How They Are Buying The Next Election: And who is behind it?

Do You Think Your Campaign Contributions Even Matter Anymore?

(And what can we do to fix it?)

Email me your opinion at JackAtlasTRM@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well I shall the monshoe hit it out at dawn.

SPEAKER_02 0:07

Alright, folks, so get this. 40% it has come out. 40% of all the money spent in elections in this past election cycle came from crypto. Crypto. You want to talk about shadow money? Let's talk about some shadow money. Let's talk about how all these politicians are paid off today, huh?

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Here we go.

SPEAKER_02 0:25

When the road keeps rolling on right, folks, welcome to today's episode of the Radical Middle. I hope you're having a really good day, a good day of eudaimonia. And today we are going to talk about the two main reasons. The two main reasons why all of your Senate congressmen are corrupt. They're against you, and they're bought and paid for by others. And I know there's a lot of reasons. And it's a lot more nuanced to this, but we're just going to tackle the two main ones. These are the two main ones that are right in your face that we can see that's a problem right now. And if you're new to this show, we don't do, I mean, we observe Democrats and Republicans, but we are not Democrats and Republicans here on this show. We're not loyalist to Trump. We're not loyalist to this and this. We don't do that because this is another instance of its both parties. Trump may be the worst of them out there right now, and we'll show this through the statistics that I'm going to say later. Trump is obviously in right in our face and right through reporting. Trump has taken more advantage of two laws than any other politician, not just president, politician in history to enrich himself and to gain power and to be able to wield more levers of government. But he isn't the only one. We will talk about Trump in a little bit and all of his illegal activity given all this kind of stuff, but it is equal across the board. The first one's going to be Citizens United. Now, if you don't know what Citizens United is, it's a precedence that were set from the Supreme Court that basically, that basically said that corporations are United States citizens. Now I have read the opinion, the dissenting opinion, and I studied this case very, very carefully when it was out. And I am telling you, I have no idea, no idea how those justices constitutionally came up with that. Even in their opinions, they had zero legal and constitutional justification for that. I mean, we know a couple of them are paid off. Clarence Thomas getting his multi-vacations and homes and RVs and all this kind of stuff bought for him by a heavy billionaire political lobbyist. We know these justices are paid off, quite a few of them. So that actually makes sense. And I am calling them out on it right now. I absolutely know that you did not go by the constitution or the law or even precedence, because there is no indication that you did in all those studies. It was bought and paid for. And now corporations, now, as soon as this the Supreme Court did this, corporations were considered individuals. And yet what's weird is an individual can only donate so much to a campaign, and even so much to campaigns in general, under state laws. There's a reason why states run campaigns. For instance, in Wyoming, it was sixteen hundred dollars. Nobody was allowed to donate to my campaign anything over sixteen hundred dollars, even if they were a billionaire. However, for some reason, for some reason, corporations get a loophole. They can, as long as they quote, do not consult with or talk to or align with and collaborate with the political campaign itself, they are allowed to, as long as it's on their own volition, basically buy a whole bunch of advertising, unlimited amount, 10 million dollars of advertising, and nobody ever gets to know exactly where it comes from. And no, nobody ever gets to know where it comes from. And and they can basically outspend a voter 20 to 1, 30 to 1, 100 and 1 in any election. They bought the vote. So of course, politicians stopped caring even more than they already did about the people. Because now 99% of their campaign money was going to come from corporations. Not directly, but indirectly. And I'll give an example back in 2016 when I ran for Wyoming State House of Representatives. There was this one of those incubator projects down in Cheyenne. And what was interesting is all of a sudden, about six months before the election season, about 25, 26 corporations just opened up. And it was all under the name of the secretary in, you know, the secretary in charge of the incubator, right? She was just the name on the corporations because I was doing some research. I owned a newspaper back then and I was doing some research on this. And I'll even tell you I was threatened for the research I was doing on this. But let's let's let's get back to the point. What happened was is all of a sudden there was a $10,000 mailer against me from the Freedom Riders Corporation, and