2020 election spending was ~11 to 15 billion which is in the same ballpark as the annual amount of money spent on almonds by Americans. The NRA spent low hundreds of millions over the past two decades - ie the annual budget of a large and well valued company and not even a tenth of the largest company's annual marketing budgets.
This suggests the eliminating private contributions would do relatively little, no?
Thank you sir. So in following, a bad "flu" breaks out, maybe even from a lab and voilla trillions are printed seemingly overnight, mandates are issued, laws change, new technological advances replace work habits and all at a drop of a hat. Wall Street makes billions while the rest fall into a cognitive abyss. New Ponzi schemes (Bitcoin) support old Ponzi schemes (US dollar/MMT) meanwhile no one knows what's going on, our children are lost and no one wants to work because if you do want to work, honestly, to produce, you will be used in this morass. I guess that is what Lofgren saw.
I don't think I buy this. The vast majority of US government spending is on Social Security and Medicare+Medicaid, and welfare with only about 10% on the military. It's not unusual at all or conservatives to be pro smaller government with the exception of the military - we see this in the UK and France for instance - both of which have much much much stronger campaign finance laws than the US, which implies to me that the US case doesn't need a special explanation.
The part of the US military I know a bit about is the nuclear weapons bit, and my reading of the history of that was that financial interests had very little to do with nuclear build up. Initially it was a money saving measure - much cheaper to have nukes than a large conventional army - then because the Red army was so much stronger more nukes were needed. Then a combination of a first strike strategy which was launched by the Pentagon under McNamara radically increased the number of strategic nukes needed. This was added by all the branches of the US army with the exception of the marines lobbying to get themselves as many nucelar weapons as possible. Then, from the Regan-Gorbachev talks starting in Genva in 1985 to the end of H.W Bush's term, there was a dramatic cut in the number of nuclear weapons that faced just very little resistance. The only example I know of where finnaical interests clearly affected nuclear weopons policy was when a treaty (I can't recall the specific treaty, but it was during the Carter precidency) limited the number of ICMBs for only a 10 year period. So in the one sphere of US military policy I know well, it seems to be that finncial intersts played essentially 0 part.
I do not think your example is well chosen nor do I think that Lofgren has in mind this pat of the military. Other military expenditures are, I think, much more important: domestic bases, airplanes, hardware, subsidies for civilian/military technological innovations (as documented by Mazzucato) from Internet to Elon Musk and they are all politically attractive b/c they provide money to companies they produce them or subsidies to new technologies (and thus to investors). Just look at the ease with the most recent military bill of >$700b passed compared to the impasse of BBB.
Most of this post is somewhat hard to assess, because it is pretty broad-brush.
One claim - 'an electoral system where winning is practically synonymous with having access to more money than your opponent' - should be much easier to assess. May we see the evidence?
Also in Russia. Both systems using power of State to generate enormous wealth for the benefit of few, whilst holding out the pseudo-purpose of serving the "people". Combine with growing sentiments of the Authoritarianism (see Karen Stenner's definition) that formulates "America" and/or "Russia" and/or "China" - push eventually comes to shove and those exquisite hypersonic missiles are in full flight. The Empire (EU, UK) is dead, long live the Empire.
I wonder if something similar is happening in UK as well. The Parliament, shown in MP preferences, seems out of touch with their own constituency. But seen from the lens of deep state as defined above, it's clear who the governing MPs listen to.
Relatively little $ is spent on politics.
2020 election spending was ~11 to 15 billion which is in the same ballpark as the annual amount of money spent on almonds by Americans. The NRA spent low hundreds of millions over the past two decades - ie the annual budget of a large and well valued company and not even a tenth of the largest company's annual marketing budgets.
This suggests the eliminating private contributions would do relatively little, no?
Thank you sir. So in following, a bad "flu" breaks out, maybe even from a lab and voilla trillions are printed seemingly overnight, mandates are issued, laws change, new technological advances replace work habits and all at a drop of a hat. Wall Street makes billions while the rest fall into a cognitive abyss. New Ponzi schemes (Bitcoin) support old Ponzi schemes (US dollar/MMT) meanwhile no one knows what's going on, our children are lost and no one wants to work because if you do want to work, honestly, to produce, you will be used in this morass. I guess that is what Lofgren saw.
I don't think I buy this. The vast majority of US government spending is on Social Security and Medicare+Medicaid, and welfare with only about 10% on the military. It's not unusual at all or conservatives to be pro smaller government with the exception of the military - we see this in the UK and France for instance - both of which have much much much stronger campaign finance laws than the US, which implies to me that the US case doesn't need a special explanation.
The part of the US military I know a bit about is the nuclear weapons bit, and my reading of the history of that was that financial interests had very little to do with nuclear build up. Initially it was a money saving measure - much cheaper to have nukes than a large conventional army - then because the Red army was so much stronger more nukes were needed. Then a combination of a first strike strategy which was launched by the Pentagon under McNamara radically increased the number of strategic nukes needed. This was added by all the branches of the US army with the exception of the marines lobbying to get themselves as many nucelar weapons as possible. Then, from the Regan-Gorbachev talks starting in Genva in 1985 to the end of H.W Bush's term, there was a dramatic cut in the number of nuclear weapons that faced just very little resistance. The only example I know of where finnaical interests clearly affected nuclear weopons policy was when a treaty (I can't recall the specific treaty, but it was during the Carter precidency) limited the number of ICMBs for only a 10 year period. So in the one sphere of US military policy I know well, it seems to be that finncial intersts played essentially 0 part.
I do not think your example is well chosen nor do I think that Lofgren has in mind this pat of the military. Other military expenditures are, I think, much more important: domestic bases, airplanes, hardware, subsidies for civilian/military technological innovations (as documented by Mazzucato) from Internet to Elon Musk and they are all politically attractive b/c they provide money to companies they produce them or subsidies to new technologies (and thus to investors). Just look at the ease with the most recent military bill of >$700b passed compared to the impasse of BBB.
Most of this post is somewhat hard to assess, because it is pretty broad-brush.
One claim - 'an electoral system where winning is practically synonymous with having access to more money than your opponent' - should be much easier to assess. May we see the evidence?
Politics is a concentrated expression of economics - Vladimir Lenin
Wasn't Catherine Austin Fitts saying something similar in the 90s?
Also in Russia. Both systems using power of State to generate enormous wealth for the benefit of few, whilst holding out the pseudo-purpose of serving the "people". Combine with growing sentiments of the Authoritarianism (see Karen Stenner's definition) that formulates "America" and/or "Russia" and/or "China" - push eventually comes to shove and those exquisite hypersonic missiles are in full flight. The Empire (EU, UK) is dead, long live the Empire.
I wonder if something similar is happening in UK as well. The Parliament, shown in MP preferences, seems out of touch with their own constituency. But seen from the lens of deep state as defined above, it's clear who the governing MPs listen to.