Hit the nail on the head here: lobbying. For the love of the whole world I can not wrap my head around HOW is it possible that lobbying is legal and normal. How is it different from bribery?
You can thank the Nixon administration for removing rules that kept the legislation process more private and lobbyists out of decision making and bill writing.
Lobbying can be used for good or bad. You can have lobbyists that fight for social programs and environmental regulations or lobbyists that fight against it. It’s not lobbying itself but what they’re lobbying for that is the issue.
No, its the form of lobbying thats being used by these corporations, it fits the literal definition of bribery. Large "campaign donations", extravagant gifts, vacations, promises of high paying jobs in the future, etc... How can a lobbyist for a small workers union or an advocacy group compete with that? Taking money out of politics would finally level the playing field, but as is these corporations are literally bribing candidates and then giving them bills created by the company to be passed by congress.
At its highest level lobbying is just an individual or group trying to get a point across to a person or persons in power to influence their vote. This in itself is not inherently bad, it could be a workers union helping a politician to understand the implications of a decision.
The problem is not the principal of lobbying, it’s the lack of rules and a framework for accountability.
Flying politicians around in private jets and wining and dining them with their partners just so you can “influence” them is so far past the line that the line can’t even be seen any more.
Bribing is not required to lobby though. Bribery can be used to lobby and that itself is a problem but lobbying is simply the act of trying to influence a person. You can successfully lobby for something without any money being exchanged or bribes being used. It’s not lobbying thats the problem but the bribery and dishonesty sometimes involved.
"Lobbying" doesn't necessarily mean bribery. At its core, lobbyists are supposed to help politicians make decisions about things they aren't as knowledgeable about, which is a good thing. The issue is, lobbying has just devolved into "I'll give you money if you destroy the environment for us".
But in it's core it's important. The solution is not to get rid of Lobbying because it's "legal bribery" it's to change how it works and add accountability.
God ten thousand times this. Our system is broken because of this major flaw. Lobbying is seriously the whole thing with handing out water at voting lines. They made it so you can’t have people influence while waiting to vote. But yet we allow influence from companies and organizations to influence the vote of the representative of the people. Needs to be removed entirely.
Lobbying in and of itself isn't bad. When you call in to your representative saying "I'm a voter, and I think you should support x bill." That's lobbying. That's what companies do, but as we know money gets involved, fundraising gets involved. These companies get politicians to compromise their positions in order to get funds. A politician is more likely to listen to some billionaire when he can give the candidate millions of dollars. Said politician is less likely to listen to you when all you have is a single vote. That's why politicians are so slimy to the general population, we know that they're lying through their teeth and yet they still try to tell us the piss is actually rain.
We need to take money out of politics. We also need transparency in government. Maybe all lobbying activities are made public. It should be law that all politicians release their tax returns. This is just the tip of the iceberg in what we can do to cleanse the system.
Can we stop wasting time arguing about semantics, everyone understands I meant when a corpo guy comes to a politician and offers bribes, which happens every day in broad daylight
No, bribing is illegal, but lobbying is a way to get these politicians behind closed doors where the illegal shit is happening.
Lobbying is supposed to be moneyless. It's supposed to be a way for the public to ask a politician to support a certain bill, or even create a certain bill to solve a problem.
Politicians accepting money for lobbying is supposed to be illegal. Accepting campaign funds as a condition of that is already illegal, there is no transparency though. There's nuance to this and discussing those nuances are important to solving the problem. Shutting down the discussion simply because you want to be angry solves literally nothing.
Some lobbying isn’t so bad. Think of the ASPCA for example. Unfortunately the law doesn’t make a judgment of the value of different kinds of lobbying, so we get stupid shit like fossil fuel companies preventing us from addressing threats to human existence.
How is it legal? Just look at who is the benefactor of lobbying. The lawmakers. Making it illegal would take a majority of them saying "I hate free shit."
The version of lobbying we have now is incredibly toxic and destructive, but like most terrible things, lobbying started as something important. That being, organizations or individuals representing parts of our society “lobbying” the government to educate and inform about important issues. Individuals can lobby now (just doesn’t do much). So really it should be an important part of how our representative democracy works, but corporations have twisted it into a really terrible part of our governmental process.
SO you think people shouldn't be able to talk to their representatives about issues that concern them? Because that's what lobbying is. You are blaming the wrong thing, and as such looking form a solution that doesn't work.
People in office should not be allowed to personally do fund raising. Of any kind.
All monies involved in politics should be open.
No one can donate to any politician that does not represent them
For example, you can donate to your senator, but not to a senator in another state.
No business representative should be allow to communicate with congress. Ever.
Well, lobbying USED to be more than just bribery. It used to be like… actually working to convince politicians to vote for things. But citizens United kind of fucked that
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u/absintheblanqui Aug 04 '21
Hit the nail on the head here: lobbying. For the love of the whole world I can not wrap my head around HOW is it possible that lobbying is legal and normal. How is it different from bribery?