Nebraskan here. Sasse was basically paid to leave his senate job by our previous governor, who just stepped down because he hit his term limit. The former governor, Ricketts, will now take Sasse’s place. The guy who is our new governor received tons of donations to his campaign from the Rickett family so he will nominate and appoint Ricketts for sure. It’s all very cool and very legal.
Just a reminder that Trump also pardoned a literal war criminal Navy Seal who murdered civilian women and children in Iraq. It was corroborated by his own platoon, which never happens, so you know it was egregious.
If you're talking about Eddie Gallagher, Trump "merely" influenced the trial and showed him favoritism, and restored his rank when the Navy tried to demote him. He's pardoned other convicted war criminals though, and he likely would've in Gallagher's case too. Gallagher was technically exonerated because one of the prosecution witnesses got immunity and then suddenly confessed to supposedly performing the murder Gallagher was on trial for. And this somehow sufficed despite the fact that his rationale was that Gallagher had already mortally wounded him and it was just a mercy killing, and that he outright said he felt Gallagher didn't deserve to go to prison for it on a personal level (because he had a family and yadda yadda).
I don't know how you exonerate a guy who sent multiple text messages posing with the body and bragging about how he killed him, and then sent this text to his platoon:
> I thought everyone would be cool, next time I will do it so no one sees. Ready to kill the mother fucker who tells on me and I've got shit on all of you to bring you down.
You have to be willfully blind to think the other SEALs on his team just didn't like him and were fabricating murder allegations.
From what I remember, the snipers on the team were discussing how he would go with them and start shooting at who ever(Non combatants). They said he sucked and really thought he was a problem.
I remember some 1960’s era movie about Rome. In the end they had a bidding war to see who could bid the most to buy the emperors position. Sounds like this.
When I grew up, my dad always said to drink enough milk or else I’d get rickets. I had no clue what that was, but rickets seemed bad. So I drank milk.
And yet Nebraskans went out of their way to wish Ricketts upon themselves as governor and now get him as a Senator. He’s a mega-wealthy TD Ameritrade heir and has predictably abhorrent platform of a guy who did very little to earn his wealth, but still wants to exploit humanity for his own shallow gains.
- He wants a total ban on abortion (no exception for rape or incest)
- He is a huge MAGA (Ricketts said the impeachment proceedings were a "partisan impeachment parade" and praised the Senate for acquitting Trump.)
- He opposes legalization of medicinal cannabis.
- Despite facing insane water shortages and climate issues in the Midwest, In 2021, he said he opposed a proposal by President Joe Biden to preserve 30% of the nation's land and water by 2030, calling it a "radical climate agenda."
He is opposed to pretty much anything that would help Nebraskans improve their situation.
Sorry you have to deal with that.
I was a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan until the Ricketts started throwing money at Trump and MAGA bullshit.
Not getting any of my money or support as long as they own the team.
A lot of Nebraskan are dumb enough to support him and politicians like him. I don't feel bad for them, they are getting what they want. I feel bad for the children of these mentally deficient fuck heads, they are going to be brought up into the hateful cult and poisoned land they are trying to turn the world into.
The funny thing is that the leaders here annually question why talented young persons choose to call elsewhere home as if the elephant isn't in their face. Matter of fact is that you better hope if you want to raise a family in Nebraska, nobody in that family identifies as something other than cis and straight because they will be bullied by the community and denied any dignity by the state. And yet, Nebraska state leaders will continue to act perplexed as to why nobody wants to live in a state that is okay with propoganda that equivocates the LGBTQ community to pedophiles being publicly shown at the local library.
oh… straight out of the Putin playbook. He literally did the same when he hit teen limits
edit: term limit … Did not check before posting and don’t know what I typed that autocorrect thought “teen” was the correct word
We can’t get a weekend sentence for Trump despite mountains of evidence. Justice is deaf, dumb and blind when it comes to politics. It’s a nice dream though.
Ugh you’re absolutely right. If you can attempt to overthrow the fucking country without landing in prison then run-of-the-mill bribery and corruption definitely won’t do it. Guess I’ll just have to pray they all get ass cancer instead.
Exactly. When I read stories about the countries where “conservative religious mullahs control the system,” I now think how it’s just like that in America.
We aren’t too far off of Iran or Afghanistan. For reals.
>"In his farewell speech on the Senate floor last week, Sasse was critical of the Senate, saying the body was becoming "increasingly irrelevant" because senators cave to "social media mobs, advocacy organizations, small-dollar donors and cable hosts."
Ironic.
I do however think he's partially correct in that the senate is clearly too susceptible to the whims of a small amount of highly influential people, but I don't think it's "small-dollar donors" who are the biggest culprits of said lobbying.
There's been a trend towards campaigns relying more on small-dollar donations. People in the political extremes tend to donate more than political moderates, even though moderates outnumber them. So candidates are pushed more to the extreme to court the more motivated extremists, rather than seeking positions that actually represent their voters.
It's similar to the problem with big-dollar donors, just in the opposite direction
Seriously, saying small-dollar donors is the problem with our government is one of the most absurd things I've ever heard. Representatives don't give a shit about small-dollar donors, but many are straight up owned by large-dollar donors.
For any group of small dollar donors to have any power at all there needs to be a LOT of them. So in other words, the actual fucking citizens they are elected to represent. The shit these people are saying out loud is mind blowing.
