From Scott Dworkin, who organizes for the Democratic Coalition against Trump.

The Russian is Leonard Blavatnik.

Many of my friends are fleeing Facebook–tired of the arbitrary suspensions and censorship (AKA ‘Facebook Jail’) and worried about oversharing on a social network that has its own agenda beyond making a buck. I haven’t done so, primarily because I have lots of ‘friends’ who’ve followed my plays and think of me as a truth-teller. And were it not for Facebook, I never would have received the above, shared among those of us who find Trump and the GOP that supports him worthy of suspicion. While I’ve never believed that the Russians ‘hacked’ the election, I have always thought that it was extremely likely that money was paid to the GOP to swing the election. 

And if you believe the above meme (and you can investigate it by logging onto Open Secrets, a website that keeps track of such transactions), it opens up a slew of other questions. This is ONE OLIGARCH funding six major players in the GOP (tangential question, but what the Hell is Alan Dershowitz doing in this pic?) How many more are there? 

Interesting question–is GOP obstinance on Global Warming and cutting carbon emissions connected to Russian money from oil and gas interests? There’s almost $7 M in campaign contributions to Republican politicians from just ONE oligarch. How many other politicians received similar money from Russian oil interests? In a political culture where Senators and congresscreatures are expected to spend half their day raising funds for the next round of elections, how many would turn away campaign funds from wealthy citizens of a country with foreign policy goals that are the opposite of the US?

And to be fair, the Russians are not the only fossil fuel oligarchs who have been buying elections. The Saudis have never made a secret of their largesse to American politicians willing to advance their point of view. Threats to subsidize renewable fuels, tax carbon emissions and other such political actions that would be in the best interests of the US are pointedly NOT in the best interests of the Kingdom. And by the way, does no one remember how outraged Americans were when they saw pictures of George W Bush literally kissing Prince Abdullah? This AFTER 9-11, when most of America should have understood that the accused hijackers were mostly Saudi Nationals and the KSA had financial ties to the hijackers? 

Speaking of which, I don’t want to get side-tracked here, but we’re having a big political fracas about not letting in people from Mexico. I’m just saying…

I think there’s a math error here (15 from Saudi Arabia, the others from United Arab Emirates (2), Egypt, and Lebanon), but it’s no accident that Saudi Arabia was NOT one of the Seven countries that people weren’t allowed to enter the US from. Neither was Russia.

Anyway–my point is it appears that multiple Russian Nationals gave to multiple GOP politicians in order to influence US government policies involving oil and fossil fuel extraction. These donations seem to predate Trump’s alleged collusion. And it involves other US organizations such as the NRA. I would argue that were it not for the incompetence of  Trump and his associates, we might never have found out about the GOP donations to US politicians that were filtered through the NRA. And the Russians (and Saudis) aren’t the only foreign nationals that have been buying our government out from under the will of the people. 

Summing up–I think there’s ample evidence that multiple countries have bought into the US ‘democracy’ in order to sway public opinion on issues such as Global Warming.