Midterm elections are underway. Early voting is taking place, voter suppression is in full swing, President Trump is flying hither and yon, and political ads are polluting the public airways. Here’s the text of one called, “Any Democrat.” You’ll have to imagine the scary images that accompany the ad copy or look it up on YouTube.
“The screaming, the violence, the smears and death threats. The far left is moving to Socialism, undefended open borders, immediate tax increases, one-hundred percent government-run healthcare, the booming economy stopped, Nancy Pelosi back in power, gridlock, and then impeachment. Is that really what you want? Voting for any democrat gets you all that. Vote Republican Nov. 6. Paid for by Future45.
Wow! Is this dystopian future an accurate depiction of reality if Democrats win a few seats in the House and Senate? Even if it is, would it really be worse than the dystopian present? And by the way, who’s behind this bleak vision? Who’s Future45?
We were taught in school to consider the source when confronted with questionable assertions. Is the speaker legit, objective, trustworthy or a lying bunco artist trying to bamboozle the unwary?
By now we ought to have learned to be suspicious of all those anodyne sounding sponsors of tendentious political ads — Americans for Prosperity, Patriots for Paradise and all the reat of the PACs concealing the self-interest of a few wealthy donors behind flag-waving names. So, do those behind Future45 have the same interest in this election as you? Are they friend or foe? Is Future45 trustworthy?
In a word, no. Reports on PACs lag behind events, so numbers for 2018 are fragmentary, but those for 2016 tell the tale. Two years ago, Future45 raised and spent $25 million dollars on attack ads aimed at Hillary Clinton. Why? Government disclosure rules require PACs to explain their purpose, so Future45 was forced to admit it was “a single-candidate Super PAC in support of Donald Trump.”
So now we know what the goal of the ad is, to keep Trump in power by keeping Congress Republican. But who’s behind this effort? Well, in the 2016 cycle, Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino tycoon and his wife contributed $20 million of the $25 million war chest of Future45. He was Trump’s biggest donor and his pet issues are minimizing taxes on his $31 billion fortune and supporting a militant, anti-Muslim Israel.
Other donors were billionaire Linda McMahon, former CEO of WWE wrestling who ponied up $1.2 million, TDAmeritrade billionaire and Chicago Cubs owner Joe Ricketts who gave $1 million, coal billionaire Joe Craft who gave $750,000, oil billionaire Jay Bergman, $500,000, and hedge fund billionaires Paul Singer and Ken Griffin who gave $250,000 each. Thus seven donors made up 96% of Future45’s contributions.
Did they get their money’s worth? I should say they did. All achieved gigantic tax cuts from the Trump administration. Has it trickled down to you yet? The fossil fuel billionaires also got an end to efforts to fight climate change that would have been bad for their business. The Wall Street guys got a roll back of financial enforcement put in places after guys like them helped crash the markets and the economy in 2008.
McMahon, after losing two races for Senate from Connecticut, got a job from Trump as head of the Small Business Administration. She spent 2017 visiting 68 cities to sell the Trump tax cut to small business owners. Many of them have since discovered the benefits went largely to big business, not them. In addition to his tax cut, Adelson got a president hostile to unions, willing to play lapdog to Benjamin Netanyahu and to withdraw from the nuclear arms agreement with Iran.
So now you know what the Future45 moguls have got to gain if they persuade you not to vote for Any Democrat. But what will you get? According to the ad itself, no tax increases for billionaires, no reform of healthcare, and no more oversight of the Trump administration than during the first two years of his reign, no impeachment, no checks and balances. A booming economy for the one percent, and “sit down and shut up” for everyone else.
Does that sound like a winning hand for you? You decide.
And by the way, why do the Trump and his pet moguls especially dislike Nancy Pelosi and delight in demonizing her? Perhaps because, like Roosevelt and Kennedy before her, they regard her as a traitor to their class. Though she and her husband are only worth a paltry $100 million or so, they still ought to be on the same side as the billionaires. Instead she is a defender of the middle and working class. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Pelosi was also a remarkably tough, crafty and effective Speaker of the House compared to the weak and ineffectual Paul Ryan and weepy John Boehner. And she’s an uppity woman. Of course she drives the old boy’s network cuckoo.