then another mailer against me and other people in the state from this corporation, from this corporation, and all those corporations started up in the same month, a couple months before election season. And then after election season, they all filed the paperwork to shut down under one secretary in this incubator building project down in town Cheyenne. And what was amazing was is I filed for Freedom of Information Acts for that, and since they were shut down, it got denied. I didn't pursue it any longer because I started losing my business, the economy went to crap, and I had to do some rebuilding. But it was definitely shady. And I do still have my suspect of who was behind it. The Speaker of the House at the time, for instance. So what it allows people to do is say, hey, I know I can't directly give to your campaign, but here's what I'm gonna do. I don't like the guy you're running against. And I know I'm not even in your district. I might not even be in your state. But what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna open up a corporation because I got money. I know people have money. We're gonna open up a corporation, we're gonna dump $10 million into this corporation, and we're just gonna do our politic and our own thing without talking into the campaign, which, as you know, I'm sure there's one big firewall to keep that from happening, right? Right? You trust these guys, right? What the Citizens United did was so fundamentally wrong and has exasperated our already terrible elections from the time. The individual citizen no longer has any power as a citizen in its own elections. Corporations are now citizens, which means the people who are in charge of corporations get double, triple, quadruple the political power that we get. It's about as unconstitutional as it gets. I mean, so it started in 2010. And in the 2012 election, people were playing with it, but then the corporations got on board by the 2016 election. And what has that caused? The very few select rich people to decide the elections for our entire country. It caused the rise of super PACs. I mean, combined with you know some subsequent lower court decisions, like, you know, the speechnow.org versus the FCC, that Supreme Court, with no legal precedence or constitutional justification, made it so that any group, these groups can raise unlimited sums of money from individuals and corporations and unions to advocate for or against uh uh candidates. It has created an explosion of dark money because the Supreme Court assumed, which they shouldn't have been doing, that independent spending would be transparent. They didn't assume that, they knew better. The ruling created loopholes that allowed for nonprofits like 4501c3s to spend massive amounts of money to influence elections without publicly disclosing the original source of their funds. It has become shadow money. Again, they wouldn't even through a Freedom of Information Act let me find out who was actually in charge of these corporations. So this isn't just something that I'm Googling. This is something that I've experienced. And that has decreased our individuals' donor influence. The people who already have control over the market, who already have control over the lobby, are now in direct control over the election spending. And we know, and we know that while, you know, superpark, super PACs and you know, these dark money groups and corporations are legally required to operate independently from the candidates they support, in practice, you know that they are always, they're always getting caught on camera and being recorded. You know that they are always working in very close coordination with the campaigns. This independence crap that the Supreme Court came out with at the time that was theoretical and naive. Actually, no, it probably wasn't naive. It was probably very intentional. And look, in 2024, let's just take a look at the presidential election. In 2024, the already horrifying amount of money that was being spent on elections by corporations and by unions and by by people other than individuals, individual voters, individual citizens themselves. It was the largest ever by more than triple. And this was fueled also by the spending of crypto companies, which we're going to be getting into in a second. But that's what drove the outcome of this election. It's no longer the individuals, it's the very few that own the money. Basically, what they did with this, and they said, all Americans, it's okay for them to suffer, for their citizenship to suffer, for their individual vote to suffer. And our democracy will continue to wither when corporations and the super rich have more of a say in elections than the regular voters do. It's not just that the corporations and the super rich are able to block overwhelming popular policies from even getting out in the information to you, since they own the media, such as like meaningful, you know, cuts to drug prices, not ones like Ozempik like Trump Trump is doing, but real drugs that real people need, like cancer, the raising of minimum wage, forcing of corporations and the ultra-rich to pay their fair share in