That's because you've legalized bribery. Your political system rewards corruption. Every actor in the described mess is (re)acting rationally. Is this somehow a surprise?
Ugh, please stop saying this. Bribery is not legal in the US. We literally just tried a sitting US senator for corruption including bribery, and we just convicted the former Speaker of the New York State Assembly for corruption, including bribery and kickbacks. It's very much not legal.
New York politics is an outlier - in fact, New York has literally the most corrupt government in the country. The problem isn't that it's legal (it's not legal); the problem is that New York has such a wide and extensive network of corruption (as this article shows) that it's damn-near impossible to actually address any of it.
Campaign contributions and lobbying are not at all the same thing.
First, "Corporate interests" are prohibited from making campaign contributions.
Secondly, lobbying is simply the process of petitioning elected officials to persuade them to advocate your causes. That's not unique to the US; every democracy has a mechanism for that process.
Call it what you want, but this is absolutely homomorphic with corruption.
What you're describing is completely illegal. Politicians can be (and are) prosecuted for it, even in incredibly corrupt states like New York.
Consider Senator Richard Shelby[1]. He is a staunch advocate of the "Space Launch System" -- a rocket program that looks the 2nd avenue subway look like a paragon of efficiency. He is an equally staunch opponent of "new-space" companies like SpaceX, which don't take cost-plus contracts or make significant campaign contributions.[2]
Of course one could argue that he's just acting in accordance with his principles, and that it's just a crazy coincidence that Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon -- the prime SLS contractors -- are among his top 20 campaign contributors.[3] Nope, he's just acting in accordance to his principles, and they're, uh, just acting in accordance with, uh, theirs. No cause-and-effect here, nope, nothing to see.
Bullshit. There's clearly a cause-and-effect, and this is completely standard practice across the whole of the government, and would absolutely be classed as bribery anywhere else in the world.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Shelby
2: https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/06/senator-complains-ab...
3: https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/contributors...
That sounds a lot less scandalous when you realize that those top 20 campaign contributors listed aren't the companies themselves - the contributors are all employees of those companies. Companies are prohibited from making campaign contributions; all of those contributions are from the employees themselves, using after-tax money, and the only reason employer information is collected is to prove that companies aren't funneling money to campaigns under their employees' names.
It's not surprising that employees of Lockheed Martin - the largest government contractor in the country - would support the candidacy of a politician who advocates awarding government contracts. What do you expect them to do - vote for a candidate who wants to eliminate government contracts?
The idea that a politician takes actions in order to appease the people who voted for them (or persuade those who might vote for them) isn't scandalous; it's exactly what we'd expect in a healthy democracy. New York isn't a healthy democracy, which is why this doesn't happen in New York at all.
So get back to the problem at hand, the issue with New York government specifically isn't that we have too much of this process - it's that New York politicians aren't accountable to voters at all in the first place, as I've explained throughout this thread, and as been documented by the New York Times in this and other articles.
Shelby is indeed responsive to his campaign contributors. He is not responsive to voters. Conflating those two things is the very essence of the corruption of American democracy.
New York is really no different: politicians are responsive to their campaign contributors, not to voters. I'm not saying this to excuse New York: it's a serious problem there. But to say that this is a uniquely New York problem is completely wrong and fails to see the forest for the trees.
That's where you're wrong. Campaign contributors have basically no influential power over New York politicians, any more than voters themselves do.
Ironically, New York serves as a great counterpoint to your argument, because it has some of the strongest - if not the very strongest* public campaign finance laws in the entire country.
> But to say that this is a uniquely New York problem is completely wrong and fails to see the forest for the trees.
It sounds like you really don't understand the extent of the problems that exist in New York. Yes, it is a problem unique to New York, because no other state has a political system structured the way New York's is (and no other state has a government as corrupt as New York's is).
But again, that's not because "bribery is legal", because (a) it's not, and (b) focusing on "bribery" misses the heart of the actual corruption problems that New York has.
