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Comment by comte7092 | Hacker News Reader

>Seeing how thoroughly he convinced people that he had political influence

We’ve gotten tot he point where we’ve gone way too far off the deep end when it comes to this narrative around political influence. the collective imagination seems to have risen to comic book level proportions.

All people saw was SBF gave a bunch of money and thought, “he must have a ton of influence”. Meanwhile, in my state, he gave $11 million to a democratic candidate who lost in the primary and was transparently an absolute joke of a candidate.

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His donations to Democrats accounted for 0.025% of all the money Democrats spent on the midterm election last month. Anyone who genuinely believed that can buy you a get out of jail free card for billions of dollars in fraud should seriously re-evaluate how they think the world works.

I almost called BS on your statistic, but a simple Google search shows that this year's midterm elections saw spending of up to $16.7 billion [1], so it appears to be true. As a non-US citizen, the amount of money in US politics shreds my mind...what are they even spending it on? Ads? Campaign outreaches? How much do these things cost?

If it's how it is in my weird African country (Nigeria), I'll wager that most of the money is spent on advertisements and clueless campaign managers and staff enjoying the grift. But then, I understand; the U.S. is a really rich country with a high percentage of politically-active citizens, so they put their money where their mouth is.

1- https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/03/2022-midterm-election-spendi...

It’s important to keep in mind how much more expensive it is to buy ads in major US media markets. It’s not difficult to spend tens of millions of dollars just buying television ads for a few weeks during campaign season.

Single ads are actually pretty cheap. Full campaigns that are designed to reduce or eliminate opportunities for your competitors to also advertise on the same station are expensive.

Mostly ads, there's a lot of staff too, but the typical campaign salary is pretty paltry and reporting laws limit opportunities for grift.

Consumerism. If you don't roll out a full blown corporate propaganda machine you aren't going anywhere.

You're not wrong, but on the other hand... the limit on direct contributions to federal campaigns is $5800. I can tell you from personal experience that this is enough to get a meeting with any senator or congressman except the most senior leadership (their price is about 10x more). So for about $3-4M/yr you can have every incumbent senator and representative on speed dial. They won't necessarily do your bidding, but they will return your calls.

Is this really true? How does it actually work? You donate $5800 then give them a call and ask for a meeting? I assumed that would take a lot more.

If you give them $5800 they will start calling you to ask for more money. If it's a Congressman they will usually call you themselves. If it's a Senator they might call you personally, or they might have their campaign manager call. But from there it's pretty easy to get a meeting if you want one.

You don't even have to give $5800 in most cases. $1k is plenty to get the attention of junior congressmen and even some less well known senators.

Just to put all this in perspective, it's actually possible to get meetings with these people without giving them money, especially if you're a constituent. But the more money you give, the higher you move up in the priority queue, and it doesn't take much to move to the front of the line.

Just seconding everything you are saying. We dabbled in political contributions at my workplace for a project and it was easy to get a meeting with just about anyone (except our Senators who we didn't need to try) as long as we were flexible with scheduling.

It’s also important to note that a part of a politicians job is to meet with constituents, so getting a meeting is not per se nefarious. The issue is about how much more access you get if you are a big donor.

That's right. Also worth noting that if you want to influence policy (as opposed to getting personal favors) it is quite effective to call their office and speak to staffer, or write a letter. Every call and letter is assumed to represent the views of hundreds of people who couldn't be bothered to call or write. You don't have to be long-winded because the only result of your action will be that a staffer puts a tally mark on a sheet of paper, but the results of those tallies can occasionally move the needle on votes.

They will contact you.

He donated almost 1bn - that is known of. The Democrats spent about 5bn in the whole election. Do you have a source for your numbers?

Are you counting PACs?

What’s your source for the $1bn?

Axios wrote that he spent $37 million on the midterms:

https://www.axios.com/2022/11/15/ftz-crypto-bankman-fried-de...

I think that given SBF’s assertion that he donated an equal amount of dark money to Republicans, it would be wise to mention the amount of money they spent as well. Otherwise you risk giving the impression that this problem is limited to a single party.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/30/ftx-billi...

I also think the 1 billion figure is inaccurate. In May, SBF said that he could spend a billion between now and 2024. However, he backed away from that quote in October:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/14/sam-bankman-fried-backtracks...

Elon Musk later said that SBF “probably” donated over 1 billion, without providing any supporting evidence. I can’t prove that he’s thinking of the May statement but it seems plausible if not certain. Either way, Elon Musk’s guesses are not proof of anything.

I’m glad you asked for sources. It’s always important to provide them.

Can all the people who claimed SBF would never be arrested because of the corruption of media, establishment and Democrats please ask themselves how many other false things they believe because of their tribe's ideology?

No, because there's always another theory that you can jump to when your prior assumptions fail you.

Here's an easy one: "He was only arrested because he was going to reveal damning truth in today's Congressional hearing."

Even if the DOJ, Congress, and SBF all swear until they are black and blue that it wasn't the reason for the timing of the arrest, the theory can change to "Of course they would say that, they are all in on the deep state conspiracy."

The beautiful thing about the world is that there is an unlimited number of unconfirmable and unrefutable possibilities and could-have-beens that can be used to support any idea - sensible, or silly.

Surely a meager bit of attention paid to fear/disgust-based politics [now don't project here folks ;)], would dissuade you from that notion. There's always a deeper conspiracy to double down with. Or outright lies. Gish galloping, etc.

> We’ve gotten tot he point where we’ve gone way too far off the deep end when it comes to this narrative around political influence. the collective imagination seems to have risen to comic book level proportions.

Seriously. If I had a nickel for every time someone had posted on HN "SBF is immune because he donated a lot of money to Democrats" I'd have… well, a lot of nickels.

Madoff donated a lot of money to Democrats too and it didn't help him one bit.

He was the #2 donor behind Soros to Democratic candidates. It's not every day that the number two gets indicted for a multi-billion dollar fraud. It is good to see questions around influence arise.

Questions around influence are good, but what I’m referring to is different.

There were numerous posts on this forum who were adamant that nothing would happen to SBF because they were certain that he had the Democratic Party bought and paid for. It’s the certainty that I’m calling out here (“comic book level), not the skepticism.

> It is good to see questions around influence arise.

If he hadn't gotten indicted in, like, a couple of years, then sure. But people were assuming he wouldn't be indicted days after FTX collapsed.

This is accurate for non-dark money.

Interestingly, if we take SBF at his word that he donated equally to Republicans in dark money, he would be the fifth largest donor to Republican candidates.

https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/3720141-here-are-the...

Why on earth would you believe anything he says without evidence?

What's particularly stupid is most of the time that people are going off about how some company or person gave a bunch of money and that is obviously why Congress passed the bill that company or person supported, the companies or people that opposed the bill also gave a ton of money to the same members of Congress that the first company or person did.

Also, often those companies on both sides of the bill donated a lot to the members of Congress that supported the bill and those that opposed the bill.

So why do they donate all that money?

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