An international fascist movement
— led by Russia, Hungary, and China
— is on the march worldwide, and America is in its crosshairs.
Case in point: Ohio Republican Senator and maximally rich dude J.D. Vance,
who dresses up his Trump/Putin toadyism in elegant garb
In an article for the m Financial Times, Vance recently wrote:
“We owe it to our European partners to be honest:
Our generosity in Ukraine is coming to an end.
Europeans should regard the conclusion of the war there as an imperative. ...
And Europe should consider how exactly it is going to live with Russia when the war in Ukraine is over.”
The watershed moment in American history that led to this was when five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court ruled in #CitizensUnited (and three other decisions) that bribing US politicians is no longer bribery or political corruption
but, instead, is merely
“First Amendment-protected free speech.”
The cash that rightwing billionaires, foreign governments, and corporations are stuffing into corrupt politicians’ pockets isn’t “money,”
the rightwing majority on the Court ruled:
it’s First Amendment protected “free speech.”
Those corporations aren’t (to paraphrase John Marshall) lifeless, soulless creations of the law:
they are, Republicans on the Court said,
“persons” with a constitutional right to free speech.
All this made us ripe for the picking by foreign governments that see the very ongoing existence of American democracy as a threat to the legitimacy of their own oligarchies.
To the point of Vance and Greene, Justice John Paul Stevens,
in his Citizens United dissent,
warned us that his five conservative colleagues on the Supreme Court had not only thrown the door open to American billionaires and corporations corrupting our politicians and political process:
they also, he wrote, rolled out the welcome mat to foreign governments.
“If taken seriously, our colleagues’ assumption that the identity of a speaker has no relevance to the Government’s ability to regulate political speech would lead to some remarkable conclusions.
“Such an assumption would have accorded the propaganda broadcasts to our troops by ‘Tokyo Rose’ during World War II the same protection as speech by Allied commanders.”
Americans for Tax Fairness reports that
💥50 billionaire families have, at this early stage, already injected almost a billion dollars into our political system💥
—the overwhelming majority of it going to Republicans and in support of Donald Trump
—in an effort to maintain enough control of our political system that their taxes won’t go up.
In the US ordinary people don't really notice how corrupt capitalism (the cancer stage of capitalism) is affecting their day to day life in all kinds of ways. They just notice that goods and services have gotten expensive but don't understand one of the major causes: private equity.
In 2017, Andrew Intrater donated $250,000 to Trump’s inauguration fund
and, a few months later, donated $35,000 to Trump’s reelection campaign.
Intrater is a cousin of Viktor Vekselberg, a Russian oligarch who was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2018 for his connections to Putin.
We know that oligarchs play an integral role in funding Russian influence operations.
One oligarch revealed to special counsel Robert Mueller that Putin held quarterly meetings with his oligarchs to discuss strategic spending.
In 2018, a Texas-based firm donated money to House Speaker #Mike#Johnson.
That firm is 88 percent owned by three Russians.
And last week, we learned that Trump Media received loans from a Russian bank to help the company stay afloat before it went public and at a time when no U.S. bank would lend to Trump.
Any donations that might have been made through anonymous LLCs to PACs
—perhaps with attached quid pro quos
—are likely to remain opaque, due to the Supreme Court’s #CitizensUnited decision.
And we cannot say if the financial transactions we do know about are nefarious.
But the pattern paints a disturbing picture, particularly given many 🔸House Republicans’ rabid opposition to Ukraine aid 🔸and Trump’s reported Ukraine peace plan, which would 🔹cede Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine to Russia. 🔹
A similar plan was floated by Paul #Manafort, Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman, and his partner Konstantin #Kilimnik, a Russian intelligence operative, during the 2016 election.
Among the entities promoted by the Voice of Europe propaganda network was Hungary’s Center for Fundamental Rights, which “considers preserving national identity, sovereignty, and Judeo-Christian social traditions as its primary mission.” #CFR is funded by the government of Viktor Orbán and has twice organized a conference in Budapest for the Conservative Political Action Committee, which helps shape policy on the American right.
The #Heritage#Foundation
—which has spearheaded #Project2025, the authoritarian blueprint for a future Republican administration
—has become increasingly cozy with Hungary, and even hosted Orbán privately last month.
It is quite possible, perhaps even likely, that some people who are 🔥on the Russian payroll were at the Heritage event, their role to influence and build support for pro-Russian policies.
We now have overwhelming evidence of 💥vast pro-Russian influence operations throughout Europe 💥that seek to exploit politicians, media personalities, and others—and some of these efforts have been successful.
Here in the United States, while a pattern has emerged, we don’t know the full extent of the influence yet.
👉But it would be foolish, not to mention dangerous, to think we are immune.
Like a leech, #tfg is sucking the #rnc dry with paying for his"legal fees" & other vague fees.
To be sure, after #CitizensUnited there are plenty of wealthy bros around the world funneling him money, but that money is burned, can't be spent again, & tfg won't share that money with his downticket flunkies.
We need to #vote so overwhelmingly so that there's no chance for that money dump to get tfg elected, and give him a return on investment.
So it's "state's rights" when they’re banning abortion, immigration, books, lgbtq, & 'woke' businesses—but it's not state's rights for proven gun safety laws & removing violent insurrectionists from the ballot.
Ithaca cops got in increased budget, while Family and Children's Services terminated their entire outreach team, and now one of our main addiction recovery facilities is closing.
This is what it looks like to live in a dying, violent war empire. We are already fascist.