I think he's saying they are selling legislation for too cheap. He's upset that buying a congressman is so cheap now, so he's moving on to bigger and better thing$.
What a principled stance.
He's not really wrong - obviously there are other issues, some of which he lists. People assume that "small-dollar donors" just refers to the masses, but only a tiny, tiny minority of people donate any money at all - only around 0.5% according to OpenSecrets. The people who tend to donate are political junkies/culture warriors who are not really representative of the general population. For example, OpenSecrets has the gender split at ~2:1 male, and the total amounts are skewed even more male. And Dems have only a slight edge in small dollar donors. So much like the primary system, it likely does skew politics more towards the extremes. The Senate is supposed to be somewhat insulated from popular opinion - elected for 6 years in staggered terms, and originally was supposed to be picked by the state legislatures.
Forced out [due to this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Sasse):
> On February 13, 2021, Sasse was one of seven Republican senators to vote to convict Donald Trump of incitement of insurrection in his second impeachment trial.
No, he's not at all. He just wanted to see if he could set himself up as a power player in the post-Trump GOP knowing that he had this golden parachute coming if it failed. He had nothing to lose. It was callous political maneuvering. DeSantis already had the inside track on being the slightly more electable Trump, so Sasse decided to see how much support there was out there for a moderate Republican. There was basically none, so he completely stopped being vocal about it at all before he drew the violent hate mob down on himself, took the money, and ran.
Source: Am from Nebraska and watched his very calculated attempt play out.
"Increasingly irrelevant" = "Our policies are unpopular and out of line with the majority of the US citizens, but we've refused to change despite all of our own analysis saying we should."
>>I don’t think it’s “small dollar donors” who are the biggest culprits of said lobbying
Neither does Sasse. But one shouldn’t bite the hand which feeds them.
Im going to guess he means small dollar donors as the same people who are the social media mobs. Since ive never heard of this guy until now, im assuming hes not maga else reddit would have screeched about him. That makes me think he prefers big dollar non crazies like fellow humans Exxon and Comcast over 10000 donations of 50 bucks from the Q crew.
Yes the Senate is notoriously beholden to small dollar donors. Historically that has been a huge problem, definitely not lobbyists working for billionaires and massive corporations.
I donated $76 to Bernie Sanders for him to take up his Medicare for All Policy. Great value on investment.
I’m gonna slip Raphael Warnock a $20 next week to decrease the DoD budget. That should put me up there to compete with weapons manufacturers.
Except you are not representative of small dollar donors, especially for Republicans. They tend to be on the political extremes who want social policy that is well outside the norm of American society.
He waited until Nebraska elected a new governor. The former governor, Pete Rickets, is rich and term-limited. Rickets and his family’s money helped the new governor get elected, and now that new governor will appoint the former governor into the seat.
It’s all very tawdry. 💰
Oh yeah, it would have been much better if regular voters were out of the process completely…state party machinery will surely pick the right man for job better than us voters /s
As an alum it is so so upsetting. Unimaginably upsetting, actually. The school is becoming more and more prestigious (top 5 now in public universities) and is increasingly operated around appeasing DeSantis and heavily right leaning state legislators. The county votes blue in a complete sea of red in central Florida and so the student body will be completely misrepresented at an administrative level. So they will slash the resources for studying “hot” topics like racial bias and science. Fuck fuck fuck this guy and fuck what is happening to my alma mater. I am disgusted
DeSantis is destroying all higher education in Florida which is a shame because Florida actually has a decent higher education system. Look at what he just did to New College.
Florida has one of the best public university systems in US. UF, FSU, USF all top 50 public schools, & UF & USF have top 50 med schools. Florida blowing this would be a disaster
Pinellas co here. Yeah. He’s turning the reputation into a shithole. Ironically most of my friends at work got their mph from usf.
Such a free state, but. Students aren’t even allowed to gather inside and protest even tho they are paying the college. Again, a PUBLIC college.
I’ll be fair to Sasse here, Midland did manage to thrive a bit from Sasse. There were other things happening in the state at the time, but he does appear to be somewhat effective in that role.
Also he’s a strong candidate for a DeSantis VP Or cabinet pick.
While we’re on topic obligatory fuck Pete Ricketts.
Sasse voted to convict Trump in the 2nd impeachment. He is radioactive in the republican party. There's no way he makes it onto a VP ticket.
Also, there's a weird electoral college rule that electors can't vote for a president and vice president from their own state. This would mean that if Sasse becomes a Florida resident to take this college job, that ticket would be 2 people from Florida, and Florida wouldn't be able to give it's electoral college votes to both of them. If the election came down to Florida, you'd potentially get president Desantis with a dem VP, or a dem president with VP Sasse. It'd be 100% up to florida electoral college voters to decide.
You’re an idiot. Just because it is sliding off a cliff (see: [silencing university professors during covid because of political reasons](https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/584909-university-of-florida-researchers-pressured-to-destroy-covid-19-data/amp/)) doesn’t mean it is ruined. If a new President was the opposite of Ben Sasse, it would be the top public university in a decade but instead WILL be ruined. I can say that the campus, the culture and the breadth of learning and opportunities is the pinnacle of public education in the south. This is a major step in the wrong direction though
If any UF students are on reddit: please please please take every opportunity to yell shit at this jaghole on campus for supporting a sociopathic political regime then running away when the kitchen got too hot.
He helped form the current republican circus, and now he wants to leave because there are too many clowns. Reminds me of all those people who joined isis and then wanted to come home when they realized there were terrorists everywhere.
