@ISIDEWITHQuestionselectionsStarted 9yrs agoActive 2wks ago

Should there be a limit to the amount of money a candidate can receive from a donor?

In the U.S. a citizen may give $2,700 per election to a federal candidate, $5,000 per year to a PAC, $10,000 per year to a State or local party committee and $33,400 per year to a national party. Citizens and corporations may give unlimited amounts to a Super PAC. A Super PAC is freed from traditional campaign finance laws as long as it does not fund a candidate or campaign or coordinate directly with a campaign how to spend donations.

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Answer Overview

Response rates from 10.8k State Senate District 9 voters.

69%
Yes
31%
No
63%
Yes
23%
No
5%
Yes, politicians should not be bought by wealthy donors
6%
No, as long as all donations are public knowledge
1%
Yes, and ban all political donations and publicly fund elections
1%
No, this is a violation of free speech

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Other Popular Answers

Unique answers from State Senate District 9 voters whose views went beyond the provided options.

 @9MYMGYN from Georgia  answered…7mos7MO

There should be no limits on individual donations not made through a PAC or public funds, but there should be a limit on PAC/corporate donations

 @5DVLBZWfrom Indiana  answered…4yrs4Y

All current regulations hurt all alternatives to the Democratic and Republican Party candidates. The limits the D/R politicians impose on themselves are routinely violated by them, in fact; but are vigorously enforced against people like me. You really should look into this yourself.

 @8XLR4JX  from North Carolina  answered…1yr1Y

Yes, and any pay-to-play candidates should be disqualified and any pay-to-play donors fined or jailed.

 @9K5MYMG from Wisconsin  answered…10mos10MO

Yes, but make it so all donations are completely anonymous to everyone even the person receiving the donation so the money cannot influence someone in the government's decision making.

 @9L3PV69 from California  answered…9mos9MO

people should not be limited. corporations should. people are citizens with constitutional (first amendment) rights. corporations are not.

 @9D3RPBQfrom Guam  answered…1yr1Y

Donors should be only perceived by grassroots sources and sources that are entirely democratic and people oriented

 @8PP96SHfrom Maine  answered…4yrs4Y

Yes, politicians should not be bought by wealthy donors Yes, and ban all political donations and publicly fund elections

 @8GBN55K from California  answered…4yrs4Y

Elimination of corporate donations and a limitation to how much individuals may donate. Ban PAC'S.

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 @ISIDEWITH submitted…1mo1MO

Matt Gaetz’s Campaign Finances Don’t Add Up

Former Congressman Matt Gaetz’s campaign committee has reported spending millions of dollars on Stripe Inc.’s payment-processing services in recent years, though it now says that those funds ultimately went somewhere else — and campaign-finance watchers say that’s a problem.During the 2024 election cycle, Gaetz’s principal campaign committee, Friends of Matt Gaetz, said in Federal Election Commission filings that it had paid a total of $1.2 million in “e-merchant fees” to Stripe, a San Francisco-based financial-services company. The sum is equivalent to about 19% of all contributions the campaign took in during the period, the filings show.Such outlays far exceed election-season norms. A Bloomberg News analysis of FEC filings by candidates for federal office this year found that campaign committees typically reported spending between 1% and 4% of their contributions on payment processing. Most campaigns report payment-processing expenses separately from other vendor costs.Gaetz has long disclosed comparatively high spending on financial-processing fees, FEC filings show. Over the past three election cycles, his campaigns have reported paying Stripe $2.5 million — or 13% of their fundraising haul over that time. That is a greater share of donations than any other candidate or committee has reported paying Stripe since 2020. Gaetz was first elected to Congress in 2016.When a credit card is used for a transaction, including for political donations, it can generate a small processing fee to cover costs. For well-funded campaigns, those costs can add up. During the 2020 campaign, for instance, Trump’s Make America Great Again Committee reported paying Stripe over $5.1 million in fees, according to FEC filings. However, those fees accounted for less than 1% of the nearly $900 million raised by Trump’s campaign over the four-year period.Bloomberg’s initial analysis of the FEC filings found that the Gaetz campaign committee’s reported payments to Stripe were many times what it was likely to have owed the company for its services. According to its website, Stripe typically charges 2.9% of the donation plus 30 cents per transaction. Stripe handles more than $1 trillion in transactions a year.

▲  46 replies

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 @ISIDEWITH submitted…2wks2W

Pete Hegseth Slams Gay Troops Policy

Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, has repeatedly criticized policies allowing gay people to serve openly in the US military, calling them part of a “Marxist” agenda to prioritize social justice over combat readiness.In his 2024 book “The War on Warriors” and in subsequent media promotions this year, Hegseth described both the original “don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT) policy and its repeal in 2011 as a “gateway” and a “camouflage” for broader cultural changes that he claims have undermined military cohesion and effectiveness.In a 2015 appearance on Fox News, Hegseth also argued these policies like repealing DADT “erode standards” in favor of political goals like social engineering.DADT was implemented under President Bill Clinton in the 1990s and allowed gay people and lesbians to serve in the military — provided they did not disclose their sexuality. Military officials were also barred from asking military members their sexual orientation. If a troop’s orientation came to light, it could lead to their discharge.The policy was repealed during the Obama administration, allowing openly gay service members.Hegseth writes in his book that he was initially ambivalent to the change but came to regret his passive stance, describing the repeal as a “breach in the wire” that opened the door for broader cultural and ideological changes in the military.On Thursday, Hegseth appeared to walk back his earlier remarks about DADT, telling CNN, “Oppose the repeal? No, I don’t,” and calling this report on his previous comments “more false reporting.”

