Bloomberg bankrolls a social-media army
wsj.com
wsj.com
...and now the systemD vitriol makes sense.
Michael Lewis' the Fifth Risk highlights this pretty well.
Maximizing-liberty libertarianism would say that an impartial government is necessary to enforce rights for all citizens, even if that's the right to information to vote efficiently.
Trump wanted to tack hard away from the center and to tear down the Republican establishment and rebuild it with a more populist vision. Bloomberg is running to stop the Democrats from tacking away from the center and to 'protect' the party from those threatening to tear it down and rebuild it with a more populist image.
Trump ran as an outsider populist, Bloomberg as an insider technocrat.
Neither candidate believes in compromise or their own fallibility. In either case, we would be choosing to forfeit the ability to decide for ourselves going forward.
There are no candidate that signals fallibility and or possibility of compromise. Why should they, anyway?
I guess it's a rhetorical question. In other words, let me rephrase: why money has always played an important role in politics?
In 2016 Lawrence Lessig tried to attack this problem, with little success. In this election there seemingly is another candidate, somewhat more practical than Lessig, with somewhat stronger systematic approach than others, so we can hope for some progress.
1. purchase it with their own money
2. purchase it with money from bribes
3. blackmail party insiders for the nomination and support
Using their own money is the cleanest and most honest way to do things.
4. Convince millions to give just a little bit of time or effort because you spent your entire political career fighting for working people.
Which, in my view, is even better.
So it's absolutely possible to raise money without using one's own money or taking bribes.
And even if a candidate raises money from a 100 billionaires, that's better than one billionaire. The more people you raise money from the more likely it is that those people have conflicts with one another that can then balance one another out.
A single billionaire financing their own campaign is just too much centralized power for my tastes, even if I trust that billionaire and generally like his policies.
Power corrupts.
Meanwhile, small donor fundraising has become much easier and much more successful than in the past, and imho, the entire problem revolves completely around the amount of power that has been centralized and expanded to the Federal Government. Part of the whole idea behind, you know, the principle of limited government... is to limit the amount of power that could be bought in the first place and therefore limit the incentive to corrupt the process, but obviously that ship has sailed a long time ago...
I would think that in a free society, people are not forced to give their money to support political activity they would otherwise not support. For me, it’s that simple. As Thomas Jefferson put it, “To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical.”
having a lot of money makes it easier to run, but there's no guarantee of success
The entire political process is based on money (fundraising determines whether you're even on the ballot or a debate or able to be on a ticket) and controlled by money as there is a direct correlation between media spend and campaign success.
The worst part is that the "media" is the one sector in our country that has the most to gain from chaos and they're the ones who for the most part, control the dialog and the direction and worse, the cost.
Frankly, I am more shocked by the fact that people dont understand that its all about money.
That said, I agree that money in politics is an issue, but since getting money out of politics is impossible, perhaps we should just get politics out of money. A government which is not empowered/encouraged to waste the publics money would be a nice starting point.
He's not purchasing anything - as long as Americans care enough to be informed, he's blowing hot air that no one will believe.
Caps on campaign spending are there for reasons. A campaign should contribute to meaningful public discourse. Nothing more.
> the American media is free enough to have reported on it
Private media can be biased. Either explicitly (lying to peoples faces), or implicitly (self-censorship on stuff related to the owner). Surprisingly, in several countries - such as Britain or Czech Republic - state-owned media are the one sticking to higher values.
> American citizens are now well-informed enough to know that some of the folks they talk to online are paid, and the American election will be based on the interactions of a free people
Well, there are multiple studies in several countries which show the opposite. Quick google search yields one such https://thehill.com/homenews/media/392870-pew-study-finds-am...
If you can show evidence of this, I’d be interested. I’m pretty sure that /all/ media can be biased, and is. The BBC is no different or better than Fox News. They both share the news from their perspective.
I wouldn't be too sure about that.
Amusingly, in the search results below, BBC themselves report on their own secret links to the state security establishment.
[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=bbc+used+mi5+to+vet+staff
I'm curious: How do you think that Americans can be well informed in a system that actively attempts to feed them disinformation by a series of interested parties that have down to a science how to switch public opinion and humungous budgets?
I'm not claiming that it's impossible for a single person to be well informed, mind you; I'm simply saying that it's pretty clear that the efforts to keep people misinformed are giant, becoming stronger by the day as technology advances and with no significant opposing force. I can't see how anyone can see that trend and think it's not going to have a harmful effect on society.
Unintended consequences abound, should Citizens United be fully overturned and financing be more tightly policed. Maybe those are good, maybe they're bad.
Personally, a 50% tax on any political speech spending, dedicated to funding voter media literacy and education, seems like a better approach.
Give everyone the freedom to speak, but teach everyone to listen critically.
Many voters don't have the time to spend on political education, nor the interest - I actually think the lack of free time is an issue in a democracy, and it's why elderly people are such an active demographic during elections
And the elephant in the room is that propaganda works even on informed people. Just making a name familiar to you is money well spent for marketers, even if you don't buy the claims of the ad it's still an advantage.
Media is designed to be addictive in our days. We should start treating it for what it is - if something disguising as news is actively attempting to evoke an emotional response for the reader/listener to get them hooked, that thing is harmful and not a public service (state funded or not). I don't have a solution, but I do think that at some point in the future we'll look at clickbait and disguised ads the same way we look at tobacco or asbestos now.
There's time for voter education, that's currently not being used.
As to malicious media, I hesitate to advocate censorship before I can come up with an unambiguous, simple test of what qualifies.
When he ran again 3 years later he gave away 28 gallons of rum, 50 gallons of rum punch, 34 gallons of wine, 46 gallons of beer, and two gallons of cider royal — "nearly enough for a half-gallon per voter." And guess what, he won.
Considering we wouldn't even declare independence until 18 years later, it's safe to say that buying influence in an election has been American since the beginning, and even before.
[1] https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/12384/swilling-planters-...
I totally accept it if we're only counting from the start of true universal adult suffrage, including women and taking no account of melanin content of skin - whoever is first on that deserves it be known widely for their national pride. Was that the USA?
UK has had universal suffrage since 1928. It looks like Finland was the first in 1904.
