A recent study by the NYU Brennan Center for Justice, a watchdog group that studies election law and finance, revealed that around 44% of all the money, $481 million, raised to support then president-elect Donald Trump came from 10 individual donors.
When the Citizens United decision was announced in 2010, we all ran around with our hands in the air, crying about how corporations would buy elections. Not so. Instead, we have a system dominated by mega-wealthy individuals, the oligarchs, to an unexpected degree.
As far as disclosure goes, more money than ever is “dark” money, in which the donor’s identity is not disclosed, or is hidden behind committees, trap doors, black hoods and trick mirrors.
And, it isn’t as if money buys results. Candidate Kamala Harris raised $1.5 billion in one summer, though we don’t know if our receiving those hourly fund-raising texts through Election Day hurt her at the polls.
We are entering a new era in which money and political power are fused. Big donors like Elon Musk essentially ran Trump’s campaign.
It’s not as though Trump cares about what to do now that he’s back in office. Don’t bother him. He’s on vacation. All he does is watch TV all day.
But the oligarchs care, and The White House side door of corruption is wide open for greedy bastards to come in and earn fat dollar amounts from government contracts designed to eliminate the government and the rest of us with their tariffs, tax cuts and endless forms of graft. Our country is for sale.
At the turn of the 20th century, Americans grappled with similar wealth and power issues. When J. Pierpont Morgan faced an antitrust lawsuit, he told President Theodore Roosevelt, “If we have done anything wrong, send your man to my man, and they can fix it up,” which is oligarch speak for “Up yours, buddy.”
Roosevelt had a different way of looking at the cycle of corruption and reform. “Sooner or later,“ he told a member of the working press, “unless there is a readjustment, there will come a riotous, wicked, murderous day of atonement.”
Craig Corsini lives and writes in Marin County.