taxes, necessary infrastructure and safety nets for the people. That would make our country more just and healthier and sustainable. But instead, all that money is just shadow money now. Legal shadow money, thanks to Citizens United, going to the people who will decide what's right and wrong and what's law for you. Because listening to constituents, caring about voters' concerns, and helping out the average American community. That's things that they don't do anymore. But listening to their funders, listening to the lobbyists, and making sure that they bring in as much money as they possibly can to spend on the next election, eh, that's what they do now. And then we combine this, this utter horrible, horrible, unconstitutional Supreme Court uh obviously paid off and manipulated decision. Combine that with crypto, the not real money, the fake money, the money that's only used for two things, gambling and criminal activity. And yet now our politicians are embracing that. Now you've heard me go after Trump a couple times on this, and he is the biggest taker of it. He's also the biggest, probably criminal in crypto right now, since he's using the presidency to, you know, give them crypto stuff to gain influence, to gain access to the president. That's well known and documented now that he is selling access, and his kids are selling access to the president through crypto funds. That those crypto funds are coming from dark money, like the UAE, a lot of our semi-allies, but but but much enemies, people are taking advantage of us. That's who his crypto funders are. Felons, authoritarians, and he's selling access to himself through crypto. And he's selling pardons through crypto. Pardons are for sale. On January 6th, you can go to the Capitol steps, put up a noose, and threaten to hang the vice president and actually try to, and enough crypto will get you pardoned. You can be on camera beating the shit, the living holy hell, out of a police officer. And if you got the crypto, you'll be pardoned. You can be a pedophile and molest children, but a few of those had enough crypto and they were pardoned. The list goes on and on and on. I'm not just sitting here about Trump because it's both parties doing it. It's both. The Democrats aren't. There's people in the Republican Party and the Senate and Congress, and there's people in the Democrat Party, and they're all equally involved in doing it. They might not have the powers of lever that that that Trump has gained in order to get more of it. I mean, the amount that he's stealing from us and the amount of corruption through crypto and the amount of criminality that's happening through crypto in the Trump administration is, of course, astounding and is the largest mountain in the world. But it's not the only mountain we look at. Crypto has become a problem. It's not even real money. It's not backed by any nation. And we can get in an argument later whether crypto is real money or not. I used to think it is. I was a crypto guy like way back in the day, and now I just have my eyes open. Crypto is only used for two things online gambling and criminality. That's it. Online gambling and criminality. And so anybody who embraces both Citizens United and the shadow money coming in from crypto, well, you're a bad guy. You're as bad as Trump. You might not have been able to capitalize on it as much as Trump, but you are as bad as Trump. You are part of the problem. You are as bad as the Supreme Court guys that were paid off to do this law in the first place. You are a paid-off traitor. Traitor to all of us. You are betraying the people, the citizens of the United States. Here's a couple numbers for you. 40%, 40% of all donations in the 2024 election came from crypto. So we cannot track who those and where those donations come from. Of those crypto donations, 90% of them, we can tell, came from overseas countries. So according to the math that's right in front of me, that means that 38%, or that means that basically almost 40%, about 40% of all of our money that funded our elections, Democrat and Republican, came from foreign companies and foreign governments. If that isn't election influence and election interference, I don't know what is. And it's not just one crypto. You know, Coinbase is the largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange platform, and somehow they were able to donate $50 million directly from their corporate treasury to a FairSharer, Fair Shake Pack, I think is what it's called network, along with additional contributions to congressional leadership funds amounting in another 50 million, supposedly. But it's all dark money, nobody knows for sure, and nobody knows where they got their money. Ripple Abs was $49 million and another $47 million directly into the main Fair Shake Super Pack to boost probe crypto candidates and defeat skeptics. Horowitz, $47.5 million. That's a capital firm. That's a venture capital firm. That's the people buying up your neighborhoods and whatnot and ruining your local businesses. They funneled tens of millions of dollars into Fair Shake alone, an individual campaign, and it's and and it's not even