense wealth in the first place. Any person with any decency wouldn't be a billionaire.
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u/_commenter 3h ago
I'm convinced some powers have something on him... he was literally begging for an invite to Epstein island
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u/tmmzc85 7h ago
There is no objective defense to having this type of money
in politics.
We got rid of kings for a reason. We have, together, built a great society, there is no reason we should be allowing sovereign citizens looking to carve out their only little fifdoms into it.→ More replies (1)•
u/droans Indiana 3h ago
What happens when the cattle ranchers have more power than the sheriff? The whole town burns down.
The government sold itself out to the billionaires. The cattle ranchers are in charge.
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u/inthekeyofc 3h ago
“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
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u/0o0o0o0o0o0z 5h ago
There is no objective defense to having this type of money in politics.
No reason to have that much wealth, period, full stop. Billionaires and democracy are mutually exclusive. Looks like we are all going to find that out the hard way.
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u/Typhus_black 5h ago
He and pretty much all of these billionaire oligarchs can essentially drop 250 million dollars in every US election cycle basically every time and still never run out of money. They can buy the races that sure important to maintaining their power. If just 4 of them do that it’s a billion dollars every two years towards whatever outcomes they want.
Think about how fucking insane and destructive that is to democracy.
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u/TheWatersOfMars 3h ago
$158 million is more than the extremely impressive $134 million James Talarico has raised from donors, big and small, since the race began. Musk blew it away in an instant, and to him, that's just the equivalent of me spending like $40.
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u/basil_not_the_plant 5h ago
"Money is speech". More money is more speech. Apparently SCOTUS couldn't see the dilemma for regular folks who would never "speak" as loudly as Musk ever could.
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u/Squirrely__Dan 4h ago
Sure there is. The supreme courts argument concerning citizens united was “there’s no way legalized bribery could corrupt politicians”
/s
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u/SerpentRoyalty 5h ago edited 4h ago
He is just a symptom of a system that allows this. He wouldn't be able to do any of this otherwise.
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u/haunter_ 6h ago
There is no objective defense to having this type of money in politics.
Sure there is. America decided they like it this way.
Otherwise don't you think we'd be out protesting Citizens United, or backing some candidate who wants to overturn the decision that made "political donations a matter of free speech"?
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u/Zestyclose-Egg6211 6h ago
There have been protests over citizens united, but like 5% of the American population knows what that is. And I also happened candidates who have said they went to limit the amount of political contributions in politics. Those politicians happen to typically be Democrats and the power of the letter R holds a lot more weight than an unsexy topic most people don't know much about but if you ask them surface level should someone be able to donate this much money, they would say no.
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u/haunter_ 6h ago
IMO Bernie Sanders was the last opportunity we had to course-correct and overturn Citizens United,
He was loved by the American people, but despised by the 2-party system, and so both parties colluded to shut him out.
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u/TheZigerionScammer I voted 4h ago
That's not true, Hillary Clinton also despised Citizens United (and she should, it was personal for her) and considered overturning it to be her litmus test for picking more Supreme Court Justices. If she got the same three Supreme Court picks that Trump got there's a good chance it would be overturned by now.
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u/aBrickNotInTheWall 7h ago
It's no coincidence that as the number of billionaires we have has increased our democracy has eroded more and more. But not just democracy, our entire society is eroding while we try to satiate their appetites
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u/Mindless-Fluffy 7h ago
Zero defense. One unelected South African billionaire can outspend 100,000 normal donors. He already bought Twitter to control speech, bought Trump to control government, now he’s buying the Senate. If this isn’t proof we need to tax billionaires out of existence and ban this dark money, what is?
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u/ZenBacle 5h ago
You forgot a zero or two. Most normal people donate at most 25 to a hundy.
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u/TheWatersOfMars 3h ago
It's the equivalent of every single person in Texas, including children and other people who can't vote, donating $5 each.
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u/ZenBacle 3h ago
I can't tell if you're dismissing the donation due to the small cost to normal people, or showing how absurd it is that yes throwing around the donation capabilities of the entire state of texas.
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u/disisathrowaway 4h ago
Taxing them out of existence is much more preferable to how I would suggest we solve the problem.
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u/HiphopopoptimusPrime 6h ago
It’s a terrible title, but read The Nerd Reich by Gil Duran. Lays out quite clearly Thiel’s agenda to subvert democracy and replace it with corporate feudalism.
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u/cheeze2005 5h ago
This is the consequence of letting republicans decide the law.
