Name: How Billionaires and Corporations Influence Elections in America
Uploaded: 2024-08-15T19:56:34.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'How Billionaires and Corporations Influence Elections in America' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-08-15. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'How Billionaires and Corporations Influence Elections in America' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-08-15. Transcript available.

Whenever you started in politics, I'm sure that there was a real idea of one
person can really
affect change, right? Do you think that that's still possible today with a lot
of the lobbies
and stuff that they have that goes on? Well, I think one of the points I think
everybody knows is you have a government dominated by big money interests,
right? That's no great
secret. So you have these billionaires now and they're super PACs. If you're a
billionaire,
you can contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to elect people, to feed
people.
If you're a large corporation or you represent the pharmaceutical industry, do
you know how many
lobbyists there are in Washington DC representing the big drug companies? Take
a wild and crazy guess.
2,000. You got it. That's a pretty good guess. About 1,800. Wow.
So there are a hundred members of the Senate and 435 members of the House. Got
it? 535 and you got 1,800
lobbyists. Well-paid, former leaders of the Democratic Party, leaders of the
Republican
Party. They're there to say, "Hey, Congress, do everything you can to make sure
we make as much
money as possible and who gives a damn whether people can afford the
prescription drugs they need."
So that's power. So you have a whole other drug government almost going on.
Yeah. Absolutely.
That's even bigger than our own government. Numbers-wise.
Well, not big. Well, we could define what we mean by bigger, but-
That's fair.
But if you look at Wall Street, the power of Wall Street, the drug companies,
the insurance companies, the fossil fuel industry, you have enormous wealth,
enormous power. And
if your question is, is it government that tells them what to do or they tell
what the government to do,
more the latter. They tell the government what to do. Very powerful.
Does it feel like that's changed over your time, like in politics, or has it
always been that way?
I think to some degree, you know, money talks, right?
Yeah.
No great secret. That's always been the case. It's worse now, and I'll tell you
why.
As a result of this Citizens United Supreme Court decision. You familiar with
that?
Mm-hmm.
So people brought action. Billionaires really brought action. They said, "Hey,
it's undemocratic. You're taking away my freedom of speech, right? I got a
First Amendment right.
We're on TV now. You could say whatever you want to say, and I'm a billionaire,
and I want to spend
unlimited sums of money to defeat this candidate or support this candidate. And
you have laws on the
books that which restrict my freedom to buy the election." You understand what
I'm saying?
A hundred percent.
Okay. And Supreme Court said, "Well, guys, you're right. You're billionaires.
You should be able
to spend as much money as you want to buy elections." And that's what you have.
So right now, this is
literally the truth. You have super PACs where billionaires can put unlimited
amounts of money,
hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to defeat people they don't like
or to support people they
do like. That's power. And that is a corruption of what democracy is supposed
to be. Look, you and I
can disagree on an issue, right? Ten people. We argue it out. We vote. I get
the majority. You get the
majority. Somebody wins. Somebody loses. I don't think billionaires should be
able to buy elections.
And I think most people think that. Most people are like, "Why are corporations
or companies allowed to
like give money to candidates and influence elections?" Right? Almost every
person I know says that that
should be no. Whose responsibility is it to make sure it doesn't happen? Is it
ours or is it the
politicians? Well, what happened is there were laws put in place, not as strong
as I would like,
which did limit the power of big money. Yeah. Okay. And what that Supreme Court
decision said is what
Congress did was unconstitutional, denied big money, their freedom of speech.
If you're a billionaire,
you have freedom of speech. That means you can run ads all over the day and to
beat Bernie Sanders,
beat anybody. And that's what happened. So what we have got to do now is once
again, pass legislation
that will do that. Are there politicians that aren't viable kind of, or aren't
influenced by lobbyists?
Of course there are. There are some very good people, but many people, look,
just throw out an example.
You're running for election. Okay. Your opponent is spending millions of
dollars. These TV ads are
up there. All right. You think you're going to stand up to powerful, special
interests who say,
you know, Theo, listen, I like you, but you're going to take that position on
that issue. I got
to be running millions of dollars of ads against you. What do you think you're
going to do if you want
to get elected? You could say, well, go to hell. I'm going to do it anyhow. And
many do. Or you run the risk of,
you know, seeing that kind of money come against you. Or you then have to find
a lobbyist that has
an interest of yours and you have to try and fight back. Right. Which is a
pretty pathetic thing,
right? Right. So to some degree, what you have right now, it's a funny kind of
thing. It's let's
say you were running against me. It's not you against me. It's your moneyed
interest versus my moneyed
interest. That's what super PACs are. Yeah. Now corporations cannot directly
contribute to your campaign,
but they big money interest billionaires can contribute to a super PAC. So you
have all these,
if what I would say to you, people watch the show here, look at the ads that
are on television.
They'll be underneath it. You'll see paid for by supporters of the American way
of life or whatever
the hell it is. Understand that in most cases, these are billionaires putting
money into a candidate.
So the super PAC is kind of the loophole is how they do it. So it's not
directly from.
Exactly. There are limits. All right. You wanted to contribute to my campaign.
They're pretty stringent
limits. You can't contribute. I think it's, I don't know what's 5,000 bucks
through a super PAC.
You can contribute a hundred million dollars. Wow. That's a big issue. We don't
talk about it enough.
And then you can understand that if you're an ordinary person, who's going to
listen to your interests,
your needs, right? When billionaires are putting in this kind of money. Right.
If the best I can help
you out with this 5,000 bucks, you might show up and shake my hand. But when
something really,
when the rickshaw hits the road or whatever, you're going to be working for the
big dogs,
for the cash. You got it. And that's the way the system works.
And how do we change that? Well, first of all, this campaign finance
reform is a big deal. Just this one issue. And I'm glad you raised it. We've
got to do away
for the citizens. You know, we have to have restrictions. Okay. When I ran for
president,
the average contribution was $27. Okay. Roughly speaking. And we've got
millions of people to
contribute. So I think there has to be a real stringent limit on the amount of
money that any
individual can put into the political process. And I also believe that we
should move to what
we call public funding of elections. You're a candidate, right? You want to run
for governor,
you want to run for senator. If you show that you have a certain amount of
support,
you got X number of thousands of people willing to put $5 into your campaign,
you can be able to get
public funding. And there's a limit of how much you can spend. These are not
radical ideas. They
exist in many countries around the world, actually. Yeah, that's pretty normal.
Do you think that our
election process is still democratic? Do you think it's still? Yes and no. I
mean, you know,
you want to run for office. Can you? Yeah, you can. You've got a certain number
of signatures.
But if you're going to win, and I have 10 times more money than you do, I will
beat you 95% of
the time. Wow. I mean, that's a fact, right? Right. You'll beat me. Maybe if
you're really an
exceptional candidate and I'm a real idiot, you will beat me once in a while.
But by and large,
the money people will win. So if you're asking me, are we a democracy? In one
sense, we are.
All right. You can run for office. You can raise your issues. On the other hand,
in terms of who has the
real power, money people do. And I use the term oligarchy. And oligarchy is a
society where small
numbers of very wealthy people control the economic and political life of the
country. I think we are
moving rapidly in that direction. Yeah, I feel like it's, to me, it feels like
an almost privatized
communism in a way. Right. That's a very good point. It's a very good, it's an
interesting way of looking at it.
Thank you.