Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #moneyisnotspeech, aggregated by home.social.
“The central corrupting feature of our politics right now is the power of money to buy politicians
so that government is captured by them,
not for us,” El-Sayed said as he fielded questions from the stage
“AIPAC will spend huge amounts of money if you’re uppity like me and you speak out of turn to beat you,
and you’re seeing it play out on TV every day.”
#MoneyIsNotSpeech #darkmoney #michigan
#moneyoutofpolitics
#moneyinyourpocket
#medicareforall
Money is so toxic it can cause you to mistake a corporation for living human being.
-- @ottomate
#MoneyIsNotSpeech
#CorporationsAreNotPeople
#EndCitizenUnited
Controversy has engulfed #Wyoming’s state legislature after a conservative activist was photographed👉 handing checks to Republican lawmakers on the state house floor,
in an incident that has highlighted intra-conservative divisions and the role of money in the Cowboy state’s politics.
The political storm started on 9 February, when Karlee Provenza, a Democratic lawmaker,
took a photo showing Rebecca #Bextel, a conservative activist and committeewoman for the Teton county Republican party,
handing a check to Darin #McCann,
a Republican representative, on the legislative floor.
Marlene #Brady, another Republican representative, stands in the photo’s background, a similar piece of paper pinched between her fingers.
“You have a person from the richest county in the country coming down to Cheyenne to hand out checks on the house floor,” Provenza said. “I have never seen something so egregious.”
#paytoplay #MoneyIsNotSpeech
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/26/wyoming-republican-lawmakers-checks-house-floor?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Senior Democrats have called for an investigation into a share-buying spree by two fossil fuel billionaires with close ties to the Trump administration,
after a Guardian investigation raisedquestions about potential wrongdoing.
Robert Pender and Michael Sabel,
the founders and co-chairs of Venture Global, a liquefied natural gas (LNG) company headquartered in Virginia,
bought more than a million shares worth almost $12m each in March.
The trades took place just days after a meeting with senior White House officials, who then issued a key regulatory permit that helped expand the company’s business in Europe.
Ron Wyden, the ranking member of the Senate finance committee and a member of the energy and natural resources committee,
said the transactions should be investigated, drawing parallels with previous Trump administration controversies.
“Corrupt pay-to-play schemes are at the heart of everything the Trump administration does,” Wyden said.
“There is no doubt in my mind that these new LNG transactions should be investigated so the American people know the full extent of Trump’s corruption and abuse of office.”
Wyden said investigators uncovered in 2020 that Trump’s energy secretary had inappropriately pressured a Ukrainian state-owned natural gas company
to benefit campaign donors, and added that neither Trump nor his energy team faced accountability for those abuses.
Senator Chris Van Hollen echoed those concerns about potential conflicts of interest.
“The Trump administration’s blatant use of cronyism and pay-to-play politics knows no limit.
It’s clear that they’re padding the pockets of billionaires at the expense of working Americans,”
said Van Hollen, senator for Maryland, member of the Senate banking committee and ranking member of the appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Securities and Exchange Commission and justice department.
“These investments absolutely merit further investigation.”
Van Hollen and Wyden’s intervention comes days after
Jeff Merkley, senior Democratic member of the Senate appropriations and budget committees, told the Guardian that
the stock trades should be investigated for potential wrongdoing.
“Dirty oil-and-gas bucks are fueling the Trump administration, which should outrage all of us.
This latest reporting portrays a pattern of pay-to-play donations and favorable actions by the administration,” Merkley said.
“The timing of the stock trades certainly merits investigation for potential conflicts of interest and insider trading.”
All parties involved have denied wrongdoing.
Sabel was among about 20 people who attended an event in April 2024 at Trump’s private club, Mar-a-Lago,
when the US president reportedly requested $1bn in campaign donations from the fossil fuel industry in return for favorable legislation.
Venture Global was among the “top donors” to Trump’s inauguration, donating $1m, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Individuals connected to Venture Global spent $860,000 on lobbying on Capitol Hill in 2024,
and another $810,000 so far this year, according to OpenSecrets, a non-profit campaign finance watchdog.
This is more than 12-fold the previous high of $70,000 in 2019.
“This is why we need to get money out of politics,” said Ro Khanna,
Democratic representative for California and member of the House oversight and accountability committee,
who is leading efforts with the representative Summer Lee to ban Super Pacs.
#MoneyIsNotSpeech #CorporationsAreNotPeople
#EndCitizensUnited
Common sense and history show that
donors will often use political parties as conduits
to evade limits on individual contributions,
increasing the risk of quid pro quo corruption.