Republican scotus said you can have unlimited money in politics and here we are
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u/Ambitious_Petal 7h ago edited 7h ago
First trillionaire in history now dropping $158 million to buy a Senate seat for Ken Paxton, the most corrupt AG in America. This isn’t democracy, it’s an oligarchy and Musk is buying it piece by piece.
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u/onlymostlydead Washington 6h ago
And to drive it home extra-extra...That's the roughly equivalent of someone making $100,000 a year donating about $16.
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u/TAU_equals_2PI 6h ago
Which means he can afford to keep doing it again and again and again in every election for the rest of our lives without breaking a sweat financially.
He might not win this Talarico/Paxton election, but all that money will surely tilt the balance in many other future elections.
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u/NumeralJoker 6m ago
What's weird is he is spending it here and not elsewhere though and he still might not win.
He could buy off races like Iowa or Ohio far easier, I'd imagine.
I suspect this is more about him wanting a corrupt MAGAt like Paxton under his wing and influence.
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u/BlackberryPi7 Canada 7h ago
Paxton is going to lose hard
Imagine all the people this piece of shit could help with all that money and instead it's being fucking wasted
Fuck Elon Musk
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u/animatedrouge2 5h ago
He lost the Wisconsin special election for the Supreme Court seat. Can’t wait to see him lose this one too
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u/BrunoJacuzzi 5h ago
It's not wasted, it goes to line the pockets of media companies' billionaire owners.
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u/Automaton_General 7h ago
He can't lose, they rigged that shit 30 years ago.
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u/LarrySupertramp 6h ago
This idiotic rhetoric only helps. No one is spending that much money on an election that they know is rigged. No one puts on this much effort to disenfranchise voters if the election is rigged. Please stop helping the conservatives.
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u/TheWatersOfMars 3h ago
A lot of people decide their vote in the last few days and weeks. If the election is even a little closer than it seems, tons of cash for a ton of ads could genuinely swing it.
Don't forget, this is more money from one person ($158 million) than Talarico's raised since the race began ($134 million).
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u/inthekeyofc 2h ago
This is how here in the UK Brexiteers won the vote to leave the EU. One and a half billion ads individually tailored to the trigger points of 6 -7 million targets were flashed up on their social media feeds in the last 3 days before the referendum. The majority leave got was slim, but enough to carry it. Here the architect Dominic Cummings talks about how they did it.
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u/NatalieVonCatte 4h ago
Paxton, a man known not only for the intensity of his transphobia but his cruelty and fanaticism.
Kind of like how his 2024 donation almost matched the amount spent on those They/Them ads.
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u/Continental__Drifter 6h ago edited 6h ago
Albert Einstein predicted all of this in 1949 in his essay Why Socialism?:
Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.
Capitalism and democracy are incompatible.
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u/dontgetitwisted_fr 5h ago edited 5h ago
Gee this Einstein guy seems pretty smart
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u/Hussar223 4h ago
marx predicted all of this even earlier and wrote three massive volumes about it
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u/Continental__Drifter 4h ago
You're right, I should have quoted all of Das Kapital in a reddit comment. I'll do that next time, thanks!
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u/eskimospy212 7h ago
I’m old enough to remember SCOTUS saying with a straight face that this sort of thing wasn’t corruption we should be worried about.
It was a joke at the time but now…my god.
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u/Germafias 7h ago
I was just thinking.. like it wasn’t even THAT long ago, and look how quickly we got to where we are today with it.
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u/LumberBitch 5h ago
It pretty much was an immediate opening of the floodgates of corruption. Right after citizens United tea party goons flooded Congress with the backing of the Koch Brothers
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u/BeardySi 7h ago
Billionaires are incompatible with humanity
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u/JayHill74 7h ago
Especially the tech bros who have made it clear they don't consider the rest of us human.
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u/Kaleidoscope_sky 7h ago
I live in Texas and we are being slammed nonstop with campaign ads claiming kids are getting sex changes and Talerico wanting to charge parents wirh child abuse if they don't want to change their child's sex. It's so absurd you just laugh, then you open facebook and see people believing it
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u/otherwisepandemonium Wisconsin 7h ago
Paxton can't even show up to a debate because he, and everyone else, knows that Talarico would absolutely mop the floor with him and Paxton would have nothing of any substance to say.
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u/Aware_Cheesecake_519 America 7h ago
Billionaires are incompatible with democracy and are compatible with hypocrisy and criminality.