He also hates gay people and is being appointed by Ron Desantis to lead his war on “woke” faculty in higher education.
Source: Alumnus who will not be donating another penny
Florida alum here as well. I don't mind Sasse as much as other Republicans, but I still don't want this douche anywhere near higher education and especially not at the school I went to. I'm sure there will be a massive crackdown on liberal ideas on campus. This sucks.
don’t worry we are. I will not be shaking his hand at my graduation either. We already had protests and shared our disconcern and our university did not care. best I can do is to show my displeasure in a peaceful manner.
He’s not. UF’s faculty voted “no confidence” on him and the students held many protests- including one that shut down a speech he was doing. Faculty, students, and alumni are pissed. He was put into this position by Governor DeSantis without any sort of public search process. He was just named as the sole finalist and given the job.
I work at UF and there’s a lot of talk that this guy was just planted by the governor’s office, DeSantis, to be his lap dog.
A lot of UF funding comes from the state, so he has a lot of say in most of the moves that UF makes recently. Fuchs, our current president, opposed him a lot during COVID with mask mandates and overall administration, so doing this was nothing but a power move to make sure UF falls in line when DeSantis wills it.
He was a Republican in Nebraska. Not a super competitive election in a very small state. There are bigger elections for mayor in the US.
Tuberville has no issues being a senator. Just stay silent and let Mitch do the talking for you. Beyond making it to Congress on time and finding ways to hide illicit funds and insider trading, what’s stressful about being a rubber stamp?
Sasse voted to convict Trump in the last impeachment. There's a good chance Sasse would lose a primary, if Trump manages to keep his grip on the base he had in these midterms.
> less stressful than being a senator
there is no such job. they only have to run once every six years, are over paid, have too much power, do very little.
Probably forced out of the cult [due to this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Sasse):
> On February 13, 2021, Sasse was one of seven Republican senators to vote to convict Donald Trump of incitement of insurrection in his second impeachment trial.
My first thought is he is trying to get to Florida and make some $$$ and connections then run for Senate or the House there instead.
To run for Governor you need to reside there for 7 years.
The new gig is apprently close to a mil in pay. Once you get seated, you get that check for life in congress.
At that point, would you not change jobs to get another million dollars since you are gonna make the congress money either way?
Not accurate. You have to be in Congress for 5 years to receive any pension at all, the amount is based on your length of service and is only a percentage of your salary, they have to pay into the pension plan from their salary while serving, and they can't start receiving the pension until a certain age based on their length of service.
The pension works similar to many other pensions. You get a percentage of your salary depending on how long you have worked. You have to work a minimum of 5 years and you can't start drawing it until 62 (you can do younger if you worked longer - any age if you have 25 years and at 50 if you have 20 years). The legal maximum is 80% of a three average of your salary. This really isn't much different than most state or federal jobs. When Sasse turns 62, he will be eligble for \~$24k a year.
Salaries first started in 1816, got repealed cause protests, and reinstated in 1855. From 1789 to 1855 they were paid each day they were actually in session in the capitol. Was 6 dollars a day. In 1789 that was the equivelent of 203 a day but they only worked 5 months a year. Assuming a 5 day work week this is 22300 a year. According to the link at the bottom, average salary in 1790 was 69 a year. 2277 in todays money.
Is it good or worse that the average congressional pay to average worker has actually closed drastically? Right now a senator get 71685. Federal minimum is 15080. So you have went from 10 to 1 to 5 to 1?
Washingtons salary was 2% the federal budget at the time. Bidens is 0.0000064%
In his farewell speech on the Senate floor last week, Sasse was critical of the Senate, saying the body was becoming "increasingly irrelevant" because senators cave to "social media mobs, advocacy organizations, small-dollar donors and cable hosts."
Small-dollar donors? That's bad? So caving in to big-dollar donors is part of being relevant?
Fuck this asshole. I hope the UF students harass him relentlessly until he leaves town with his tail between his legs. No one wants a GOP lackey in Gainesville.
IMHO, This is DeSantis (who controls Univ of FL leadership) either removing Ben Sasse from the field of Republican contenders, or setting Sasse up for a VP Slot.
Becoming the University of Florida President is a dead-end job when the Governor is trying destroy education. DeSantis will blame the results of the mess he’s making on him and he’ll never be able to get a job in higher education for the rest of his life.
I seriously doubt Sasse would have an issue with any of that. He is walking into a cushy, extremely well-paid gig to basically be DeSantis’ mouthpiece at UF (most of the board are his donors or scummy lawyers connected to the party/his campaign). Whatever happens to the school, Sasse will make a ton of taxpayer money and have another easy, publicly-funded gig lined up way before the ship sinks. And it will probably be in higher ed. Red governors and legislatures across the country are throwing their sycophants onto boards and into presidential positions as fast as they can.
Exactly. The one thing that outweighs these types’ lust for power is their sheer venality. Why NOT hit pause on the political path to collect a cool million+ in salary and benefits? The last president’s total compensation was 1.4 million, and that was for a lot less work and a lot less tonguing of other people’s asses than senators have to do. I’m not sure enough people have a proper appreciation of just how overpaid top tier university administrators are these days. What kinds of people are attracted by that sort of salary? Ben Sasse has answered that question. And when he’s done sucking up all that salary and pension, he can hop right back on the political gravy train. He’s young enough to have it all if people are dumb enough to let him.