📢 ANNOUNCEMENT:
I will instamute any account that blames anyone but rich wytepipo for this #Fascist #Election travesty
Talk all day abt #Racism #CorporateMedia #ForeignInterference #VoterSuppression #MoneyIsNotSpeech #ChristianNationalism #MAGA #Sexism
Just don't blame people for feeling powerless when So FUCKING Much 💵💰💵 has gone into making them feel powerless
Campaign operatives and donors have long deployed creative accounting to mask the flow of money into politics.
But in the decade and a half since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision paved the way for unlimited spending on political advertising,
it has become particularly difficult to follow the big-money flow in the weeks before Election Day,
despite the majority opinion’s assertions that “prompt disclosure” of political spending would enable voters “to make informed decisions.”
“Now it’s sort of undeniable that the court was wrong with those predictions,” said Ian Vandewalker, a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice, a progressive nonprofit that works to reduce the influence of big money in politics.
Mr. Vandewalker published an analysis this week of the increase in difficult-to-trace funding to super PACs.
“The ability to hide funding for those types of things is attractive for people who want to engage in dirty tricks,” he said in an interview.
If done effectively, operatives can hide the provenance of this money until after the election is called
— or perhaps forever.
Here is how:
Major donors give to so-called dark-money organizations, usually nonprofit groups that are not obligated to disclose their donors.
Those groups then give the money to super PACs, which are technically required to disclose their donors.
But the trail goes cold when those super PACs list dark-money organizations, instead of individual donors.
#darkmoney #MoneyIsNotSpeech
#overturncitizensunited
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/30/us/politics/dark-money-presidential-campaign.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
An international #fascist movement
— led by Russia, Hungary, and China
— is on the march worldwide, and 🎯America is in its crosshairs.
Case in point: Ohio Republican Senator and maximally rich dude J.D. Vance,
who dresses up his Trump/Putin toadyism in elegant garb
In an article for the m Financial Times, Vance recently wrote:
“We owe it to our European partners to be honest:
Our generosity in Ukraine is coming to an end.
Europeans should regard the conclusion of the war there as an imperative. ...
And Europe should consider how exactly it is going to live with Russia when the war in Ukraine is over.”
⭐️The watershed moment in American history that led to this was when five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court ruled in #CitizensUnited (and three other decisions) that 🔥bribing US politicians is no longer bribery or political corruption 🔥
but, instead, is merely
“First Amendment-protected free speech.”
The cash that rightwing billionaires, foreign governments, and corporations are stuffing into corrupt politicians’ pockets isn’t 💰“money,”
the rightwing majority on the Court ruled:
it’s First Amendment protected “free speech.”
Those corporations aren’t (to paraphrase John Marshall) lifeless, soulless creations of the law:
they are, Republicans on the Court said,
🥺“persons” with a constitutional right to free speech.
👉All this made us ripe for the picking by foreign governments that see the very ongoing existence of American democracy as a threat to the legitimacy of their own oligarchies.
To the point of Vance and Greene, Justice John Paul Stevens,
in his Citizens United dissent,
warned us that his five conservative colleagues on the Supreme Court had not only 💥thrown the door open to American billionaires and corporations corrupting our politicians 💥and political process:
they also, he wrote,
🔥rolled out the welcome mat to foreign governments.🔥
“If taken seriously, our colleagues’ assumption that the identity of a speaker has no relevance to the Government’s ability to regulate political speech would lead to some remarkable conclusions.
“Such an assumption would have accorded the propaganda broadcasts to our troops by ‘Tokyo Rose’ during World War II the same protection as speech by Allied commanders.”
#MoneyIsNotSpeech
#CorporationsAreNotPeople
https://hartmannreport.com/p/is-trump-americas-new-tokyo-rose-331?r=3b1sh&triedRedirect=true
Move to Amend's Proposed Amendment to the Constitution
#MoneyIsNotSpeech
#CorporationsAreNotPeople
https://www.movetoamend.org/amendment
Accountable.US found ties between Leonard Leo and the following groups or their lawyers that filed amicus briefs in the 14th amendment case:
🔸Citizens United,
🔸the Public Interest Legal Foundation,
🔸the Claremont Institute,
🔸Landmark Legal Foundation,
🔸Judicial Watch,
🔸Jones Day,
🔸Wyoming’s secretary of state Chuck Gray and
🔸America’s Future.