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u/Frodojj 6h ago edited 6h ago
Yep. Musk is a trillionaire (roughly). His political donation is the same as a millionaire donating only 158 dollars. The roughly 900-1000 billionaires in the US collectively own about 4.7% of the total net worth while representing 0.00029% of the population. Their tax rate is also lower at roughly 24% while the average in the US is 30%.
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u/TacticalFluke Michigan 3h ago
And for some reason, Peter Thiel, a billionaire, said "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." Which freedoms, Peter?
He also says regulating big tech, which he is, is the work of the antichrist.
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u/forestdude 2h ago
Is this a citizens united thing? How is this even legal?
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u/gandalf_alpha 1h ago
The thing that annoys me is that this amount of money is a complete pittance to him... It's about 0.02% of his total net worth.
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u/bonobro69 53m ago
Based on Forbes real time tracking it’s precisely 0.017391304347826087% of his net worth. The average American makes $69,846.57 that same percentage is about $12.15 just to give some perspective on this.
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u/AlphawolfAJ 20m ago
Well that’s awfully depressing. So he spent less than the equivalent cost of 3 gallons of gas here in Ohio trying to buy an election. Crazy
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u/readmorebookskids 6h ago
If your vote didn't matter, they wouldn't be pulling this bullshit.
It's not too late. But they would really like it if we'd all forget how many of us there are.
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u/Zaza1019 5h ago
We're never going to fix this problem are we? We have to wait 2 years just to have a chance, and people will be so worn out from dealing with Trump for 4 years and just trying to get a dem majority in the house, that people won't show up and give whoever wins the Presidency next time and give them a strong majority. Much less there is the chance that we get someone like Gavin Newsome who will cozy up to the same billionaires or will ignore fixing the problems.
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u/Dickies138 California 3h ago
Billionaires can’t afford to pay their share of taxes, but can afford to drop $150M on a corrupt POS’s campaign
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u/Biggandwedge 3h ago
You need a democratic president who will break all the rules to do good things. Like you need the pendulum to swing fully the other way. Enough of the bullshit following decorum and stupid rules.
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u/totally_not_a_dog113 2h ago
We need an FDR or LBJ. Executive Order number 1 needs to be 'undo all previous executive orders by the Trump administration'.
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u/TheIrishbuddha 3h ago
Whew! Don't want to get high on that Hopeium but one can only hold out for such a change. Ol' Chuckie and Jeffries ain't cuttin' it right now.
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u/D-Will11 2h ago
Get rid of the “must be born in US” requirement and elect Mamdani in 2028.
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u/Cloaked42m South Carolina 5h ago
If we win, this can be solved with a single piece of campaign finance legislation.
But yeah, We the People can't out spend billionaires, but we can out vote them
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u/phaedrusTHEghost 4h ago
They've been eroding our defenses against them since the discovery of the Americas. Reagan was a big break through.
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u/GuerreroUltimo 2h ago
That is on the people. Worn out? From what? Yeah, there is a lot of shit but that is life. I am gonna vote. I am gonna vote Democrat unless there is a Republican that have actively ALWAYS stood against Trump and also has some good values I agree with. I am not owned by the party ideology most Republicans and many Democrats are.
Problem with Republicans is they want the worst candidate it seems. Have to be hard core anti-Democrat, anti-LGBTQ, all that to even be considered. When we need focus on this countries problems. That debt that Reagan started. Bush Jr. ran on the Clinton surplus and giving it back in tax breaks. Those went to the wealthy and also lead to a deep recession as they horded money at the top. Trump has done this well.
We need real candidates that can win. I personally like AOC. I also like Andy Beshear. I think he has done a great job here. I would have to vote Newsome over the Republican for sure as the next R will be a Trump Republican still. If not they allow Trump to try again, would not be surprised. Seen a good number of MAGA say "I already voted Trump 3 times. I would do it again".
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u/Horror-Plankton-3503 3h ago
Why does Elon always look like he’s frowning so hard his jaw’s gonna crack?
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u/davecouliersthong 3h ago
It’s a common trait of people with autism that they are unable to identify, process, or perform facial expressions in the appropriate context. He’s obviously trying his best to appear “normal” but it comes out as this deformed painful grimace.
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u/t1kiman 3h ago
Capitalism isn't compatible with democracy. That's just the way it is, they follow completely different and in the end contradictory goals and values.