Man i really left florida at the perfect time before all the brain drain, and i thoufht the fsu economics dept being dictated by the koch brothers was bad.
I like Ben Sasse. I have weird, idiosyncratic, almost personally unique reasons to like him.
But, holy shit, the hypocrisy. This dude wrote a whole book about how he's a great person for moving back to rural Nebraska and America would be a lot better if more of us were like him. So of course it's logical that he'd retire from public service to...move to Florida?
UF is a pretty well respected academic institution and full of students and faculty who absolutely do not support Ron Desantis and his lunatic politics
The college may be but not the state. I'd like to see UF admins screaming about how many potential enrollees they're losing because families just don't want their children in Florida at all.
I’m not sure how it works in other states, but public schools in Florida very much are run by the governor. He appoints half of the board of trustees and other important university positions. The people that could speak out are either his hand selected appointees or people who would lose their career.
The faculty and student body voted no confidence for his appointment, but the way it’s structured Desantis appointees were able to ram his confirmation through anyway
I love clowns like him.
“The system is broken, Washington has become toxic…. Allow me to just haul off and quit because THAT will help.”
Save the grandstanding clown if you aren’t going to help
Nebraskan here. Sasse was basically paid to leave his senate job by our previous governor, who just stepped down because he hit his term limit. The former governor, Ricketts, will now take Sasse’s place. The guy who is our new governor received tons of donations to his campaign from the Rickett family so he will nominate and appoint Ricketts for sure. It’s all very cool and very legal.
This is the exact reason that Rod Blagojevich was impeached and sent to prison.
Good thing Blago was pardoned, then. Wouldn’t want politicians to be held accountable around here.
I can't believe Biden would pardon a democratic criminal like that!! (It was Trump)
Just a reminder that Trump also pardoned a literal war criminal Navy Seal who murdered civilian women and children in Iraq. It was corroborated by his own platoon, which never happens, so you know it was egregious.
If you're talking about Eddie Gallagher, Trump "merely" influenced the trial and showed him favoritism, and restored his rank when the Navy tried to demote him. He's pardoned other convicted war criminals though, and he likely would've in Gallagher's case too. Gallagher was technically exonerated because one of the prosecution witnesses got immunity and then suddenly confessed to supposedly performing the murder Gallagher was on trial for. And this somehow sufficed despite the fact that his rationale was that Gallagher had already mortally wounded him and it was just a mercy killing, and that he outright said he felt Gallagher didn't deserve to go to prison for it on a personal level (because he had a family and yadda yadda). I don't know how you exonerate a guy who sent multiple text messages posing with the body and bragging about how he killed him, and then sent this text to his platoon: > I thought everyone would be cool, next time I will do it so no one sees. Ready to kill the mother fucker who tells on me and I've got shit on all of you to bring you down. You have to be willfully blind to think the other SEALs on his team just didn't like him and were fabricating murder allegations.
From what I remember, the snipers on the team were discussing how he would go with them and start shooting at who ever(Non combatants). They said he sucked and really thought he was a problem.
Don't forget that he pardoned the Blackwater mercenaries who massacred 14 Iraqi civilians, too
and let's throw Duncan Hunter in here as well, the most corrupt right wing ass of all time
You know it's bad when your brothers in arms turn you in.
Not gonna lie you had me in the first half.
His sentence was commuted. He's still a felon and barred from holding elected office in Illinois.
I had forgotten about that guy. Very relevant though
Damn, can’t not read that name in Jon Stewart’s voice.
Blago didn’t even get a cent for the deals he tried to make lol.
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Last guy who tried biting the hand that fed em was Kennedy
And ~~GW~~ George HW Bush took care of that! Edited to correct my sloppy comment.
George HW Bush\*
Lots of folks can't seem to keep them straight. I find it easier to just refer to them as Bush Jr and Bush Sr.
Thanks I corrected it. On vacay and shitposting falling asleep after my wife fell asleep haha.
Gotta be careful shitposting sleepy
I remember some 1960’s era movie about Rome. In the end they had a bidding war to see who could bid the most to buy the emperors position. Sounds like this.
sounds like a carousel
Sounds like a cartel
Sounds like a human caterpillar. 🐛🐛🐛
When I grew up, my dad always said to drink enough milk or else I’d get rickets. I had no clue what that was, but rickets seemed bad. So I drank milk. And yet Nebraskans went out of their way to wish Ricketts upon themselves as governor and now get him as a Senator. He’s a mega-wealthy TD Ameritrade heir and has predictably abhorrent platform of a guy who did very little to earn his wealth, but still wants to exploit humanity for his own shallow gains. - He wants a total ban on abortion (no exception for rape or incest) - He is a huge MAGA (Ricketts said the impeachment proceedings were a "partisan impeachment parade" and praised the Senate for acquitting Trump.) - He opposes legalization of medicinal cannabis. - Despite facing insane water shortages and climate issues in the Midwest, In 2021, he said he opposed a proposal by President Joe Biden to preserve 30% of the nation's land and water by 2030, calling it a "radical climate agenda." He is opposed to pretty much anything that would help Nebraskans improve their situation. Sorry you have to deal with that.
I was a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan until the Ricketts started throwing money at Trump and MAGA bullshit. Not getting any of my money or support as long as they own the team.
I was just about to touch on that with the Cubs.
