Is it Delusional to Reject Money from Billionaires?

Gunpowder, tanks, airplanes all changed the rules of engagement in warfare.  Folks that didn't adapt got slaughtered.

In the same way Citizens United and the Internet have changed the rules of engagement in Presidential Elections.

It's not just billionaire Republicans Democrats need to keep up with, it is other countries around the world trying to influence our elections.   We rail against social media for not controlling false ads but setting the rules for censorship based on content is exactly what former Communist states do to create fake democracies.

The current uproar among Democrats about Michael Bloomberg, an extremely wealthy New Yorker is particularly ironic.  The single Democratic President who did the most for the Democratic party and folks at the lower end of the economic spectrum was FDR, another extremely wealth New Yorker.  FDR created a scheme of government that dominated for nearly 50 years, a period when we could win WW II, fight wars in Korea and Vietnam, fund Social Security, and Unemployment Insurance, have a consistently growing economy with living standards of workers and the middle class higher than at any time since, and still end with the National debt exactly where it started.

Citizens United started the change in the rules of engagement.  As long as Republicans have some semblance of power in Washington nothing is happening on Citizens United. To overturn Citizens United the Democrats need benevolant billionaires like FDR.

But even reversing Citizens United is not going to really resolve the problem.  It does not address the problem of other countries, who could care less what our law says, using the Internet to spread disinformation.

We need to require any political ad reveal the actual people behind it.  Not the PAC, or the Corporation.  The names of the actual people.  If its a lot of donors working together they can post a website with the list of names.  But every single individual must be identified.

That will give Social Media a mechanism to draw distinctions, not based on content, but based on non-disclosure.  They can reject based on failure to disclose or false disclosure.  It is then up to us as voters to monitor and identify folks trying to pedal false information.

History is littered with the cultures obliterated because they were unable to adapt to changes in the rules of engagement.  Will Democrats be added to that list?

If this makes sense to you, don't just like it - share it.  We don't have a lot of time to figure this out if we want to be prepared to counter the inundation of falsity that will occurs this summer and fall.