Every time this topic comes up, I wonder why lobbying is legal. Can anyone give me a good explanation? The only one I've really heard is "lobbying is free speech, corporations need free speech".
How do you outlaw that? What are you going to do, cloister your Congressperson in their office and forbid them from seeing people? It's actually a big part of their job. Are you going to say that if a Congressperson is considering a certain regulation of a certain industry, under no circumstances should they ever talk to anyone with any connection to that industry? As stupid as law may sometimes be today, that would actually be even stupider.
Yeah, sometimes it does devolve into the suitcase scenario but really that's quite unsubtle.
You don't. We change the societal web of incentives such that the people who become legislators are capable of making the distinction between unethical lobbying and their role as representatives on their own.
The people we're getting right now sometimes seem cognitively unable to draw this distinction at all.
EDIT: And how do we do that, I hear you cry? We'll what we're doing right now is a good start. Capitalists, entrepreneurs and some might say downright greedy people having loud, public conversations questioning and debating the role of private business in government, and vice-versa. If this keeps happening, the meme that perhaps such unrestrained lobbying might be harmful will permeate mainstream culture, and when the politicians of the future are preparing their campaign platforms, personal ethical responsibility in their relationship to industry will be at the top of their minds, because they perceive them to be at the top of the minds of those who will be voting for them. Obviously it is too ambitious to expect politicians to act selflessly. Therefore we must make it in their interests to act ethically.
And run-on-sentences. Those help too.
DHH told me to attempt the impossible if I want to achieve success. I see it as profoundly unimaginative and unambitious to restrict this notion to the fields of business and programming.
You've gotta have a go!
Besides, 'watching closely' is pretty trivial now. The government certainly seems pretty good at doing it to us.
This is why it's relevant when a politician has had an affair; if he is unwilling to uphold the most solemn covenants he makes in his lifetime, to the people to whom is the closest, and upon whom the negative impact of his actions will hit the hardest, why do we have any idea that he will be willing to uphold his covenant to perform in the general interest or uphold the Constitution when his covenant is with an amorphous, anonymous mass of "The People"?
The best solution I can think of is public financing of elections, but I am very pessimistic about such a law getting through Congress, even if the Democrats retake the House in 2012.
¹According to figures gathered by the Campaign Finance Institute, it costs about $1.3M to win a House seat and about $7.5M to win a Senate seat. (http://www.cfinst.org/data/HistoricalStats.aspx)
Seriously, nothing will happen if not even the comparably bright people on this site is able to digest the fact that politics in the US is more complicated (and, indeed more broken) than "democrat good, republican bad". They're pretty much all scum, and the few honest people seem to be pretty well distributed across the parties.
Every politician does whatever they can within the rules (and then some) to get elected, but some want to change the rules because, for example, banning corporate donations would probably hurt Republicans more than Democrats.
But finally, and my most important point: No, Republicans, to the extend they have a common position doesn't want campaign finance reform. But neither does the democrats (to the extend they have a common position). Most significantly, a very prominent Democrat broke his pledge to take public financing in the face of raising heaps of money and outspend his opponent 2:1.
I mean, perfectly honest, Democratic congress or not, is Obama going to get behind serious campaign finance reform?
Seriously, it's part of their platform.
In the same way that companies distort regulations of their industry to thwart competition, politicians will ensure that public campaign financing rules will prevent newcomers (e.g. tea party, green party, etc) from ever getting elected.
Like I said, I don't know if it's true, but I don't really see a mechanism by which single term limits will help the situation. In fact, they may make it even worse by making it hard for politicians to distinguish themselves by a record of actually doing good. Instead, the public will have absolutely nothing to go on besides advertisements, which are paid for by guess who.
For the record, I have heard this said from both sides of the aisle. I'm not standing by its truthfulness because government brokenness is a complex issue, but it certainly seems like a valid explanation to me.
When newbies get elected, they have a tough time navigating the corridors of power. This is where the lobbyists come in: they've seen the system (they probably were a part of it before becoming lobbyists), they know how it works, and they're just too happy to help out. This way their influence grows stronger year by year.