Edit: New Zealand 1893. Go the Kiwis! Ka Mate!
Arguably we still don't, given what the republicans have done to subvert democracy in Florida.
And you ignore the other key point, which is that the US had no real national competitors near its borders, while other countries whose stability you discount did. That's the key point to American stability, not any world historical genius in drafting the Constitution.
America is by far the oldest nation with a presidency, and it's finally starting to collapse.
Setting those things aside, claiming that Congress doesn’t act as a check on the President simply does not square up with such things as the government shutdowns of 2013, 2018, and 2018/19, the Senate’s refusal to confirm Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, the 2011 debt ceiling crisis, and it only goes on from there. Partisan polarization has made the checks and balances between the two elected branches more, not less relevant.
> Senate’s refusal to confirm Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court
Not a check so much as a complete refusal to perform constitutional duty. What McConnell did was subvert the process of checks and balances to remove the presidents ability to make appointments.
Sure they can. They can refuse to confirm his appointments, they can pass laws with a large enough supermajority to override his veto, and they can even remove him from office with a Senate supermajority.
> What McConnell did was subvert the process of checks and balances to remove the presidents ability to make appointments.
Thus disproving this notion that Congress is powerless against the President. The President has the constitutional power to make appointments with the advice and consent of the Senate. There's nothing in the Constitution that says the Senate has to have a good reason to withhold that consent.
The constitution is a deeply flawed document that relies on the acceptance of norms and generally good actors. Absent that you end up with a wannabe dictator like Trump acting basically unchallenged.
> and they can even remove him from office with a Senate supermajority.
an act made much harder when the executive flouts subpoenas.
I don't care about the merits of Congressional prerogatives here, which is an entirely secondary point. The point is that the Founding Fathers believed that Congress would defend its own prerogatives against the executive. This has been proven false: a model where government is dominated by partisan prerogatives is far more descriptive of reality than one where branches-of-governments pursue their own prerogatives.
Your latter point--that a Republican Congress investigated and obstructed a Democratic President--is true, but it is, again, an indication that Congress is driven by the needs of the political parties who happen to be running it at the time, not as an institution in itself.
This is entirely contrary to what the vaunted Founding Fathers intended or expected. Not least because the main thinkers among them thought the system would prevent the development of political parties. The Constitution was theorized to deal with abstractions that don't correspond to reality, and it doesn't even consider the most important driver of politics and governance not only in the contemporary world but in the world that existed a year after it was ratified.
In a world where political parties are accepted as a given and inevitable, no one would write anything like the Constitution and expect it to be effective. And no one has: even after WW2, when the US was drafting constitutions for its defeated opponents, it went with documents entirely unlike our own.
I wasn't intending to.
> I don't care about the merits of Congressional prerogatives here, which is an entirely secondary point. The point is that the Founding Fathers believed that Congress would defend its own prerogatives against the executive. This has been proven false.... Congress is driven by the needs of the political parties who happen to be running it at the time, not as an institution in itself.
Got it, this is a better explanation and I think I agree with it.
It will be a good read for everybody deifying "a realpolitik grandmaster" Henry Kissinger how badly he failed in the role of Rockefeller's political adviser. His ineptitude in politics was borderline tragicomedic. This the best proof to me that a "professional politician" is really an oxymoron.
The rich are bad at politics more often than not, and their money can compensate for that only partially.
Georgie Washington was however a spectacular politician on his own, without a doubt.
Win Rockefeller was elected, and very popular.
The more influence successful people have on politics - the better it is for the country overall.
Countries that try to manage themselves by poor majority - quickly deteriorate into chaos or into dictatorship.
Only Nixon could go to China, as the saying goes.
EDIT: I don't mean this in terms of electability -- I think Bernie can beat Trump hands down. What I mean is accomplishing what he sets out to do in terms of policy implementation -- which, as the Obama years have shown us, is not as easy as it sounds.
Tied in Iowa, won popular vote
Polling strong in Nevada.
The momentum is there.
EDIT: Regarding policy, with so many Supreme Court Justices up in age, the next President will likely get the chance to set the tone. Citizens United is the ruling that enabled much of the financial influence in the government, and Bernie is committed to dismantling it.
Terrible strategy. Bernie replacing Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer isn't going to advance the agenda. Clarence Thomas is only 71 and won't step down if a Democrat is president.
The only way Bernie passes his agenda is by getting significant portions of the country to strike until Congress complies.
1. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/24/bernie-sanders-labo...
2. https://newrepublic.com/article/140245/obamas-lost-army-insi...
Pretty much what Trump did to Republican resistance, but doubtfully as amazingly successful as it's been for Trump.
Something of note that Obama did is turn over an enormous movement to the DNC when he assumed office. Not sure anyone knows why except insiders, but it was definitely his biggest mistake, and neutered his clout. (https://newrepublic.com/article/140245/obamas-lost-army-insi...). No chance Bernie will do that.
Bernie's answer to your question would probably be "I can't, but together we can." As cheesy as it sounds, it's true.
He's pointing to the impact his $400M political donations have made, like getting women elected, stopping homelessness, youth education, etc. whenever asked.
This $2,500/mo for influencers is a drop in the bucket.
Bloomberg is the guy the rules were written to benefit. He doesn't want them changed.
That's why he chose to run against Sanders, when it appeared Sanders could win.
To bring a contrarian pt of view: If you are a billionaire and you ask for donations, people might say, "Why are you asking us for money, why don't use your own?"
Bloomberg is doing that, also at a level of intensity not really seen before, but then also managing a uniquely expensive social media campaign.
Clinton's total campaign was something like $600e6. Bloomberg has already spent half of that, within the span of three state primaries. I would not be surprised if he spends at least that on the primary, and if he somehow gets the nomination, a billion minimum for the entire campaign.
It's unreal.
As for why it's a story: Well, there's was (and still is) a bit of controversy over the role that technology, specifically social media, played in the the 2016 election. What Bloomberg is doing fits right into that theme. It also raises questions about what is advertisement, and what is individual "speech", because the former generally has to be identified as such in the context of a political campaign. Posting a status update on Facebook isn't by definition an ad, posting such an update in support of a political candidate doesn't have to be either... but if you're making those posts and you also happen to be getting paid by the campaign? Does each update and DM need to say, "This tweet was paid for by 2020 Bloomberg for President"? Does it need to have a link to Bloomberg stating, "I'm Michael Bloomberg, and I approve of this ad."? Logistically how would he even do such a thing for each and every paid social media interaction?