▲  1811 replies

 @ISIDEWITH submitted…1mo1MO

Vetting Fiasco: Trump's Defense Pick Caught in Sexual Assault Allegation Storm

CNN commentator and New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman said President-elect Donald Trump’s team missed Pete Hegseth’s payoff to a sexual assault accuser when they vetted him to be secretary of defense.Hegseth is among a raft of cabinet picks facing tough confirmations, and who aren’t being subjected to the customary FBI checks, instead being vetted by private firms. Over the weekend, Hegseth’s attorney dropped the bomb that there was a confidential settlement with a woman who accused the former Fox News host of sexual assault. On Monday night’s edition of CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins, Haberman revealed that her sources in Trump world did not know about the payoff, which was missed in the vetting “because it was a private settlement”HABERMAN: There’s more concern from some people around Trump than there is from Trump himself, about this whole issue. Trump has really dug in, and has told advisers that he is going to stick with Hegseth. Now, we’ll see if anything else emerges.They did do a vet, we are told. This did not show up, this issue, because it was a private settlement, according to the people, who were briefed on what took place. Trump really likes Pete Hegseth. But this did introduce the thing Trump doesn’t like, which is an element of surprise and a negative headline. And so, we will see where this goes.

▲  59 replies

 @ISIDEWITH submitted…2mos2MO

Inside the Podcast Revolution: Trump’s Unfiltered Strategy and Harris’s ‘Meltdown’ Risk

Tech billionaire Elon Musk attributed President-elect Trump’s election victory, at least in part, to the lengthy podcast interviews he did during the campaign.In an interview late Tuesday with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Musk said Trump’s podcast appearances showed the American public that he was a normal person.“I think it made a big difference that President Trump and soon-to-be Vice President Vance went on lengthy podcasts,” Musk said in the interview.“I think this really makes a difference because people look at, like, Joe Rogan’s podcast, which is great, and Lex Fridman’s and the All-In podcast, and, you know, to a reasonable-minded, smart person — who’s not, like, hardcore one way or the other — they just listen to someone talk for a few hours and that’s how they decide whether, you know, you’re a good person, whether they like you,” he added, according to a clip highlighted by Mediaite.Trump conducted many interviews with new media during his campaign, as well as with legacy news organizations such as Fox News.Last month, he joined Joe Rogan’s podcast for a 3-hour long interview. The celebrity host later endorsed his candidacy.His opponent, Vice President Harris, did not appear on Rogan’s podcast because, according to “The Joe Rogan Experience” host, the Harris campaign only had an hour and required him to travel to her. Rogan said he felt “strongly” that the “best way to do” an interview with the vice president would have been in his studio in Austin, Texas.Musk recalled posting on his social platform X account that “nothing would do more damage” to Harris’s campaign than going on Rogan’s podcast, “because she would run out of non-sequiturs after about 45 minutes.”“You can’t hide for three hours,” Carlson replied.Musk added, “Yeah, like, hour two and three would be a complete melted puddle of nonsense. So it would just be absolute game over. That’s why she didn’t go on.”“But on the other hand, Trump, he’s there, and there’s no, there’s no talking points,” the Tesla CEO continued. “He’s just being a normal person who’s having a conversation, and doing three hours of Rogan, no problem.”

▲  349 replies

Active 3hrs ago

 @ISIDEWITH submitted…1wk1W

Defense Bill Blocks Transgender Care To Minors

The Senate on Wednesday gave final approval to a defense policy bill directing $895 billion toward the Pentagon and other military activities, moving over the objections of some Democrats who opposed a provision added late in the negotiations that would deny coverage for transgender health procedures for minors.The 85-to-14 vote, coming a week after a divided House passed the same measure, cleared the bill for President Biden’s signature.Most Republicans and many Democrats supported the measure, which provides a 14.5 percent pay raise to junior enlisted service members and a 4.5 percent pay raise for all other service members. It also expands access to meal assistance, housing and child care programs that benefit those in uniform.But several Democrats withheld their backing in protest of a provision preventing TRICARE, the military’s health care plan for service members, from covering “medical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria that could result in sterilization” for children under 18.The language, which would affect the gender-transitioning children of service members, was recently added to the measure at the insistence of Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, who refused to bring a defense bill to the House floor without it, according to aides familiar with the negotiations.Twenty-one Democrats, led by Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, proposed an amendment to strip the provision from the bill, but the matter was never brought to a vote. Several of them took to the floor on Tuesday to lodge their objections.“It’s flat-out wrong to put this provision in this bill and take away a service member’s freedom to make that decision for their families,” Ms. Baldwin said, estimating that the provision could negatively affect as many as 6,000 to 7,000 military families.

▲  1914 replies3 agree