#Campaign finance

[politijohn]

Source

Source

Year after year and just keeps going

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The largest campaign finance violation in US history

I'm coming to DEFCON! On Aug 9, I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On Aug 10, I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

Earlier this month, some of the richest men in Silicon Valley, led by Marc Andreesen and Ben Horowitz (the billionaire VCs behind Andreesen-Horowitz) announced that they would be backing Trump with endorsements and millions of dollars:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2024/07/16/trump-lands-more-big-tech-backers-billionaire-venture-capitalist-andreessen-joins-wave-supporting-former-president/

Predictably, this drew a lot of ire, which Andreesen tried to diffuse by insisting that his support "doesn’t have anything to do with the big issues that people care about":

https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/24/24204706/marc-andreessen-ben-horowitz-a16z-trump-donations

In other words, the billionaires backing Trump weren't doing so because they supported the racism, the national abortion ban, the attacks on core human rights, etc. Those were merely tradeoffs that they were willing to make to get the parts of the Trump program they do support: more tax-cuts for the ultra-rich, and, of course, free rein to defraud normies with cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes.

Crypto isn't "money" – it is far too volatile to be a store of value, a unit of account, or a medium of exchange. You'd have to be nuts to get a crypto mortgage when all it takes is Elon Musk tweeting a couple emoji to make your monthly mortgage payment double.

A thing becomes moneylike when it can be used to pay off a bill for something you either must pay for, or strongly desire to pay for. The US dollar's moneylike property comes from the fact that hundreds of millions of people need dollars to pay off the IRS and their state tax bills, which means that they will trade labor and goods for dollars. Even people who don't pay US taxes will accept dollars, because they know they can use them to buy things from people who do have a nondiscretionary bill that can only be paid in dollars.

Dollars are also valuable because there are many important commodities that can only – or primarily – be purchased with them, like much of the world's oil supply. The fact that anyone who wants to buy oil has a strong need for dollars makes dollars valuable, because they will sell labor and goods to get dollars, not because they need dollars, but because they need oil.

There's almost nothing that can only be purchased with crypto. You can procure illegal goods and services in the mistaken belief that this transaction will be durably anonymous, and you can pay off ransomware creeps who have hijacked your personal files or all of your business's data:

https://locusmag.com/2022/09/cory-doctorow-moneylike/

Web3 was sold as a way to make the web more "decentralized," but it's best understood as an effort to make it impossible to use the web without paying crypto every time you click your mouse. If people need crypto to use the internet, then crypto whales will finally have a source of durable liquidity for the tokens they've hoarded:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/16/nondiscretionary-liabilities/#quatloos

The Web3 bubble was almost entirely down to the vast hype machine mobilized by Andreesen-Horowitz, who bet billions of dollars on the idea and almost single-handedly created the illusion of demand for crypto. For example, they arranged a $100m bribe to Kickstarter shareholders in exchange for Kickstarter pretending to integrate "blockchain" into its crowdfunding platform:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/untold-story-kickstarter-crypto-hail-120000205.html

Kickstarter never ended up using the blockchain technology, because it was useless. Their shareholders just pocketed the $100m while the company weathered the waves of scorn from savvy tech users who understood that this was all a shuck.

Look hard enough at any crypto "success" and you'll discover a comparable scam. Remember NFTs, and the eye-popping sums that seemingly "everyone" was willing to pay for ugly JPEGs? That whole market was shot through with "wash-trading" – where you sell your asset to yourself and pretend that it was bought by a third party. It's a cheap – and illegal – way to convince people that something worthless is actually very valuable:

https://mailchi.mp/brianlivingston.com/034-2#free1

Even the books about crypto are scams. Chris Dixon's "bestseller" about the power of crypto, Read Write Own, got on the bestseller list through the publishing equivalent of wash-trading, where VCs with large investments in crypto bought up thousands of copies and shoved them on indifferent employees or just warehoused them:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/15/your-new-first-name/#that-dagger-tho

The fact that crypto trades were mostly the same bunch of grifters buying shitcoins from each other, while spending big on Superbowl ads, bribes to Kickstarter shareholders, and bulk-buys of mediocre business-books was bound to come out someday. In the meantime, though, the system worked: it convinced normies to gamble their life's savings on crypto, which they promptly lost (if you can't spot the sucker at the table, you're the sucker).