In short, it's a story because it sits are the nexus of technology, politics, and general societal discourse.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/crowd-h...
We should keep complaining until they do.
What exactly does your comment attempt to achieve?
Don't care yourself? Don't read the story, don't comment - or at least don't be surprised when you're rebuffed, too.
It's a rather disgusting story, actually.
I'm not convinced the typical process as far as there being two viable parties and running through the wringer of their processes, is something that is particularly great at producing good candidates, or that someone bypassing that legally is a bad thing.
... I'm only partly joking; I am not a fan of the idea that there are some special gatekeepers or One True Process™ for determining who's allowed to talk to voters.
The things Bloomberg has meaningfully "wrong" in terms of process look something like this:
- he is be a rich person (definitely not trendy in the party), and...
- his failure to solicit donations deprives people of one meaningful test of his political appeal, instead
- he spends his own money on politics instead: an uncool, Constitutionally protected exercise of the First Amendment, which has an unfortunate interaction with the political narrative that _Citizens United_ must be restored (though in fact it wouldn't stop him from doing this)
Needless to say, arguing about some of these "violations" is actually in practice just arguing about ideology and might be more effectively approached as such.
Politics lately seems to be:1) paint candidate in the best light, 2) paint opponent in the worst light.
Note: there is no requirement to have a consistent set of rules to do this.
Mark Twain: Running for Governor [Written about 1870]
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3189/3189-h/3189-h.htm#gover...
I was going to say politics has gotten nastier, but I know that's not true. [1]
The Democratic party is really not required to have any sort of fair process for deciding their candidate for president. It can be as transparently crooked and disgusting as this and really that's just how he chose to operate within the legal frameworks established by folks like him.
Sure, there's the huge personality flaws that Bloomberg displays by taking this strategy, but those don't seem to be of major concern to most American voters. Our current president is a daily salient reminder of this fact.
If we want to focus on Bloomberg's personality, why not start with all the horrific policies he enacted as mayor? There are far more visible character flaws in those decisions than this decision to buy his way towards the Democratic party.
If you supported his policies, after all, you'd have no problem with this strategy being undertaken - right?
Pick your lesser evil
So what though? What point is this rebutting? If a process is crooked and disgusting then damn straight you're gonna have people complaining about it and demanding they do better, as you see here.
I disagree. This is somewhat par for the course. For many people, this could be the first time they experience the disappointment of how corrupt folks like Bloomberg operate within the political sphere. However, these people would be incorrect to chalk this up as historically or even politically noteworthy, for many of us this is rather unsurprising and the story has already been told many times. Why rehash these tired tropes when Bloomberg presents so many new, unique, and significant issues that we now must address?
In other words, just because you don't care doesn't mean that others don't. And the news isn't writing stories catering to solely your interests; there's millions of other readers to consider.
How about the current racist with his reign of corruption and racism?
Assume what you want, but that claim is just false. He also defended it for years even after it was ruled unconstitutional.
Stop and frisk is only the tip of the iceberg, by the way.
This claim he reduced it is a key talking point of his campaign, and an outright lie. He was defending it literally up until the moment he decided to run for president (defending it publicly for years until October 2019, then apologizing in November 2019 when he announced his campaign).
> You know, I strongly disagree with Bloomberg, having lived through his reign of terror in NYC personally. But I just don't see the point in focusing on this kind of attack.
I think there are two issues here:
1) candidate Bloomberg himself, and
2) systemic flaws that are offensive to small-d democratic sensibilities, of which Bloomberg is a representative and symbol.
The point of that kind of attack is to bring focus on the systemic flaws. Also, at this point, many more people are probably attuned to those flaws than they are to the candidate himself (as only New Yorkers have really had to care about him, previously).
> The Democratic party is really not required to have any sort of fair process for deciding their candidate for president. It can be as transparently crooked and disgusting as this...
It can be, but not having a fair process turns off a lot of voters, and makes others angry. Doubly so if that lack of fair process means they'll be forced to choose between two bad options.
This seems like a rather weak point of contention...
It sucks, but welcome to politics.
The precedent for having consecutive 'billionaires' as president is a little troubling. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with billionaires, but it sets the bar oddly high for a democratic republic.
Debatable. Find me a billionaire who didn't get where they are through exploitive labour practices, monopolistic consolidation, political manipulation, massive environmental damage, or inheriting wealth earned in one or more of those ways. A world where billionaires can exists seems like a perversion of the ideals of "healthy" capitalism to me.
Where do you think the moral cash limit should be? 10 million or 100 million? When does your success turn you evil?
I don't see how you can say those things when you live in such a nice capitalistic economy when the rest of the socialist/communist world is in such turmoil.
You're in the field that embraces capitalism the most, and it's beautiful. You can start a company in your garage and build an empire from nothing, and many of us have.
Capitalism exploits the greedy humans into generating wealth by rewarding them greatly, it also generates many jobs and assets for the economy. Yes that one person gets rewarded greatly, but many masses would not benefit if they never existed or were never motivated to do those things.
The lazy humans will fleece the system until there's nothing left. Some people need survival to motivate them to climb.
Socialism fails when you run out of other people's money. There's many examples of that.
I literally called them greedy in my argument, not virtuous. I don't believe they are all virtuous, some might be. Some are seeking their passions. All are greedy in some capacity.
> If all billionaires retired tomorrow I believe the country would keep working the same way and the economy would keep growing.
I don't understand, we replace them with another person? Or would a government entity take over their assets they generated.
Accruing capital almost never has anything to do with hard work or laziness. It's a lot of luck. What family you were born into, what area of the world, if you had parents growing up etc. You could be the laziest POS and have more money than you could spend in a lifetime.
Tax-funded education and healthcare is necessary to offset some of the insane luck a trust fund kid has vs kid with a single mother with debt and no inheritance in sight. So everyone can have a fair shot at participating in capitalism. Nothing remotely socialistic about it.