Term limits is not the answer. I think California's open primaries will help in electing moderates, people who are willing to look at all sides of the equation.
Just in case you see this, my idea was to limit ALL contributions to $1 per entity - person, corporation, whatever.
Hmmm... So if a corporation had/forced all employees to offer up their dollar to a specific candidate, looks like you are right - It could/would still be gamed... sigh.
You don't. In short, you de-incentivize lobbying by drastically reducing the size, scope, and budget of the federal government as mandated in the Constitution.
Income taxes were never "banned". Before Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust in 1895, federal income taxes were considered an "indirect" tax constitutionally, and thus only had to meet the requirements of Art. I, Sec. 8, cl. 1, which was that taxes must be uniform geographically. Pollock declared federal income taxes a "direct" tax, which thus had to meet further requirements under Art. I, Sec. 2, cl. 3, which called for the receipts of direct taxes to be apportioned proportionally to the population of each individual state.
The Sixteenth Amendment (ratified 18 years after Pollock) lifted the requirement of proportional distribution; it did not change the constitutionality (or unconstitutionality) of federal income taxes.
One statistic the article states is that some organisation spent about 700,000 dollars in lobbying and 2.5 millions in campaign contributions. I only wonder which was more effective.
Now imagine you're a key figure in an industry, such as, say, the internet industry, and you have opinions about things, such as, say, net neutrality. How foolish would it be for you not to attempt to influence the decision makers by providing them with your view of the issue?
This is what lobbying is. It has nothing to do with free speech, and everything to do with information flow. You certainly would never outlaw it.
There are a lot of "grass roots" lobbying going on for nearly free based on emails, web pages, and social media. In fact, it is so effective that many lobbiests have adopted "grass roots" mechanisms to lobby - see "astroturfing" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing.
And a letter from that group is probably more representative of the collective opinion of the people working there than (say) a Senator's votes are representative of their state.
A corporation is made up of SHAREHOLDERS, not employees.
Now, imagine that you can't sound the alarm. This is going to put people out of work and ruin your business, but you can't say anything.
That's what it means to prohibit lobbying.
To stop lobbying, you need to stop Congressmen from getting power-drunk and passing random rules and regulations that affect the economy based on something they just read in the New York Times (like the recent debit/credit thing). Companies generally don't want to lobby, they just do it as a defensive measure.
I fundraise for my kid's school. A local bank, ABC Savings, makes a considerable donation. There's no expectation that the school will pass a rule where we only accept students if their parents bank at ABC Savings. There's a difference between accepting campaign fundraising and quid pro quo.
In your own example - it's not like school will not accept somebody if they're not using ABC Savings. But they sure as hell will cater more to those who do, than to those who don't?
The only long term solution to the problem is to improve journalism (which is happening slowly) to encourage a better class of office seekers combined with a reduction in the importance of government in business and daily lives, to make it less worthwhile and less necessary for businesses to influence government.
Lobbying itself shouldn't be illegal, it should just be de-incentivized by controlling the federal government's size and scope per the Constitution. This would also fix a lot of the corruption among federal representatives, who all too often are judged for the amount of booty they can bring back to their states.
Is it bad if I write a letter or talk with my congress critter? How about if I put up a sign?
How about if you and I get together to do so?
Corporations are voluntary aggregations of people.
I think it’s possible to draw logical and constitutional lines between
¶ 100 people writing letters to their Congresscritters advocating for the same policy
¶ a manager of a corporation (with 100 shareholders) writing Congresscritters to advocate for some policy (that not all 100 shareholders think is a good idea)
¶ a corporation hiring a lobbyist to be its permanent advocate in Washington
Actually, those shareholders do think that it's a good idea because they've continued to be shareholders.
> corporation hiring a lobbyist to be its permanent advocate in Washington
That's just like me than me writing a letter every day.
Corporations don't make decisions, though. People make decisions. We act as individuals. France doesn't attack Britain. Soldiers in one army attack soldiers in another army. We act as individuals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodological_individualism
I don't agree with everything it said, but The Corporation makes some good points about how corporations as legal entities allow people to abdicate responsibility. Watch it on Youtube here: http://bit.ly/hb0wuL.