reported. Nobody knows exactly how much and where that money came from. Chris Larson, another 13 million, he's a co-founder of an executive chairman of Ripple, acted as a massive individual political spender. Lower estimates at $13 million. Now here's the thing. Is it Democrat? Is it Republican? Well, let's see. The top benefactor so far since 2024 of crypto campaign spending is Bernie Moreno, Republican Ohio. You have won over 40 million dollars. That's just known. You were by far the largest single benefactory of the entire election cycle, other than Trump himself. The crypto backed super PAC defend American jobs flooded Ohio with over 40 million dollars. Now listen, probably not one dollar from this super PAC came out of Ohio. But these huge companies, anywhere they are in the world and governments, can now have that much influence over your election. Ruben Galego! Come on down. Democrat from Arizona with over $10 million, as he was heavily backed by pro-Democratic crypto affiliate Protect Progress. The group spent well over $10 million on independent expenditures to support his successful run for the open seat, vacated by Kristen Sinema. This is one that I had a lot of hope for when she was, you know, until I found this out. Elisa Slotkin, Democrat in Michigan, she has taken over that we know of $10 million. She did that for the Michigan Senate seat, mirroring the strategy of Arizona, protect progress, directed more than $10 million in shadow money and crypto money to support Slotkin's campaign for Michigan's open Senate seat. Jim Justice, Republican, West Virginia, over $3 million. Summary figures, Democrat, Alabama, $2.6 million. Again, this is not a Democrat and Republican thing. This is a corruption thing. This is an all of them thing. You should not be able to use shadow money, crypto, to fund an election. As a matter of fact, all election campaign contributions should come from within the state that they are running in. There's no reason that corporations out of Washington and New York and California and Abu Dhabi and Iran and Saudi Arabia and Russia should be able to put money in a super pack to influence our elections. And the fact that not only do these people not do anything to stop it, but are capitalizing on it shows that they are the bad guys. They are the problem. And yes, Trump is capitalizing on it more than anybody, but that doesn't excuse anybody else's behavior. This isn't a, well, what about them? I don't do whataboutism. They're all wrong. And they've all taken away our vote. They've all taken away our elections from the individuals. Citizens United made corporations into individuals, and crypto has allowed those quote unquote individual citizens to not have to report the same way as real people do and therefore be able to take over elections. I mean, we could name more Jim Banks, 4 million. Jim Justice, 3.4 million, John Curtis, Republican Utah, 2.8 million. And again, as I'm reading these, if you notice, Republican Democrat, Republican Democrat, Republican Democrat. So every time you see them in some committee or something pointing the finger at the other, you know, think about those three fingers pointing right back at them. They're all the problem. And not one of them are trying to do anything to help the American citizens get the power of their vote back, but they're actually contributing and taking that away. Again, don't listen to what comes out of their mouth. Watch what they do. Let's take a look at Slotkin. I was really interested in her because I'm out of Michigan right now, is where I live. I used to live in Wyoming. Now I live in Michigan. And, you know, I usually don't favor Democrats, but Slotkin, in a time where there really isn't any more Republicans, it's either, you know, MAGA or, you know, something else. Um, the time where Republicans are kind of done, Alyssa Slotkin was kind of a breath of fresh air. She was military, and I and I'm a veteran, you know, so you know, she took an oath to our constitution, she blah, blah, blah. You know, she seemed to have a rational head. She did some, I can't remember if it was CIA kind of stuff or whatnot, but she actually seemed to be very rational, very down to earth, um, and and probably be a good senator because the Senate deals with more international affairs, treaties and such. But then, yeah, we're gonna take over 10 million of shadow money and corporate money. And I know the excuse. Well, if I don't do it, somebody else will, and then I won't win, I won't be able to do the good stuff. Well, the problem is you're now bought and paid for. You're never gonna be able to do the good stuff. You're now no longer functionable and useful to those people, those individuals, not the corporations, not the foreign governments, not businesses and individuals outside of Michigan. But Elisa, I'm talking to you right now, Miss Slotkin. Because you took over 10 million, this is just what we know of, of crypto, of shadow money, you are no longer to be trustworthy to represent the individual voter, the individual constituent of the state of Michigan. I'm calling you out right now. You too, Shamari figures, you