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Comment by a3n | Hacker News Reader

> Call your congresscritter.

Sorry, but regular people don't make "campaign contributions" of any noticable size, so all we get back is a form letter acknowledgement based on whatever box you checked for subject.

Big Pharma, Big X and Big Y, on the other hand, "donate" enough "campaign contributions" that the campaigner can all but ensure (re) election based on recent name recognition to get the nomination, then counting on "their" voters being unable to vote for the opposite party even with the discovery of a live boy or a dead girl.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=live+boy+or+dead+girl&t=fpas&ia=we...

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Respectfully disagree. I live in a smaller US state and I’ve emailed my representatives and received a personal reply from both of them. One actually engaged and we politely discussed a public policy issue back and forth in an email thread. More often than not you can walk right into their office and meet them if you’d like.

And did meeting them shift their position on an issue where the opposition is a massively powerful and wealthy industry that spends millions on lobbying efforts?

I'm sure your nice discussion held as much sway with them as hundreds of thousands of dollars of "donations".

Try showing up with 500 people.

I hazarded a guess that a bit more than 500 people suffer from diabetes in the US -- more like 34 million. If you could get one in a thousand to agree to take political action, that's 34,000 people.

Well maybe it’s time to start protesting?

What always amazes me is how much this is tolerated in the “Land of the free”. At what point do Americans stand up for democratic principles?

This pathetic “we can’t do anything” attitude will be how democracy dies.

If my electoral district was gerrymandered or corporate donations through PACs we’re allowed in Canada I would be planning protests instead of typing this. Our system is far from perfect, but I have a hard time imagining a scenario in which the public here would passively accept many of the things we can see to the South.

Why is there so much apathy towards these issues?

Shouldn’t the fairness of the democratic system in the US be the #1 issue for both Democrats and Republicans?

When you're told you're number one your whole life, you don't go anywhere else, and your religion and patriotism are joined at the hip, why, there's no reason to change anything.

Factually incorrect comment. Corporations cannot make campaign contributions.

Luckily people can, and corporations are people. That is to say, corporations can donate to PACs and PACs can donate to candidates.

not true. PACs cannot donate more than a pretty low limit to candidates.

The whole point of a PAC is that they don't donate to the campaigns directly, but rather exercise their free speech to supply the public with "information" about the candidates.

Money is, after all, "speech."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

Walk softly and carry a big purse.

Sure, they make donations to super PACs, which ""don't coordinate""[0][1][2][3] with campaigns.

[0] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-and-democratic-polit...

[1] https://www.rollcall.com/2019/06/06/what-is-mcconnelling-how...

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/10-ways...

[3] https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-politics-superpacs-impa...

I can't find the link now, but something that really opened my eyes on terrifying PACs are was someone pointing out how they manipulate the political discourse without even spending a dime. They just sit there on a gigantic warchest and send out gangster-style missives like "hey it sure would be a shame if you supported X or Y and we had to drop $10M on pummeling you with primetime TV ads in the week before your reelection."

This kind of influence is completely untraceable through all the normal disclosure mechanisms since no money actually gets spent. And worse still, it offers enormous leverage— once you have that war chest, you can use it to issue hundreds of threats and only occasionally have to actually follow through.

It's just a completely different ballgame compared to a "normal" campaign finance option that directly spends donations.

Are you sure? Pretty sure they can. Either way they can donate huge amounts to PACs, create their own PACs, run ads, etc. Bribery is pretty much legalised, it's ridiculous. See Citizens United v. FEC for example.

wink wink

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