More like: “Did the Russians pore massive amounts of money into Republican candidates through third party organizations such as the NRA and rich Russian immigrants to the U.S.?”
As has been said many times, “Follow the Money”.
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The infiltration of the Sander’s facebook pages by Russian/Macedonian bots created and spread malicious lies about Hillary Clinton. How do we deal with the inordinate gullibility of Americans to believe what they want to believe and disregard the rest when social media has such and impact on the information stream available? We know that the bots had a great influence on what Americans were reading and sharing in the facebook circle jerks so how do we deal with that malignant flow of disinformation? Used to be just right wing media that spread the shit all round but last election we witnessed Russians creating and spreading it and Sander’s supporters unwittingly spreading it more because they needed to believe ugliness about the woman who so soundly defeated their chosen candidate. How do we filter out lies and disinformation without treading on the first amendment?
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I’ve been meaning to ask Sam Thielman here at TPM to see if he’s aware of any work that’s being done, or has been done to document any increase in foreign investments into the US Political Influence Industry since the release of the Citizens United decision. It seems to me, in no uncertain terms, that unlimited “free speech” is destroying our political system by effectively implementing a Might Makes Right, or the Loudest Voice Wins end game. Sam’s work on the NRA and Russian oligarchs makes that blatantly obvious.
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IIRC correctly the Obama administration considered designating election systems as part of critical infrastructure, which would have qualified them for measures intended to harden their defenses against attacks.
Also, the administration offered to assist states in preventive measures, but were rebuffed by some states – I assume most of these were Republican-led and were wary of what they perceived as federal government overreach into what are traditionally the purview of state and local governments.
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Follow up question: Why would Trump undermine our defense and purposefully tie the US’s hands against an ongoing Russian attack?
Easy answer: Trump is beholden (by choice or force) to Russia and his administration, staff and political party have been willfully serving that purpose for over a year now.
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That’s true. Mainers (I lived there and in NH for something like 20 years and loved it) have a weakness for independent 3rd party candidates. With King it worked out OK, but otherwise, not so much. (LePage won his first election in 2010 with only about 37% of the vote.)
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Maybe, however, the paper ballots I have used are scanned before going into the ballot box. The box is opened only if the election is within the margin of error. Once scanned the ballot is wide open to hacking and malicious manipulation. Fact is scanned documents are usually wide open and visible no matter how many attempts at security are tried.
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There was also a vigorous grass roots write in campaign to get LePage to resign. So, at least they are participating in their government. From Rachel Maddow:
“By our count, more than 1,800 people in Maine, just in that first month, did actually take the time to write to him and ask him to resign. Just in the first month after he asked. We don’t even have the letters that came in after the first month. This is just what came in, in that first month.
“And it’s interesting. Going through them, they are heartfelt letters, polite letters. There are a few rude letters. There’s a lot of hand-written letters. Most of them, though, are very short and polite and to the point.”
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When I read that the Kochs are planning on spending $400 million in 2018 I read between the lines that speech ain’t free.
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Rachel’s become our explainer. The question remains however. How many nudges would he need to leave? Billions and billions, as Carl Sagan would’ve said.
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$400 million is peanuts to the Koch Bros.
And half of that is coming in from Russia.
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Those letters are sent by people on a different planet, and therefore do not apply to him. Humans sent them to him reflecting their humanity. LePage does not believe in humanity. He wants nothing to do with humanity. That’s why he spends so much time trying to separate himself from everyone who is actually human.
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I’ve read about LePage’s early years and they were horrible. Abusive parents, poverty, 18 siblings, all of it. Another guy who grew up under these conditions was Perry Smith. And look how he turned out. That LePage has not gone on a killing spree is something short of miraculous.
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Don’t knock it, if you haven’t tried it…
That works for me.