I still don’t understand how lobbying is legal. Like, it’s straight up bribery.
Lobbying is supposed to be making your case to a politician, and hoping they vote/propose a bill/etc. With that interest in mind. You yourself are allowed to lobby your congress critters…technically.
We’re allowed, but without a fruit basket stuffed with money they’re not going to listen.
They’re surprisingly not that expensive to buy though, 10k will get you pretty much whatever you want…
The lobbying is not the problem. The donations that sway opinions are the problem. If it was entirely unrelated to donations and the congress person was just hearing out all sides of an issue, that’s a good thing.
How often do companies fund biased or outright falsified studies that are then presented as fact by lobbyists?
I could maybe get more behind lobbying without donations if all data points were required to be peer reviewed. The lawmakers hearing these arguments are not experts (see any tech related legislation ever), it’s real easy to lie to them; basically removing the money then means that the most charismatic and/or best liar ends up winning.
If donations did not affect outcome, no company would donate.
Even when a legislator’s decisions are unaffected by lobbying, companies still control legislation by ensuring legislators who earnestly believe in legislation that favors the corporations over the people get elected.
This is how Biden sided with banks and the prison-industrial complex for half a century yet didn’t have enough money to fund his son’s cancer treatment without selling his house until Obama paid off his medical debt.
If you ever called or wrote a letter to your congress person about an issue you cared about you were a lobbyist when you did that.
The problem is not lobbying, the problem is pay-for-play. Something like 80%-90% of candidates who spend the most money end up winning their election. Our politicians are owned by wealthy corporate interests who fund their elections. The solution is to get money — especially corporate money — out of politics.
There are a number of policy proposals that might limit the power of money in our politics, federally funded elections, regulations for how much air time each candidate gets, perhaps bring back the fairness doctrine, just to name a few.
Yeah but there’s a difference between making one phone call and your job being to convince people to do things they would never do otherwise.
In theory, it’s partially meant to educate politicians who cannot be experts on everything in a world where information exponentially grows, but this system has clearly been intentionally used to abuse power.
Met a dude in 2015 who was a lobbyist for Boeing in DC. I heard he made 750k a year back then. He must be a really good educator!
I used to work for a lobbyist on the hill, doing line standings. I would get paid to stand in line for hearings and committees and then the lawyers would come relieve you right before the hearing. Sometimes they wanted you to camp out the day before the hearing, and usually there were other line standers and it would be a circus, lots of fun.
And I know lobbyists who are just regular people who looked up the process and did it. I’m not advocating for it, just giving context.
There are other examples of programs and policies being used in this way. Now, to me, the question is whether or not they are intended to easily abused by design. I don’t have the knowledge to say one way or another. However, as previously stated, it’s obviously being used as a bribery under another name.
If lobbying were illegal, that would mean all of the organizations that fight for justice lose their voices too.
Lobbying isn’t bribery, it’s persuasion
We didn’t deserve Carter. We still don’t. He’s a better category of human than nearly all of the politicians we have at the moment.
That is why the Democratic party drastically changed its primary rules after Carter was elected (to make them less democratic, and to give establishment elite party members more power).
They tried to tighten the collar on the public even more when Occasio-Cortez primaried an establishment Democrat.
The left-wing of the Democratic Party, including President Jimmy Carter, are the red-haired stepchildren of the party, and they’ll never let us forget it.
There are more secret fascists than it appears who will Hail Hydra when Secret Hitler makes his appearance.
Didn’t the rules change because Hubert Humphrey got snubbed by the DNC just flat out ignoring the primary results in states that had them?
Hubert Humphrey got snubbed by the DNC just flat out ignoring the primary results in states that had them?
I didn’t know this and am eager to find it. Was it during the 1968 election against Nixon?
It’s a fun game. Like at a party, until you realize it’s likely real life.
Its extremely obvious. “Oh, these? These aren’t bribes. They’re uh, free speech! Yeah! And companies speak in money so this is their free-”
Shut the fuck up.
Citizens United is one of the worst decisions in the history of the Supreme Court.
clearly he’s old enough to run again.
Man. The guy can grow peanuts, build thousands of houses, kick cancer’s ass, and is brilliantly insightful.
No wonder he lost reelection. He’s competent. I’m kinda shocked he won in the first place. We didn’t deserve him, and we still don’t.
He can also fund and arm the Indonesian government while it commits genocide in East Timor
And he wasn’t competent. He squandered a Democratic majority in both the House and Senate for two years by sitting to the right of both chambers of Congress, and ended up heralding the deregulation and deunionization that we blame Reagan for.