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u/nutationsf 3h ago
A capitalism where you could not cheat, meaning you have to pay all costs including a livable salary and the damage to the environment you caused - looks a lot like socialism
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u/Y0___0Y 6h ago
None of this was allowed until 2012. We had a system where there were limits on how much money wealthy people could donate to political campaigns before that.
It was solely the Republican party that introduced all rhis corporate money into politics.
The supreme court ruling to allow this was made exclusively by Republican-appointed judges.
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u/100percent-sales-tax 5h ago
Where are all the "Uhm ackshually they aren't really billionaires they have like zero liquidity" mfs when this galactic chud casually drops 150 million on his favorite state level politician in the moment?
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u/Frost_Monkey 3h ago
Pretty sure those mfs all went offline when some data centers were blown up
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u/VirtuaFighter6 6h ago
Think about that, $158 million. You could change so many people’s lives with that kind of money. Instead, he uses it to prop up a droopy eyed douchebag. Just sick.
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u/tcwillis79 2h ago
Unless he’s bribing people for their votes I fail to see how anybody that wants talarico is going to change their vote to Paxton but what do I know. This is the easiest layup for Texas Democrats in a couple generations. I’m sure they will still blow it though
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u/thegoodnamesrgone123 1h ago
I’m sure they will still blow it though
It's not the Dems fault if you look at those two people and vote for Paxton
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u/WhyMustIMakeANewAcco 1h ago
The goal is not to get people to change their votes. That almost never happens. The goal is to get people that will vote Paxton to actually show up, and suppress Talarico voters.
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u/IncognitoAstronaut10 4h ago
When people finally realize it's not red vs blue, but is normies vs the oligarchy, which we have far more numbers, we can make a difference together. I hope this time happens in my lifetime before it gets far more out of control. But alas, the Trans deniers, women's sports, immigrants, and rage baiting continues to divide far more effectively due to the oligarchy owned media platforms. It's a long uphill slog, but I'm bit giving up.
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u/NumeralJoker 1h ago
But it is red vs blue because team oligarchy is team red.
Yes, they do try to influence the Democrats too, and to a degree they certainly do, but by and large THEIR preferred option is Republicans, which is why we end up in this mess in the first place.
When we tell you to vote against Republicans no matter what, we're pointing out how they ARE the tool of the oligarchy.
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u/Prestigious_Fox4223 4h ago
not red vs blue
It should not be a team sport, but only one team is trying to destroy democracy at the moment. We can discuss red vs blue once we don't have federal disaster aid based on the voting patterns of the state, wars being started to protect pedophiles, etc
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u/WorstDMImaginable 3h ago
The oligarchs only back the “Red” team though, so in a way it really is a Blue vs Red thing
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u/TurdWrangler2020 3h ago
They hedge their bets. You should poke around the Democrats finances. They're all bought and paid for.
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u/IncognitoAstronaut10 2h ago
I agree, it is currently red vs blue. I'm just saying long term. We've got to get the money out of both sides in the end. We need campaign finance reform and end of Citizens United. Remember, if they are willing to kill with Dobbs, Citizens United is much much younger.
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u/DaddyDontTakeNoMess 15m ago
People try that "same sides" thing. But it's consistently one side that tries to raise the minimum wage, help healthcare, and increase voting. The other side does just the opposite.
You're going to have billionaires that support both sides, but some billionaires agree that taxes for them should be higher, and would gladly pay more if it meant better education, etc.
The ones that are wishing the worst on people have the most to gain by giving to Republicans. The big donors on that side are some of the worst people imaginable.
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u/Carthonn 8m ago
I said this to my father years ago. That it’s not red vs blue but the haves vs the have nots and you’ve got to be humble or smart enough to realize we’re have nots. We are ants to these people.
He said I shouldn’t think that way.
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u/PunfullyObvious 7h ago
I'm thinking no individual should be able to give $158 Million to a political campaign. Maybe no more than a few hundred dollars.
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u/haunter_ 6h ago edited 6h ago
How dare you infringe on their "right to free speech" via unlimited political donations and bribery?
This is exactly what our founding fathers had in mind when they concocted the 1st Amendment.
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u/Plastic-Pension7263 7h ago
They’re the minority. We shouldn’t have to live in their world under their terms.
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u/Wauwuaw5983 5h ago
Musk merely shoving millions of dollars into a campaign is going to alienate some voters who were planning to vote for Ken Paxton.
People will still show up to the polls, but they might leave it blank or vote for a candidate with zero chance of winning.
