The Gilded Age of Billion-Dollar Political Bribery

Jim Hightower on Jun 10, 2026

Remember long, long ago in the old-timey days of politics, way back ... maybe 10 years or so?

In those olden times, if someone or some corporations gave a million dollars to a political candidate, the donation was scandalous news -- a bribe!

Ahhh, I miss those innocent days when ethical outrage could erupt over a mere million. These days, a high-dollar campaign would indignantly return such a paltry check to the donor, demanding that a couple of zeroes be added. Welcome to our glorious age of billion-dollar bribery.

But a lot of people get lost in the illions, thinking that the "B" number is just an inflated "M." So perhaps they assume the level of corruption hasn't gotten that much worse. Uh ... wrong! To clarify, think of those Ms and Bs not as dollars, but time -- specifically seconds on the clock. A million seconds is 11 days. But a billion seconds? That's 32 years!

And that's a whopping difference in political punch. Aside from letting the insanely rich buy particular government favors, billionaire bribery also allows that exclusive class to prevent policies that people actually want from getting on the public agenda.

One glaring example is the overwhelming grassroots demand by bipartisan majorities to STOP the ever-rising deluge of corrupt political cash that's drowning American democracy. Congress can do this with two basic reforms. But both political parties have their heads stuck in money bags, so there is zero action by our "representatives" to do what America desperately needs.

We the People have to be the cattle prod to move the system. To help, go to Campaign Legal Center: campaignlegal.org.

THE SYSTEM IS NOT "RIGGED" ... SAY THOSE WHO RIGGED IT

Millions of us are mad as hell at the moneyed establishment for constantly rigging the system against America's workaday majority.

Those riggers could save face by making some basic reforms, but instead, they're getting mad at us for saying the system is rigged! Indeed, corporate powers have launched a PR offensive assailing what they call a "populist trend" of disgruntled people declaring that "everything is rigged." They're condemning anyone who talks about corporate oligarchies ripping off consumers, workers, students and others.

But wait -- that's not a "trend," it's people's real-life experiences with the shameful corporate health care system, price gouging by food giants, the rapacious greed of AI billionaires, the flagrant theft of people's voting rights, the gutting of public education ... and so awful much more? You don't have to be in Who's Who to know What's What: The system is rigged.

Yet, the riggers demand that we "riggees" stop saying that word. One right-wing pundit whines that it's socially destructive for malcontents to suggest our laws are being manipulated to give more and more power to corporate elites. He asserts that even talking about it "undermines voters' faith and trust in our government."

Trust in our government? Come on! The majority of our lawmakers openly sell themselves to corporate bidders, the White House is a shopping mall for rich donors and the Supreme Court functions as a corporate subsidiary. It's no secret that corrupt officials now routinely rig America's economic and political systems for the rich. Far from prissily shutting off discussion of this scandal, we must drag it into the center of American politics ... and crush it.

To find out more about Jim Hightower and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

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