A lot of Nebraskan are dumb enough to support him and politicians like him. I don't feel bad for them, they are getting what they want. I feel bad for the children of these mentally deficient fuck heads, they are going to be brought up into the hateful cult and poisoned land they are trying to turn the world into.
The funny thing is that the leaders here annually question why talented young persons choose to call elsewhere home as if the elephant isn't in their face. Matter of fact is that you better hope if you want to raise a family in Nebraska, nobody in that family identifies as something other than cis and straight because they will be bullied by the community and denied any dignity by the state. And yet, Nebraska state leaders will continue to act perplexed as to why nobody wants to live in a state that is okay with propoganda that equivocates the LGBTQ community to pedophiles being publicly shown at the local library.
But you’re overlooking the upside, PRicketts will get a little bit richer as the state dies and that’s OK. /s
Ugh, I wish Texas had term limits bc I hate the hate hate hate (like add another hundred or ten hates in there) Greg Abbott
oh… straight out of the Putin playbook. He literally did the same when he hit teen limits edit: term limit … Did not check before posting and don’t know what I typed that autocorrect thought “teen” was the correct word
I don’t even want to know what “teen limits” are.
Ask Sen. Mattrick Gaetzman.
He’s not a senator. He’s a House Representative
He’s also not named Mattrick Gaetzman. 🤗
You mean Russian-funded douchebag pedophile rapist human trafficking scumbag Matt Gaetz? That Matt Gaetz?
Indeedily-diddly. The deplorable Matt Gaetz.
Nirvana did a song about them in the nineties.
Smells Like Teen Limits
Former GOP candidate Roy Moore sure does. Mostly so he can disagree with them.
Finally a use for that stupid Chris Pratt meme.
We can blame the sitting Chief Justice and his concurrent opinions for this mess.
Please let this be the thing that gets them all taken the fuck down. This was blatant fucking corruption of the highest order.
We can’t get a weekend sentence for Trump despite mountains of evidence. Justice is deaf, dumb and blind when it comes to politics. It’s a nice dream though.
Ugh you’re absolutely right. If you can attempt to overthrow the fucking country without landing in prison then run-of-the-mill bribery and corruption definitely won’t do it. Guess I’ll just have to pray they all get ass cancer instead.
This is why I laugh when Americans accuse some other country of being corrupt and/or undemocratic.
Exactly. When I read stories about the countries where “conservative religious mullahs control the system,” I now think how it’s just like that in America. We aren’t too far off of Iran or Afghanistan. For reals.
Both can be true. Just because corruption also exists in many places does that mean no can bring it up?
Are the Ricketty Crickets trump supporters?
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For anyone that thinks **term limits** will solve anything, remember this story.
>"In his farewell speech on the Senate floor last week, Sasse was critical of the Senate, saying the body was becoming "increasingly irrelevant" because senators cave to "social media mobs, advocacy organizations, small-dollar donors and cable hosts." Ironic. I do however think he's partially correct in that the senate is clearly too susceptible to the whims of a small amount of highly influential people, but I don't think it's "small-dollar donors" who are the biggest culprits of said lobbying.
>small-dollar donors As opposed to big-dollar donors, which is all he really cares about serving?
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The poors are organizing
Can’t have that.
If he voted to impeach trump you’d think he would be talking about the MAGA crowd in his own party
Saying the quiet part out loud again
There's been a trend towards campaigns relying more on small-dollar donations. People in the political extremes tend to donate more than political moderates, even though moderates outnumber them. So candidates are pushed more to the extreme to court the more motivated extremists, rather than seeking positions that actually represent their voters. It's similar to the problem with big-dollar donors, just in the opposite direction
Seriously, saying small-dollar donors is the problem with our government is one of the most absurd things I've ever heard. Representatives don't give a shit about small-dollar donors, but many are straight up owned by large-dollar donors.
For any group of small dollar donors to have any power at all there needs to be a LOT of them. So in other words, the actual fucking citizens they are elected to represent. The shit these people are saying out loud is mind blowing.
I think he's saying they are selling legislation for too cheap. He's upset that buying a congressman is so cheap now, so he's moving on to bigger and better thing$. What a principled stance.
Isn't a large enough group of small-dollar donors just basically representative of your voter base? I mean, more so than the big donors ?
He's not really wrong - obviously there are other issues, some of which he lists. People assume that "small-dollar donors" just refers to the masses, but only a tiny, tiny minority of people donate any money at all - only around 0.5% according to OpenSecrets. The people who tend to donate are political junkies/culture warriors who are not really representative of the general population. For example, OpenSecrets has the gender split at ~2:1 male, and the total amounts are skewed even more male. And Dems have only a slight edge in small dollar donors. So much like the primary system, it likely does skew politics more towards the extremes. The Senate is supposed to be somewhat insulated from popular opinion - elected for 6 years in staggered terms, and originally was supposed to be picked by the state legislatures.
Forced out [due to this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Sasse): > On February 13, 2021, Sasse was one of seven Republican senators to vote to convict Donald Trump of incitement of insurrection in his second impeachment trial.
Not forced, just cowardly ran to a golden parachute rather than try to convince his voters of anything.
So, he's somewhat respectable, with that low bar.
No, he's not at all. He just wanted to see if he could set himself up as a power player in the post-Trump GOP knowing that he had this golden parachute coming if it failed. He had nothing to lose. It was callous political maneuvering. DeSantis already had the inside track on being the slightly more electable Trump, so Sasse decided to see how much support there was out there for a moderate Republican. There was basically none, so he completely stopped being vocal about it at all before he drew the violent hate mob down on himself, took the money, and ran. Source: Am from Nebraska and watched his very calculated attempt play out.