too, Jim Justice, you too, Galago, whatever your name is, you too, Morano, whatever your name is, Republican, Democrat, Republican Gemini, and damn it, you too, Trump. Trump and Trump's family and his inner circle. Just when we're talking about the Appalachian Mountains and what's going on there, he's Mount Everest. He needs to be taken down for this shit too. He needs to be 86. He needs to be thrown out of the presidency using the 24th Amendment. And don't get me started, I was in the military and I was also a bouncer, and I've done a lot of different things, and 86 does not mean to kill the president. I do not advocate that. I advocate on kicking him out of office legally through the Constitution and the 24th Amendment. We need to 86 47. He is corrupt as ever. But so are these people. We need to 86 Democrat Galego or whatever his name is. We need to 86 Democrat Lisa Sloken. We need to 86, you know, Republican Jim Justice. We need to 86 them all. Because they are no longer representing us. They're representing corporations and foreign governments from Citizens United, and they're getting rich and getting funded through shadow money through crypto. And remember what I said, crypto is only used for two things online gambling and crime. And unless you can prove me otherwise, every one of you, you're criminals, and you're betraying the individual citizen of the United States. And I know a lot of people are really gonna balk at the crypto thing because they really don't understand, truly down to fundamental, what crypto really is. But I'll tell you, it's fake. It's a scam. It's something that doesn't exist, which is why it's perfect for politicians like Donald Trump. Because it's a scam. And now we got these people specifically supporting an act that's 100% anti-constitutional. It's called the Genius Act. Stupid name for an act like this. What it allows is for corporations to individually come up with their own cryptocurrency and governments and states, so like Michigan can have its own cryptocurrency. Do any of these people, I mean, they are the top of our federal government. Do any of these people read the Constitution? The federal government is solely responsible for the American dollar, for the currency of America. You cannot give without a constitutional amendment that ability away. But yet here we are. And again, it's Trump, it's his supporters in the cabinet, it's his Republican source supporters in Congress, it's his Republican supporters in the Senate, it's his Democratic haters in the Senate and his Democratic haters in the con in Congress. They're all in this together and they're all trying to take advantage. And let me tell you something about these party hacks, these MAGA crowd or the Republicans or the Democrats, you know, the people who really are just, it's all about party and the other party and our party and our, you know. Let me tell you something about these party hacks. If any of them, whether they're just a consultant in their party or they're a representative of their party in office, if any of them take corporate money, corporate interest, or shadow money and put it on a higher value as these people have done than their voting citizens, they need to get the fuck out of their respective parties. And what amazes me is like right now you have a whole bunch of Democrats that on Monday, and Zlotkin's one of them, for instance, on Monday, they will rail, rail against Trump and the Republican corruption policies when it comes to this kind of stuff. And then Tuesday, vote for the very same thing that's allowing all that corruption to happen in the first place. So don't let them fool you. They are not on your side either. They're feeding you shit with one hand and they're doing the same thing Trump like in the other. And they're trying to tell you that they're the good guys. Well, let me tell you something. Democrat or Republican, if you're taking this money, if you're taking shadow money, if you're taking corporate money that's uh has gone for somehow tax free and has bypassed the voters and has no accountability and in foreign, you are the bad guy. It's not a party thing. It's you. Look in the mirror, it's you. I mean, to me, it's not only shocking and outrageous, but just a down I mean, to me, it's not, you know, it's not only shocking and outrageous, but it's just a downright betrayal. Betrayal to the citizens that you represent. And do your own research. Look what's going on in and around the White House. Howard Luck and his kids are in charge of Tether, which is a two hundred billion dollar. Or so stablecoin that has now been used in shadow money all over the world in the last year and a half. Tax-free shadow money. And the whole time Lutnick is in government with his own cryptocurrency lobbying for cryptocurrency. Trump has his own cryptocurrency once he realized the scam behind it. And now lobbies for his own cryptocurrency. The conflict of interest and the corruption is astounding. And it's not just these guys, it's their families. And the worst part is, is until recently, when the FBI scrubbed this data, if you looked at law enforcement data nationally, Tether, the