I mean he’s right.
And the general population should stop accepting it as if we have no choice in the matter.
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.
Yeah, that’s true. I also remember a time when the CIA was doing their dirty work down in South America while Jimmy Carter was in office. Dude isn’t as great as everybody thinks he is
Jimmy Carter may have not have been a great president and the US government may have sone some shitty things while he was in charge, but he is probably the most upstanding American president of the last half century. Pretty much everyone after (with maaaybe the exception of Obama) has been of lesser character.
Which, now that I’ve written it out, sounds really sad. The best the country could do was Jimmy Carter, who … wasn’t great.
Dude, Obama ordered more drone strikes than any president before him. Just because he was a good speaker and charismatic doesn’t make him a good person.
How many drone strikes did Truman order? How about Garfield? Maybe a metric of “Everyone who came before” isn’t very good for technological advancements like that.
I’m an idiot, so I don’t know if this is a sensible take. However, coming from a place of political strategy, I’m not sure a lot of presidents can out-maneuver military much. Presidents have term limits and military personnel don’t. Both for understandable reasons to be clear. However, it sets up a dynamic where one knows the ins and outs like the back of their hand and the other is like a substitute teacher with a class full of CIA operatives.
It’s a feudal system of corporate lords with a priesthood of economists, politicians, and lawyers.
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…
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!
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.
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.
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 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
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.