There's a name for this: it's called a "bezzle." John Kenneth Galbraith defined a "bezzle" as "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it." All bezzles collapse eventually, but until they do, everyone feels better off. You think you're rich because you just bought a bunch of shitcoins after Matt Damon told you that "fortune favors the brave." Damon feels rich because he got a ton of cash to rope you into the con. Crypto.com feels rich because you took a bunch of your perfectly cromulent "fiat money" that can be used to buy anything and traded it in for shitcoins that can be used to buy nothing:

https://theintercept.com/2022/10/26/matt-damon-crypto-commercial/

Andreesen-Horowitz were masters of the bezzle. For them, the Web3 bet on an internet that you'd have to buy their shitcoins to use was always Plan B. Plan A was much more straightforward: they would back crypto companies and take part of their equity in huge quantities of shitcoins that they could sell to "unqualified investors" (normies) in an "initial coin offering." Normally, this would be illegal: a company can't offer stock to the general public until it's been through an SEC vetting process and "gone public" through an IPO. But (Andreesen-Horowitz argued) their companies' "initial coin offerings" existed in an unregulated grey zone where they could be traded for the life's savings of mom-and-pop investors who thought crypto was real because they heard that Kickstarter had adopted it, and there was a bestselling book about it, and Larry David and Matt Damon and Spike Lee told them it was the next big thing.

Crypto isn't so much a financial innovation as it is a financial obfuscation. "Fintech" is just a cynical synonym for "unregulated bank." Cryptocurrency enjoys a "byzantine premium" – that is, it's so larded with baffling technical nonsense that no one understands how it works, and they assume that anything they don't understand is probably incredibly sophisticated and great ("a pile of shit this big must have pony under it somewhere"):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/13/the-byzantine-premium/

There are two threats to the crypto bezzle: the first is that normies will wise up to the scam, and the second is that the government will put a stop to it. These are correlated risks: if the government treats crypto as a security (or worse, a scam), that will put severe limits on how shitcoins can be marketed to normies, which will staunch the influx of real money, so the sole liquidity will come from ransomware payments and transactions with tragically overconfident hitmen and drug dealers who think the blockchain is anonymous.

To keep the bezzle going, crypto scammers have spent the past two election cycles flooding both parties with cash. In the 2022 midterms, crypto money bankrolled primary challenges to Democrats by absolute cranks, like the "effective altruist" Carrick Flynn ("effective altruism" is a crypto-affiliated cult closely associated with the infamous scam-artist Sam Bankman-Fried). Sam Bankman-Fried's super PAC, "Protect Our Future," spent $10m on attack-ads against Flynn's primary opponent, the incumbent Andrea Salinas. Salinas trounced Flynn – who was an objectively very bad candidate who stood no chance of winning the general election – but only at the expense of most of the funds she raised from her grassroots, small-dollar donors.

Fighting off SBF's joke candidate meant that Salinas went into the general election with nearly empty coffers, and she barely squeaked out a win against a GOP nightmare candidate Mike Erickson – a millionaire Oxy trafficker, drunk driver, and philanderer who tricked his then-girlfriend by driving her to a fake abortion clinic and telling her that it was a real one:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/14/competitors-critics-customers/#billionaire-dilletantes

SBF is in prison, but there's no shortage of crypto millions for this election cycle. According to Molly White's "Follow the Crypto" tracker, crypto-affiliated PACs have raised $185m to influence the 2024 election – more than the entire energy sector:

https://www.followthecrypto.org/

As with everything "crypto," the cryptocurrency election corruption slushfund is a bezzle. The "Stand With Crypto PAC" claims to have the backing of 1.3 million "crypto advocates," and Reuters claims they have 440,000 backers. But 99% of the money claimed by Stand With Crypto was actually donated to "Fairshake" – a different PAC – and 90% of Fairshake's money comes from a handful of corporate donors:

https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-62/

Stand With Crypto – minus the Fairshake money it falsely claimed – has raised $13,690 since April. That money came from just seven donors, four of whom are employed by Coinbase, for whom Stand With Crypto is a stalking horse. Stand With Crypto has an affiliated group (also called "Stand With Crypto" because that is an extremely normal and forthright way to run a nonprofit!), which has raised millions – $1.49m. Of that $1.49m, 90% came from just four donors: three cryptocurrency companies, and the CEO of Coinbase.

