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Comment by spywaregorilla | Hacker News Reader

SBF spent about 33% Republican / 66% Democrat

EDIT: Not accurate ^

Yet 18 of the 25 top donors were Republican leaning. Billionaires comprise 20% of Republican funding vs. 14% for Dems. Most republican megadonors were entirely republican. The big ones are from hedge funds.

So yeah, SBF donated to the dems. We need more regulation to get money out of politics. But let's not kid ourselves into thinking the republican party is immune to this. They are in it. They tend to be more in it.

96% of house seats were won by the party that spent more in their race.

https://web.archive.org/web/20221113221316/https://www.nytim...

https://web.archive.org/web/20221113013307/http://www.opense...

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Good post.

> 96% of house seats were won by the party that spent more in their race.

I don’t think the causality here is clear. A lot of companies/billionaires/millionaires and even regular people tend to donate money towards the people who are likely to win the race. If you wanna be in the good graces of the person representing a certain district in the House the best way to do that is to make a bet on the likely winner ahead of the elections.

I would say... mostly true? The 96% isn't as sobering as it first sounds because most races are not competitive at all.

https://www.opensecrets.org/outside-spending/by_race/2022?di...

Many have literally $0 by outside spenders (ignoring the parties themselves).

On the other hand you don't see a ton of money going to non-competitive races because it doesn't really matter. The politician doesn't benefit all that much so it's not exactly a great way to earn favors. Or at least, that's what I'd assume. Lobbying is cheaper than people expect but a lot of these totals are so low I can't imagine it really matters to anyone.

The highest spending race was Nevada 3. With ~$15M for Republicans and ~$5M for Democrats. Predicted a likely democrat Win by 538 and ultimately won by democrats 52-48. Contradicting kind of all points here we're making. It's fuzzy of course. Need to get money out regardless.

>On the other hand you don't see a ton of money going to non-competitive races because it doesn't really matter. The politician doesn't benefit all that much so it's not exactly a great way to earn favors.

Just my own speculation, but this is probably only true to a certain point. A politician in a non-competitive race is not going to have anything productive to do with 15 million as in NV3, but money that goes to the PAC run by your former aide helps to grease his palm (so 100k goes in and 50k is spent on ads, 50k on the PAC CEO's salary for example), or to similarly grease the palm of your various consultants, friends, and family, or to grease the palms of friendly industry groups who you sincerely hope will hire you on a do-nothing job once you retire from politics.

Money coming in to a certain point is always a good thing, and I speculate being in a foregone conclusion race probably helps limit the scrutiny on how you spend it.

> So yeah, SBF donated to the dems. We need more regulation to get money out of politics. But let's not kid ourselves into thinking the republican party is immune to this. They are in it. They tend to be more in it.

Fair enough and thanks for the context, but politically connected is politically connected. Can be politically connected to democrats or republicans.

Some people will never understand how damaging this level of tech money tied up in politics is. Apparently it's easier to jump on one side and do finger-pointing than to actually accept the level of fraud happening.

SBF spent 99.9% Dems and 0.1% Repub, according to your first link.

You’re telling untrue facts according to your own sources — to minimize that the second largest Dem donor was a criminal stealing customer funds. Your comparison to Repubs is unfounded as none of their donors engaged in organized crime like SBF.

Why are you spreading election misinformation?

Ok buddy, look, one. You're right, it was a mistake. I misremembered something. I cited a source containing the right information and you pointed it out. Thanks.

> Why are you spreading election misinformation?

Two, Fuck off. This is needlessly passive aggressive. There is no need to throw in a worst-faith assessment of my motivations for posting all of this.

This is more misinformation than the OP - there's more criminal money flowing into republicans by far, the below is just two examples (edit: two examples) from 10 seconds of searching for an article:

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/20/gop-operatives-char... https://www.wsj.com/articles/former-gop-donors-charged-in-in...

Even if talking just about people who are later found to have acted improperly, look at the CEO of FTX Ryan D. Salame, one of the largest Republican donors.

10 seconds of searching is where your argument falls apart, good luck with that.

Anyway you are justifying this destructive behavior with more destructive behavior? It's no wonder you don't take more time to understand these things.

I'll reiterate my comment to the original OP. Billionaires donating may generally be legally doing their business. That doesn’t make it moral or ethical or completely legal. If the entire billionaire system is corrupt, pointing all fingers at the corrupt Dem party when the Repub party is just as corrupt, if not more so, is weird, uniformed, and biased. Are you spreading election misinformation?

It's not illegal but totally immoral to call out corruption only when it's who you previously deemed your political opponent.

No one is justifying any behavior, criminal activity is criminal activity and the money needs to be out of politics in general. My comment is only calling out the commenter for making an obviously biased statement without even taking half a second to see if it's even conceivably true.

The argument falls apart because two examples were quick to find? If all you can complain about is that it was too easy to find two examples to counteract the commenters clearly partisan and facetious claim then it sounds like you're grasping at straws.

Please enlighten us on how we should have spent more than 10 seconds to understand that there are actually no republican donors engaged in criminal activity and the commenter was just making a factual statement we obviously don't understand.

Nobody is unbiased in their opinions about what politicians do with the money, nor should they be. But if you really want to spend more than 10 seconds I'd say reference something more academic that what google spits out as fast facts. Yes, I am partial to books and history in assessing this situation, and see no issue with complaining about you minions taking their latest "internet research" so seriously.

Those other billionaires donating a ton may be mostly legally doing their huge business. That doesn’t make it moral or ethical or completely legal. If the entire system is corrupt, pointing all fingers at the corrupt Dem party when the Repub part is just as corrupt if not more so is weird, uniformed, and biased. Are you spreading election misinformation?

Excusing criminality by saying “well, legitimate business isn’t totally ethical!” is nonsense gaslighting.

>Excusing criminality by saying “well, legitimate business isn’t totally ethical!” is nonsense gaslighting.

I think the point was not whataboutism, but rather that the sewer of filthy lucre that we call "campaign finance," regardless of who gives/receives such funds, creates perverse incentives in the political system and should be discouraged/done away with.

That's not a partisan take IMHO.

Who is excusing it? I'm not! You have to lock SBF up assuming everything we have heard so far is close to the truth.

I want the lot of billionaire donors to have their and their company's finances and political involvement investigated and made transparent for the public. Keep them all accountable. But ofc SBF is worse than all the rest because of how bad his actions have been. The worst. But overall we shouldn't allow any one to have such outsized power. Don't make it legal to politically donate this much money to any one.

On the other hand, you appear to be excusing the Republican donor's. Your comments are saying "go after this visibly criminal (according to our justice system) Democrat. Focus on that! Ignore all the republican [and other Democratic] ones". Being as partisan as can be.

nobody9999 summarized my side perfectly as well.

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