There are plenty of people making $100k/year exploiting labour and/or damaging the environment. But when you're one of the ~2000 billionaires in the world you are pretty much by definition responsible for such a massively larger amount of that harm than the guy making $100k.
> when the rest of the socialist/communist world is in such turmoil
There are plenty of degrees of socialism that could be applied before you end up in stalinist russia. Canada is arguably more socialist than the US, is that in turmoil? Various scandinavian countries are more socialist than Canada, yet they seem to be doing alright.
I'm not saying let's become communist, I'm saying:
1. force capital to respect labour by compensating it fairly
2. force capital to pay for the social and environmental damage it does
3. stop capital from using globalization to avoid doing #1 and #2
4. keep capital out of politics, so that it can't roll back #1, #2 and #3
If we did those things, you'd likely have a lot fewer billionares. Maybe none. But if there were billionaires, they wouldn't be standing on a horde of blood money like a goddamn dragon from a fantasy novel.
(hint: it's because the economy generates so much wealth)
I don't think your Canada/Scandinavia economy argument is going to win any vote from any American.
Also you're wrong: there are ~700 billionaires in asia and only ~600 in north america (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_the_numbe...)
Maybe I can help. The view is that calling the accumulation of wealth "success" is a misnomer because there is hardly anything he as a person had to do compared to the collective effort of all of the people who labored to carry out the orders from above. The workers who made his "empire" what it is have been shafted, since the result of all of their work is that most of the profit goes to the few people at the top. It is wrong to say that Bloomberg did as much work. It is wrong to say that Bloomberg provided opportunity for those workers, because opportunity to be subjugated is not opportunity at all. Opportunity would be to earn 100% of the proceeds of your work so that you have the opportunity to achieve what you want. Employers unilaterally deciding how much money to pay their employees is fundamentally unfair by definition, courtesy of the word "unilaterally". Choice is a false concept in capitalism as you cannot choose from all possible options, just the ones that are graciously handed down from the plutocrats.
Also: the economy we live in is not "nice". It is if you have significant investments in the stock market, but relatively few people actually do. Of the total invested wealth, 90% of it belongs to the top 10% percent of the population. If you are not a part of this club, chances are you are hurting more than you were 15 years ago.
More importantly, if she only had £60 million would she be any less happy?
That said, Biden was up in polls initially based on name recognition alone.
Make a publicly facing form on darknet to send in your vote receipt along with your full name, SSN, voter registration number, etc. (cross referenced against leaked databases) to prevent double dipping and spoofing. Send over $50 of Bitcoin (better yet Monero) on verification.
Literally no one can stop this.
The volume of young people,minorities and poor who would vote for a little cash is enough to push the ballot towards the Democrat. Its not prejudice, just a fact that there are more people who lean left than right, but most of them do not vote.If they did, the entire landscape of Washington would change and in states like Kentucky it would shift the entire balance of power.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2019/11/ftc-r...
or
Oil is good for the environment - scientist
-
You're telling me you don't see a difference here?
I'd bet dollars to donuts Mike's got a tech team in place right now that is running rings around the DNC's haphazard patronage party.
From a political science and historical perspective it's absolutely astonishing. Mike has a lot of baggage but a lot of cash and talent behind him, including ~100 pretty excellent TV and online ads.
Sounds more like a lack of choice.
We keep pulling from the same small pool of rich, connected household names and expect different results.
This isn't correct. It was thrown out because the Democrats lacked standing. It wasn't ruled on the merits: a standing argument means you are not eligible to bring a case yourself.
It's not even a sensible argument: salary is a nominal sum the government pays the president. Emoluments are gifts from foreigners. There's no logical relationship between salary and gifts.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/07/politics/emoluments-lawsuit-t...
I think people are letting their disdain for him cloud their judgement. Also innocent until proven guilty.
You focussed on that and not the central point that your interpretation for dismissal of the court case was incorrect. It has nothing to do with his salary.
What exactly is secret service lodging? not paying city security bills for police? Are you being serious? A President and even ex presidents get secret service. How exactly is he lodging? These are absolutely absurd claims.
Have you looked into what the Bidens were up to? Where was everyone when Obama came out of office being worth over 120 million and Nancy Pelosi worth 140 million?
Like I said, I think your disdain for him is clouding your judgement.
Trump was a registered democrat.
You can register whatever party you want as a regular citizen, but it doesn't dictate who you vote for or what you believe in or actually do.
Given other information about him, and even last debate he is the absolute weakest candidate, almost feels like he is there to spoil the election to help the incumbent.
Trump - a former Democrat, now the Republican president
Bloomberg - a former Republican, turned Independent, now running as a Democrat
Parties used to have the power, but now it seems like popular politicians are picking the party they think provides them with the easiest path to power, realigning their policy views accordingly.
The Democrats seems to have both a socdem wing and a more neoliberal wing and the Republicans a growing right wing populist wing and the standard neocons. Maybe this is oversimplified, but I feel like these should be different parties
That's the strategy being used because 3rd parties have no chance in our system. The only thing you can do is merge into one of the 2, become the new repo owner and reshape it going forward.
Look up your state to find the rules that apply to you:
Other than Forbes, I know of no source that claimed Trump was a billionaire. I think it all goes back to the original lie.
Further, most of his charity scams have been strictly small time. Amounts ranging from $10,000 to a few hundred thousand. No billionaire needs to bother scamming figures so low. If you have, say, $5 billion in net worth and it grows at 5% per year, that’s $250 million per year.
$100,000 is strictly beneath the notice of someone with that much income. But it was not below Trump’s notice. Ergo, it seems unlikely he has the income. Again, the only source on his wealth was himself.
I should note, against my own argument, that Forbes presently thinks Trump is worth $4.4 billion. I could be wrong, but the charity behaviour seems so contrary to actually having wealth. We also know no banks other than Deutsche Bank would lend Trump money. If he truly has billions in assets not encumbered by debt....why? There seems little risk.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2019/05/08/why-we-...
In many properties with Trump's name on them Trump is minority owner with small stake and these companies have huge loans. Bank Trump’s Empire: A Maze of Debts and Opaque Ties https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/us/politics/donald-trump-...