There are plenty of crypto dollars for politicians to fight over, but there are virtually no crypto voters. 69-75% of Americans "view crypto negatively or distrust it":

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/10/majority-of-americans-arent-confident-in-the-safety-and-reliability-of-cryptocurrency/

When Trump keynotes the Bitcoin 2024 conference and promises to use public funds to buy $1b worth of cryptocoins, he isn't wooing voters, he's wooing dollars:

https://www.wired.com/story/donald-trump-strategic-bitcoin-stockpile-bitcoin-2024/

Wooing dollars, not crypto. Politicians aren't raising funds in crypto, because you can't buy ads or pay campaign staff with shitcoins. Remember: unless Andreesen-Horowitz manages to install Web3 crypto tollbooths all over the internet, the industries that accept crypto are ransomware, and technologically overconfident hit-men and drug-dealers. To win elections, you need dollars, which crypto hustlers get by convincing normies to give them real money in exchange for shitcoins, and they are only funding politicians who will make it easier to do that.

As a political matter, "crypto" is a shorthand for "allowing scammers to steal from working people," which makes it a very Republican issue. As Hamilton Nolan writes, "If the Republicans want to position themselves as the Party of Crypto, let them. It is similar to how they position themselves as The Party of Racism and the Party of Religious Zealots and the Party of Telling Lies about Election Fraud. These things actually reflect poorly on them, the Republicans":

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/crypto-as-a-political-characteristic

But the Democrats – who are riding high on the news that Kamala Harris will be their candidate this fall – have decided that they want some of that crypto money, too. Even as crypto-skeptical Dems like Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester see millions from crypto PACs flooding in to support their primary challengers and GOP opponents, a group of Dem politicians are promising to give the crypto industry whatever it wants, if they will only bribe Democratic candidates as well:

https://subscriber.politicopro.com/f/?id=00000190-f475-d94b-a79f-fc77c9400000

Kamala Harris – a genuinely popular candidate who has raised record-shattering sums from small-dollar donors representing millions of Americans – herself has called for a "reset" of the relationship between the crypto sector and the Dems:

https://archive.is/iYd1C

As Luke Goldstein writes in The American Prospect, sucking up to crypto scammers so they stop giving your opponents millions of dollars to run attack ads against you is a strategy with no end – you have to keep sucking up to the scam, otherwise the attack ads come out:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-07-31-crypto-cash-affecting-democratic-races/

There's a whole menagerie of crypto billionaires behind this year's attempt to buy the American government – Andreesen and Horowitz, of course, but also the Winklevoss twins, and this guy, who says we're in the midst of a "civil war" and "anyone that votes against Trump can die in a fucking fire":

https://twitter.com/molly0xFFF/status/1813952816840597712/photo/1

But the real whale that's backstopping the crypto campaign spending is Coinbase, through its Fairshake crypto PAC. Coinbase has donated $45,500,000 to Fairshake, which is a lot:

https://www.coinbase.com/blog/how-to-get-regulatory-clarity-for-crypto

But $45.5m isn't merely a large campaign contribution: it appears that $25m of that is the largest the largest illegal campaign contribution by a federal contractor in history, "by far," a fact that was sleuthed out by Molly White:

https://www.citationneeded.news/coinbase-campaign-finance-violation/

At issue is the fact that Coinbase is bidding to be a US federal contractor: specifically, they want to manage the crypto wallets that US federal cops keep seizing from crime kingpins. Once Coinbase threw its hat into the federal contracting ring, it disqualified itself from donating to politicians or funding PACs:

Campaign finance law prohibits federal government contractors from making contributions, or promising to make contributions, to political entities including super PACs like Fairshake.

https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/federal-government-contractors/

Previous to this, the largest ever illegal campaign contribution by a federal contractor appears to be Marathon Petroleum Company's 2022 bribe to GOP House and Senate super PACs, a mere $1m, only 4% of Coinbase's bribe.

