Amazon is doubling down on lobbying | Hacker News Reader

Amazon is doubling down on lobbying

washingtonpost.com

57 pointssalmonet35 comments

I'm pleased and impressed that the Post is writing skeptical and/or negative stories about Amazon, despite (as the author notes) the fact that Bezos owns the newspaper. He might indeed, after all is said and done, want to see it flourish as a journalistic enterprise, not just as a business.

In what way is this story "skeptical and/or negative"? It quotes Bezos and summarizes Amazon's lobbying objectives, i.e. the article is itself engaging in lobbying.

I suppose that some people believe all lobbying is bad.

walterbell makes a good point I hadn't thought of though: from a board of directors point of view, this may be a positive piece that encourages investors.

I don't really see any negative spin at all. Amazon is portrayed as a business just trying to get things done in "backwards" Washington DC.

They are made out to seem like they don't even know what they are doing, "Amazon is really having to learn how to navigate all these things," even though they are spending nearly 10 million dollars on lobbying, have numerous contracts with the federal government and have a former whitehouse press secretary as a senior vp?

This is pretty much an amazon fluff piece.

It's what zwily said. Among the majority population, lobbying is seen as what businesses do to get laws written that are favorable to their interests, including tax breaks, energy subsidies, etc. In concept people understand that when a congressperson needs to learn about something in order to make a decision, he or she should be talking to experts. In practice (the perception is) those experts tend to try to persuade more than educate. So, in the example of the drones flying for example, the lawmakers may be learning of all of the good outcomes of easing FAA regs and letting Amazon fly drones, and may even distinguish between large companies (or another grouping in which Amazon falls) and a grouping that their competitors may fall into (say, smaller companies) in a way that becomes a barrier to entry for the competitors. This will obviously be seen as reasonable in some sense, but there may have been a better way to do things that didn't raise the barrier for competition. Amazon lobbyists are unlikely to help the congressperson understand that other way.

At least, that's how some perceive it.

Are you saying this is not how it is? There is a lot of downvoting of anti-lobbying sentiment here, but I haven't seen a reasonable explanation as to why yet, and I'm curious. Everything I've read tends to indicate that it's a net negative for society when well funded, non-objective parties essentially write the laws.

I think it can be that way, but I don't know if it always is. For instance, in making marine laws for pleasure boaters lobbying occurs where a group (BoatUS, for example, or the non-profit United States Power Squadrons) will push for a law (or to prevent one) without a real profit motive. These are about things like requiring people to wear life jackets in dinghies or being allowed to anchor in certain regions.

Lobbying of the DC public has a role, but should not be mistaken for journalism.

Lobbying by large corporations is bad, period. This is not just "speech", this is a wheel of bribery and legislation-writing. It is replacing any hope of democracy with corporate rule.

It's not all bad, but the bad outweighs the good by such a large value that the net sum is harmful to society. We would be better off without it. The problem with lobbying is it is a feedback loop which affects further lobbying, and lobbyists today have far too much power. It's because money is involved.

Hmm, interesting point.

I think that most companies that engage in lobbying try to keep such activity relatively quiet, and aren't interested in having it exposed or written about.

I'm not saying that lobbying is bad; I realize that it's part of the process. But I do think that many lobbyists prefer a lack of transparency and exposure.

Yeah, I don't think people notice advertorials or understand motives for things like this. Its just to get the news out that amazon is open for business in the upcoming election cycle.

Only $10m? The sadist thing about American politico-capito-corruption is how little the players sold themselves for. Double digits is an great return on money. Lobbying returns 22,000%? [1] Come on, American politicians, you're better than this!

[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/01/06/144737864/forge...

How is it lobbying even legal? Can somebody explain? (Serious question).

Freedom of speech. Courts have ruled that citizens have the right to group and petition to Congress to listen to a specific issue or more (redress of grievances). That has evolved into lobbying groups that are funded by corporations, organizations, unions, etc.

And courts have ruled that money = speech and thus government can't regulate that either.

You can read more here:

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/043015/why-lo...

Thanks.

Also, lobbying helps address issues where laws haven't kept up with technology.

A friend of mine is a lobbyist for an energy company. During a power outage, they will do robo-calling to customers to survey whether power is out in a given area. Those robo-calls were (or still are?) illegal, because they violated telemarketing laws. They lobbied to update the legislation for the "do you have power?" robo-calls.

Amazon would probably categorize their push for all online retailers to collect and pay sales tax in all 50 US states as an example of this.

Funny thing, though, is that their position was the exact opposite back when there were many states that they had no presence in, and were able to not charge sales tax in those states.

Lobbying consists primarily speaking about what you think public policy should be. Doing this is explicitly protected as legal by first amendment to the US constitution.

Without the ability for individuals to speak about public policy, how can there be democracy?

There is a problem. Wealthier individuals have the ability to speak more persuasively. They can afford education in rhetoric. They can afford time to learn how laws are written. They can afford time to learn about the particular domain which those laws must govern. They can afford the time to spend honing their arguments. They can afford expensive pieces of equipment like printing presses, which have always been expensive, to spread those arguments. Does this mean that the rich have more ability to influence public policy than the poor? Yes. Yes it absolutely does.

There is also a question of whether people can pool their resources to create organizations that advocate for certain policies or candidates. The US Supreme Court was recently asked to examine this question and gave an opionion on it, which you can read here: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf

You and other commenters are focusing on lobbying in principle, and I generally agree with your explanations.

