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Comment by seaourfreed | Hacker News Reader

The USA is a Kleptocracy since US congress members sell-out for lobbyists and money-in-politics. $3.5 billion per year flow through lobbyists, and that is all it takes to corrupt our congress.

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Imagine it another way. I am a health care company, you are a congressperson. You want to vote for something I don't like. I visit your office and tell you I am thinking about spending 20 million dollars in dark money ads to help elect your opponent who agrees with my position. As the politician can you even vote for this bill knowing it will probably end up with non-stop negative attach ads against you and your loosing your seat, your ability to vote on other important legislation. You vote for the bill anyway, it looses. The attack ads start, they are lies but they are continuous and overwhelming. You loose your seat to someone who will do what the lobbyist/industry wants. You are now on the outside.

In a just society this would be considered extortion

Any solid example of something like this happening?

AIPAC

What other way is there to imagine it?

You just described how it is a systemic issue. It’s not a case of bad apples but the system itself.

Your true hypothetical is even more damning.

And as with most big structural issues in the US, the answer is right there and obvious for everyone wanting to look for it: severely restrict campaign spending, ban PACs and the like, and boom, the election process and government in general will become much less beholden to money interests.

(Yes, I know about Citizens United - it has to be repealed, which is of course possible).

>$3.5 billion per year flow through lobbyists, and that is all it takes to corrupt our congress.

I can’t tell what you would consider an improvement, that number being higher or lower?

I would prefer that number be lower, but for how much they get it's already depressingly low.

Ah, yeah that’s reasonable. If we are gonna be run by whores, they may as well be expensive ones.

This misses the point somewhat.

The 3.5 billion doesn't go to congress people. It goes into reelection coffers. Or as the sibling points out into electing-others-coffers.

We like to believe in free-and-fair elections, but in most cases the options are "unknown names". Most people vote party, not person.

The real "electing" happens at the primary level even all candidates are the same party. At this level money talks (through advertising.) Basically its a most-money-wins setup.

Congress is the pinicle of the iceberg you can see, but the real action happens at state level, in primaries, etc. That's why you end up with "2 bad choices" come election time.

The only way to remove money from politics is to ban TV and internet political advertising. (And it won't shock you to discover TV and internet think that's a bad idea.) Frankly, I'm not even sure that would help.

Politics bows to moneyed interests because politics is built on access to advertising money. RFK didn't drop out because he lost interest, he dropped out cause he ran out of money. He then sold his endorsement to the highest bidder.

Ultimately US society values money above all else. So it's not surprising that money is at the root of US politics. As far as the system is concerned this is not a bug, it's the killer feature.

An improvement would be if the number was lower because hired lobbyists were less effective. We should undo Citizens United with legislation so that concentrated wealth can't be used to bully politicians as easily, giving them the freedom to act on voters needs. If we treat unlimited political spending as the corruptive force it is instead of a fundamental right, things wouldn't be perfect but they would surely be better. Sadly, a corrupt legislature is unlikely to legislate away corruption. Campaigning on reversal of the CU ruling brought massive popular support and individual donations to Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign, but IMO was a also a big (maybe biggest) reason he was treated as untenable by the establishment.

First of all $3.5 billion is not a lot of money when you consider that it represents all industry. We spend significantly more money on almonds [1]. More importantly, lobbying is literally just talking to politicians, and the vast majority of this money is just spent on salaries and expenses for professionals who do so.

The reason it seems like congress is so beholden to corporate lobbyists is because corporations are the only ones who take lobbying seriously these days. Grassroots lobbying being taken seriously is what lead to the passage of the Civil Rights and Clean Air acts. Even today, there are examples of grassroots lobbying that prevails over corporate interests. A handful of nimby can perpetually stall billions of dollars of real estate development, and there is no way billionaires like Peter Thiel are happy that abortion bans have cost the Republican Party so much political capital.

[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-in...

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