I'm with Nolan on this one. Let the GOP chase millions from billionaires everyone hates who expect them to promote a scam that everyone mistrusts. The Dems have finally found a candidate that people are excited about, and they're awash in money thanks to small amounts contributed by everyday Americans. As AOC put it:

They've got money, but we've got people. Dollar bills don't vote. People vote.

https://www.popsugar.com/news/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-dnc-headquarters-climate-speech-47986992

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/31/greater-fools/#coinbased

[afloweroutofstone]

Crypto corporations are by far the dominant corporate political spenders in 2024 as nearly half (48%) of all corporate money contributed during this year’s elections ($248 million so far) came from crypto backers.

Koch Industries is a distant second place in 2024. The privately held conglomerate owned by Charles and, formerly, the late David Koch, contributed $25 million to its Koch-controlled Americans for Prosperity Action and $3.25 million toward electing Republicans to Congress. Direct corporate election spending at this scale is unprecedented.

Crypto corporations’ total spending in the past three election cycles – $129 million – already amounts to 15% of all known corporate contributions since the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United, which total $884 million. 92% of the corporate crypto spending is from 2024.

Since Citizens United, the crypto corporations are now second in total election-related spending, trailing only fossil fuel corporations, which have spent $176 million over the past 14 years, including $73 million from Koch Industries.

[destielmemenews]

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[odinsblog]

Five days before Donald Trump became president in January 2017, a manager at a bank branch in Cairo received an unusual letter from an organization linked to the Egyptian intelligence service. It asked the bank to “kindly withdraw” nearly $10 million from the organization’s account — all in cash.

Inside the state-run National Bank of Egypt, employees were soon busy placing bundles of $100 bills into two large bags, according to records from the bank. Four men arrived and carried away the bags, which U.S. officials later described in sealed court filings as weighing a combined 200 pounds and containing what was then a sizable share of Egypt’s reserve of U.S. currency.

Federal investigators learned of the withdrawal, which has not been previously reported, early in 2019. The discovery intensified a secret criminal investigation that had begun two years earlier with classified U.S. intelligence indicating that Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi sought to give Trump $10 million to boost his 2016 presidential campaign, a Washington Post investigation has found.

Since receiving the intelligence about Sisi, the Justice Department had been examining whether money moved from Cairo to Trump, potentially violating federal law that bans U.S. candidates from taking foreign funds. Investigators had also sought to learn if money from Sisi might have factored into Trump’s decision in the final days of his run for the White House to inject his campaign with $10 million of his own money.

Those questions, at least in the view of several investigators on the case, would never be answered, The Post found.

Within months of learning of the withdrawal, prosecutors and FBI agents were blocked by top Justice Department officials from obtaining bank records they believed might hold critical evidence, according to interviews with people familiar with the case as well as documents and contemporaneous notes of the investigation. The case ground to a halt by the fall of 2019 as Trump’s then-attorney general, William P. Barr, raised doubts about whether there was sufficient evidence to continue the probe of Trump.

(continue reading)

[weevil-mastermind]

I really wish there was a leftish movement in the U.S. willing to play the long game on campaign finance reform and Citizens United like how the right was willing to play the long game on Roe v Wade.

[racefortheironthrone]

is lobbying just basically legalized bribing, or is there any other difference?

The difficulty is that lobbying is simultaneously "legalized bribery" and "influence peddling," and the core of the First Amendment's guarantee of "the right of the people...to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Whether it's done by an environmental group trying to preserve endangered species or a deeply corrupt corporation that wants to strip-mine public lands for pennies on the dollar while poisoning the planet, or by a civil rights group trying to achieve equal rights or a hate group trying to legalize oppression of minorities, it's all lobbying.

