Oligarchy – a small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution
1981
1981 was a big year of change for me. I left teaching in June, and started law school at the University of Cincinnati in August. Cincinnati was home, and I was soon managing a Cincinnati City Council campaign for a good friend who was a great candidate. Like many Democratic campaigns of the time, we were well organized, had great volunteers, a very little money. We were trying to run a $40,000 campaign on a $10,000 budget. This campaign taught me an important political lesson. I was a good campaign manager, but a lousy fundraiser. That’s a near-fatal flaw in politics.
But we had an offer, an opportunity, from a wealthy Cincinnati woman interested in supporting other women for office. She offered $15,000, more than the entire cost of our efforts. It would have allowed us to jump into the television market, the one area that we were desperate to crack, but blocked by the entry costs.
Quid Pro Quo
I remember serious discussions with the candidate about the position that the single donation would put her in, were we to win. What did that amount, and more importantly, what did that percentage of our effort, guarantee to the donor? Sure money in politics guarantees access to the office holder, but at what point does it actually promise action? Is there an implicit quid pro quo if a donor literally writes the check that wins the office?
We agreed the answer to that last question was a resounding “yes”. So we backed away from the donor, and never got the “magic check” that would change everything. We lost, thirteenth out of twenty with the top ten winning a seat on the Council. I went on to leave law school at the end of the semester, discovering that my three-year taste of teaching and coaching was more powerful than my desire to learn the law. There were lots of decisions for me in the fall of 1981.
Musk’s Lead
The 2024 Donald Trump campaign raised and spent around $1.5 Billion in the last campaign (Open Secrets). We know that Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, spent $277 million supporting the Trump Campaign (CBS). That’s about 18.5% of the total. Since Trump won the election, Musk has literally moved in with him at Mar-A-Lago. He’s been “appointed” to lead an unofficial advisory group, deceptively named the “Department of Government Efficiency”(DOGE). Only Congress can create a whole-new department of the executive branch.
And this week, Musk exercised unilateral power over the House Republican Caucus; single-handedly killing a bi-partisan agreement to keep the US Government from closing. His combination of social media attacks (after all, he does own Twitter) and threats of retribution threw the House into a crisis that still isn’t resolved. The Government technically shuts down Friday at midnight – with no reasonable solution in sight.
Sure, the President-Elect chimed in. But he clearly was following Musk’s lead.
Elon Musk is the ultimate capitalist. His expertise isn’t in space travel, nor in social media, and not even in electric car technology. Musk is a venture capitalist, with his original stake coming from his wealthy South African parents. He co-founded PayPal, then sold it to E-Bay for $1.5 billion. Now he owns Tesla, Space X, Twitter (now known as ‘X’) and some other smaller companies.
Money Talks
Capitalists understand that they get something for their money. And Musk gave a lot of money to Donald Trump, enough that he can take the credit for Trump’s win in 2024. So what’s the “quid-pro-quo”: what did Musk buy?
It certainly is more than just access, though he got plenty of that: breakfast, golf, lunch and dinner with the next President of the United States. And it’s more than the unofficial head of “DOGE”. Musk is now acting as the “muscle” for Trump’s influence on his own MAGA-Republican Party. When Trump tells a Congressman to do something, his threat is to “primary” the legislator if they don’t. Now it’s not just Trump’s endorsement; the threat is also backed by Musk’s almost unlimited money.
The easiest way to explain the Russian Government is that it is an oligarchy, with a few very wealthy people running the government, “fronted” by (and scared of) Vladimir Putin. We haven’t even started the second term of the Donald Trump Presidency. But the outlines are already clear: there is a single oligarch, Elon Musk, determining the course of the United States of America.
Money talks, (everything else) walks. That’s what America looks forward to for the next four years.