But what about lobbying in practice? The revolving door, gifts, paid trips, campaign contributions, etc. Wealthier individuals have a greater ability to influence politicians and not just because "they can afford education in rhetoric."

It is difficult in most cases to prove quid pro quo bribery. But I suspect most politicians, lobbyists and insiders generally agree that politics is increasingly a pay-to-play game.

An anecdote from Jack Abramoff, former lobbyist sentenced to 4 years for "trading expensive gifts, meals and sports trips in exchange for political favors"[0]:

'...the number-one weapon used to influence a member of Congress was the promise of a future, high-paying job to a member's top staffers. 'Now the moment I said that to them or any of our staff said that to them, that was it. We owned them,' Abramoff said . 'And what does that mean? Every request ... of our clients, everything that we want, they're going to do. Not only that, they're going to think of things we can't think of to do' ... Such tactics resulted in Abramoff's lobbying firm holding sway in the offices of about 100 Congressional representatives, he says ... 'I would view that as a failure, because that leaves 335 offices that we didn't have strong influence in.' [1]

Note: Other than Abramoff, whom the media generally focused on during his corruption investigation, many other people were also convicted of crimes including officials from the White House, House of Representatives, congressional staff, Department of the Interior, Labor Department and Justice Department. [2]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#Indian_tribes_gr...

[1]: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/11/how-jack...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#People_convicted...

I'd be interested to know if you have stories about people practicing these tactics where those people were not indicted of any crimes.

> An anecdote from Jack Abramoff, former lobbyist sentenced to 4 years for "trading expensive gifts, meals and sports trips in exchange for political favors"

This is true, but outdated. The lobbying rules were drastically tightened as a result of this scandal.

The rules aren't perfect, but they are much stronger and better enforced than they used to be. Today, I think GP has it right about the primary advantage being access and the resources to use that access, not the sort of bribery you describe.

Have a look:

http://www.ethics.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=Gifts https://ethics.house.gov/gifts/house-gift-rule

You forgot to mention unlimited campaign contributions, which is paying someone to pass laws in your favor.

How that's legal, I don't understand.

It's legal because Americans consistently vote for the people who do it over the people who don't. This is democracy in action, in a very real sense.

In theory, anybody can do what these lobbyists do, or rather they aren't doing anything that any person couldn't do - carefully follow everything that goes on in Congress, try to secure meetings with congresspeople and their aides to try and explain their point of view, research things and put favorable facts at peoples' fingertips instead of making them search around themselves, etc.

In practice, it makes a huge difference when it's your full-time job to do it, versus individuals acting in their free time. And a bigger difference when you have a big budget to wine and dine people, take them out to nice places, show up at events, do research and organize data for slick presentations, and other such things. And a bigger difference yet when you keep doing it for years and years, building relationships with people, getting experience in who can get things done and is responsive to your input, learning how all of the processes really work, and ultimately hiring more former insiders who already know these things.

Even in theory we can pretty much guarantee a non-objective outcome because that's the lobbyist's intent.

What do you think lobbying is exactly?

By and large, lobbying is the process of presenting politicians with factual and legal arguments to support policy positions that they wanted to take anyway. So if climate change legislation would be bad for your company, you go find the conservative politicians who are ideologically opposed to environmental regulation and you present their staff with every bit of information you can find to throw into the debate.

Why should this be illegal?

It seems reasonable to me to conclude that this system would result in those with the most money and power getting the most face time to present their arguments. Which could often mean that corporate interests trump individual interests.

And, of course, there are plenty of instances of corruption in the lobbying process. Everything from outright bribery, to promises of lucrative jobs post retirement for congresspersons, etc.

I don't personally think that lobbying should be illegal, but it doesn't seem that odd that someone might think it should be.

The history of the 20th century actually shows the opposite--both the labor and environmental movements employed lobbying tactics in direct opposition to moneyed corporate interests, and achieved huge success (they each got their own Cabinet agency, for example).

It shows at least 2 examples of the opposite, yes. That's not, to me, enough to discount that it might be reasonable for a person to be concerned about lobbying, and whether it it might be harmful/illegal.

Nice motte and bailey. Congresspeople should pay attention to all their constituents, not auction off their attention to the highest or slickest bidder.

There's an interesting theory that shows a potentially simple way to reduce the harmful effects of lobbyists. The short version is that there was a change in Congressional procedure in the 1970's that eliminated the secret ballot for Congressional voting on bills.

The downside of this is that lobbyists, for the first time, could know for sure if the money they spent trying to get a vote from a specific member of congress panned out or not. Prior to this change, a member of congress was able to vote their conscience, with no way for lobbyists to actually know how they voted.

So, the theory is that going back to a secret ballot could weaken the ability of lobbyists to buy votes. It would be difficult, of course, to change this, since going to a secret ballot would also prevent ordinary citizens from seeing how their elected representatives actually voted.

A video that goes into more detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJ4tTj6Pe_E

Even if you hate Michael Moore (and I don't), here's a fun piece that he did more than 20 years ago, in which he hired lobbyists to get a resolution passed in Congress declaring "TV Nation Day," in honor of his TV show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHAspJDFJRA

Besides his commentary and satire, it shows (to some degree) the difference between lobbying in principle and reality.

When you play the Game of Crony Capitalism, you lobby or you die.

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