Actual net worth is very hard to estimate because he is hiding his financial status as much as possible. The fact that American banks don't do business with him anymore indicates that his financial situation is not good.
Well, him and the three other people with the skills to actually built it.. he just provided the seed capital and then put his name on it. Secunda, MacMillan and Zegar are all billionaires.
I think it's also pretty easy to spot these days and we're armed much better to fight it at the platform-level.
I don't think this will end well for Bloomberg, he has a long way to climb, and his name is literally associated with big money. He may have already reached saturation, and this is a dying move.
Another aspect of this is that when one encounters a positive comment about Bloomberg on the Internet, the default assumption for a lot of people is going to be that Bloomberg slipped them a twenty. Even honest supporters of Bloomberg are going to have their statements viewed with extreme skepticism.
> I think it's also pretty easy to spot these days...
Is that really true? Some forms of astroturf are transparently obvious, but just because some of it is easy to spot doesn't mean it all is.
> I don't think this will end well for Bloomberg...
Same here. I'll take him seriously as a candidate once he's defended his ideas and his record in an adversarial setting (such as tonight's debate) and has won some delegates.
And that last bit is 1% of the interest and is tangentially related so it doesn't totally jar. Look out for it. You get the same ones repeated again and again like that. It may be totally organic too because Assange is a narcisist rapist who is lying about being afraid of being extradited to the USA so lots of people have said so. Keep repeating and it becomes fact undermines anyone with a different point of view. Full disclosure I am not an Assange supporter nor a Bloomberg or Bernie supporter.
Paid shills are actually really hard to spot. I strongly suspect most of what jars as paid shills aren't paid.
I hypothesize you could detect this type of stuff using semantic analysis of text if you check word order and frequency (or go ML with fastText or w/e) you could get maybe 90% accuracy at determining whether someone isn't a shill. There needs to be an investigative process which humans undergo after this. Then some form of identification would be required before any sort of ban (ideally you tell them, this only stops the false positives from rejoining) can be lifted, just incase any local laws are broken.
The shills all have some source material, so they should be closer to it language-wise than those that they teach/brainwash.
But hey, I wish I was paid to shill against other shills and detect them, it would be an interesting job.
To put it simply: the President does not serve at the pleasure of Congress.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/01/preside...
Talk about buying the election.
Are anyone going to be fooled by this?
Edit: does facebook and twitter require that you disclose any payments you get for posting?
This in particular is an active area of development. Instagram initially said no, but then they changed it to yes.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/14/instagram-ads-bloomberg-me...
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-digital-troll...
Or is it only "buying the election" when it's a candidate you dislike?
My vote isn't for sale and I assume that's true for other Americans. If I thought otherwise, I'd have a hard time convincing myself that democracies can work.
Since the US green party had 200-300 views per youtube video for them out of a million voters about 1 or 2 are not fooled. With candidates further "down" the list we all are fooled. I read maybe half the program for 1% of the alt-candidates. Definitely fooled I was.
Also it's not about explicitly buying votes but there's a lot of lower information voters out there who currently are principally hearing from Bloomberg because he's spending lots of money in later states where the more traditionally funded campaigns haven't because they're on lower cash reserves.
It's not clear at all that Bloomberg would have failed had he run a traditional campaign.
I'm not bothered by self-funded campaigns because my vote isn't for sale (and I assume the same is true for others). Winning elections is about convincing people, not brainwashing them. Money increases visibility, but it didn't save Hillary Clinton.
> Also it's not about explicitly buying votes but there's a lot of lower information voters out there who currently are principally hearing from Bloomberg because he's spending lots of money in later states where the more traditionally funded campaigns haven't because they're on lower cash reserves.
"Lower information voters" is just code for "dumb people who disagree with me". Your perspective is that voters are dumb animals who flock to whoever spends the most on ads.
No 'low information' is just that people who don't, either through apathy, time or lack of interest, seek out or read that much about the various campaigns. Tons of smart people are low information.
Also your vote might not literally be for sale but it's definitely influenced by the amount of media and information you see about campaigns which is correlated with money. Consider the degenerate case of a campaign with nearly zero money but a perfect fit with your politics. Can't vote for it if you haven't heard of it.
Are you suggesting that political advertisements don't use the same sorts of psychological manipulation as non-political advertisements? Or you do consider psychological manipulation to just be a form of "convincing"?
>Your perspective is that voters are dumb animals who flock to whoever spends the most on ads.
Voters are human beings, most of which are highly susceptible to being manipulated through an array of time-tested psychological tricks that advertisers have been using for over 100 years.
Yes people are getting fooled real bad.
The decline of democracy is here.
But sure, "both."
I think that is a lot harder to know and an eternal debate I have.
Yeah lots of media is buying a lot of attention...in the end someone chooses to vote for that person, or not, or stay home.
I strongly worry about the influence / advantage of such money, but folks still pick them and provided they're not illegally ... imprisoning candidates (extreme example of course)... it's still an election.
I don't know how to tell how much these things really change people's minds or if they really do just get extra attention and folks pick the person they want.
Do not misunderstand me. His attempt to simply buy an election is.. annoying, if not unseemly. That said, I am perfectly fine with him finally spending at least some of his vast fortune instead of hoarding it like a dragon.
Hell, he wants to pay me $2500? I will pocket that and then vote for hopefully less obnoxious candidate.
No need to get literal.
>money invested in companies
does not equal
>produce value for society
Necessarily. Those two things CAN be the same, but aren't necessarily the same.
The naive people are the ones who swallow the line from billionaires.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/28/apple-q1-2019-cash-hoard-her...
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/07/microsoft-apple-and-alphabet...
edit: why did i get downvoted?
Wealthy people do 'hoard wealth like a dragon', by definition - otherwise they would not be wealthy.
It's not a dragon hoard if it's two pieces of gold.
Do we have any any hard numbers how much was spend by various nation-states to benefit the Trump campaign?
To be fair, there are so many loopholes in campaign finance laws that it is hard to get accurate numbers of spending, beyond what is self-reported, for any candidate.
Sure they benefit from spreading their message much wider, but it doesn’t mean people will vote for him.
