The night Senator Cory Booker rose to speak in a 25-hour filibuster, something rare happened: sincerity leaked into the Senate chamber like light under a closed door.

“I can’t allow this body to continue without doing something different,” he said. For a moment, we believed him.

And then we didn’t.

Because the moment the cameras cooled,  Booker’s team and a herd of other fundraising pigs flew straight to the money trough. What should have been a moment of moral clarity was immediately doused in transactional slime. The fundraising consultants, PACs, and self-anointed digital strategists—always more interested in scraping donor dollars than scrapping tyranny—sprinted to exploit the speech.

You probably saw it in your inbox before Booker even sat down:

“BREAKING: Booker Fights for YOU—Will You Chip in $5?”

“Cory’s Not Backing Down!”

“This One Gave Me Chills 👇”

Literally dozens of Democratic campaigns and Democratic-releated PAC  scrambled to capitalize on the moment. None bothered to call on the folks they were writing to go demonstrate at  one of the Hands Off  rallies scheduled for a few days later.  All of them from opportunistic campaigns and PAC fundraising mills pretending to speak forBooker. Not one of these emails helped build real power. Not one helped the Movement Voter Project or any group Booker actually aligned with.

Far too many of these appeals helped  line the pockets of digital sewer rats running scammy shell PACs and faux-Democratic committees that exist solely to fleece grandma and grandpa.

As Micha Sifry put it in his Connector Substack: “Booker’s speech was transformative, but the follow-through was the same old transactional politics.” That’s because the parasites had already moved in, transforming the lifeblood of grassroots energy into digital swill.

This isn’t just an insult to Booker—it’s a metastasizing cancer on progressive politics.

These digital charlatans poison the well for everyone. They flood inboxes with urgent nonsense, eroding trust with every breathless “last chance” that isn’t. And the damage doesn’t stay contained within political fundraising. It spreads like black mold—infecting the donor lists of food banks, women’s rights groups, climate orgs, and civil liberties coalitions. These groups now find themselves sending appeals into a digital wasteland where burned-out  and pissed-off donors hover over the DELETE key.

I’ve seen it. You’ve seen it. The $3 ask that turns into a $300 recurring charge because the pre-checked box was buried in 6-point Helvetica. The “triple-match!” scam where no triple ever existed. The donor who thinks they’re giving to a Senate race but is actually funding the consultant’s Tesla. As Micha Sifry’s post points out, on PAC –Blue Amp — took in a little more than $4000  after the Booker speech from mining its list for Corey  while taking in $3600 for itself.  “Last cycle, Blue Amp says it raised $1.8 million overall, of which $1.1 million went appears to have gone to Blue Amp Action LLC, a private entity that does not have to disclose who it employs or how it pays its staff or owners. The group says that a larger percentage of all the money it raises goes to candidates but good luck trying to get to the bottom of the paper trail.”

Let’s be clear: these aren’t just “bad actors.” This is a business model. A business model built on deception, wrapped in the flag, and sealed with a blue donkey sticker.

And the Democratic Party? Too often complicit. Too often silent. Or worse—hiring the very same firms to run the same rinse-repeat con jobs under the guise of “grassroots energy.”

So here’s my advice to readers of The Agitator so when, in turn, folks ask your advice about political giving:

Unless it’s a direct appeal from the candidate’s official campaign, hit DELETE.

Say NO to the digital sewer rats.
No to the PACs.
No to the digital pickpockets in blue.
And for God’s sake, stop clicking “Chip In Now” unless you know where the pipe leads.

If Democrats want to win elections and lead a movement, they need to get from transitional hustle to funding serious organizing  action; and  stop letting scammers set the tone. Because if pigs can fly, they should be grounded, not rewarded.  As for Senator Booker

If Democrats want to win elections and lead a movement, they need to stop letting scammers set the tone. Because if pigs can fly, they should be grounded, not rewarded.  He could write a fat check to the Movement Voter Project and try to undo do some of the damage. But that would require doing something different. You remember—like he promised.

Roger