Hacker News Reader

Comment by pktgen | Hacker News Reader

> A racket is a service that is fraudulently offered to solve a problem, such as for a problem that does not actually exist, that will not be put into effect, or that would not otherwise exist if the racket did not exist. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_(crime))

Can someone explain to me how this description does not apply to Intuit?

View on HN

The answer you aren't looking for is that Intuit doesn't actually control the US government.

It's clear they have significant influence on this matter.

If you could convince legislators that their constituents cared about the issue (in meaningful numbers), the lobbying would be irrelevant.

The lobbying just looks like a lot of influence because it is more noticeable than all the not caring.

You know that people that use lobbying will almost always care more, because their money is on the line? Also they are willing to use that money to prove it?

Yeah sure. What does that have to do with my comment?

My point is that legislators are almost universally dedicated to keeping their jobs and will pretty much limit their responses to lobbying to the situations where it won't lower their chances of getting reelected.

Because they need contributions(direct and indirect) to get (re)elected or even able to be a candidate? And there are other ways to use money to influence this?

The 2008 presidential election certainly showed the impact that pulling in the right electorate can have on the result of an election (in some literal sense, the Obama campaign got more people on their side to care enough to vote). I think that is the most powerful effect money can have on an election.

I don't think campaign dollars have such a big impact on the elections of Senators and Representatives. Maybe Senators, but for representatives, the primary force right now is the shape of the districts.

What I'd like to see is the removal of the special seats that the parties have at the table. Make it staged signature collection for everybody, for everything.

(staged in the sense that 5 signatures would be enough to be the only name on the ballot but not enough to show up next to 3 other people that collected 1000+ signatures)

Shapes maybe indicate that Democrat or Republican wins, but doesn't indicate with one. With enough money you can outdemocrat any Democrat or outrepublican any Republican. After election they better play ball or next time no one will give them any money.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com