Now, professionalized lobbying is actually a fairly recent phenomenon. Back in the 19th century, wealthy elites simply just bought elected officials or entire branches of government outright, but during the Progressive Era this was uncovered by muck-raking journalists and led to a lot of people going to jail, so something had to take its place - and that was lobbying.

Even as late as 1945, there were barely 400 lobbying groups in the U.S compared to 17,000 today. The cause of the explosion of lobbying as an industry was a combination of the post-war expansion of the U.S government and changes to campaign finance law in the wake of Watergate. The Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) sought to regulate campaign spending and campaign finance in response to perceived corruption in Federal elections, and was further strengthened by major amendments in 1974 that set hard limits on contributions and spending and created the Federal Elections Commission to enforce FECA.

The Supreme Court, which had begun its slide to the right thanks to LBJ massively fumbling the ball with his Supreme Court nominations and letting Nixon get a bunch of Justices on the Court, struck down a lot of those limits in Buckley v. Valeo in 1976 - which started us down the road to Citizens United. Corporate lobbies very quickly realized that they could expand their influence enormously by acting as the middle-men between corporate cash and elected officials, which now meant that they could wield enormous carrots and sticks to get elected officials to comply with their wishes.

Now, I think there will always be problems with lobbying that come down to the issue of concentrated vs. diffuse interests. There are all kinds of political issues where the majority of the people are on one side of a debate, but where they aren't particularly aware of or engaged with that debate, and even though they have a stake in the outcome, it's rather vague and abstract not something they care about very much. But a lobbying group for a particular "special interest" that is on the other side of that debate and is very aware and engaged and cares about the outcome very much because they stand to gain or lose a lot of money from the outcome. So that lobbying group, which represents a minority position and should lose in the democratic process, will invest the necessary resources in order to win.

The only way to fight this, sadly, is for social movements to be just as organized as lobbyists. For the longest time, it was the labor movement that acted as the "countervailing power" in American politics, because they had the manpower and the money to effectively lobby the Federal government not just on behalf of unions but also on behalf of low-wage workers or racial minorities or consumers and so forth. The problem is that the labor movement doesn't really have that manpower and money any more, but nothing has really replaced it in American politics, in no small part because the left is not immune to America's instinctive hatred of politics and institutions.

And yes, the other major thing that we could do to fight "legalized bribery" is to break up the nexus between campaign finance and lobbying, but in order to do that, we'd have to overrule about fifty years of Supreme Court precedents, and that's not going to happen without the Democratic Party successfully taking back control of the Supreme Court.

[plethoraworldatlas]

Current state of Vote Uncommitted

(Linked for data)

Only a few states have yet to hold primaries.

As of now, according to this data, over 794 Thousand primary votes have been uncommitted/uninstructed/none/etc

+794,000

+794k

And this isn't even counting all the people in states that lacked uncommitted options and had to vote write in, or vote for some random other democrat in protest, or left blank, etc. Since so many of those are also protest votes in line with vote uncommitted, I would add another 100-150k to the amount of protest votes Vote uncommitted has gotten so far.

The largest amounts of uncommitted votes are in crucial swing states, by margins that far exceed the tiny amount Biden won by in 2020.

And remember, these numbers are just people who go out to vote in primaries; It takes effort to do that.

Almost 4/5ths of a million Primary voting Democrats have gone out to tell Biden

1) fuck you

2) we are against your genocide

3) our votes for you are dependent on you changing course now and totally

4) We do not have faith in your ability to win while doing this and attacking your own supporters, so stop and change course now

And this is just the vote uncommitted campaign; There are also the many, many, many major dedicated lifelong democrat donors and fundraising organizations that have signed letters and statements telling him to change course because they either can't support this genocide or they know this will cost him the election if he doesn't change course now, as well as those who have cut of funding for the same reasons, and those who did both and more.