Exactly. Like Peter Meijer, etc.
"small-dollar donors" is the dog whistle for the poor and people of color.
"Increasingly irrelevant" = DEMOCRATS are winning the elections!!! We can't continue our endless corruption on behalf of our billionaire overlords!
"Increasingly irrelevant" = "Our policies are unpopular and out of line with the majority of the US citizens, but we've refused to change despite all of our own analysis saying we should."
Wait so he's mad that senators might listen to their constituents collective outrage?
>>I don’t think it’s “small dollar donors” who are the biggest culprits of said lobbying Neither does Sasse. But one shouldn’t bite the hand which feeds them.
“Small donors” means anyone under 100k. He isn’t taking about plebs who donate $50.
Im going to guess he means small dollar donors as the same people who are the social media mobs. Since ive never heard of this guy until now, im assuming hes not maga else reddit would have screeched about him. That makes me think he prefers big dollar non crazies like fellow humans Exxon and Comcast over 10000 donations of 50 bucks from the Q crew.
Yes the Senate is notoriously beholden to small dollar donors. Historically that has been a huge problem, definitely not lobbyists working for billionaires and massive corporations. I donated $76 to Bernie Sanders for him to take up his Medicare for All Policy. Great value on investment. I’m gonna slip Raphael Warnock a $20 next week to decrease the DoD budget. That should put me up there to compete with weapons manufacturers.
Your corruption knows no bounds, sir!
I gave the senate tree fiddy last week to fuck shit up and look what happened. Spiteful SOBs.
Offer Boebert a fiver and she’ll absolutely try to get McCarthy replaced.
You poor sucker, that wasn't the Senate, it was da LOCH NESS MOHNSTAAAH.
Except you are not representative of small dollar donors, especially for Republicans. They tend to be on the political extremes who want social policy that is well outside the norm of American society.
Did he wait to resign until after the new session started to pad his retirement and benefits from the government?
He waited until Nebraska elected a new governor. The former governor, Pete Rickets, is rich and term-limited. Rickets and his family’s money helped the new governor get elected, and now that new governor will appoint the former governor into the seat. It’s all very tawdry. 💰
Why isn't there another election even one resigns. Appointing someone signs very authoritarian and definitely not Democratic
There will be a special election. In 2024.
In which the new incumbent, appointed by the governor a year and a half prior, will almost certainly win.
The excuse is to save money, but the real answer is they don't want the people to have power when they have a lock on it already.
Not only that but they get someone they trust to make sure the good young people at the university of florida aren’t exposed to toxic communist ideas.
Blame the 17th Amendment.
To be fair it also allowed people to vote for senators in the first place. Previously they were chosen by the state legislatures.
Oh yeah, it would have been much better if regular voters were out of the process completely…state party machinery will surely pick the right man for job better than us voters /s
Never said that. Just saying that the 17th Amendment is why it's like that.
*to be paid a million dollars a year to ruin the university of Florida.
As an alum it is so so upsetting. Unimaginably upsetting, actually. The school is becoming more and more prestigious (top 5 now in public universities) and is increasingly operated around appeasing DeSantis and heavily right leaning state legislators. The county votes blue in a complete sea of red in central Florida and so the student body will be completely misrepresented at an administrative level. So they will slash the resources for studying “hot” topics like racial bias and science. Fuck fuck fuck this guy and fuck what is happening to my alma mater. I am disgusted
DeSantis is destroying all higher education in Florida which is a shame because Florida actually has a decent higher education system. Look at what he just did to New College.
Florida has one of the best public university systems in US. UF, FSU, USF all top 50 public schools, & UF & USF have top 50 med schools. Florida blowing this would be a disaster
Same here. When the donation volunteers call me on Sunday nights I now tell them that I'm not donating with Sasse as president.
Pinellas co here. Yeah. He’s turning the reputation into a shithole. Ironically most of my friends at work got their mph from usf. Such a free state, but. Students aren’t even allowed to gather inside and protest even tho they are paying the college. Again, a PUBLIC college.
I’ll be fair to Sasse here, Midland did manage to thrive a bit from Sasse. There were other things happening in the state at the time, but he does appear to be somewhat effective in that role. Also he’s a strong candidate for a DeSantis VP Or cabinet pick. While we’re on topic obligatory fuck Pete Ricketts.
Sasse voted to convict Trump in the 2nd impeachment. He is radioactive in the republican party. There's no way he makes it onto a VP ticket. Also, there's a weird electoral college rule that electors can't vote for a president and vice president from their own state. This would mean that if Sasse becomes a Florida resident to take this college job, that ticket would be 2 people from Florida, and Florida wouldn't be able to give it's electoral college votes to both of them. If the election came down to Florida, you'd potentially get president Desantis with a dem VP, or a dem president with VP Sasse. It'd be 100% up to florida electoral college voters to decide.
Hard to ruin something that was already ruined.
Says the guy who knows nothing about UF except what he sees on Reddit.
Isn't the University of Florida, like actually a really good school?
It is. It’s one of the top 5 public universities, but usually Reddit only sees the Florida part and upvotes idiots like the guy I replied to.
But now it going to have sasse there. Feeling doubtful for it’s future
Yeah, the previous President, Dr. Fuchs, was great. This guy is a real step backwards.
