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this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
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My mind is still baffled that you can let outside sources give government members money to do their bidding and call it 'lobbying.'
I mean if this happened where I live, we'd call it bribery.
AOC is on fire lately. I'm a big fan of her.
It absolutely IS legalised bribery. That's why the US isn't ranked as the most corrupt of all western countries in every study; doesn't count if it's legal and expected.
How can this be legal? Sorry I'm a real dimwit today. Maybe Americans should focus on getting rid of lobbyists with money first. That'll get rid of a lot of problems.
You're not being a dimwit, it's the immense corruption implicitly accepted that's utterly bizarre. I'd be baffled too if I wasn't used to it. Still am sometimes, tbh.
And yeah, getting private (and foreign government) money out of public politics is the absolute most effective thing that the US could do to start fixing the many systemic problems.
Because lobbying does have its place. When your local charity that advocates for better mental health sends someone to speak to a senator about how a program could be improved, or where it is causing issues, that's lobbying.
The corruption comes when the senator expects a three course meal experience as the cost of having that talk with they lobbyist, or the lobbyist has connections to people who will totally not base their donations on what the senator agrees to during the meeting. Sure, we could make that sort of lobbying illegal, but who is going to investigate 400+ individuals having several meetings a day with people wanting to advocate for various agendas? The IRS is already getting the shaft, and they're the ones who freaking bring in the money! Do you think congress will ever agree to pay money to set up something to investigate themselves?
That's why lobbying should be okay, but excepting money and/or goods or even a cookie is corrupt. There should be an ethics code or something and every prosecutor in the country should go after every single one of them.
I used to work for the government here in Europe. It was really emphasized that accepting gifts from the public is never acceptable.
Then I worked for a nonprofit that had 1 person who had ties to the government in our board and even there, when a client brought me wine because I helped house them (my job), I had to decline and explain why.
It was harder, because they were refugees and didn't understand. I said the gesture was appreciated and I gladly helped them, but it could be seen as corruption and would jeopardize the funding of my organisation.
Afterwards I was laughingly bitching at my boss and colleagues about how I had to say no to good wine and it was blasphemy. So I got a few bottles of wine every year for my birthday from then on.
That's worlds apart from profit-based corporations and rich people sending money, hosting high dollar fundraisers and bundling hundreds if not thousands of maximum "individual" donations. Not even the same UNIVERSE as unlimited dark money.
That it isn't already is extremely embarrassing to anyone who claims that corruption isn't rampant in American politics. It already IS illegal for doctors to do that and, while there's a lot of people exploiting loopholes, it's nothing compared to the number of politicians doing it like it's the most natural thing in the world.
Mainly BECAUSE of the rich and powerful being the de facto deciders of most laws
They will if they're forced to. I'm thinking a general strike and just 1/1000 of the people dissatisfied with the corruption protesting in front of their offices every day for a few weeks or months ought to do it. Could even do it in shifts so no one person has to go more than a couple times a month and still have plenty enough to make the status quo that's needlessly killing hundreds of thousands of people people unbearable to the corrupt demagogues maintaining it too.
If you want a general strike to happen en masse, you need to create an organization to coordinate it. If Occupy Wall Street showed anything, it's that you need leadership to provide organization and coordination.
One of the things this organization will need to be able to do is put food on the table for someone who's striking but living paycheck to paycheck. It'll need to be able to take care of people that are fired.
It would effectively need to brand itself as a citizen's union, and ask for dues and donations so it can build a war chest for the strike itself.
Shits tough to do. For that much effort, people would rather just go into politics and try to make a difference there. And that is actually something that we need more people to do.
Because conservatives put this narrative out for decades that it's speech. And our government is controlled by wealthy sociopaths.
The Constitution gives the people the right to redress grievances with their government. So, if we're free to get up in their grill and tell them what we want, where do we draw the line?
The same place that most other democracies do: bribery.
Colossal SCOTUS mistake/intentional fraud aside, money isn't speech and corporations aren't people.
New York recently executed one of the Trump Companies. Texas should follow suit, since they love executing people for killing people.
You're goddamn right, they should! Especially since Texan fossil fuel companies alone kill thousands of people a year!
Lying scum Rush Limbaugh (conservative values fucking who knows what in the D.R.) used to dishonestly promote this idea that campaign contributions (bribes) was free speech.
Well, the US Supreme Court unfortunately decided to agree with him in 2010
During trying times like these, it's a small comfort to remember he's dead and buried.
So the reason it isn't considered bribery is because they're not paying anyone to change their positions so much as finding people who already agree with their positions and dumping money on them to win elections.
Less direct quid pro quo bribery and more patron client sponsorship.
That's why the whole money is speech thing happened, because the way the system operates basically amounts to using funds as a form of public endorsement, which is a protected form of free speech, and it's pretty hard to say why one group should be able to do that while another shouldn't without one of those groups already being in jail.
The problem is that the system doesn't publicly finance elections, and as a result, can't justify why some should be able to donate while others shouldn't.
I get it, but wouldn't it be easier to just make lobbying free and let everyone have a say instead of taking the money and risking the nation's security by foreign influence?
I mean, it's just opening up your country for catastrophe at this point.
The only way to do that really at the moment would be to give Congress members a discretionary fund to use for getting constituents out to speak with them on the issues, the problem with that is that it gives the Congress critters the ability to influence who's able to talk to them by just never scheduling people who want to talk about shit they're not interested in.
It would also require Congress critters to never attend any sort of educational conference which runs afowl of freedom of association.
She'll do an about-face as she approaches spitting distance of POTUS.
First, I think you're wrong. But my speculation regarding the future is no more valid than yours, so there's that.
But second, they've been doing the Hillary-smear against her from the time she took office, and it has never let up. Much as it pains me to compare an intelligent, principled lawmaker against that empty vapid windbag, she's nearly as much of a lightning rod to republicans as trump is to anyone sane. She's unfortunately got no shot at the whitehouse unless our country and our politics change dramatically.
If I'm wrong, that's great, but I suspect I'll be dead of old age before things could change enough for her to have a shot. Maybe by the time she's a senior citizen.
In the meantime though, I hope she keeps getting elected and keeps fighting the good fight. If that happens, I expect her ability to enact change will only increase, even if she never makes it to the oval office.
I hope I'm wrong about her, but she is a politician. Constituencies are built to gain office, and the closer she gets to power the more she will (and must) contort her program.
Nah, she's not Elizabeth Warren. She sticks to her principles when it makes things more difficult for herself too.
As evidenced by her correct opposition to the Amazon complex destroying a historical neighbourhood in her district while engaging in state-sanctioned tax evasion.
People who believed the lies of Amazon and corrupt demagogues still try (often successfully) to use that against her.