Toomas Hendrik Ilves Quotes
It's much cheaper to influence elections than it is to go to war.
Ilves, Toomas Hendrik. Interview on Election Interference.
This is a very clever analogy to an aspect of astronomy and physics. Most of the mass in the universe is dark matter which is invisible to human sensors and instruments and hence cannot be seen. Yet they have the most gravitational effect on matter that can be seen.
Colbert actually formed his own Super PAC and funded it with his own money.
Most of the Super PAC money was, and is, spent on TV ads—usually negative, attack ads. The network profits that year rose by $180 million mostly due to the political advertising. It was estimated that in 2012, there were $9.8 Billion spent on political advertising at all levels. What is particularly important about this quotation is that it shows that corporations do not make campaign contributions to increase good government in America. They not only think their political “investments” can return profits to them, but in this case, the CEO acknowledges that the corporation had already received much benefit.
He had been serving as a University President. One change was the unlimited corporate funds that could then be donated to campaigns by corporations. “Super-Pacs” were one of these vehicles. Kerrey refused to use them. His opponent did not. His opponent was able to spend much more money on his campaign. Kerrey lost.
The Citizens United case held that it was unconstitutional to limit the amount of money that corporations could spend political campaigns.
Toomas Hendrik Ilves is an Estonian politician who served as the fourth President of Estonia from 2006 until 2016. Ilves worked as a diplomat and journalist, and he was the leader of the Social Democratic Party in the 1990s. He served in the government as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1996 to 1998 and again from 1999 to 2002. Later, he was a Member of the European Parliament from 2004 to 2006. He was elected as President of Estonia by an electoral college on 23 September 2006 and his term as President began on 9 October 2006. He was reelected by Parliament in 2011.