What about the votes of the people you influenced in his direction? If just 2 other people turn to him as a result, your vote against him has been effectively negated. Perhaps the $2500 means more to you than the vote against Bloomberg? If so, that's fair. A lot of people could use that kind of money, and I don't blame them for taking it. Ironically, that speaks directly to the imbalance of political power caused by the existence of massively wealthy individuals like him.
But assuming you are OK with promoting a candidate in exchange for $, why not take money from a candidate you believe in, rather than one you plan to vote against? Is it because (just guessing) he's paying more? In which case, it seems a lot like he's just buying the primary.
To the candidate I believe in I give my donation. For someone I believe, I will spread their message for free. Him? He has to pay.
He is paying you to leverage your reputation and trust networks, and you are extending your reputation and trust networks to him for a fee.
It doesn't matter that you think you don't subscribe to belief about people you posited above, because if you don't believe in Bloomberg's message, you are effectively deceiving those in your trust network.
Now, perhaps everyone in your trust network is in on your deception, but realistically the vast majority of humans, as social (vs. antisocial) beings rely on trust networks as a strong signal for forming opinions and taking actions.
So maybe it is not all doom and gloom?
He's buying up media and politicians. People can't decide from themselves when he's spending a billion dollars to shape the narrative.
If Bloomberg gets elected the US is done. It's not longer anything resembling democracy and the only thing that will save us from the new order will be revolution.
Companies spend billions of dollars on advertising, but plenty of people decide for themselves.
(This is the core argument of Democracy for Realists).
So being extremely wealthy and successful now disqualifies you from being a good President?
Unlike our current super wealthy President, Bloomberg has more experience in government (mayor of NYC) and has a more successful track record in business.
Money shouldn't disqualify you from being a good President, poor judgement, low moral character and lack of relevant experience should.
I certainly wouldn't mind if Bill Gates ran for President and if he did I doubt he'd accept donations.
There are only about 600 billionaires in the US. Trump is obscenely wealthy.
I don't believe anyone is saying this. Bloomberg, for example, is spending more on TV ads than every other candidate combined. It's not a level playing field at all. Bloomberg has a war chest nobody can compete with. His having it isn't the issue we're talking about here. The fact that he's able to use it in this manner should worry us all.
It's not really relevant to the argument. I have an issue with what Steyer was doing as well, but at least he followed the rules.
Bloomberg got the rules changed to suit him, by spending money with the DNC. He's been blanketing the airwaves and buying endorsements.
It's plutocracy.
Almost certainly yes. These people have out of control egos and little relevant experience. Bloomberg would be no different than Trump.
Gates too.
To say anyone with $X shouldn't be President sounds like profiling. Why not just disagree with his policies or actions?
As far as relevant experience, Bloomberg was the Mayor of NYC and has managed a large organization. That's a lot more government and leadership experience than Trump or Obama had.
Plenty of other things to not like about him but being Mayor of NYC or running a successful business shouldn't disqualify him by any means. So now no one who wants to be President should be a Mayor first or start a successful business? Maybe we should throw out senators while we're at it. Pretty soon we'll be left with armchair economists and self described philosophers who truly don't have any relevant experience.
It's flippant, but here's a simple test.
> has managed a large organization
If that's your justification for why you should be president, then you aren't actually qualified to be president. There is no business on earth that would adequately prepare someone to be president.
> Obama
Obama was a US senator for 4 years and a state senator 7 more.
> Trump
Is a disaster. Bloomberg would also be a disaster.
I feel like this is often the crux of the argument against any kind of government regulation. "The people are smart enough to not be duped!" And in many cases it's easier to create chaos / scam people than it is to defend yourself against it. Just because some people seem capable of defending themselves / cutting through the fraud doesn't mean everyone who can't are idiots or children.
I'll give you an example. There used to be a ton of "Anti-Virus" apps on the iOS App Store. Due to how iOS is built, these apps literally weren't even able to do anything—they were all pure scams. But... people purchased them, not knowing about it. Many of us on HN would recognize immediately that these were scams, because technology like this is in our wheelhouse, so to speak. But it's likely someone in your family (a non-idiot) who's used antivirus software on computers before, and was comfortable with that arrangement, would easily be duped into buying one of these apps. Your analogy would have you advertise or endorse these products, then turn around and mock any "idiot" who purchased them. That's, to me, classic unethical behavior. I can't fathom how this is defensible to anyone with a modicum of empathy.
US schools do have educational system focused on presenting how US election system is supposed to work under ideal circumstances. By default, citizen should know wtf they are voting for. It may be a system issue, but that is a separate conversation.
Apps, otoh, are relatively new. There is no class out there on avoiding scams ( though there probably should be ).
I also disagree with unethical part. He is spending his own money. How is that unethical?
1. I was referring to your example scenario where you're taking his money and disingenuously working to support his campaign.
2. I'm not sure why you're suggesting "spending your own money" absolves you from unethical behavior. If I bought a bunch of worn-out tires and hired some kids around the neighborhood to start a tire fire in the nearest park, that'd be absolutely unethical (and probably illegal as well), despite the fact that I funded the operation myself.
2. I never claimed to be absolved. Then again I do not believe I committed a sin either. You may be pushing your analogies too far. Lets stick to the facts available to us.
Just because you're able, and many people in your left or right coast region may be, doesn't mean everyone is.
I agree with your sentiment, free will and less protectionism...
but, no - consumers/voters are not educated, or even given the tools they need to become so. Literally more is spent every year on the opposite.
Snap and media conglomerates alone ads so much noise, for no profit, to do just this - distract, and fuzz.
You mean, you'll pocket that $2500, then vote for him for another promised $2500, because your vote is for sale - that much is certain.
How about subvertive of the democratic process?
I do think you have a valid argument here assuming the process was not already subverted.
Bloomberg is buying off people and hasn't been forced to defend his atrocious record, at all.
and plenty of people support aggressively campaign financing reform and public funding of elections.
In other words, hate the game not the player.
Are you sure about that? Trump raises massive donations at every rally.
You mean investing it in his company?
Being passive about issues like this (let alone turning a blind eye and personally profiting from them...) gets into a scenario where there is no less obnoxious candidate to vote for.
And how is that covert? We are all talking about it. People seem to freak out, because it appears to be working, which is interesting.