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u/TheManInTheShack 4h ago
Only individual voters should be allowed to donate to political campaigns and then it should be limited to something like $5000 per candidate per election cycle.
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u/Fabulous-Kick-345 4h ago
There is going to come a time, probably soon, where even billionaires will be worse off under republican rule.
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u/davecouliersthong 3h ago
A simple billionaire could lose 99% of their wealth tomorrow and still be a multimillionaire who could live out their life at a level of luxury completely unobtainable to the average person.
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u/lih9 2h ago
They still exist in society and on this planet though.
We found out the hard way during the pandemic that plebs are the backbone of the economy and it doesn't run without essential workers. Supply chains need people to work and demand products, otherwise the economy falls apart.
There is no escape from global warming.
Billionaires could live in their little gated compounds but it's a very small existence and not sustainable in the long run.
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u/oxymoronian 6h ago
If you drive a Tesla and can spare some money you should try donating to Talarico to offset the damage Musk is doing with they money you gave him.
I still have a Model Y that I can't sell because the value when to shit and I'm doing my part.
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u/AAA_4481 7h ago
We don’t value democracy. Since Regan we’ve been taught that capitalism is they key and democracy is the hole.
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u/TAU_equals_2PI 6h ago
$158 million is POCKET CHANGE FOR MUSK.
$158,000,000 when his net worth is $1,000,000,000,000
It's like the average American spending $15.80
So he can keep doing it again and again and again in every election for the rest of his life.
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u/LT_DANS_ICECREAM Texas 2h ago
Imagine being such a horrible and corrupt candidate that a billionaire has to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to help your campaign. And he'll still likely lose. Fellow Texans, please dont vote this excrement into office.
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u/lookn4knks10 6h ago
The reality is that money can help. But it doesn’t buy a victory. Bad candidates lose. There are countless cases where huge disparities in spending did nothing for a candidate.
Musk spent millions in Wisconsin. And lost badly. Blowout. Why? People who are angry vote. And cash doesn’t change how they vote.
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u/spuzzumed 6h ago
Question, if musk had spent hundreds of million of dollars building a new "Ken Paxton Hospital" and a bunch of school, would this have done more to move the needle?
I fail to understand how spending huge sums of money to run ads with AI generated talarico-in-a-skirt images helps anybody.
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u/WhatAmTrak 4h ago
It helps because it’s pandering to hateful voters who fear trans people/anything different from themselves. When you give your base something to hate the other candidate for (even if it’s fake AI), they’re hard to convince otherwise. Critical thinking skills are sadly very diminished skills used these days
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u/Necessary-Bed-4973 4h ago
Look at some statistics about money’s effect on elections. You might be surprised just how much it changes things. Paxton is a historically bad candidate and Trump is also more unpopular than ever. In a normal voting environment money is probably the most important factor in deciding an election.
Edit: effect
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u/trastamara22 6h ago
The angriest vote
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u/Several_Hour_347 5h ago
Lmao what is this moron talking about? Money is incredibly powerful in elections and warping idiots viewpoints on candidates
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u/snackattack4tw 5h ago
The first thing they said was money can help. What when was the point of being so aggressive?
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u/tomsloat 7h ago
Needs to be made illegal to donate over a certain amount of money to any political party, they shouldn’t be prosecuting the parties, it should fall on the individual, slap musk in prison
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u/ItsAllOnUHF 7h ago
And billionaires with fraudulent immigration paperwork have no place in the US.
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u/magicspider8 5h ago
The idea that rich people are smart, can be described as propaganda because they are just corrupt criminals.
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u/Joe1972 5h ago
If the democrats get back into power they need to remember this and pass serious laws to permanently reduce the number of billionaires. Don't just limit political spending. Cap personal wealth at 1 Billion or whatever. Make it impossible for anyone to ever be that rich again. Tax them 90%
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u/TXPromoGuy 4h ago
Tax the billionaires. There’s no “trickle down”, only socialism for corporations.
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u/2brightside 4h ago
I don't have a problem with billionaires. I have a problem with people influencing policies for the gains of themselves. Well guess what.
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u/398452983298759 3h ago
I'm really excited to see the money they are throwing at campaigns not working.
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u/jcouball 1h ago
Come on Texans!!! Is this how you want politics to be run? What about when a democrat billionaire is pumping in the money?
Vote like you want free and fair elections. FWIW, that means voting blue.
