 Last week, we talked about how activists confronted Kyrsten Sinema in the bathroom demanding that she support immigration reform and the Build Back Better Act. And at that time, I made a comment that I think I'm now gonna have to walk back. I said, why is she even teaching at ASU? What unique insight could she possibly provide to students? She's just a mindless corporate drone. So what does she know about anything? And I'm gonna have to walk back that comment because there is a class that she's teaching that really is perfect for her. So this headline from the Intercept says it all. Senator Kyrsten Sinema is literally teaching a course on fundraising. The senator is educating Arizona State University students on her fourth day, asking for money. Yeah, so I think that if you do want to learn how to be corrupt, how to beg for money from your corporate donors, this is something that she knows quite a bit about. The fact that this is a course that's offered, it's not super surprising because colleges offer all kinds of courses. Some of them are really insightful. Others are kind of pointless. It just really depends. This one, however, is definitely something that future politicians might want to know about if they want to play the game in DC and win, if they want to become a politician or a lobbyist. It's it's really disgusting and gross, but really this is exactly what you'd expect from Kyrsten Sinema. She's not going to be teaching political science 101. She's not going to be teaching history. Of course, she's going to literally be teaching students how to be corrupt and nobody knows better than her. So Ken Clippenstein of the Intercept explains, all students hope to learn from the top experts in their field. Graduate students at Arizona State University have an unusual opportunity this fall to do just that, where Senator Kyrsten Sinema is teaching a course on getting rich people to give you money. The course titled Developing Grants and Fundraising is one of two classes Sinema is teaching this fall at Arizona State University School of Social Work. The syllabus, which was obtained by the Intercept, says students will learn diverse fundraising strategies for nonprofits, as well as how to cultivate donors, including large individual donors, by leveraging resources like opportunistic fundraising, finding supporters for major fundraising events and, well, asking for money. The outline identifies key course concepts such as corporate giving, political strategy, influence and power, as well as more socially conscious terms like discrimination, oppression and privilege. One of the required books is Fundraising for Social Change, ironic in light of Sinema's attempts to ensure things like corporate tax rates remain unchanged. A spokesperson for Kyrsten Sinema did not respond to a request for comment. Fundraising is a subject the Arizona Senator knows a thing or two about. Having raised eye-popping sums of money from groups opposed to President Joe Biden's build back better agenda, Sinema has racked up some nine hundred twenty thousand dollars in campaign contributions from said groups, according to an analysis by Accountable.us, a watchdog group that monitors corporate lobbying. Now, if you want to read the full syllabus, it's ten pages long. I'll link to it in the description down below if you are watching this on YouTube. But if you are listening on Spotify or means TV, you can find this on the Intercepts website. They link to it in the article. But this really, I think it speaks to how broken our system is, where things like this are normalized in a democratic society. Things like this shouldn't have to be taught. It shouldn't be the case that this is so ingrained. It's just what we expect from politics that classes are literally taught on it. It really speaks to how far we've fallen, and it doesn't just date back to Citizens United. Money in politics has been an issue for a while in American politics. It dates back to Buckley v. Vallejo. But when you live in a capitalist society, eventually capitalism, like a virus, seeps into every single facet of society and it inevitably targets democracy itself. And that's really what we're seeing. We're seeing the commodification of democracy, the commodification of elections, to where you can't really be electorally successful, unless you raise large sums of money. It's a business. It is a business that companies profit off of now. That really is disgusting. Now you have a few exceptions. You have Democrats like the squad Ilhan Omar, Corey Bush, AOC, who they don't actually raise money from large multinational corporations or elites. They take lots of small dollar donations. And that really is the better model because even if these politicians who raise money from small donors aren't going to be perfect, are they going to be more in touch with what their constituents want? Yeah, because it's human nature. Corruption really is something that it's not that complex. If, let's say, Amazon donates to your campaign or a super PAC and they give you five hundred thousand dollars, it is human nature that you are going to be more kind to them. I mean, just think on an individual level. Put politics aside, if one of your friends walks up to you and they give you a thousand dollars, you're obviously going to be thankful. But if that person says something that you disagree with, if they say that they don't they don't support Medicare for all or they call you stupid and, you know, they think that you're ugly, well, you're going to have a harder time criticizing them because they just gave you a thousand dollars. You're going to maybe bite your tongue or maybe you push back, but not as harsh as you would have had you not been thankful for the large sum of money that they gave you. So it's it's psychological. It's a human thing to be corrupted by money. And so when you take that and you extrapolate it and you put it on a massive scale like US politics, you see the aggregate effect that it has on our society where politicians, they don't represent their constituents any longer, they represent their corporate donors. And Kirsten Sinema is teaching a class on just this as if it's normal. The class isn't necessarily about the way that money and politics has corrupted our democratic institutions. It's how to participate in what is tantamount to legalized bribery. That's so gross, but this this is what we've come to expect from one of the most corrupt senators in the United States. And I can't even say that she, you know, it's I think that it's a misrepresentation to say that she's one of the most corrupt. She's just more brazen about it than other senators, but many senators are corrupt. Most senators are corrupt. Sadly, just last week, we were talking about how John Hickenlooper was questioning Facebook about their profits if they changed their algorithm to not actually promote hatred. Now come to find out he has lots of money in stocks in Facebook. So this is something that is ingrained in society. It's not just corruption from donors. There's conflicts of interest. Senators own stocks. They profit off of the companies that they're supposed to be regulating. And none of this is even controversial. It happens out in the open and we just kind of as a society, we come to expect it now. And over time, that erodes the fabric of democracy. It's antithetical to a representative democracy. And Kyrsten Sinema is trying to rather than break up that rather than speak out against it and the ways that it has helped to deteriorate democracy in the United States. She's teaching about it as if it's normal. Well, you know, this is just the system. This is what the system incentivizes. So I'm just teaching that. But really, what what a stupid class to teach. What a dumb class to take. You should be teaching about the impact that money in politics has on democracy rather than trying to propagate that. But again, like I'm not going to try to police the things that are taught at colleges because they teach everything. But this is just sad. The one thing that she possibly has any knowledge about. That's what she's teaching about an issue. It's not it's not surprising. It's just it's like a parody. It's like a parody that has come to life. And it just is so depressing and embarrassing and expected.