As RFK Jr. Backs Trump, Here's the Secretive Billionaire Plutocrat Funding Them Both | Common Dreams
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Timothy Mellon, the reclusive heir to a Gilded Age fortune, has poured over $165 million into the 2024 election so far, with tens of millions backing both Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
  • nkat2112@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    882·
    2 months ago

    Let me try to understand:

    • Idiot Brain Worm betrays the Democratic party by running as an Independent to take votes away from Biden.
    • Idiot Brain Worm subsequently realizes he’s actually taking more votes away from Felon Drink Bleach.
    • Harris enters the scene and the left builds up momentum causing the felon’s outlook to look much worse.
    • Then Idiot Brain Worm gives up to help Felon Drink Bleach.

    And all the while this oligarch has invested $1.6 billion into this criminal clown show? This was the best he could do?

      • mosiacmango@lemm.ee
        13·
        2 months ago

        A Trojan horse that had “I’m a big ol’ fucking Trojan horse filled with fucking idiots that will try to fuck you up” written 6ft high on its side.

        Luckily, the Harris campaign isn’t as stupid as the “bought and paid for for far right billionaires” Kennedy campaign.

    • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      19·
      2 months ago

      It turns out wealth ≠ intelligence. Maybe for first gen wealthy, but all subsequent gens are wealthy because of familial inheritance.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
      171·
      2 months ago

      Almost exclusively, in fact. We mostly don’t hear anything about it unless they star on a reality TV show, though, for two reasons:

      1. most media is owned by people they play golf with

      2. “rich person does nothing of value” isn’t a great headline. Hell, generalize it to the absolutely factual “most rich people do nothing of value” and both Forbes and Fortune will probably sue you 🤷

      • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
        41·
        2 months ago

        It’s better to be lucky than good at something. But there’s a major difference between starting out middle class (or working class) and starting out wealthy.

        The people who started and developed entire companies clearly had some skill. Massive intelligence isn’t necessary, but they were not stupid. If they were stupid they would have already blown all the money. Compare what happens to lottery winners and you will see what I mean.

        The difference is, future generations that inherit are more like lottery winners: they have no idea how to grow the money left to them. Plus they have no concept of staying under budget because they have always been rich. This is worse than a lottery winner because they already have an expensive lifestyle to maintain.

      • Simulation6@sopuli.xyz
        2·
        2 months ago

        Dude is in his 80’s and is the grandson of the money making Mellon. Wikipedia lists his career as ‘started a software company in the 1960s’ .

  • linearchaos@lemmy.worldEnglish
    46·
    2 months ago

    “Timothy Mellon, the reclusive heir to a Gilded Age fortune, has poured over $165 million into the 2024 election so far, with tens of millions backing both Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.”

    • dynamic_generals@lemmy.world
      101·
      2 months ago

      They let him off easy. I couldn’t figure out how exactly they’re related, but Richard Mellon Scaife is a big part of the reason we’re in the political mess we are today day. Americans distrusted corporations in the 1970s - tobacco, Dow Chemical, Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed… also low income inequality. In response, future SCOTUS Justice Powell - who was on the board of Philip Morris and close friends with GM’s general counsel wrote what was intended to be secret memo for members of the US Chamber of Commerce:

      ‘Attack on American Free Enterprise System’ was written to transform corporate America into a “vanguard.” Contents include “the American economic system is under attack… [enemies are] perfectly respectable elements of society…the college campus, the pulpit*, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, politicians.” Capitalists need to wage “guerrilla warfare” against those seeking to “insidiously” undermine them. “Capture public opinion by exerting influence over the institutions that shape it - academia, the media, the churches, and the courts - to control debate at its source.” Said donors should demand a say in university hiring and curriculum and “press vigorously in all political arenas.” Key to victory is “careful long-range planning and implementation” with a “scale of financing available only through joint effort.” The memo spurred the ultra-conservative foundations to weaponize their “philanthropic” giving to “fight a multi-front war of influence over American political thought.”

      The Coors family heeded the call first, followed by Mellon Scaife who massively overshadowed the Coors’. These foundations, that only existed for inheritance tax avoidance, were weaponized right at this moment… two months before Powell was nominated to The Court.

      That’s how close we came to living in a good timeline.

      And I’m only 1/4 of the way through Jane Mayer’s Dark Money; maybe just a tip of an iceberg. I’d suggest it’s required reading for every American. I should add Mayer is also responsible for unmasking Clarence Thomas in Strange Justice, the source for nearly everything we know about his grotesque history. I haven’t read it.

      *this was pre-Moral Majority, but not by much.

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
    161·
    2 months ago

    “Billionaires in both parties should not be able to buy elections,” said Sanders. “For the sake of our democracy, we must overturn the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision and move toward public funding of elections.”

    Exactly.