 There's a plethora of threats to American democracy, the most obvious being voter suppression, a lack of a new voting rights bill, and on top of that election denialism by the GOP. But another massive threat to democracy is capitalism itself. Since Citizens United was decided, billionaires have increasingly spent more money to influence the outcomes of elections, all to support candidates who they can control and help grow their wealth. And this is something that I just don't think gets talked about enough. I think Americans have a sense that money in politics is increasingly a big issue, but they don't necessarily know how specifically billionaires are influencing elections, but a new analysis conducted by Americans for tax fairness are going to put this into perspective. So here's some of their key findings. A tiny group of 465 American billionaires have pumped over $881 million into federal midterm races. Even among the elite fraternity of billionaires the political spending is highly concentrated. The top 20 donor households have contributed nearly three quarters, 73% of all billionaire contributions this cycle, more than $643 million. With five weeks to go in the 2022 campaign, as of the time the data was collected, that $881 million was already a 44% increase in billionaire contributions over the entire 2018 midterm cycle, which totaled $611 million based on an earlier ATF analysis. After the flurry of fundraising that closes out a campaign season, billionaires might well have contributed close to $1 billion. By a 3-2 margin, more billionaire cash is supporting Republicans 59% than Democrats at 39%. Most of the remaining 2% has gone to super PACs backing supporters of Israel and cryptocurrency from both parties. Now I just want to stress that according to their key findings, this data was collected five weeks ago, so by now it could already be the case that billionaire contributions have surpassed $1 billion for a midterm election. And that is horrible considering that when you look back to Citizens United and when it was just decided, well, they're spending 27 times that amount now. Now for some additional details here, as you can see, billionaire contributions have increased substantially each subsequent midterm election after Citizens United was decided, specifically $32 million in 2010, $232 million in 2014, $611 million by 2018, and now $881 million and counting in 2022. Now looking at this table of the top 20 biggest billionaire donors, six contribute to Democrats while 14 donate to Republicans. The list includes George Soros, Ken Griffin, Peter Thiel, the Bloombergs, Paul Singer, Koch Industries, Miriam Adelson, the Schwab's, and this is just like a small portion of all of the billionaire buying elections, but this is just the top 20, most of them giving to Republicans. So if you're wondering why nothing seems to change and the GOP can continue to win elections after January 6th, after they got what they wanted by repealing Roe v. Wade, it's because Americans are constantly bombarded by propaganda. And that's why nothing ever changes because when the American people finally get fed up and they want to vote the ghouls out of office that are contributing to their suffering, well they get blasted with political ads and they see these mailers that are completely disingenuous and deceitful and they end up voting in the way that the billionaires want them to vote because propaganda unfortunately it's very effective, it works. Now Americans for tax fairness shared some additional mind-blowing facts so they write billionaires represent 0.0000002% of the American population, but they're responsible for 7.4% of all political donations so far this cycle. These contributions aren't just drowning out voters choices, billionaires are betting they're going to make great returns on investment and they are. For example, just look at the Eulene family and Diane Hendricks. These billionaires spent $20 million to get Ron Johnson re-elected in 2016. Their influence was rewarded with a special tax break secured by Johnson that saved them $80 million in taxes in 2018 alone. Another one, take a look at Ken Griffin. He spent $50 million to defeat a ballot initiative in Illinois that would have made the wealthy pay more of their fair share in taxes. The tax could have cost him $51 million a year. It's all about return on investment. Americans again as I stated are bombarded with propaganda and I wish that it didn't work, I wish that they weren't so easily duped into voting against their own self-interest, but this is what happens every single time and some billionaires are just choosing to cut out the middleman, right? We saw in 2020 how Mike Bloomberg became almost electorally viable simply by spending lots and lots of his own wealth and now it's happening once again. Rick Caruso in the LA mayor race is spending $80 million of his own worth and this could get him that seat compared to Karen Bass who only raised $6 million in comparison and this is a lot of money for a mayor race. I mean I get that this is Los Angeles but still $6 million is a lot of money but when you compare that to Rick Caruso a billionaire who's trying to buy his way to power it's genuinely nauseating. I mean imagine this, you're not getting elected now based on your policy ideas. You're just getting elected because you can blast your message out to more people. In the case of Rick Caruso a Democrat, he really just became a Republican or he just became a Democrat. He was a Republican I think so he can become electorally viable but he can blast his message out and get everyone in Los Angeles to at a minimum know who he is whereas Karen Bass is struggling just to get her name out there. It's genuinely infuriating to see the ways that billionaires are manipulating elections but this isn't the only realm of influence. If you think about it people like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg they own social media websites so they are able to single-handedly filter out what we see. On top of that billionaires like Peter Till and JD Vance invest heavily in other platforms like Rumble and then they recruit propagandists on their platform like Glenn Greenwald and Tulsi Gabbard under the guise of quote challenging the status quo when in actuality they're upholding the pro-billionaire capitalist status quo by saying exactly what these billionaire oligarchs want them to say and these billionaires are savvy they've adapted right they know that there's this anti-establishment presence currently in the United States right they know which way the wind is blowing they know that people are fed up and they know that the working class is getting increasingly angry at the ways that oligarchs are exploiting them exploiting their labor they see the labor movement they see this move towards unionization so what are they doing they're adapting their propaganda is getting a lot more intelligent so rather than just saying hey you know vote for this republican because social security is bad and it should be cut no they're really savvy they're funding candidates like Blake Masters who have these pseudo populist messages that are supposed to appeal to working class voters and somehow it works I mean he may not win but for him to even be electorally viable when this individual is bankrolled by someone like Peter Thiel it just it shouldn't happen but the message gets out and voters just don't see the puppeteers who are pulling the strings behind the scenes and that's genuinely disturbing so this is billionaires corrupting our democracy and even if the GOP just stops with their election denialism and stops with voter suppression not going to happen by the way but if they were to cease doing that immediately the threat to our democracy is still present because these oligarchs are buying our elections and we shouldn't tolerate this we should not tolerate this any candidate that's taking money from a billionaire should not have your support because these billionaires they are not looking out for you they're looking out for themselves so if a candidate gets a lot of money millions of dollars in political contributions from that billionaire do you think that they're going to give a shit about the five dollars that you donated no they're going to deliver for their donors so this report is not surprising at all but i just wish that americans would uh i don't know care about it and realize that when they're blasted with political propaganda it's all intentional to get them to vote against their own self-interest