Money In Politics is Even Dumber Than You Think

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*** Sources ***

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2026/01/lobbying-firms-took-in-a-record-5-billion-in-2025/

https://archive.org/details/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc/page/n9/mode/2up

https://www.wsj.com/health/pharma/drugmakers-have-spent-millions-targeting-middlemenand-its-paying-off-08bdef04

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-pharmacy-benefit-lobby-group-ramps-up-spending-lawmakers-close-2024-01-25/

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-corporate-power-reset-that-makes-citizens-united-irrelevant/

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/17/massie-aipac-record-spending-israel-maga-trump-primary-00925375

https://www.fec.gov/updates/contribution-limits-for-2025-2026/

https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/michael-bloomberg/candidate?id=N00029349

https://www.fec.gov/resources/campaign-finance-statistics/2016/tables/presidential/presreceipts_2016_m10.pdf

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/01/31/elon-musk-trump-donor-2024-election/

https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/candidate-taking-receipts/understanding-independent-expenditures

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/558/310/

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-spent-over-quarter-billion-dollars-help-elect-trump-2024-12-06/

https://www.opensecrets.org/outside-spending/super_pacs

https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/other-non-profits/social-welfare-organizations

https://www.wired.com/story/super-pac-backed-by-openai-and-palantir-is-paying-tiktok-influencers-to-fear-monger-about-china/

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/insidious-foreign-dark-money-threat

https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-reports/the-inside-story-of-how-the-fec-investigated-a-dark-money-group-but-failed-to-hold-it-accountable

https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2013/11/11/243973620/when-lobbyists-literally-write-the-bill

https://info.legistorm.com/blog/revolving-door-in-congress

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/05/hawaii-corporations-political-money/687159/

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Last year, the amount of money spent on lobbying hit a record $5.24 billion dollars at the federal level alone… and well… I don’t know if you realized, but there weren’t even any major federal elections in 2025.
When you factor in the upcoming midterms, state and local level lobbying in addition to all of the money spent outside of officially disclosed channels, the volume of cash that is… uhh “enabling” the law making process is going to eclipse 11 figures within America alone this year… and by all accounts it’s going to be a great investment…
A cambridge university report found that out of 1,779 policy issues passed during their study, the preferences of economic elites and special business interests had a significant influence on policy outcomes which wasn’t really the shocking part…
The shocking part was that the preferences of average citizens had effectively no measurable influence, even in large groups that were extremely politically active. Oh and this study was done in 2014, when total political spending was less than a quarter of what it is today…
Part of the reason WHY that spending has become so ludicrous is not because the money is being used to circumvent the will of the people, (that battle was won long ago), it’s instead become a spending battle between OTHER lobbyists to see whose special interests take precedence over the lessor donors…
but even if we somehow reformed this in its entirety tomorrow, we only need to look to other countries to see that it’s probably not going to fix all of our problems…
Oh and of course… this is all assuming that everybody was actually playing by those rules in the first place…

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