cryptocurrency we're talking about here that Lutnik and his kids own and manage and somehow got legalized through the government in a little bit and have grown it significantly over the past year, mostly from foreign investments, to have him change our policy. Well, that tether, when it comes to sexual exploitation, sex trafficking, international arms sales, and drugs, tether is the number one tool used by these international criminal organizations. Number one. And yet he's still able to legally capitalize on it because he just him and his kids should be in prison. All these people should be in prison. This is not a Democrat and Republican thing. Trump should be in prison just for this, let alone the Epstein files and a million other things. I mean, he's a whole different animal. But he should be in prison for this. Him and his kids. Lutnik and his kids should be in prison. But anybody involved, anybody involved in this shadow money, you need to be in prison. You accept shadow money, you should be in prison. And you're a public official, you need to be in prison. It's criminal. And by the way, who's this guy, this Lutnick billionaire behind uh cryptocurrency that's uh responsible for the majority of the money being exchanged between criminals and terrorists and drug cartels and sex traffickers around the world? He's our commerce secretary. Somebody who was also a frequent visitor on Epstein Island and one of Trump's closest, closest, closest confidants. Writings on the wall, people. Writings on the wall. They're all wrong on this one. Do me a favor, folks. Try not to allow these people to justify their actions when it comes to how they take donations as a result of the Citizens United. Why they don't take actions to create a new law to protect us from the results of Citizen United. And anybody, whether it's your state, your county that wants to start crypto, and if it's your congressman and senator or anybody locally that's taking campaign money from crypto, they're taking criminal money, it's shadow money, and you need to call them out on that and vote their asses out of office. Don't watch the commercials that that shadow money is paying for to influence you. Vote their asses out of office. I'm a Michigan voter, and at least Sletnik or whatever her name is is coming up to vote. And if I don't see any kind of major change with her on accepting shadow money, crypto money, and if I don't see any major change in her taking responsibility and trying to introduce bills that would stop Citizens United and give the people the right to their vote, the right to their elections back and to stop peddling foreign influence in our elections, then I will do my part to vote her ass out of office. And it's too bad because I thought she could have actually been a very good functional senator. Anyway, I'm going off on tangents here. The whole point of this show was to try to talk about the two things that are ruining elections that have allowed elections to be taken away from us as citizens. Number one, the ability to make a corporation a citizen and to give them a complete separate rules when it comes to taxes and funding elections and donations to elections. And then number two, the allowing of shadow criminal money to be taken by states, to be taken by candidates, because now we don't know who's paying that money. We don't know who owns these senators and congressmen anymore. And that, my friends, is a problem. It's not just a problem for Democrats, it's not a problem for Republicans, it's not a problem for us independents, it's a problem for all of us Americans. And it's just further proof that right now we live in times not of American ideals, but of the kind of ideals that say if you're not a guest at the table, you're on the menu. And if you're listening to this, you and me folks, we're probably on the menu. But until next time, I'll see you next week. I hope you're liking the show. I know it's only the third episode. I'm trying to get into a groove here, but I'm really glad you were able to come along and listen. If you have any comments, I mean I know some of these are on YouTube, but most of this isn't on Padcast. If you have any comments or concerns or questions, you can email me at Jack Atlas T-R-M, The Radical Middle. So that's Jack Atlas T R M at gmail.com. And I'll either read the questions and comments over the air or I'll get back to you. Anyway, thanks for listening, and I'll see you next week. This is Jack Atlas, your host of The Radical Middle. I hope you have a day of you, Diamondia.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

You can see the riding on the pavement. Your kids are growing up in basements. Online, a whole new generation. I'ma make five, so you better go take it. Always they need a new replacement. Decentralized, can't contain it. We're changing life, get a brain.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

Make on the TV script, yeah. We wanna build the drive. I think that we've all let it know. Yeah, we will build the drive.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

I think that we all let it know I think that we all let it now