The right-wing fundraising world is a small world. Filled with small men and small women.
That’s when the big players like ALEC step in. The ventriloquist dummies in our legislature aren’t smart enough to write their own anti-democratic laws. A national right-wing cabal called the “American Legislative Exchange Council” changes their diapers, wipes their drool and ghost-writes their anti-democratic laws for them. You don’t really think our right-wing lawmakers understand the big words they’re reading off the cue cards they’ve been handed, do you?
Thanks to our free and fair election Arizonans elected a pro-democracy democrat, Governor Katie Hobbs, who has vowed to veto every anti-democratic bill the bullshit peddlers send to her desk. Less than a year into her first term Hobbs has given up on trying to reason with the obstructionist band of MAGA bozos in her legislature. Refusing to be hobbled by hobbits, Hobbs announced this week she’s raising $500,000 to kick the bullshit brigade out of our legislature in 2024.
Thanks to our free and fair election Arizonans elected a pro-democracy democrat, Attorney General Kris Mayes. Mayes just revealed Arizona's former Attorney General, Mark Brnovich, hushed up his findings that every stolen election theory was, in a word, bullshit. Brnovich did not stop the BS from spreading. Like most MAGA Republican elites Brnovich hoped the base was stupid enough to not know bullshit when they saw it.
Like most MAGA Republican elites Brnovich hoped the base was stupid enough to not know bullshit when they saw it.
The truth could cut off the flow of funding from the fact cats, fools and MAGA saps to the candidates running on bullshit and the pro-bullshit non-profits that love them, cabals with names like the imperial “Federalist Society”, the Orwellian “Honest Elections Project”, and the misty-eyed flag-clutching “FreedomWorks”, which alone will spend $10 million dollars to restrict voting. They are all working to restrict voting rights on behalf of their donors.
Sometimes the donor is a super spreader group like the multi-million dollar “Bradley Foundation” which gave $850 million to keep the bullshit flowing, some to Arizona. One of those beneficiaries was Charlie “Taliban” Kirk, the Jesus and Trump Patriot who runs “Turning Point” for belligerent oppressed Trump youth right here in Arizona on the buckle of the Bannon Belt. The CEO of “Turning Point” happened to be the former chair of the Maricopa County Republican Party, Tyler Bowyer, and Tyler Bowyers’s pal is Arizona State Senator Jake Hoffman, the evil genius who ran “Rally Forge”, a digital-marketing troll farm paid handsomely by “Turning Point” to peddle bullshit.
Note from 1777. The men who froze at Valley Forge are not amused by the narrow ideals of “Rally Forge”.
Because Hoffman’s “Rally Forge” was spreading bullshit online it was banned from Facebook, which made him a “cancel culture” martyr down at the Trump “merch” store out on the Interstate next to the windmill. After he was kicked off Twitter he was rewarded for peddling “the election was stolen” bullshit by the voters of Queen Creek, a simple town of bullshit believers, with the honor of representing them in the state senate. Hoffman is currently assigned the honor of spewing bullshit as the vice-chair of the Committee on Government and Elections. Hoffman is a tool of the “Heritage Foundation”, the biggest of the bullshit peddling think tanks reigning in far away Washington, D.C. where the home office had the insight to pay Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife, Ginni Thomas, $650,000 for her daffy insights. By the time Fox News goes to trial, and is levied a billion dollar fine for the heinous crime of peddling bullshit I imagine Kari Lake will be out there still, like a political Jeremiah Johnson, talking to any pine cone that will listen, claiming the 2032 Senate Race was stolen form her. And crazy billionaires will find new political pawns and puppets to screw working families. And on Christmas Eve, in a spirit of hope and magic, dads everywhere will plant turds on the roof.
For this rant I depended on the reporting of these fine journalists. Subscribe to them. Read them.
Amisa Ratliff, reporting for “Issue One: Fix Democracy First”
Who profited from election deniers
https://issueone.org/articles/who-profited-from-election-deniers/
Jane Meyer, reporting for “New Yorker”
Big money behind the big lie
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/09/the-big-money-behind-the-big-lie
Richard Salame, reporting for “The Intercept”
Was Election Denial Just a Get-Rich-Quick Scheme?
https://theintercept.com/2021/02/06/election-deniers-profit-lawsuits/
Jim Small, reporting for “Arizona Mirror”
Election denial is lucrative: Kari Lake raised $2.5 million after Election Day
https://www.azmirror.com/2023/01/24/election-denial-is-lucrative-kari-lake-raised-2-5-million-after-election-day/
Laurie Roberts, writing for “The Arizona Republic”
Kari Lake's campaign may be over, but the grift goes on…
https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/2023/01/25/kari-lake-election-campaign-fundraising/69840863007/
Rachel Leingang, Hank Stephenson, reporting for “Arizona Agenda”
Thanks for this. I’m ashamed that my home state, Wisconsin, has spawned the Bradley Foundation, the Uhleins, and too many more of their ilk. Fighting Bob LaFollette, leader of the Progressive Movement, must be sobbing in his grave.
Great series! If only the truth would set us free.