Billionaire’s Bakesale

June 3, 2024: VOTE FOR ME SO I CAN IGNORE YOU

On January 21, 2020, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, held that corporations and other outside groups can spend unlimited money on elections.1 This is one reason it takes tens of millions of dollars to conduct a viable political campaign for office. Therefore, if you want to run for federal Congress, you need a megadonor, that is, a corporate sponsor or a billionaire. These megadonors want something in return. Now, Congresspersons are no longer representing their constituents (you), but rather are listening to their donors. What you want, and what the donors want, may be different things. What the donors want is lower corporate taxes and less regulations on business. Curiously, that is what Republican office holders have been promoting for decades, and now they have achieved it. But instead of creating the promised good jobs, these changes have created higher corporate profits, emptied tax coffers, oppressed workers (you), and released more industrial pollution. Some of those missing regulations protected your rights as a worker, and protected the water you drink. If you are planning to vote for Donald Trump in 2024 in order to fix all this, you may be disappointed. Remember, On December 8, 2016, President-elect Donald Trump nominated Andrew Puzder to be United States Secretary of Labor. Mr. Puzder is the former chief executive officer of CKE Restaurants, the parent company of Hardee's and Carl's Jr., a position he held from September 2000 to March 2017. Mr. Puzder has been a harsh critic of raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. He also opposed a Labor Department rule that aimed to make millions more workers eligible for overtime pay. Fortunately for the worker (you), Mr. Puzder’s appointment was not confirmed 2.

Billionaire businessman and lifelong Republican Stephen Schwarzman supported Trump in the 2016 election and became a trusted adviser once Trump took office. But Mr. Schwarzman withdrew his support in 2017 after Trump said that a violent Charlottesville white nationalist rally had good people “on both sides.” But now (June 2024) Mr. Schwarzman is once again supporting Trump, “I am planning to vote for change and support Donald Trump for President.”3 For a Jewish man to cast aside his reservations about Trump’s white supremacist tendencies may demonstrate that billionaires, in general, are quite fond of Donald Trump. Billionaire John Paulson held a fund-raising gala for Donald Trump on April 6, 2024.4 There Mr. Trump emphasized the importance of extending his signature tax cuts (that reduced the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%). He addressed some of the nation’s wealthiest political donors and raised a record-breaking amount of donations from the nation’s elite - a set that included billionaires such as sugar magnate José “Pepe” Fanjul Sr., oil baron Harold Hamm and Johnson and Johnson heir Woody Johnson. Some may find this odd for someone with a political movement fueled by populist themes.5 Conversely, since taking office, President Biden has fought to build a fairer tax system that rewards work, not wealth, and he is asking that the wealthiest Americans and large corporations pay their fair share of taxes.6