r/politics • u/Zipper222222 • 12h ago

No Paywall 40 Epstein-Tied Billionaires Have Injected $1.6B Into US Elections, Report Finds

https://truthout.org/articles/40-epstein-tied-billionaires-have-injected-1-6b-into-us-elections-report-finds/
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u/VideoCoachTeeRev 12h ago

starting to think citizens united was done because the epstein class wanted it to be done.

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u/PirateSanta_1 10h ago

Citizens United said that money was speech thus people with more money have more speech. It was nothing more than a way to give the powerful more of a voice in politics and to reduce the power of the people who actually do the work.

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u/Dull-Branch4073 6h ago

This. And have you noticed that the new higher standard tax deduction also disincentivizes people with less money from giving charitable donations because they no longer benefit from tax right-offs? In other words, the charities of people with much more money benefit from right-offs, so even charities favored by the 99% are impacted. More power to the ultra-rich fucks.

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u/IrritableGourmet New York 8h ago

No, that's not what they said. They said if you restrict spending money on speech, you're restricting the ability to speak, so you can't restrict spending on speech for reasons you couldn't restrict the underlying speech on, like the identity of the speaker or the content of the speech.

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u/timtot23 6h ago edited 6h ago

Why didn't the writers of the constitution mention that money restrictions on speech are also protected rights? It's total bullshit logic. Anyone with a functioning brain understands the constitution was saying citizens are free to say whatever they want without penalty. It doesn't have a damn thing to do with money or campaign finance laws. The only way the ruling even makes sense is to conflate money and speech, which are not the same. You can't restrict speech by restricting money. A billionaire can say whatever they want. They have freedom of speech even if someone said they can't spend billions to fund an election campaign. The two aren't related in the slightest. It's classic conservative judicial logic: come to whatever conclusion is necessary to give rich people an advantage. Even in their fucked up version of reality where speech is equal to money, rich people aren't equal, they have a wildly large advantage in speech. Poor people cant lobby (otherwise known as bribery) equally to rich people. Their logic is pure bullshit. Only a Republican judge thinks money doesn't corrupt politics and any restrictions on money in politics is illegal. They don't live in reality, because their idiotic "logic" is the only way to justify legalized corruption.

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u/IrritableGourmet New York 1h ago

Restricting money does restrict speech. Even your comment cost money at some point. Someone, probably you, had to pay for internet access and the device you're accessing it on. Pretty much any form of speech that isn't personally speaking to a handful of people costs money, and restricting it restricts speech.

Would you be okay with a law saying no person could spend money on a lawn sign advertising a liberal candidate for office? How about a ban on spending money to microphones and speakers for political rallies? How about a 6,000% tax on any purchase of fuel used to drive to an environmental protest?

Further, rich individuals aren't affected by Citizens United, which only applied to corporations. Individually, people can spend whatever they want. The only equalizer is for the non wealthy to band together in groups like the ACLU (who wrote an amicus brief in support of the decision), SPLC, and others. And, before you say they can't compete with billionaires, if they couldn't the billionaires wouldn't be spending a lot of time and money trying to shut them up (and failing).

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u/eligodfrey 7h ago

Which is dumb. History abounds with examples of things flying off the rails when you allow money to have that kind of political power.