Lastly, how am I passive? I said I would take his money if offerred. I placed myself right on the fence..
As for lack of candidates, I do not think we are at culling stage yet.
I find it morally acceptable to take his money if you need it. But let's not forget what that transaction means. It's the powerful forcing your outward attitude towards them. You're not a reputable citizen if your speech is controlled by your lord.
That said, riddle me this as it may yield some interesting answers. Do you believe there is such a thing as too much power in one set of hands? If so, is one Bloomberg too much?
With capitalism the solution was roughly that some things were taken out of money's reach. You can't buy them. Still I say that a guy like Bloomberg has too much power. It's not like the struggle is over.
I don't think there are ten Democrats who oppose what Bernie Sanders stands for.
But there are millions of Democrats who oppose what they think he stands for.
Most voters don’t have a coherent ideology. The ever-appealing “center” is not a real thing; it exists only wherever voters can be convinced it exists.
It's pretty gross to watch someone literally buy an election. I hope he fails. But there's a good chance he'll get far, because though he is running as a Democrat, many of his past statements regarding women, minorities, and stop and frisk appeal to the non-PC Republican sentiment that worked in the last election. And you can count on the fact that the average person won't understand that none of this buzz is organic.
I wonder what the HN ones look like, maybe like this:
"I disagree with the article and also with the parent comment..."
Of course, it could be grassroots. I just doubt it.
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidentia...
Does buying support like this work? "Hey family, Mike Bloomberg is awesome, we should all vote for him". That just feels so artificial and fake, but maybe if the phrase gets repeated enough people start believing it...
> Outvote also allows users to look up whether their friends have voted in past elections by matching their contact lists against public data.
That's a good way to lose family and friends. "I see you haven't voted, if you want to stay friends and be invited out, better vote or donate to Mike's campaign".
> it is important to be transparent about paid commercial promotions, but he views the ethics of political activism as less clear. ... “it took decades for TV and radio to figure out what disclosure for ads should be.”
So promoters don't have to put disclaimers in their messages. Does that open the door for his opponents to pretend to be Bloomberg's supporters but say ridiculous stuff to make people dislike him.
Definitely. When a voter is in the booth, and has to make their decision for once and for all, name recognition and the opinion of your community matters a ton. Further, the type of social media content that is being produced is painting him as sort of a benevolent, rich, goofy guy. It's intentionally anti-establishment, but not in the radical way or the thoughtful way... it's a safe type of rebellion and that is endearing to a massive amount of people.
> Does that open the door for his opponents to pretend to be Bloomberg's supporters but say ridiculous stuff to make people dislike him.
This has happened for a while and will continue to happen, although this kind of stuff is mainly isolated to niche Twitter... as we run up to election time, I think you will see more of this Clickhole/Onion type posting of anti-support-support.
Running for president is very expensive. All other candidates are also spending a lot of money -- but they're spending a lot of _other people's money_, to whom they are now beholden. What do those other people expect to get in return for their financial support? Surely they don't just give away millions of hard earned dollars to install someone in the most powerful office in the world out of faith in democracy. Donors and their groups -- especially the large and important ones -- are almost always aligned with explicit policy (and often persoanl) quid pro quo expectations, should the candidate win the election.
Bloomberg, by contrast, is spending his own money. He's not beholden to anyone's interests or greed or kickbacks or special interests. Whether you like or dislike his policy proposals, surely this point, at least, is better than a candidate with a wealthy donor network of obscure motives pulling the strings behind the scenes.
No - it's not that he's spending his own money. But rather, how he's spending it.
And they're not "upset". They're calmly pointing out the obvious: that this kind of attempted influence buying is profoundly dystopian and antidemocratic.
If we allow the extremely wealthy to have an extreme advantage in campaigns, we'll end up with a government that only serves their interests. Why would we expect anything else?
The solution to this is public funding of elections that puts all candidates on an equal playing field, or at least overturning Citizens United and only allowing direct donations under the maximum including from yourself.
Hiring dedicated trolls at $2500 a month, you mean? Do you have a source for that?
I don't think it's antidemocratic. Bernie Sanders is doing just fine with a fraction of the ad spending. Ultimately, nobody is being forced to vote for him. Super Tuesday will be the first test, and it's very possible that Bernie will sweep all of the big states himself.
This is the same reason governments sell war bonds -- they don't actually need the $100. It rather serves to make ordinary people feel they are contributing something to the cause.
Now there are two options. Either the consumers have just as much money chasing a smaller amount of goods, leading to inflation, or you need to reduce the amount of money consumers have. Selling bonds is a mechanism for doing the latter. The end result is the same: the war effort means lower living standards, whether through inflation or through people voluntarily forgoing consumption by purchasing war bonds; the latter happens to make people less upset and likely has different distributional characteristics, so is probably a better idea.
Note that there are various details like whether your economy is at capacity (and if it's not, maybe you can do the war effort production _and_ still produce the goods consumers want by expanding overall production). And there can be various different mechanisms which lead to inflation in practice, ranging from "printing money" to pay for the cost of the war effort production, thus bidding up prices in general, to establishing rationing and a corresponding black market with high prices.
In a non-fiat-money world, there can be other reasons to do war bonds, of course, including "getting some of whatever counts as money", since the government does not control the supply of that.
It's worse because it's self-serving. It's unprecedented because he's outspent every candidate (I believe in the history of the US) and it's all his own money. He can buy anyone at this point...I'd rather have a politician pulled in several directions than one that just does whatever he pleases because he can buy influence and influencers
Surely this was said of the current occupant... never quite as clean as that, it would seem.
What a laughable statement. Of course he is, he's beholden to his own interests as a billionaire. Bloomberg is special interests personified. How is it possibly a good thing that any single person in our country can elect themselves via sheer wealth?
Also incredible that you phrase being beholden to many people's interests as a bad thing. Of course there is corruption by another name when candidates take money from Super PACs (Buttigieg/Biden), but isn't it a good thing that, for example, Sanders is now beholden to the interests of his over 2 million donors? Almost like he's beholden to the interest of his constituents, as an elected representative...
I think some Americans might be misinterpreting Trump's and Bloomberg's position. Their personal wealth made them jaded, not immune or uninterested in the idea.
