Podbit · The Bulwark Podcast
The Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling on coordinated party-candidate spending is another brick out of the campaign finance wall. The system is now so incoherent that you can give $7,000 to a candidate, $50,000 to a party committee, or unlimited billions to a super PAC — and the only fix for the last absurdity creates a new one.
Where this was said
At 25:45 · chapter starts 25:40
Tim Miller delivers a mid-show ad read for Aven, a fintech company offering home equity lines of credit issued on a Visa card. The pitch centers on the mismatch between the $1 trillion Americans carry in high-interest credit card debt (rates above 23%) and the untapped home equity sitting on household balance sheets. Aven's product routes that borrowing through home equity instead, dramatically lowering the rate. The ad touts a 4.9-star Trustpilot rating from over 8,000 customers and promises no hidden fees and no credit score impact to check your offer.
The Supreme Court struck down 6-3 limits on coordinated spending between candidates and party committees, another extension of Citizens United.
Fei-Fei Li went back to Stanford from Google in 2018 specifically to build a multi-stakeholder governance framework for AI. Her argument: market forces are not societal norms. Just as biology uses IRBs and cars have safety laws, AI needs layered oversight from educators, governments, and the public — not just a few industry titans.
Andrew Santino's personal MCU of political villains is collapsing. He and Bobby speculated that a circulating photo of Mitch McConnell with a Chinese official was AI-generated compositing two separate images.
Mass surveillance is here to stay. The real battle isn't stopping cameras — it's ensuring judges and laws keep that data out of family court and civil disputes, admitting it only for violent crimes and national security. The surveillance economy currently yields more upside than downside, but only if we build the legal guardrails now.
When people cite Scandinavia as proof socialism works, Galloway says they've got it backwards. Northern Europe runs highly competitive free-market economies with more competition in many sectors than the US — they just make sure taxes are actually paid and redistributed. Billionaires and universal healthcare can coexist.
Two percent adjustments to income tax and stamp duty tweaks are deck-chair rearrangements. The UK's competitiveness hinges on four structural levers: currency valuation, energy costs, regulatory burden, and tax rates. Devalue the pound, build 56 nuclear plants, slash red tape, introduce a flat tax — and the country transforms.
Lisbon had one of Europe's worst heroin crises. Then Portugal legalised drugs and redirected all enforcement money into rehabilitation and housing. Crime collapsed. Addiction fell. Then politics moved the money elsewhere, and the problem started creeping back. Chesterton's Fence: you forget why you were spending that money.
Congress passed the Boland Amendment 411 to 0, explicitly banning CIA and Defense Department funds for the Contras. Reagan signed it — then immediately moved the operation deeper underground, essentially responding to a bipartisan prohibition by going more illegal.
The CIA planted mines in Nicaraguan commercial harbors, wrote the Contras' press releases taking credit, and promptly blew up ships from four allied nations. The Wall Street Journal broke the story, Congress erupted, and the Boland Amendments multiplied.
Oliver North was a decorated Marine and devout Catholic with zero covert operations experience. He ran the entire shadow war against Congress — planes, airstrips, arms shipments, shell companies — learning on the job. And by every operational measure, he crushed it.
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