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Comment by samtho | Hacker News Reader

Not discounting any of the stuff that FTX has done or will come to light, but this practice of supporting “both sides” is a very common, by-the-book strategy for any special interest group or organization looking to buy influence and is flushed with money.

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I’m still baffled that this kind of corruption isn’t frowned upon more. People are buying influence. How is that supposed to be OK or normal?

Unavoidable now because of the Citizens United court decision. Of course it's bad, but what are you gonna do?

Make noise about it.

If you believe this is wrong, that is.

I don’t know, it’s not this prevalent everywhere so it is possible.

Yes, it is possible to amend the US Constitution to carve out an explicit exception in the 1st Amendment for political donations. So far Congress hasn't made a serious effort to do so.

I'm not really familiar with the US constitution, but doesn't the 1st Amendment only protect speech, petition and assembly? Is there some part I'm missing or did a court classify campaign donations as speech?

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

Ah thanks, that's what I was missing. Such a mindboggling decision.

If you actually read the decision, there's nothing mind boggling about it. It is consistent with the US Constitution, and with Supreme Court precedents. The result of that decision has been terrible, but we can only reliably fix it through the defined constitutional amendment process.

It wasn’t this prevalent here either until recently.

The Supreme Court has decided that Congress isn’t allowed to regulate this kind of behavior. The Court has also chipped away at bribery statutes, narrowing them significantly.

Unfortunately, without a constitutional amendment, new justices on the Supreme Court, or a revolution, there’s not a lot that can be done. I support an amendment, but with the current court it’s… we have a long way to go.

Or the “honest and honerable” politicians stop accepting donations they know are evil.

Ah never mind, we all know they can’t help it.

Money matter in campaign. Politicians accepting these have massive advantage over those who don't- so they end up more winning.

In my opinion, this is the voters fault. Read up on the candidates, talk to other voters, if the candidate's ad is all fluff and no substance, don't vote for them. STOP believing non-journalistic cable TV channels who only profit from eyeballs and not the facts.

Advertising is very effective. There's no point in blaming people for it, especially since they are the victims in this scenario.

"Victims", really?!?

Yes, people being fooled into electing corrupt government officials are victims. What's your objection? If I lie to you and steal from you, are you not a victim?

your expectations of voters are unrealistic. not everyone has the time or the education to sift through all that and effectively parse it's meaning. Madison avenue figured this out a long time ago and it's been downhill ever since

There are honest and honorable politicians that don’t take such money.

They often lose to the politicians that do take the donations. Because they don’t have the money necessary to compete in the election.

So, there’s a survivorship bias. Elected politicians are much more likely to be taking those donations. That’s why the system is so problematic. It drives out honest and honorable politicians, and rewards corrupt ones, which further reinforces the idea that all politicians are corrupt. They’re not, but under this system most elected politicians are.

Band together with other citizens and demand an end of this! Also since we're at it corporations aren't persons. The founders of the US were very vocal about giving power to the people, the laws were never intended to grant personhood to legal entities for the purpose of enabling unlimited political lobbying by their wealthy owners.

What kind of organization should citizens be allowed to create to promote a political position, if not a corporation?

If by citizens you mean citizens with a fuckload of money.

One with limited spending power appears to be the gist, to everyone but the Supreme Court

A political party, surely.

(Also, despite that I am not much of a fan of the UK political system, I do like that it has extremely low limits on election spending).

A new political party would itself be a corporation (because if not, who owns its assets?) Running single-issue minor party candidates is also useless unless your issue is important enough to convince a majority of voters to abandon one of the big two parties that have run everything for our lifetimes.

The non-profit kind for starters.

Citizens United is a 501(c)4 nonprofit corporation. I think a lot of Super PACs are, but it doesn't seem to alleviate anyone's concerns.

Banding how exactly in a way that would have sufficient impact to change this? It's not trivial to start a massive political movement. I gotta pay my mortgage, etc.

There is a significant effort put in by the FBI and others to arrest people who do that.

Maybe I’m dense, but what difference does it make whether it was SBF or FTX making the donations? Why implicate Citizens United?

Yes, Citizens United articulated a system where "money for access/attention" is the dominant paradigm of American democracy.

I think it’s frowned upon by many. It’s extremely challenging to address since Citizens United made it legal, and the courts have chipped away at efforts to make it more transparent.

I’m absolutely unhappy with the result. We legalized bribery and rank corruption. It’s awful for the system.

What do you think it’s not frowned upon?

I think their point is more that it's not frowned upon by people with lots of power and/or money. US policy very often aligns with the interests of the rich, and being able to buy the policy they want is very much in the interests of the rich.

To answer your last question: I'm not American, but I read a fair bit of US politics on places like HN. Whenever companies bribing US politicians is mentioned, it's done in a matter-of-fact way using extreme euphemisms. I don't just mean by the people involved, I mean by everybody, all the way down to regular nobodies discussing politics on the internet.

I very seldomly read stuff like "FTX bribed both the democrats and the republicans". People write stuff like "this practice of supporting “both sides” is a very common, by-the-book strategy". I mean, "supporting", really? "by-the-book"? That doesn't sound very frowned-upon-y to me. That sounds like y'all think this stuff is as normal as the air we breathe.

These aren't bribes. This isn't corruption either.

I don't understand that. What's the difference between "bribing" and "buying influence"? Is it about the time difference between when you give a politician money and when you expect something back?

It's the nature of the transaction. You are paying for a specific official act, that would be outright corruption.

Generally the money does not get you anything but an opportunity to pitch stuff to the politician, it's just an expensive way to become golf buddies.

There's a lot of things the politicians can help you with outside of their official duties. A senator chasing after your business partners visa issue is going to get it resolved within a day, without needing to wield any official power. This isn't corruption, corruption would be paying off the person making the visa decisions.

I get that if you come from a country with little actual corruption, this might seem like a distinction without a difference. It really isn't though, real corruption places a price tag on government officials doing (or not doing) their jobs.

I don't mean this in a dismissive way, because I appreciate your comment and you carefully set out a distinction, but it very much underlines what I'm worried about: that Americans are totally a-ok with corruption as long as it's done on a high enough level, to the point that it's openly discussed in the media and on internet forums and people do effort to explain to one another that it's not really real corruption at all.

Well depending on how you define both sides.

They are buying the regulation for themselves and against the people and yes this is very common and the people hate it.

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