here's a fun little quote to keep in mind

When you look at the smallest popular vote shift needed to give Trump a victory, the 2020 election was close. Indeed, it was even closer than 2016. If Trump picked up the right mix of 42,921 votes in Arizona (10,457), Georgia (11,779), and Wisconsin (20,682), the Electoral College would have been tied at 269 all. The House would have then decided the election. Republicans will hold the majority of state delegations in the new Congress, and they undoubtedly would have chosen Trump. If Trump had also picked up the one electoral vote in Nebraska’s Second Congressional District, which he lost to Biden by 22,091 votes, he would have won the Electoral College outright.  -CFR

[ophilosoraptoro]

BlackRock Recruiter Who ‘Decides People’s Fate’ Says ‘War is Good for Business' Undercover Footage

[originalleftist]

LoL, Donny Dipshit (convicted on 34 felony counts for campaign finance violations) filed a complaint with the FEC over Harris getting Biden's campaign funds (which she is legally entitled to).

Speaking as a Biden/Harris donor, I would be pissed if my money went anywhere else.

Cry harder, loser.

[viewwrangler]

And so, the circus begins anew (sort of)...

Trump campaign files election complaint to block Harris from Biden’s $90 million war chest (independent.co.uk) Alex Woodward 23 July 2024

Donald Trump’s campaign has accused vice president Kamala Harris of committing a “heist” and a “brazen money grab” after she inherited President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign war chest.

Trump’s complaint with the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday accuses the president and vice president of running afoul of campaign finance laws by turning Biden’s now-ended campaign into the “Harris for President” campaign, allowing Harris to tap into more than $91 million in the campaign’s coffers.

After Biden ended his re-election campaign on Sunday, Biden notified the FEC that his committee was changing its name to Harris for President, with Harris as the beneficiary. But as Biden’s running mate, Harris was already sharing the campaign committee with the president, and legal analysts have doubted the arguments at the heart of Trump’s attempt to take the wind out of his rival’s sails....

Can The GOP Sue Over Harris Getting Biden’s Campaign Funds? Sure — But It Likely Won’t Work (forbes.com) Alison Durkee Forbes Staff

President Joe Biden turned his campaign funds over to Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday after he dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed her—a move that Republicans have said could spark legal challenges over Harris getting the money, though campaign finance experts told Forbes they believe the move is legally sound and any litigation would take so long to play out that it wouldn’t affect the election....

On the upside, sort of: if normal FEC processes are followed, by the time any ruling could come down, the election will be over.

On the downside: the current head of the Federal Elections Commission was appointed by Trump, and he's already shown his partisan bonafides, as it were. So it's entirely possible that he will try to expedite things to block access, in which case things will need to move to the court system. Where it's all likely to wind up anyway.

Mind, if Harris keeps raking in donations at the current rate, it may not hugely matter anyway. On her own -- and assuming that these later donations are properly tracked so that they can be separated if needed -- her campaign has raised over $100 million in just two days, and over $200 million total for allied campaigns and causes (washingtonpost.com).

[commissarpiglet]

Hey, look what I found...

First news source, dated 2012 describes that years Israeli politicians fundraising for their campaign from foreign sources, primarily from the US.

[Image id: Money Comes From The U.S. reads as:

For this new report, each member of the Knesset was asked to give a list of campaign donors and the amounts received. Officials at the state comptroller's office told NPR they are currently in the process of checking and verifying the list, although a quick glance at the figures shows a clear trend.

The report says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised more than 90 percent of his campaign money in the United States. Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya'alon, also from Netanyahu's conservative Likud bloc, raised 100 percent of his campaign contributions overseas - mostly in the US. end image id]

[Image id: Titled Many Americans Prepared To Give reads as:

Wilf didn't choose to fundraise in the U.S. herself; her campaign money came entirely from her own personal fortune. But she says she understands Israeli politicians who accept help from often eager American donors.

"Americans are trained to give money to politicians. It is in the system," Wilf says. "They know this is how politics work. So when a politician tells them, 'I'm running,' it makes sense to them to give money. I've had many American Jews offer to help me. And I tell them, 'I don't need it, I'm fine.' But that's their way of saying, 'We want to help you. We want to support you. We like the work that you are doing.' "

Back in the Knesset cafeteria, politicians speculate about the upcoming elections and what surprises may be in store.

