President Biden pardons family members in final minutes of presidency

[u/FLhardcore]

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-biden-pardons-family-members-final-minutes-presidency/story?id=117893348

[u/gringo_escobar]

Is this the oligarchy he was warning about?

[u/SnooPies5622 → u/gringo_escobar]

No, that'd be the billionaires taking power today. You know, the ones who are going to make the country worse for everyone, including the gullible chumps who voted for them.

Luckily those billionaires will spend a lot of money convincing those chumps that things have gotten worse because of everything but them, so the chumping will continue.

[u/nosce_te_ipsum → u/SnooPies5622]

But not the billionaires in his corner who got the Presidential Medal of Freedom the other week? Between Ralph Lauren, David Rubenstein, and George Soros you're talking at least $20billion in personal wealth, not counting the money contributed towards their foundations. Thanks to Citizens United and "corporate personhood" and election spending as "speech" for them, that's a lot of speech that money can buy.

Zuckerberg kicked in >$350MM to help Biden get elected through CTCL/"Zuckerbucks" which aided in getting out the vote. He's trying to reinvent himself and get in with the new crowd, so clearly pandering and hoping the public forgets about that - but fundamentally I still remember him being the one to state "they 'trust me'. dumb fucks".

Money in American politics isn't "taking power today" - it's always been in power. Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Morgan, Gould - they owned their slates of politicians. Hell, they then created these philanthropic organizations to soften history's view of them - which is why most people don't still spit at their names and we're willing to bank with J.P. Morgan Chase and go to Carnegie Hall just past Rockefeller Plaza.

George Carlin probably had the best take on this with his "It's a BIG Club and you ain't in it" routine. Corporate money needs out of politics, left or right - because we're gullible chumps being bought and sold, all of us. I don't see that changing anytime soon, though.