Money talks, all others walk...

[SuperMatt]

Not over yet.

Florida attorney general asks for investigation of Bloomberg's efforts to reinstate felon voting rights | CNN Politics

Florida's attorney general has requested that the FBI and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigate Michael Bloomberg's efforts to reinstate the voting rights of felons by paying their fees, according to a letter to the agencies provided to CNN by the attorney general's office.

www.cnn.com

WTF? You are getting free money, because the people who can’t afford to pay those fines would never pay them. Why complain about that? Oh, that’s right... it’s not your money, so you only care how it might affect the vote. Screw the voters who gave ex-felons the right to vote overwhelmingly by imposing the fines restriction, and when the fines are paid, whine about that too. It’s so nakedly partisan.

 

[SuperMatt]

96% of public comment received last year on this rule change opposed exempting 9 million acres of the Tongass National Forest in Alaska from the Roadless Rule passed back in the Clinton era. The Trump administration has now changed the rule, opening the way for establishment of roads and timber logging to occur in about half the forest.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1309659624124157952/

You look at all the wildfires in America and you somehow think “let’s get rid of even more trees!” Flat-earth society at work.

 

[lizkat]

You look at all the wildfires in America and you somehow think “let’s get rid of even more trees!” Flat-earth society at work.

I'm going to end up w/ stress injuries from rolling eyes and shaking my head when I read the news any more.

 

[JayMysteri0]

One reason Florida isn't to fond of Billionaires getting involved and offering to pay the fines of state felons allowing them to vote. It's because perhaps Florida hadn't intended for those fees to be paid?
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1310357340344942599/

 

[SuperMatt]

One reason Florida isn't to fond of Billionaires getting involved and offering to pay the fines of state felons allowing them to vote. It's because perhaps Florida hadn't intended for those fees to be paid?
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1310357340344942599/

The government of Florida is a mockery. And yet people vote GOP? I guess they figure Dems might raise the state income tax above 0%.

 

[lizkat]

One reason Florida isn't to fond of Billionaires getting involved and offering to pay the fines of state felons allowing them to vote. It's because perhaps Florida hadn't intended for those fees to be paid?
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1310357340344942599/

No "perhaps" about that in at least some of those counties, sounds like.

So sick of all the ways to keep someone down for the count permanently. Everything from the zip code you're born in to the luck of the not necessarily very random draw if you get in trouble with law enforcement.

American ideal: pay debt to society, get second chance.

"How are we doin' on that lately?"

So money talks, but sometimes your money (or the money someone else is willing to provide to you) isn't even green, if someone with more local clout would prefer that you not have a voice at all.

I mighta just got cured of my one-off experience of having my money only turn green in that Texas diner after I finally flashed an inch of pale belly skin to the racist owner who "didn't serve Mex... nor mix neither." Could be time to let that guy's mistaken view of my suntan go. This thing in Florida sure has that beat all to hell as a marker of power-abusing bigotry.

 

[JayMysteri0]

The government of Florida is a mockery. And yet people vote GOP? I guess they figure Dems might raise the state income tax above 0%.

It's more like they know is that any punitive measures sought by the GOP will always be directed towards dems. So why wouldn't you vote GOP exclusively, it's in your own best interests?

 

[lizkat]

It's more like they know is that any punitive measures sought by the GOP will always be directed towards dems. So why wouldn't you vote GOP exclusively, it's in your own best interests?

Florida is pretty complicated. There are all those senior citizens, who have often tended to leave their earlier politics (and their brains) behind when they retire to Florida and sit in the sun wondering if they're going to outlive their assets including a presumed continuation of Social Security checks and Medicare benefits. There are also a lot of ranchers and farmers. There are devoutly anti-socialist expatriates from Venezuela and Cuba. There are economic refugees from the devastation of Puerto Rico and Haiti. None of these blocs are politically monolithic except maybe the ranchers, but they are on balance more right-leaning than I had expected them to be.