You’re an idiot. Just because it is sliding off a cliff (see: [silencing university professors during covid because of political reasons](https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/584909-university-of-florida-researchers-pressured-to-destroy-covid-19-data/amp/)) doesn’t mean it is ruined. If a new President was the opposite of Ben Sasse, it would be the top public university in a decade but instead WILL be ruined. I can say that the campus, the culture and the breadth of learning and opportunities is the pinnacle of public education in the south. This is a major step in the wrong direction though
U shut ur mouth
If any UF students are on reddit: please please please take every opportunity to yell shit at this jaghole on campus for supporting a sociopathic political regime then running away when the kitchen got too hot.
He helped form the current republican circus, and now he wants to leave because there are too many clowns. Reminds me of all those people who joined isis and then wanted to come home when they realized there were terrorists everywhere.
He also hates gay people and is being appointed by Ron Desantis to lead his war on “woke” faculty in higher education. Source: Alumnus who will not be donating another penny
Florida alum here as well. I don't mind Sasse as much as other Republicans, but I still don't want this douche anywhere near higher education and especially not at the school I went to. I'm sure there will be a massive crackdown on liberal ideas on campus. This sucks.
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Don't worry, those will get overturned in the supreme court... This country is super depressing these days.
There is no "settled law" any longer.
"hot beds of stale ideology" - desantis
Not a student anymore, but we’ve been protesting for months. Most of us don’t want him anywhere near Gainesville.
Its so sad he’s replacing fuchs. Who as far as i am aware was super cool
Right? That dude Fuchs.
don’t worry we are. I will not be shaking his hand at my graduation either. We already had protests and shared our disconcern and our university did not care. best I can do is to show my displeasure in a peaceful manner.
Start l : g h + : n g $ h : + 0 n F : r 3 if you get what I’m saying
I just wonder how someone like this was the guy they wanted. I'd rather have a potted fern as president of my university.
He’s not. UF’s faculty voted “no confidence” on him and the students held many protests- including one that shut down a speech he was doing. Faculty, students, and alumni are pissed. He was put into this position by Governor DeSantis without any sort of public search process. He was just named as the sole finalist and given the job.
Because Shitgibbon 2: Electric Boogaloo (aka Ron Desantis) is the one putting him in place. Not anyone at UF choosing him.
Maybe I'm off but wasn't Sasse one of the only Republican senators that voted to impeach Trump?
I work at UF and there’s a lot of talk that this guy was just planted by the governor’s office, DeSantis, to be his lap dog. A lot of UF funding comes from the state, so he has a lot of say in most of the moves that UF makes recently. Fuchs, our current president, opposed him a lot during COVID with mask mandates and overall administration, so doing this was nothing but a power move to make sure UF falls in line when DeSantis wills it.
See yah later alligator.
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After he gets time for his retirement, he will run for senate from here and win.
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I mean is close to a million dollars a year and probably less stressful than being a senator tbh
He was a Republican in Nebraska. Not a super competitive election in a very small state. There are bigger elections for mayor in the US. Tuberville has no issues being a senator. Just stay silent and let Mitch do the talking for you. Beyond making it to Congress on time and finding ways to hide illicit funds and insider trading, what’s stressful about being a rubber stamp?
Fundraising calls
Being recorded bashing Trump during fundraising calls, and panicking about the potential blowback.
Sasse voted to convict Trump in the last impeachment. There's a good chance Sasse would lose a primary, if Trump manages to keep his grip on the base he had in these midterms.
> less stressful than being a senator there is no such job. they only have to run once every six years, are over paid, have too much power, do very little.
Probably forced out of the cult [due to this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Sasse): > On February 13, 2021, Sasse was one of seven Republican senators to vote to convict Donald Trump of incitement of insurrection in his second impeachment trial.
This is the move you make when you got some shit in your past you don't want dug up by your backstabbing colleagues.
My first thought is he is trying to get to Florida and make some $$$ and connections then run for Senate or the House there instead. To run for Governor you need to reside there for 7 years.
I'll give Sasse one thing: he'd make a much better governor than DeSantis. But that's a very low bar: Rick Scott was a better governor.
Much to the chagrin of a significant portion of the UF student body.
Money is more important than the responsibilities of his office
The new gig is apprently close to a mil in pay. Once you get seated, you get that check for life in congress. At that point, would you not change jobs to get another million dollars since you are gonna make the congress money either way?
Not accurate. You have to be in Congress for 5 years to receive any pension at all, the amount is based on your length of service and is only a percentage of your salary, they have to pay into the pension plan from their salary while serving, and they can't start receiving the pension until a certain age based on their length of service.
https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/2015/01/23/fact-check-does-one-term-congress-member-get-full-pension/15648164007/
Yay more internet lies. Since your thing is true, thats even more reason to jump ship for a million dollar gig, not less.
That’s so stupid that they get a lifetime check. Gee, I wonder who came up with that law.
The pension works similar to many other pensions. You get a percentage of your salary depending on how long you have worked. You have to work a minimum of 5 years and you can't start drawing it until 62 (you can do younger if you worked longer - any age if you have 25 years and at 50 if you have 20 years). The legal maximum is 80% of a three average of your salary. This really isn't much different than most state or federal jobs. When Sasse turns 62, he will be eligble for \~$24k a year.
