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Comment by chiefalchemist | Hacker News Reader

Has the (tax) law been broken? It's not clear that's the case. Again.

These people (e.g., Trump) don't write the laws. We know who do. Let's focus on the root problem, not yet another symptom.

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The problem is that political donors are influencing the law. How can you change the law when the ones that need to lose the most influence are currently the ones with the most influence? These people are the problem.

Yep, this is why discussing this issue can be a hilarious exercise in circular frustration. The counter argument boils down to "don't hate the player, hate the game", except these players are lobbying to keep the game alive, so don't tell me I can't hate those players.

There is no contradiction in hating both, protesting both, or by other means frustrating what these people want to get away with. Don't let them.

Are the people using their power and money to influence the law the problem?

Or are the people elected to office who then are swayed by the influence of money and power to shift the laws in favour of the rich and powerful?

Is asking for corruption the root of the problem, or is the root of the problem the people in power who use corruption to enrich themselves?

What if it’s possible for both to be problems?

newsclues seems to be seeking the root of the problem. I'm no US history expert, but I don't figure there were PACs and SuperPACs influencing electoral politics when this country was founded. The congresspeople seem to have been here before the corrupt lobbying industry arrived, which would suggest corruption within the members of congress themselves arose first.

Please feel free to correct me if wrong.

I assure you, lobbyists existed from the beginning. The rich - heavily represented in the Founding Fathers - have always had friends and "friends" looking to use their influence. Go outside the US and you'll see the same phenomenon; Viking chiefs will have had their buddies, the French kings had their courtiers, etc.

PACs and SuperPACs exist because the rich willed them into existence.

I believe you, but do you know of any books or resources where I can learn more about this?

There has been money and corrupt back-room dealing in politics as long as money, politics, and back rooms have been around.

I believe you, but do you know of any books or resources where I can learn more about this?

Donors don't write the laws. They don't take an oath to serve WTP. And so on. They are a symptom. They are not the root problem.

> Donors don't write the laws.

You’ve said that multiple times, as if you can just will it to be true through repetition. Of course, the statement is categorically false.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/10/us/politics/crypto-indust...

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/us/alec-a-tax-exempt-grou...

https://archive.nytimes.com/dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/...

Indeed it's very false. Lobbyists oftentimes push legislation their clients wrote. You gotta be pretty ignorant to believe otherwise.

There’s really no significant nexus documented here between Yass’ political giving and the legality of his tax avoidance strategy. He’s a free-market libertarian who hates paying taxes. He donates to groups and candidates that agree with his philosophy.

Maybe in 2025 a GOP trifecta that had help winning from Yass (and many, many others) will zero out all capital gains taxes or something, but that’s not corrupt, it’s just the long term policy see-saw tilting a different way.

Joe Biden could offer a pardon for anyone who manages to assassinate a a conservative within a federal jurisdiction and it would be completely legal within our system, however I suspect some would still find it problematic.

It's literally corruption. Your constituency is not your donors; it's your voters. The fact that this raises no concerns to the majority of Americans speaks to how cynical we all are.

No. They are not the problem. They don't makes the laws. They don't accept the donations. They don't take an oath to serve The People. Etc. These people are a symptoms. To believe otherwise is simply a false mental model.

These "OMG Mr X..." and "OMG Ms Y..." and "OMG Company Z" - and the accused nearly always GOP'ers (which certainly doesn't reflect reality, odd huh) - is a waste of time.

How do I know it's a waste of time? Because we get one or so per month and...nothing is discussed. Nothing changes. In fact, the drone of stating the obvious just switches people off. How convenient.

The truth is, these distractions are another spin job manufacturered by The Politics Industrial Complex. So perhaps we start the discussion there then as that the foundation on which all other nonsense is build?

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/im-your-biggest-fan/

Finally, Trump said it best, via Chappelle on SNL. It's at the end of the monologue if you haven't seen it already.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_m-gO0HSCYk

> No. They are not the problem. They don't makes the laws. They don't accept the donations. They don't take an oath to serve The People. Etc. These people are a symptoms. To believe otherwise is simply a false mental model.

They donate money to the people who do take the oath to serve and make the laws. If you hire a hitman, you’re still guilty of murder. If you pay to get bad politicians elected, you’re still responsible for the outcome.

These people influence the ones who write the laws.

Donald Trump was very much the head of the executive branch in the United States for four years. He may not have written laws but he certainly signed many into law. But, it was broken before he came in and I honestly don't know much about the bills he signed into law.

I would agree with the greater point that might be getting made here is that it's all of Washington, DC gaming the laws and using their democratically elected "for the people" powers for personal inurement.

I will never judge private citizens for using any law to their advantage. After all, a private citizen is just leveraging what everyone else can.

Unfortunately, we know who writes the laws but the voters in states rarely replace their senators and representatives. I wish this was less of a "team sport" where my guy who is "conservative" or "liberal" has to win and people would be willing to fire a senator or a representative for just one term so our elected officials are reminded who they work for and that we may vote them out at any time. We don't have term limits for these seats but through voting we effectively /could/ replace them every cycle if we wanted.