Benito Mussolini's definition of #Fascism is the melding of corporation and state
By that definition we've been a Fascist country since #CitizensUnited
It's just taken a little time for the gloves to come off
My own understanding is that Fascism is what we've been trained to call #Capitalism when it starts treating ytpipo the way it's been treating #BIPOC folks the whole time
"Clinton’s relationship with Citizens United dates to her husband’s first campaign for president."
How many of those who earnestly believe(d) #BothSides are the same but really blame #Democrats know anything about #CitizensUnited? Look where we could have been now.
The collapse of #democracy in the US is being ignored by many Americans, with problems ranging from gerrymandering to bribery of legislators.
This decline has roots in #SupremeCourt decisions like #CitizensUnited, leading to oligarchy and a loss of democratic principles.
The situation resembles historical patterns seen in the rise of #fascism in Europe. With the upcoming election as a crucial moment, action is needed to preserve democracy against powerful interests.
The FEC is the primary agency responsible for interpreting and enforcing federal campaign finance law.
It is also one of the few federal agencies with evenly divided leadership:
no more than three of the FEC’s six commissioners can be from the same political party, and under current law, it takes four votes for the commission to act on any significant matter, including deciding to investigate alleged legal violations.
Over the last decade and a half, sharp partisan divisions among commissioners frequently left the agency paralyzed and unable to issue new regulations, provide advisory opinions to political actors seeking to understand their legal obligations, or meaningfully enforce the law.
Recently, the commission has bucked this trend to make some bipartisan progress on a few emerging issues.
Unfortunately, there almost certainly aren’t sufficient votes on the FEC to tackle bigger issues that are part of the ongoing legacy of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which has been the subject of previous rulemaking proposals.
And the commission now faces a new test in responding to the emergence of artificial intelligence, which has the potential to revolutionize political campaigns.
It already has a new rulemaking petition on this subject before it.
Of greatest immediate concern, however, is that even the imperfect rules the FEC does have on the books are seldom enforced.
Take the example of coordination between candidates and super PACs.
Due to Citizens United, outside groups like super PACs may raise and spend unlimited money on elections so long as they act independently from candidates or political parties.
But in the years since that decision, groups have sprung up that work hand-in-glove with political candidates to the point where they are essentially shadow campaigns, resulting in a steady stream of complaints filed with the FEC.
The agency almost never pursues these allegations. In the almost 14 years since Citizens United, it has only initiated a handful of investigations into potential violations of the coordination ban, none of which resulted in any fines.
The same goes for dark money from undisclosed sources, which totaled more than $1 billion in the 2020 election cycle and $615 million in the 2022 midterms.
The proliferation of dark money is partly a function of gaps in the law — including regulatory gaps the commission could address.
But it also results from the fact that many groups that should be required to register as PACs (which have to disclose their donors) simply do not do so.
This, too, has resulted in a stream of complaints on which the commission seldom acts.
The FEC’s efforts to prevent foreign spending in U.S. elections are lacking as well.
While political contributions by foreign actors are banned, the FEC relies on campaigns and PACs to self-certify that they confirmed the U.S. citizenship of donors with foreign addresses.
As the commission’s Office of Inspector General has pointed out, this approach “poses a national security risk and provides insufficient oversight of possible illegal foreign donations.”
In total, the agency has only initiated about a dozen investigations into allegations of foreign spending in the past decade, and when it does occasionally pursue violations, the slow pace and low penalties tend to minimize any deterrence value.
For instance, the FEC recently fined a pro-Trump super PAC $25,000 for soliciting a $2 million donation from a fictitious Chinese businessman in late 2016 — almost six years after the fact, for misconduct during a campaign cycle in which the PAC reported spending more than $23 million.
Overall, the FEC levied about the same dollar amount in penalties last year as it did in 2004, despite overall spending on federal elections having more than tripled.
#Biden abandons strategic ambiguity wrt #Taiwan as US readiness is at a historic low, giving #China the greenlight to escalate from "exercises" to invasion.
My thinking on what must happen to save democracy has evolved.
Fact: The United States has been a backsliding democracy for some time.
Fact: We are in an information disruption.
Because democracy requires facts and an educated population, the question is whether enough people will develop the media literacy needed in this new age of information quickly enough.
🚨Let's hope every Boeing aircraft that's flying is being thoroughly examined.
"Boeing personnel tightened six loose fasteners on the fuselage structure around the plug exit OPPOSITE THE ONE THAT WAS LATER VIOLENTLY EXPELLED from an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 at altitude last Friday."
Republicans use words which mean the opposite of what they sound like or mean. You know, like Moms for Freedom, Citizens United, and Profile are just a short list of oxymoron's, used by them. A full list would be nice if anyone has one.
I have never seen so much evil in my life, think-tank wise. Florida billionaire and major DeSantis donor Dick Uihlein and his Foundation for Government Accountability—FGA (& its lobbying arm “Opportunity Solutions Project) are not just trying to roll back child labor laws across the country— with great successes thus far— they are into EVERYTHING, and to a degree of sickness I’ve never seen.
1/infinite
One of its newer initiatives: discourage high school kids from furthering their education
@JoParkerBear I apologize for posting so many links. Your post caught my eye! The Uihlines came to my attention after J6, so I thought I'd share some of what I've read since then.
Traitor #Hawley triggered TRE45ON Turtle merely by pretending to go after #CitizensUnited
Hawley's (D) challenger, #LucasKnuce, said the bill is nothing more than a performative campaign prop & that Hawley has been taking checks for maximum donation endorsed by Citizens United group itself.
#McConnell reportedly told Hawley the only reason he is in the Senate at all, is due to the #Senate Leadership Fund —which can take unregulated, unlimited contributions for candidates & campaigns.