There are limits to what individual donors can give, but politicians in New York can still receive unlimited campaign contributions in total.[1] This means that large companies and unions can pool their resources to buy influence, exactly as anywhere else.
New York proves that well-regulated bribery is not any better than poorly-regulated bribery.
> Campaign contributors have basically no influential power over New York politicians, any more than voters themselves do.
So you're saying that the politicians in New York are not receiving substantial campaign contributions from the unions, consultancies, and contractors that are profiting from the 2nd Avenue Subway? Are you quite sure of that?
No, they can't, because corporations (including unions) can't contribute to political campaigns.
If you know of a corporation (including a union) that's actually pooling their resources and giving them to campaigns or politicians, you should report it, because that is illegal. You can't keep asserting that that is legal - it's not.
> So you're saying that the politicians in New York are not receiving substantial campaign contributions from the unions, consultancies, and contractors that are profiting from the 2nd Avenue Subway
People who work at those companies might decide to donate their own money to politicians, yes. That doesn't mean they're buying special influence with them on behalf of their employers.
I'm getting rather tired of this discussion, because you seem to be mostly interested in hammering away at the same (misguided) point about bribery, despite the fact that this very article outlines the evidence that unions don't need to bribe or buy politicians with money; they already hold that influence over elected officials, without needing to pay anything for it.
If you'd like to keep pounding the same drum, there are plenty of other articles on which to do it, but it's a real distraction from the point at hand here, and I'm getting tired of carrying on a conversation about a point that's contradicted by the article were commenting on.
And the company might decide they deserve an extra Christmas bonus equal to their contributions to candidates the company likes plus enough to cover the income taxes... It was however, a discretionary bonus available to all employees. It might not be legal, but it happens all the time.
There is literally no evidence for the extraordinary and outlandish claim that this happens "all the time".
Please don't distract from the actual topic at hand - the wide corruption within the MTA and the New York State government - with completely unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.
I've worked at multiple medium sized companies that bonused executives who went to optional political fundraisers, but it is anecdotal evidence at best.
Some companies also run very public PAC's for the same purpose. They may or may not discretionarily bonus employees who donate to the PAC, I haven't worked at these places so I don't know first hand, but I wouldn't be surprised.
Yes, it absolutely is. Here's the link to Lockheed Martin's own description of their employee-contribution-pooling PAC, as mentioned previously: https://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/who-we-are/corporate-gover...
That is how it's done, and it's completely standard and legal. Everybody (who wants to buy influence) does this. The message this sends is reinforced by much more spending on third-party lobbying groups. In 2016, for example, this PAC channeled $2.6M worth of employee contributions directly to candidates[1], plus an additional $13.6M to lobbyists to ensure that the message was received as intended[2].
> I'm getting rather tired of this discussion, because you seem to be mostly interested in hammering away at the same (misguided) point about bribery, despite the fact that this very article outlines the evidence that unions don't need to bribe or buy politicians with money; they already hold that influence over elected officials, without needing to pay anything for it. [...] I'm getting tired of carrying on a conversation about a point that's contradicted by the article were commenting on.
Again, sorry, you're wrong. Quoting from the article, emphasis mine:
"Construction companies, which have given millions of dollars in campaign donations in recent years, have increased their projected costs by up to 50 percent when bidding for work from the M.T.A., contractors say."
"The unions working on M.T.A. projects have donated more than $1 million combined to Mr. Cuomo during his administration, records show."
"WSP USA, formerly known as Parsons Brinckerhoff. The firm, which designed some of New York’s original subway, has donated hundreds of thousands to politicians in recent years, and has hired so many transit officials that some in the system refer to it as “the M.T.A. retirement home.”"
Finally, let me add: in my previous career I was a consultant for public transport infrastructure planning. This is something I have direct experience of. Politicians are specifically disinterested in cost savings on infrastructure projects because that would work against the interest of their donors. In private, this is something they will tell you without shame. So I've seen this problem point blank.
1: https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pacgot.php?cmte=C00303024&c...
2: https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D00000010...