I have a friend who owns businesses. His business is part of a larger non-profit association and this association lobbies capital hill every year. He personally goes up there and has conversations with them once a year for our state. He like to share a story where he was waiting to meet with a member of the house. The representative came out of his office, his assistant was helping him put on his jacket and he asked his assistant "What is this vote for?" .. He gets his answer and then he asks -- "How are we voting?" ... presumably asking how his party is voting or how his majority whip wants him to vote.

I like this verbiage from a specific website (pragmaticvoters.com):

  A pragmatic voter understands that a politician who is afraid of losing their position is a politician that is willing to govern for the better interest of the people. Politicians should always fear losing their jobs. Through voting, we remind them who they work for.

Unfortunately a willingness to fire a senator or rep for one term, can be capitalized on by candidates or entire parties that are incapable of governing, but exist to attack and disrupt. And even those candidates are still plugged into the same money network.

It can work the other way around too. Voters can be influenced by fear of electing the wrong person. The predictable outcome of electing someone who promises to "disrupt the establishment" is a lesson that a society needs to re-learn once in a while.

> I wish this was less of a "team sport" where my guy who is "conservative" or "liberal" has to win and people would be willing to fire a senator or a representative for just one term

I think you should consider that this is something that can be manipulated to achieve the end goals of people like Yass. Current political strategy is to appeal to the extremes rather than the centers. Culture wars and the like are used to exploit people’s biases in social issues and help wedge apart the center.

Actually most laws are written by lobbyists.

I used to work on the Hill. This is bullshit. Lobbyist input is taken into account, but "writing an entire law" is more of an exception to the rule.

What's with the conspiratorial cynicism of the American political system on this board?

@Dang - most of the commentators are also new to HN. I feel like I've brought up this issue before.

edit: removing unconstructive snark from post

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_act

> Many American special interest groups draft model acts which they lobby lawmakers to pass. In particular, the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has successfully gotten hundreds of model acts passed since 2010.

Model Acts exist, but they are an exception to the rule, also they are aimed at State Legislatures, not Federal. In addition, they serve a valid purpose to harmonize laws. For example, the CDC's state level emergency acts are all Model Acts, as well as a lot of other Federal-Local legislation.

The practice absolutely occurs federally. https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2013/11/11/24397...

No offense, but I worked on the Hill as a Staffer and activiely worked on helping draft legislation. Having a front-end developer with no legislative experience trying to explain my former job to me and how we actively wrote legislation is a bit jarring.

Also, I never said it didn't exist - I said it's more common at the state level than the federal level

"I worked as an individual staffer in 1/538 offices" isn't a great refutation for reputable news reporting; I certainly wouldn't be surprised by lobbyists targeting specific receptive legislators for the tactic. We've got plenty of incontrovertible evidence of lobbyists getting their precise language into bills; a staffer is quoted in the NPR article with a very different opinion than the one you're espousing.

(I'm not a front-end dev, incidentally. That's my absolute least favorite part of the web.)

I know Lee. I also have close friends and ex-colleagues of mine who work at the New America Foundation. Ironically, they also lobby and help write legislation (by your definition).

For example, a lot of the current anti-trust bills coming in the House and separately being spearheaded by Lina Khan in the FTC are directly out of the work the New America Foundation did (I 100% support their cause btw - this statement isn't trying to tar and smear them).

There is stuff to complain about how lobbying is managed in the US, but the take in this entire thread is off and arguing something entirely tangential.

The sophomoric cynicism you describe is widespread in American society, but I notice it can be particularly bad among engineers, who seem to have a real arrogance in thinking they know more about how other domains operate than they actually do.

Amen to that. I've seen a lot of bad takes by people on here who support politicians on either side of the aisle.

Most commentators here on HN honestly suck at anything social sciences related and it 100% is Reddit level discourse - which is not something a board should aspire to be.

I think being cynical about what's going on in DC is a way to show respect for the intelligence of the lawmakers. I don't think any of them really believe a lot of their own statements but just say and do what's tactically best to appease donors and get reelected.

My ex used to work at several congress committees during the drafting of Obamacare and then later financial regulation after the 2008 crash. The lobbyists maybe didn’t write the laws from scratch but they certainly rewrote important sections of Obamacare that dealt with cost reduction and the bank lobbyists also got to remove a lot of provisions the banks didn’t like. A lot of smaller bills that are brought up in the House are almost verbatim from what lobbyists submitted to a representative.

Ditto rules, regulations, rulings.

Pedantry about "most" and "written" aside, there's a massive (> billion dollar / year) effort to further the reactionary project. So let's instead write "too many" and "strong-armed".

As for "bOTh siDes THe SamE", if working to end democracy is legitimate, then why are the reactionaries working in secret?

The Trump organization committed tax fraud, and as this article lays out, Yass’s techniques were / are also illegal.

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