Yup, it distorts what a politician will say and what bills they'll sponsor if they're elected. The most dangerous thing the $12 billion in almond money will do is buy a politician to allow them to skirt worker protections and environmental protections to continue maximizing almond money. That puts the interests of the politician not with the general population who wants clean water and safe non-abusive jobs but rather the few almond farm owners who want to maximize almond production while minimizing worker costs (and perhaps locking out new almond farmers from the industry).
This sort of kleptocracy is the problem with American politics. Bribery laws are so laughably bad that you have to literally stuff gold bars in your suit pockets before you run the risk of being prosecuted. You have to be a grade A moron to get caught.
Speaking of grade A morons. Our political establishment here in Ohio jumped into bed with a huge publicly traded energy company who was pushing millions of dollars each to various individuals. I'm still boggled that these people thought they could bag millions of dollars and no one would notice.
It used to be that when payoffs to politicians were discovered it would be paltry amounts like $10-30k that no one would notice and which are easily ingested into someone's finances without ringing any bells with the IRS or regulators. You would ask yourself why they would risk their career for such a small amount of money.
These politicians and appointed regulators in Ohio were trying to literally absorbed generational wealth without regulators or the IRS noticing. Impossible.
Our governor DeWine, who was definitely knowledgeable of all this and involved, was smart enough to keep his hands off the money--though they did fund his campaigns legally. He stands to serve out his final term and be replaced by one of the others in the cabal. (Yost), or Viveck Ramaswammy. The times.
This sort of kleptocracy is the problem with American politics. Bribery laws are so laughably bad that you have to literally stuff gold bars in your suit pockets before you run the risk of being prosecuted. You have to be a grade A moron to get caught.