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u/DantifA Arizona 7h ago
"Billionaires" is good term because it is concise and evocative of the point.
But hundred-millionaires are also not compatible with democracy.
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u/Karinka_LI 7h ago
He moved his whole company there and now the democrats are going to take over. It’s too rich.
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u/Eggheadpancake 6h ago
It's fucking bonkers that we as a country are allowing open bribery in our democracy
It's further more bonkers that as citizens haven't finally begun to take it in our hands to start fixing some of these problems ourselves.
This government has committed violence on US for to long not to respond.
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u/SpeaksSouthern 6h ago
Billionaires don't believe or follow any part of the Constitution when it comes to when they work for the United States. They don't care about humans.
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u/Valkertok 6h ago
Billionaires can exist just fine in democracies. See Europe.
What makes them incompatible in USA is your stupid law.
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u/AtlantaGangBangGuys 6h ago
I think that there should be an earning and wealth cap. Once you hit $999,999 million dollars, you get a gold star and can never be worth more than that. Every other penny goes to people.
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u/Western-Corner-431 6h ago
The gullible, ignorant, uninformed, petty, incompetent, uneducated and uninvested voter isn’t compatible with democracy. If people took their lives, history, future, health, wealth and safety seriously, no billionaire could fuck with democracy.
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u/doiutfis 6h ago
It's an investment. In return he expects tax breaks for his Texas facilities and white nationalism.
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u/ehyamwhatayam 5h ago
I thought the apartheid Nazi was going to Mars, why is he still here? Take your cybershmucks and go to Mars.
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u/LuisCFerr 5h ago
Citizens United imo is thr most antithetical to democracy ruling of scotus since the Civil war.
We need a constitutional ammendment removing the pay to play aspects of politics.
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u/Sagethecat 5h ago
Billionaires aren’t compatible with society. Full stop. They are the virus that will take us all out.
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u/The-Animus 4h ago
Democracy and a successful society are founded on no one having too much power and there being checks and balances. It's why we have various branches of government with different power and responsibilities made up of numerous people from all over that can be voted out if they don't do a good job.
When unelected individuals and corporations have as much or even more money and power than government agencies, entire governments, or even entire countries, they are able to corrupt everything to the detriment of everyone.
Billionaires are inherently antithetical to democracy and a thriving and healthy society.
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u/LargeFatherV 4h ago
Every so often I think of that article that idiot Jeremy Peters wrote for the New York Times saying that Elon Musk’s politics are complicated and wonder what he thinks about it now. That dude was a fucking moron lmao, Musk was making it simple and clear what his politics were back when that article was written.
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u/curiousleen 4h ago
What’s super funny to me is… if Elon had chosen a few towns to donate a couple million to upgrading schools in the name of Paxton, it may have made a serious positive impact politically and for his own image…
But alas, money better spent on ads and rallies…
We need to be taxing billionaires into upper millionaires. PERIOD.
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u/UltravioletAfterglow 4h ago
John Roberts and his fellow so-called conservatives opened the door for this with their Citizens United ruling. They eagerly sold out democracy to appease billionaire and corporate power grabs like this.
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u/cryptidsandwich 3h ago
Billionaires are extranational entities that should be treated as the threats they are.
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u/Bekindorstfu69 3h ago
They want all the power. Voting gives the people the ultimate power, and by electing people who represent us we can keep the oligarchs at bay.
Please use your right to vote! (or concede to the oligarch way and lose that right!)
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u/andrewface 1h ago
Why would they need this much money if Talarico is such a vegan freak with a both sets genitals who aborts babies for fun shouldn’t he be easy to defeat without a billionaires influence?
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u/HuckleberryMoney2320 1h ago
At what point do a critical mass of people get angry enough to actually do something about all this? We are told to vote, but then ghouls like Musk buy elections so our votes don’t count. They won’t stop until all us peons are dead and they get to rule over a wasteland. At this point, short of direct action, the best we can hope for is for some cyber attack to take out the entire Internet and break the social media link between the oligarchs and the public.
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u/Sandy_Bananas 1h ago
lol. We’re destroying our planet so that an handful of perverts can keep doing their do.
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u/CosmonautCatPhD 55m ago
If you asked this guy to donate $20 million to fund a children's library in Fremont, CA where his factories are he wouldn't do it. But he has $160 million to try to buy elections to get himself tax cuts.
The guy is torching his legacy so bad you just know he's going to spend the last 10 years of his life trying to spend his way out of infamy, but man... what a joke.
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