Hoffman says that Israelis have shown time and again they don't really care where or how their elected officials raise money.

"Israelis don't care where their politicians get their money from," Hoffman says. "There are politicians that have been convicted of illegal fundraising that are making political comebacks right now, and people don't have any problem with it whatsoever."

What's more important to Israelis, he says, is that their elected officials have the elbows to get the job done. end image id]

Source:

If anybody wants to jump in this rabbit hole with me, or already has, I'd love to get a break down of just how much the US (and others if it's relevant) are funding Israeli politicians. So far it seems like sources outside of Israel can only fund primaries, but I'd bet that's enough for US interests to be involved in Israeli elections.

[tmarshconnors]

Biden and Trump First TV Debate

As I watch Biden and Trump face off in their first televised debate, I can't help but reflect on a country that has a population of 333.3 million people (as of 2022). With so many citizens, one would think there would be a wealth of candidates eager to run for the highest office in the land. Yet, here we are again, faced with a choice between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

I am no fan of Joe Biden by any means, and I am not saying that Donald Trump is the "savior" of America either. The reality is far more complex. Surely, there must be more people who can run for office, bringing fresh perspectives and new energy to our political landscape. Instead, we seem trapped in a cycle of familiar faces and entrenched political battles.

The Problem with the Status Quo

No matter who wins the upcoming election, one thing is certain: the American people will lose out. This isn't just a uniquely American problem, either. Over in the United Kingdom, we're facing a similar scenario. Our general election on the 4th of July this year feels like a rerun of old political dramas, with little hope for real change.

In both countries, the political landscape seems devoid of truly inspiring leaders. We see the same names, the same faces, and hear the same tired rhetoric. It's as if our political systems are designed to recycle the past rather than innovate for the future.

Where Are the Fresh Faces?

One of the biggest questions is why we aren't seeing more new faces in politics. With so many intelligent, capable, and passionate individuals in both the U.S. and the U.K., why do so few step up to run for office? The reasons are multifaceted:

The Financial Barrier: Running for office is incredibly expensive. Campaigns require vast amounts of money, which often means that only those with substantial financial backing or connections can realistically consider running.

Political Entrenchment: Established politicians have a stronghold on their positions, making it difficult for newcomers to break through. The political machinery often favors incumbents, who have name recognition and a network of support.

Public Disillusionment: Many potential candidates are dissuaded by the current state of politics. The negativity, polarization, and media scrutiny can be overwhelming. This discourages fresh talent from entering the fray, preferring to make a difference in less public, and perhaps less contentious, ways.

The Impact on Democracy

The lack of diversity in our political candidates has a direct impact on democracy. When voters are presented with limited choices, it undermines the very principles of democratic governance. Democracy thrives on variety and choice, enabling the electorate to select leaders who truly represent their values and aspirations.

In the absence of this variety, elections become exercises in choosing the lesser of two evils rather than selecting the best possible leader. This, in turn, leads to widespread disillusionment and apathy among the electorate. When people feel that their vote won't bring about meaningful change, they are less likely to participate in the democratic process.

Looking Forward

As we watch Biden and Trump debate, we should be asking ourselves what we can do to encourage more people to run for office. How can we lower the financial barriers, dismantle the entrenched political systems, and inspire a new generation of leaders?

We need to foster a political culture that values innovation, inclusivity, and genuine public service. This means supporting candidates from diverse backgrounds and with new ideas. It also means holding our current leaders accountable and demanding more from them.

In the end, the future of our democracy depends on our ability to broaden the pool of candidates and ensure that our political systems are open to fresh voices and new perspectives. Only then can we hope to elect leaders who truly represent the will of the people and can bring about the change that so many of us desire.

In both the United States and the United Kingdom, the time for political renewal is now. Let's hope that the next debate, and the next election, will feature a more diverse and inspiring lineup of candidates, giving us all a reason to believe in the future of our democracy.