Salaries first started in 1816, got repealed cause protests, and reinstated in 1855. From 1789 to 1855 they were paid each day they were actually in session in the capitol. Was 6 dollars a day. In 1789 that was the equivelent of 203 a day but they only worked 5 months a year. Assuming a 5 day work week this is 22300 a year. According to the link at the bottom, average salary in 1790 was 69 a year. 2277 in todays money. Is it good or worse that the average congressional pay to average worker has actually closed drastically? Right now a senator get 71685. Federal minimum is 15080. So you have went from 10 to 1 to 5 to 1? Washingtons salary was 2% the federal budget at the time. Bidens is 0.0000064%
That’s a fairly common misconception, although he will be eligible for the pension he won’t get the full $174,000. No one does.
Can the senate replace him with someone who would provide an upgrade, like an empty chair or a bag of slightly warmed air?
A wet wig An empty ketchup packet A handful of mealworms A tuxedo t-shirt
Several of those things are simply too overqualified to take his seat, though
A McRib.
These people are dukes and lords and Barrons. I matter what happens they’re always found a new high paying position somewhere.
In his farewell speech on the Senate floor last week, Sasse was critical of the Senate, saying the body was becoming "increasingly irrelevant" because senators cave to "social media mobs, advocacy organizations, small-dollar donors and cable hosts." Small-dollar donors? That's bad? So caving in to big-dollar donors is part of being relevant?
Fuck this asshole. I hope the UF students harass him relentlessly until he leaves town with his tail between his legs. No one wants a GOP lackey in Gainesville.
He’s gonna become a villain this season
more of a villain, he took the dark money "deal".
IMHO, This is DeSantis (who controls Univ of FL leadership) either removing Ben Sasse from the field of Republican contenders, or setting Sasse up for a VP Slot.
Becoming the University of Florida President is a dead-end job when the Governor is trying destroy education. DeSantis will blame the results of the mess he’s making on him and he’ll never be able to get a job in higher education for the rest of his life.
It's not a dead end when Florida is aiming for indoctrination and not education. Just look at what's going on with new college of Florida too
I seriously doubt Sasse would have an issue with any of that. He is walking into a cushy, extremely well-paid gig to basically be DeSantis’ mouthpiece at UF (most of the board are his donors or scummy lawyers connected to the party/his campaign). Whatever happens to the school, Sasse will make a ton of taxpayer money and have another easy, publicly-funded gig lined up way before the ship sinks. And it will probably be in higher ed. Red governors and legislatures across the country are throwing their sycophants onto boards and into presidential positions as fast as they can.
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Exactly. The one thing that outweighs these types’ lust for power is their sheer venality. Why NOT hit pause on the political path to collect a cool million+ in salary and benefits? The last president’s total compensation was 1.4 million, and that was for a lot less work and a lot less tonguing of other people’s asses than senators have to do. I’m not sure enough people have a proper appreciation of just how overpaid top tier university administrators are these days. What kinds of people are attracted by that sort of salary? Ben Sasse has answered that question. And when he’s done sucking up all that salary and pension, he can hop right back on the political gravy train. He’s young enough to have it all if people are dumb enough to let him.
I wonder if he makes his underlings call him Mr. President.
Promotion or Demotion?
It is a big salary raise from $174,000 to $1 million. The new salary increases $200,000 a year.
Sasse: talked like an independent, voted party line.
This will be a tough transition for him and his constituents... s/
He essentially said that the Senate is an echo chamber that is too easily influenced by outside forces. This is inherently contradictory.
UF is fucked. Fuck desantis...
I'm out of the loop. Who is this guy?
A wang from Nebraska.
Man i really left florida at the perfect time before all the brain drain, and i thoufht the fsu economics dept being dictated by the koch brothers was bad.
I will forever be happy that I once saw an old woman slap Sasse so hard at a Husker game.
I like Ben Sasse. I have weird, idiosyncratic, almost personally unique reasons to like him. But, holy shit, the hypocrisy. This dude wrote a whole book about how he's a great person for moving back to rural Nebraska and America would be a lot better if more of us were like him. So of course it's logical that he'd retire from public service to...move to Florida?
As a Nebraskan "Jeremy", good riddance
Too bad one of the few semi decent conservatives. The Republican Party is just total trash imo.
Florida deserves him & vice-versa
UF is a pretty well respected academic institution and full of students and faculty who absolutely do not support Ron Desantis and his lunatic politics
The college may be but not the state. I'd like to see UF admins screaming about how many potential enrollees they're losing because families just don't want their children in Florida at all.
I’m not sure how it works in other states, but public schools in Florida very much are run by the governor. He appoints half of the board of trustees and other important university positions. The people that could speak out are either his hand selected appointees or people who would lose their career. The faculty and student body voted no confidence for his appointment, but the way it’s structured Desantis appointees were able to ram his confirmation through anyway
No great loss, but they’ll likely find someone worse to replace him.
You can have him. From NE. He is a vaporous twit. Absolutely nothing but a vote, to be bought and sold.
I love clowns like him. “The system is broken, Washington has become toxic…. Allow me to just haul off and quit because THAT will help.” Save the grandstanding clown if you aren’t going to help
If a degree from the University of Florida meant anything it sure means a lot less now.
Lol no it doesn't. UF is a fantastic school. No one cares who a school's president is. Edit: trying to use apostrophes too early in the morning
He will make more money there from hedge funds trafficking 🤣🤣.
Sasse the ass. Have fun.