I do find it odd that almost all of the negative coverage of crypto, SBF, FTX, etc. has avoided his political donations. Unless I'm misunderstanding what happened here (and please correct me if I'm wrong), but it very much seems like FTX stole money from regular people to use for lobbying and influencing elections. I can't think of anything more anti-democratic than that.
Don't worry, some of the politicians who received money stolen from regular people have verbally committed to donating the same amount of money to their own nonprofits.
Yeah it's just reliably the top 1 or 2 comments on anything related to SBF as well as being discussed in no fewer than 10 articles in a small publication called the New York Times.
It's not so much that it's avoided entirely, just that the narrative has been about the corruption of the crypto industry and SBF himself and not what the money was used for and what that indicates about the political system as a whole.
Yeah, I get that it can feel "off," but practically I'd actually much prefer that we focus the money theft conversation on money theft and the campaign reform conversation on campaign reform.
I.e. the fraud isn't made worse by the fact it was turned into donations and, likewise, campaign donations of that sort aren't less troublesome when they're made with legitimately-earned money.
I.e. the fraud isn't made worse by the fact it was turned into donations
Not sure how that's true. If he scammed a bunch of people to buy a boat, that's one thing. If he scammed people and then directly influenced a very close election, that seems a little worse?
For example, imagine this was the test case that people wanted to push on campaign finance reform. Politicians finally give in and say "yeah you know you're right, this was really wrong. From now on, funding campaigns via dark money channels with stolen money is punishable by death."
Is campaign finance fixed? Did we make any meaningful progress on any actually meaningful problem?
An adequate handling of the campaign finance component. You're expressing that the handling/reaction/attention toward this facet of the SBF case is inadequate. What would've been adequate to you?
Who did FTX/SBF fund, how close were these elections, what other political consequences were downwind of this? Who would have potentially won without the funding?
From a Time article:
Bankman-Fried contributed more than $70 million to election campaigns in less than 18 months, placing him among the nation’s top political donors. He personally gave at least $40 million to politicians and political action committees ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, mostly to Democrats and liberal-leaning groups, making him the second overall top donor to Democrats, only behind George Soros, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Bankman-Fried also donated a significant amount to fundraising committees and super PACs affiliated with both parties. The biggest single recipient was Protect Our Future, a Democratic-aligned super PAC that claims it was “designed to help elect candidates who will be champions for pandemic prevention.” The group received $27 million from Bankman-Fried, and supports effective altruism, a philanthropic movement premised on the use of reason and data to allocate money, which Bankman-Fried also supports. Beneficiaries of Protect Our Future include Carrick Flynn, who lost a Democratic primary in Oregon’s 6th District, George Rep. Lucy McBath and Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett.
The former crypto king made one of the largest donations to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in 2020, contributing $5.2 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.
So again, you're telling me that this guy stole money from regular people and then used it to support a candidate that ultimately won the election? How is that not the single biggest aspect of this story and a daily headline for the last two years?
>>So again, you're telling me that this guy stole money from regular people and then used it to support a candidate that ultimately won the election? How is that not the single biggest aspect of this story and a daily headline for the last two years?
Because there's no reason to believe that money particularly did anything to sway the election or to buy him influence afterwards.
The only reason anyone cares is because a bunch of jackasses were like "he donated to the DEMS! he'll NEVER see the INSIDE OF A COURT ROOM!" and then when he absolutely did in fact get charged those same jackasses started trying to save face by just repeating the first sentence even louder.
> Because there's no reason to believe that money did anything to sway the election or to buy him influence afterwards.
What proof do you have of this statement? If donating so much money that it places you "among the nation’s top political donors," yet it has no effect on the election, why does anyone donate money at all?
Money isn’t just more dollars equals more votes or more dollars equals this person does what I say. If that was true, Hillary would have won in 2016 and SBF wouldn’t be getting ready for a long time in Federal prison.
Presumably he donated to democrats because he prefers the political platform of that party and wished to signal that support to others (including non-politicians). That he’s one of the good billionaire. Obviously that isn’t the case.
Campaign finance reform is a popular issue with voters, not so much policymakers. Same as voting and election reform.
What it says is that industries can perform regulatory capture by funding the right people in office. Crypto just doesn’t have the same clout at oil and gas and other groups.
NYT ran stories making him out to being a victim, how his family was "caught on the middle," how FTX was simply a success story turned to bad luck. NYT effectively lead blocking PR
It would be more accurate to say that the NYT has been far too eager to positively misrepresent and run interference for crypto in general, so of course the face of crypto got his fair share of that for a couple of years.
This reads to me like run of the mill softball reporting on white collar crime. I don't get the impression that's what GP was alleging, but if it is, then yep, agreed.
If Madoff were stupid enough to take a NYTimes interview shortly after implosion, I don't think it'd look much different. (Edit: Actually, quite a bit more glowing, and not even an interview: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/nyregion/13madoff.html)
Not really. He gave $40M to democrats and $200k to republicans. [0]
If his aim was to influence crypto policy then he would have donated very differently. It appears he was lobbying for his own political ideology and not just to benefit his crappy company.
We don't really know what the split was. SBF has claimed he donated significantly more to the republicans. From your link above:
The GOP donations were "dark-money" contributions, making his claim difficult to verify. Such secret contributions, allowed by the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens
United ruling, wouldn’t show up in the FEC disclosures used to compile MarketWatch’s list
What would he have to gain by lying about spending even more customer money? I see it as a boast of how well he was playing the game; and also an admission that he was trying to buy influence.
How is that irrelevant? Usually when someone is caught bribing politicians with billions of dollars of stolen money, it's considered kind of relevant where that money went?
Can you specify what exactly it is that you think is "irrelevant"? Because it sounds to me like you are contradicting yourself. First you say it's irrelevant where the money went, now you sound like it's relevant after all?
They will be positively distraught that the charges for campaign finance violations and conspiracy to commit bribery won't come to trial. Sadly that trial just wasn't in the public interest.
Yeah, I wouldn't consider myself much of a conspiracy person but this does not sit right. Even if there wasn't overt pressure to drop the cases the folks involved probably realized that in the course of litigating the case they would make a lot of important people angry (or at least irritable over being painted in a likely less than flattering light).
My company ghosted me for an internal advancement opportunity. A short interview with the HR recruiter then silence for 2 months, even from my manager. I had to complain to the head of HR to get a response letting me know that they're going with an external hire.
In my case, I wasn't referring to indians, I meant chinese immigrants. My last few managers have been Indian immigrants and they all had diverse teams. I'm sure it does happen though.
Yeah but we aren’t talking racism here we are talking nationalism. It’s not the same to hire lots of hispanics or to say “wow this team is primarily asian”. Here i’m saying particular hiring managers only want people who were born in their country of origin.
But I dont go onto online forums and blast Hispanics for hiring other hispanics ? I know its a common trait worldwide to hire from your own group but I dont point out "specific" communities because they do it ? Like you just did.