I had always figured that older people would tend to be more liberal than when they're working, just anecdotally and from my own experience with "old folks" when I was still in the workforce, noticing that some of my elders and their contemporaries wanted more for their grandkids and were seeing that was not gonna happen in a consolidating economic scene and pressure to privatize government agency functions.

But I do also know that a liberal lean among seniors is definitely not the conventional wisdom, at least in the latter part of the 20th century and early 21st.

These days though if a senior doesn't vote against this batch of so-called Republicans, they really have checked their brains at the door to the polling station. "Just my opinion."

 

[lizkat]

So it's two weeks to the US elections and looks like the Trump campaign managed to blow through somewhere around a billion dollars... on who knows what, since some of it was "disclosed" to several limited liability companies (LLCs) purposely set up to avoid providing ultimate targets of the particular funds.

How Trump plowed through $1 billion, losing cash advantage

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s sprawling political operation has raised well over $1 billion since he took the White House in 2017 — and set a lot of it on fire...

apnews.com

Trump campaign has now come up so short of what's needed that they're spending a lot of what they raise on... yeah, more fundraising. That kinda thing is usually called "losing your shirt". Or just "losing".

There are signs Trump’s grassroots fundraising operation has slowed. Once a driving force, the campaign is now spending about 77 cents for every dollar it raises, typically through online ads asking supporters to chip in a few dollars.

Between July and September, it cost the campaign $181 million to raise $235 million through such small contributions. That’s a considerable break from earlier in the year, when it raked in hundreds of millions while spending far less.

Go figure. And figure, and figure.... as the clock runs out.

Meanwhile since money does talk, some big R-leaning donors have been talking amongst themselves and have apparently been deciding to donate to PACs that are not controlled by the campaign, since unsure where that dough is actually going. Also some of them are basically telling Trump to take a hike and putting their donations into Senate races.

 

[Huntn]

Thinking about the alleged power of the grassroots donors in political contests in the USA...

1. Act Blue is a nonprofit fundraising platform available to Democratic Party and progressive candidates and related political organizations. USA grassroots donors have contributed a little over $6 billion through this platform over the past 16 years.

https://secure.actblue.com/A

2. The net worth of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos increased by $13 billion on the single day of July 21, 2020, thanks mostly to a 7.9% rise in Amazon stock that day.

https://nypost.com/2020/07/21/amazons-jeff-bezos-sees-net-worth-grow-by-record-13b-in-one-day/


3. No clue how much free speech ol' Jeff personally buys with his dough on any given day or for that matter over the past sixteen years. He has given money to both political parties and to candidates of both parties.

https://marketrealist.com/p/jeff-bezos-political-party/

4. But, Amazon spent $16 billion on lobbying in DC in 2019.

https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?cycle=2019&id=D000023883

4. Jes' sayin'...

Act Blue has been bugging the hell out of my wife with both calls and texts at all hours. Somehow even I am getting texts for her! When you give money, the word goes out. Now it’s become LEAVE ME ALONE!!

 

[Eric]

Act Blue has been bugging the hell out of my wife with both calls and texts at all hours. Somehow even I am getting texts for her! When you give money, the word goes out. Now it’s become LEAVE ME ALONE!!

Amen to this. I donated twice to Biden and am certain I get between 10 and 20 texts/emails from them per day asking for more. He's got so much money they're flooding down-ballot races with cash as well, all well and good but damn man they act like they're living on the streets looking for a hot meal. I'm sticking with them until the election and the second it's over I'm unsubscribing the shit out of them all.

 

[Alli]

I'm sticking with them until the election and the second it's over I'm unsubscribing the shit out of them all.

I’ve already begun unsubscribing.

 

[lizkat]

I’ve already begun unsubscribing.

Me too. It's ten days before the election and all they're doing now is trying to have something in their war chests for the next time around... or gas money for their last trips back for the win/lose parties. I mean they've even dished out the last of the walkaround money for pizzas or whatever for local office staffers so... I'm done.