“It’s no surprise that #Leonard #Leo is backing efforts to support Trump at the supreme court,” said Accountable.US president Caroline Ciccone.
“Leo helped Trump draw up his supreme court nominee shortlist – many of whom are justices on the bench set to hear this critical case
– and now, Leo’s deploying his rightwing network in support of Trump as he faces consequences for his violent insurrection. It couldn’t be clearer where Leo stands.”
🔸Citizens United, a conservative group whose name is synonymous with the 2010 supreme court ruling that allows unlimited political spending by outside groups and corporations, filed a brief alongside Steven Calabresi, Leo’s fellow co-chair of the Federalist Society.
Other lawyers tied to the society are signed on to the group’s brief as well.
🔸The Public Interest Legal Foundation’s brief is co-filed with a man who has been featured in more than 100 Federalist Society events, and the group has received funding from groups tied to Leo.
🔸The Claremont Institute has also received funds from groups tied to Leo’s funding network, and the brief’s author wrote a book that includes a quote from Leo on the back cover and featured in society events.
Leo has complimented the chairman of the 🔸Landmark Legal Foundation as a “great patriot” and “our old Federalist Society stalwart”.
The 🔸Judicial Watch president is also president of the 🔸Council for National Policy, which Leo has reportedly been involved with.
🔸Jones Day, a conservative law firm whose attorneys authored an amicus brief for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has given money to the 🔸Federalist Society, and the firm is where Leo, Trump and others met to come up with a list of supreme court candidates.
The lawyers who filed 🔸Wyoming secretary of state Gray’s brief include a Federalist Society contributor who’s received a fellowship from the group.
🔸America’s Future has gotten funding from a group that’s exchanged millions with Leo’s financial network.
#authoritarianism
#darkmoney
#LeonardLeo
#MoneyIsNotSpeech
#CorporationsAreNotPeople
@darkmoney
Granting personhood to corporations is an absolute perversion of the principle cited in the Declaration of Independence, which explicitly states that the government of the United States was created by people and for people, and operates only by consent of the people whom it governs
#corporationsarenotpeople
#moneyisnotspeech
https://hartmannreport.com/p/to-rescue-democracy-america-must
The movement’s triumphs are now visible but its engine remains hidden:
A billion-dollar network of groups, most of which are registered as tax-exempt charities or social welfare organizations.
Taking advantage of gaps in disclosure laws, they shield the identities of most of their donors and some of the recipients of the funds.
Among those who’ve been paid by the groups are leading thinkers and individuals with close personal ties to #Leonard #Leo — including a whopping $7 million to a group run by a close friend and his wife.
They also include a for-profit business for which Leo himself is chairman and which received tens of millions of dollars from his nonprofit network.
Leo’s role as the central figure in this movement has long been known, culminating in his acquisition last year of what many believe to be the largest political donation in history.
Few are aware of the extent to which the movement’s baby steps were taken in concert with #Ginni #Thomas.
Two months before the #CitizensUnited decision, but after the justices had signaled their intentions by requesting new arguments, attorney #Cleta #Mitchell — later to play a role in Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 elections — filed papers for Ginni Thomas to create a nonprofit group of a type that ultimately benefited from the decision.
Leo was one of two directors listed on a separate application to conduct business in the state of Virginia.
Thomas was president. She signed it on New Year’s Eve of 2009, and Crow provided much of the initial cash. A key Leo aide, #SarahField, would come aboard to help Thomas manage the group, which they called #LibertyCentral.
#darkmoney #clarencethomas #samuelalito #abortionban #scotus #MoneyIsNotSpeech #CorporationsAreNotPeople
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/10/ginni-thomas-leonard-leo-citizens-united-00108082
What is enough? For some, there's no such thing, especially among billionaires afflicted with hoarding syndrome. The problem is that their illness bleeds the rest of us dry.
https://hartmannreport.com/p/why-billionaires-fund-anti-trans-255
Watch The Corporation - 10th Anniversary Cut Online | Vimeo On Demand on Vimeo
#CorporationsAreNotPeople
#MoneyIsNotSpeech
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/thecorporationcp
@GottaLaff
#BHFund will just reincorporate under a new name, as have so many other #DarkMoney groups
#MoneyIsNotSpeech #CorporationsAreNotPeople #EndCitzensUnited
@gmbucks1 @ProPublica
Reject the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United and other related cases, and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.
#MoneyIsNotSpeech #CorporationsAreNotPeople #MoveToAmend
https://www.movetoamend.org