He appeared to run a cost effective campaign. The endless free coverage provided by pundits and commentators who continuously mocked was transformed (by him) into a strength. He also made full use of social media to reach as many people as he could. I'd be hard pressed to name another candidate who so effectively used twitter.
The slogan and the hats too. Make fun of him all you want - but it was an effective and cheap marketing campaign. More importantly - its a message that resonated with a lot of people.
That's how you win elections.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/feb/21/outside-coas...
"“OK. You want to talk about Trump? I voted for Trump!” I asked him if he was pulling my leg. He laughed. “No way. I may be a Muslim, but I am a businessman first and I am not stupid. Many Muslims here did. Under the table.” He added with a big smile: “We are Americans. We have diverse views also.”"
Clearly there are a lot of minorities who voted for him.
At no point did someone fail to deliver their message. HRC's message (to the extent that it could be parsed) just didn't click with a lot of people. Trump's did.
The rules for winning a presidential election are well known and well established. You have to win a majority of the electors spread over many states. This means composing a message that broadly resonates with the country. Trump did that. HRC did not.
Hillary Clinton's message resonated with over 3,000,000 more voters, however unfortunate their distribution was.
I believe it's a strength of the US that we have different voting methodologies for different roles. One for the House and a _different_ (yet also fair!) methodology for the President.
While these reasons were partially born as a result of compromise - the compromise is rooted in some good political theory.
We would be worse off if we only had one method and not the other. But we have both and we are stronger for it. I'd like to keep both. I think most ardent defenders of the electoral college would say the same.
You really want to celebrate a compromise that was made to enable to states to maintain chattel slavery? The electoral college is only fair in 2020 if your goal is to elect candidates who have fewer votes nationally. It no longer serves any philosophical or practical purpose.
Slavery is merely one kind of divisive issue that can be used by a candidate to leverage seeds of distrust, disdain and disagreement to gain leverage over the other side. Even without slavery, there were other issues that divided North and South. Anglophile vs. Francophile. Agrarian vs. Industrial. Federalist vs. "Jeffersonian Repulicans". Federal powers. vs State. Small states vs. Big States.
Something like an electoral college itself encourages compromise over divisive issues. You can't make just an appeal to populous coastal regions to win. You can't just make an appeal to moneyed northern industrial cities. You can't just make an appeal to agrarian southern interests. As we continue to change shape, candidates have to learn its shape and pull back to the middle if they want to win.
I like that modern candidates really have to get out there to so many different states and "press the flesh". They need to know a substantial portion of the country. A national vote would slowly put an end to this. And I think that's dangerous.
Consider today's angry issues - the debate over the 2nd amendment or Roe v Wade. A national vote would result in situations where a candidate can take a very strident position on topics like this and win - but it would ultimately lead to more division rather than trying to wrestle ourselves to some sort of compromise.
So I think it's really unfortunate to dismiss the EC as though its some sort of slavery preserving institution. It really promotes compromise and chills regional passions even if they are a large majority.
> Something like an electoral college itself encourages compromise over divisive issues.
I can name exactly one time this has happened and I don't think the Compromise of 1878 is something we should be holding up as good governance. Our current issues are a direct result of that compromise.
The EC only served to increase tensions at several points in our history - 1800, 1860, 1878,2000, 2016. I can't think of a single time it has served to increase unity or harmony. We have had a few individuals who were more-or-less consensus candidates (Monroe and Eisenhower), but that had nothing to do with the EC.
> You can't make just an appeal to populous coastal regions to win. You can't just make an appeal to moneyed northern industrial cities. You can't just make an appeal to agrarian southern interests. As we continue to change shape, candidates have to learn its shape and pull back to the middle if they want to win.
So instead the candidates spend their time raising money to run ads and pandering to about 6 swing states, which winds up leaving far more people out of the process than if every vote was worth, you know, one vote.
> I like that modern candidates really have to get out there to so many different states and "press the flesh". They need to know a substantial portion of the country. A national vote would slowly put an end to this. And I think that's dangerous.
See above. Trump literally knows New York City and nothing else. He lost by 3,000,000 votes. How is a national vote more dangerous than a system that happily elected an unpopular demagogue? Especially when the stated function of the EC is to prevent such an event.
> Consider today's angry issues - the debate over the 2nd amendment or Roe v Wade. A national vote would result in situations where a candidate can take a very strident position on topics like this and win - but it would ultimately lead to more division rather than trying to wrestle ourselves to some sort of compromise.
We've had the Electoral college for the entirety of the existence of those issues. They are more partisan than ever, with no compromise on the horizon (in large part thanks to the EC appointing 2 unpopular presidents in 16 years).
> So I think it's really unfortunate to dismiss the EC as though its some sort of slavery preserving institution. It really promotes compromise and chills regional passions even if they are a large majority.
You have demonstrated no proof of your claim. The fact that all of these issues are at historic highs really underscores the fact that what you are arguing simply isn't true.
There basically would be no country without it.
If we got rid of it today, every state that relies on equal representation would be in their right mind to secede rather than be legislatively bullied by the more populated coastal states.
The U.S. is a democratic republic, because the power stems from the people (demo-), not from a small group of people (oligo-) or a single person (auto-).
And he's right - he went from nothing to third place (in national polls) solely through (mostly internet) ad spend.
What I don't understand is why every candidate isn't taking a similar approach. These guys are showing it's not about events, likeability, policies, history, etc. It's just about mass manipulation enabled by the internet.
I still think his entire campaign is just a twisted way to get around campaign contribution limits and possibly a bulwark to keep the wacko socialist candidates from winning the nomination.
Hopefully he proves me wrong and is a real candidate that will be able to stand toe to toe with President Trump and we will see a good old fashioned dust up between the two of them this summer!!
But who knows, the experts said Hillary would win too.
Edit: Nevermind, the OP meant what you thought :D
Back in 2015 or 2016, The Atlantic had a great article that highlighted the billionaire donors behind each of the (traditional) Republican candidates in the presidential primary. It wasn't hard to see how the candidate's platform aligned with the donor's agenda in each case.
If some billionaire is going to be driving a political campaign, I'd much rather they were upfront about the whole thing and put their own name on it.
Okay Bloomer.