this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2025
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[–] [email protected] 186 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Foreign political funding should be banned everywhere by default. It makes no sense to let foreign interests muck about in your domestic policy.

[–] [email protected] 76 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Even local political funding should be banned. Elections should be funded by the state with each candidate getting the same amount of exposure.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I’m okay with funding from constituents, with strict caps on amounts. That way people who have lots of public support get more funding, but a wealthy person can’t outspend someone else.

No funding from corporations, and no anonymous funding.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago

We already have too many narcissistic leaders everywhere because they can be superficially charming and build up loads of useful connections. It makes sense to have a cut-off for who gets funding at all, but they should all get the same amount of exposure.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (2 children)

That sounds like a system that would be rife for abuse.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, good thing no one can abuse the current system by having a lot of money.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Depends on which current system you mean. I'm Canadian, and while it's not perfect, it's a pretty good system.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Fair point, I assumed we were talking about US even though that wasn't strictly specified. I'm not Canadian so you probably know more than I would, but I'm pretty sure Canada has it's own systemic problems.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I assumed we were talking about US

Well, the article's about Greenland, but I guess Ameri-centrism is par for the course.

I’m pretty sure Canada has it’s own systemic problems.

Sure, but I don't think our donation rules are big systematic problems. Our rules don't allow donations from foreign sources or companies, and include pretty reasonable limits for individuals (plus 75% of political donations are refunded next tax year). We have definitely had donation scandals, but they've almost exclusively been because people are breaking the rules.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

How? You get a certain amount of funds to be spent on specific regulated activities if you pass a threshold of signatures.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

A non-serious campaign could use those funds to enrich themselves/others even with approved activities. They could pay for staff, buy signs, etc. and all those people & businesses would make money doing legitimate work for a campaign whose only purpose was to employ those people/businesses.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Not if staff and signs were only provided by the government. It no doubt comes with its own set of problems, but given what we've seen with open campaign finance, I think those wouldn't hold a candle to what we have now.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

TBH, that sounds even worse, and I am saying this as a fan of big government.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

I agree in principle, but in practice it’s tricky. You must have courts that are strong enough to throw out election results if foreign interference can be proven. This has recently happened in Romania, but there are also many examples in which these laws were meaningless. The US is the obvious case where the 2016 election result should have been thrown out, but nothing happened. For the Brexit vote I think some pretty meaningless fines were handed out.

Another question is what should happen with foreign interference that is not financial in nature. For instance, Musk speaking at AFD, or the Meta algorithms pushing political content.

[–] [email protected] 93 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Both EU and UK should do the same.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 months ago

It's not a bad plan in general, really. Maybe the US should look into and rectify issues that may already exist around political funding.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's already the law in Canada:

Only individuals who are Canadian citizens or permanent residents can make contributions to registered parties, electoral district associations, candidates, leadership contestants and nomination contestants.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago
[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

At least Germany already does it. On the federal level the maximum donation for non-EU citizens/corporations is 1000 Euro, which is why the Bundestag is investigating Musk giving Weidel a platform as if you were to buy that kind of reach you'd pay way more than 1k. It's generally the parties which get fined for accepting. Donations over 10k must be publicised, over I think 35k immediately. State law is generally similar.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago

This is the best preventative measure they can do for now. Musk and other actors can dump massive amounts of money into elections to sway them and many of these democracies haven’t been challenged from outside like this before.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago

Good on ya fellas. Don't allow our Orange Idiot fuck with you.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I don’t think tanks, missiles and boots on the ground cares too much about elections! Trump is a facist and he’ll use the American empire military and economic force to bend other nations to his will!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If he decides to go to war on multiple fronts with no one backing him up, I don't think it will go well for him.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

There's always russia and Isreal.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

They're both a little busy at the moment. I don't think they have people to send to Greenland and Panama.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I really do think that a war of bald faced imperial oligarchic aggression would trigger the collapse of the union.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They also should block Xitter altogether.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Everyone should.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Foreign and corporate. Anything over $2000 from an entity.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Every country should just make the USA illegal. Nothing specific, just the USA in general.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

We need this in Canada

[–] [email protected] -3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Funny that when Georgia does it, it's anti-democratic.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Pull your tongue out of Putin's arse.

Dogs do that.