Swiss Billionaire’s Mega-Influence on U.S. Politics

Re:Swiss Billionaire’s Mega-Influence on U.S. Politics by woodruffw on Tuesday May 17, 2022 @10:02PM (#31418476)

There's an undercurrent of special pleading in this reporting: conservative judicial activism is what got us into this mess and the last decade has seen conservative groups trounce progressive ones in terms of raising "dark" money, but it's suddenly a problem when a progressive foreigner plays by the same rules. Hmm.

And in case it isn't clear: I'd like to ban all private money from public elections. But there's a clear bias in the reporting here, which is unfortunately consistent with RCP "losing the plot" w/r/t being a nonpartisan news source.

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Re:Swiss Billionaire’s Mega-Influence on U.S. Politics by daenz on Tuesday May 17, 2022 @10:13PM (#31418546)

>conservative groups trounce progressive ones in terms of raising "dark" money, but it's suddenly a problem when a progressive foreigner plays by the same rules.

What are some foreign conservative billionaires that we should be worried about?

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Re:Swiss Billionaire’s Mega-Influence on U.S. Politics by zzleeper on Tuesday May 17, 2022 @10:21PM (#31418593)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Murdoch

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Perlmutter

(And yes, for instance Murdoch is technically an American citizen, but for technical reasons i.e. "to satisfy the legal requirement for US television network ownership.")

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Re:Swiss Billionaire’s Mega-Influence on U.S. Politics by daenz on Tuesday May 17, 2022 @10:26PM (#31418628)

Aren't all 3 of those people American citizens?

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Re:Swiss Billionaire’s Mega-Influence on U.S. Politics by woodruffw on Tuesday May 17, 2022 @10:15PM (#31418556)

There's a reason there's an operative "dark" in "dark money."

On net, I don't care if the billionaire is a foreigner or not. I care that they're a billionaire.

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Re:Swiss Billionaire’s Mega-Influence on U.S. Politics by daenz on Tuesday May 17, 2022 @10:28PM (#31418642)

You seem to care about their political alignment as well, otherwise you wouldn't have attempted to discredit the RCP's reporting for having a bias against a foreign progressive billionaire.

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Re:Swiss Billionaire’s Mega-Influence on U.S. Politics by woodruffw on Tuesday May 17, 2022 @10:59PM (#31418811)

Not especially. I do care about special pleading, particularly the when pleader is the one that lit the fire in question.

I would like there to be no private money in politics, full stop.

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Re:Swiss Billionaire’s Mega-Influence on U.S. Politics by johnthebaptist on Tuesday May 17, 2022 @10:14PM (#31418553)

Vladimir Putin

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Re:Swiss Billionaire’s Mega-Influence on U.S. Politics by mc32 on Tuesday May 17, 2022 @10:20PM (#31418589)

Putin wants to destabilize. He's not trying to shape politics one way or another. He wants chaos and anarchy for his enemies. However, lots of billionnaires wish to influence society toward their "vision".

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Re:Swiss Billionaire’s Mega-Influence on U.S. Politics by johnthebaptist on Tuesday May 17, 2022 @11:30PM (#31418957)

He’s a conservative foreign billionaire and influences US politics (which addressed the parent’s question in my opinion).

And he’s certainly trying to “shape politics one way or the other”. The whole disaster is in Ukraine is based on shaping geopolitics. And US conservative politicians and pundits have been used in the run up for that purpose

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Re:Swiss Billionaire’s Mega-Influence on U.S. Politics by mc32 on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @12:30AM (#31419239)

He cares about the old Soviet Union/Russian Empire glory days. That's it. He could not care less who's in the white house, he'll cause them trouble whoever they are --that's all he cares. He personally may be conservative but he is not trying to make the US conservative or liberal --it makes no diff to him.

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